This paper examines the influence of Chinese television broadcast services on local political attitudes in Tanzania. Chinese government makes a lot of effort to facilitate the transition from analog to digital TV and provide a secure and reliable television network in Africa. The StarTimes Group, a Chinese private broadcasting company, was responsible for this Chinese investment project and aimed to provide affordable television subscription services to African 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 impl...[ Read more ]

This paper examines the influence of Chinese television broadcast services on local political attitudes in Tanzania. Chinese government makes a lot of effort to facilitate the transition from analog to digital TV and provide a secure and reliable television network in Africa. The StarTimes Group, a Chinese private broadcasting company, was responsible for this Chinese investment project and aimed to provide affordable television subscription services to African 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. We use a difference-in-difference approach to explore the causal effects of StarTimes television media services on local political attitudes by comparing regions that were early covered by the digital signals from StarTimes in 2013 and the later treated regions. By analyzing data from 4,442 respondents from the Afrobarometer survey, evidence suggests that people have a higher trust in the ruling party and, meanwhile, have a higher support for a democratic government. Besides, locals are also less likely to think China is the best development model after implementing the StarTimes program. Consistent pro-local government and pro-China attitudes could only be found in those who own a television within the household. The provision of the StarTimes television program could potentially harm the local governors by decreasing the willingness to vote in elections.