{"id":66188,"date":"2026-05-27T06:34:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=66188"},"modified":"2026-05-27T06:34:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:34:45","slug":"cgtn-versus-bbc-china-uk-and-soft-power-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/cgtn-versus-bbc-china-uk-and-soft-power-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"CGTN versus BBC: China, UK, and Soft Power in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Carlos Latuff<\/strong><\/p>\n

I found it strange to come across interference from a Chinese radio station on the BBC\u2019s shortwave broadcast. For about a month, between April and May 2026, I was monitoring this special BBC radio service, transmitted from a station in Madagascar and aimed at Sudan and Gaza in Arabic. Aside from some technical and propagation issues, this was the first time I had encountered this kind of interference.<\/p>\n

At first, I thought it was some sort of technical problem. The interference from the Chinese radio made it impossible to understand what was being said on the BBC broadcast. I tried again on other days, and the problem persisted. On May 25 at 17:00 UTC, I tuned into another BBC broadcast, this time transmitted from Ascension Island and aimed at West Africa in English, on the frequency 17780 kHz. To my surprise, the BBC broadcast was once again overpowered by the signal of a Chinese station \u2014 I couldn\u2019t tell whether it was China National Radio or China Radio International (also known as CGTN Radio).<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Audio-1-Chinese-radio-interference-over-BBC-17780-kHz-May-25-17h02-UTC.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

This monitoring was done on an Ecopower EP-F23B radio \u2014 a white-label model \u2014 with DSP technology and manual tuning. I wondered if it might be a problem with the device itself. So I used a digital Xhdata D808 radio, and when I tuned precisely to the frequency, I determined that the issue wasn\u2019t a technical fault with my equipment, but rather deliberate interference with the BBC broadcast.<\/p>\n