Abstract

This paper examines the influence of Chinese television broadcast services on local political attitudes in rural Tanzania. In 2015, the Chinese government announced the "Access to Satellite TV for 10,000 African Villages" project, which aims to facilitate the transition from analog to digital TV and provide a secure and reliable television network in rural Africa. The StarTimes Group, a Chinese private broadcasting company, was responsible for the project and for providing affordable television subscription services to rural communities. This paper studies whether Chinese investment in television media in Africa would affect local political attitudes regarding local trust toward government and, more widely, support towards authoritarianism and the Chinese development model. This paper focuses on Tanzania, one of the earliest African countries to implement the project. By analyzing data from around 8,742 respondents from the Afrobarometer survey, we find that people tend to have a higher level of trust in local governance after implementing the program. However, such effects only exist in those who own a TV in their household, while the entire rural community that experienced the digital transition perceives their government as less democratic and has a higher support for democracy.