China’s government and companies’ strategic communications and grass-roots lobbying strategies in Africa in the digital age: a case study on China’s Confucius Institutes

International audienceThis thesis focuses on China’s hybrid lobbying strategies (economic and cultural, hard and soft power) in the sectors of media and telecommunication in Africa, particularly in Kenya and South Africa. It intends to analyse changing Chinese soft power influence strategies in the digital and social media age. I rely on different perspectives and theoretical approaches: public policies cognitive analysis, media framing effects on political debates, critical analysis of the uses of information and communication tools in different socio- historical backgrounds, prospective analysis of PR techniques evolution (Davidson, 2016; Olsson & Eriksson, 2016; Yeomans, 2016; Kantola, 2016; Bernays, 2013; Berg, 2009). We mean to examine the innovative way in which the Chinese “party-state” spreads a certain vision of its culture and ideology on the African continent in order to promote its economic interest. This grass-roots lobbying (Barnes & Balnave, 2015; Schneider, 2015; Jalali, 2013; Reddick & Norris, 2013) can be described accurately with the metaphor of the Trojan horse.As the essential destination of the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, the official ways to name Chinese international relations’ strategy, Kenya has become a hub for China. China’s cultural institutions opened their first African Confucius Institute there. Being one of the members of BRICS, South Africa also grew into the business centre of China in Africa. Many important branches of Chinese Telecom companies are based in the country. It seems that these institutions, no matter public or private, were eventually being an essential channel for China’s local PR actions.As the core channels of “soft power”, culture and knowledge encapsulate values, ideologies and beliefs (Desmoulins & Huang, 2017; Gupta, 2013; Martel, 2013; DeLisle, 2010; Courmont, 2009; Bläser, 2005; Keohane, Jr, & Keohane, 1998; Nye, 2006, 2004, 1991). China’s cultural associations, training institutes, humanitarian foundations, companies as well as government’s propaganda are mutually reinforced and seem to be aimed to enhance China’s cultural, political and economic influence spheres indifferently.This could not be possible without a high level of centralisation and of governmental control, pervasive media propaganda and well-funded and staffed information censorship institutions. As a matter of fact, China remains a one-party state, its constitution determines the Communist Party of China (CCP) as China’s sole ruling party, although Chinese economic development after the reform and opening up of 1978 shows the characteristics of capitalism. Most Chinese companies are owned by the state. Furthermore, even through Chinese Constitution protects the freedom of speech and of the press (see Chapter 2, Article 35), the status of Chinese press is extraordinary and difficult to tackle from a western viewpoint. In China, media plays as the spokesman filtering all negative news and led by the CPC, which means it defends politically governmental issues and positions, even participates in all political propaganda.One hypothesis is that since China is the birthplace of the Confucian culture and since Chinese people see themselves as the continuator of Confucianism, interests’ groups PR strategies rely on different action lever than in Western Europe. Common interests are more valued than individual interests, political authority is more important than individual freedoms, also social responsibility wins over individual rights (Chu, 2016, p. 198; Huntington, 1997, p. 10). Functioning as the vanguard of Chinese image’s promotion, all people are considered as the spokesman of the CPC, no matter whether they are working for a media company, a cultural public agency or the diplomatic corps. They carry out a gatekeeping process (Brown, 1979, p. 595; Lewin, 1997) to promote CPC ideas and to promote the development in Africa of a kind of socialism that presents Chinese genuine characteristics.The thesis examines the current logic of China’s and China’s companies’ soft power strategies, and the related PR actions. The main research question is: what is so special with the Chinese soft power strategies (one-party system, censorship, propaganda, state monopolies, centralisation of the decision-making process, economic boost, ecological crisis, millennium Confucian philosophy and appealing non-individualistic culture in a context of capitalist crisis)? How are China’s governmental diplomacy and corporate PR strategies conceived, deployed and intertwined? How do second-track diplomacy and PR strategies differ and interact? I chose to adopt a comparative approach (two countries and two sectors of activity). How do these strategies interact with other resources of power in the digital and social media age?A multidimensional theoretical framework was mobilized, I aim to associate different approaches of public relations, lobbying, communication, international relations and foreign policy (political science, political theory). Secondly, fieldworks in Kenya and South Africa will take place in Spring 2018 to interview local residents, such as African branches of Chinese enterprises and media (China Telecom, Huawei, StarTimes, CGTN, CCTV, Xinhua), as well as representatives of Confucius Institutes and China’s local embassies. I will also analyse the rhetoric and semiotic of Chinese soft power strategies as it reveals itself on sites, forums, blogs and social media platforms, where PR strategies of China’s companies and governmental agencies are revealed.In short, I intend to analyse the institutional, rhetorical and technical innovative strategies deployed by China, its second-rack diplomacy, its soft power strategy (local PR actions and digital grass-roots lobbying). My study encompasses the PR actions of Chinese companies and governmental agencies in Africa by focusing on two sectors (telecoms, media), and two main countries: Kenya and South Africa

Highlighting the social dimension of the relationship in China’s public diplomacy practice: toward a global engagement?

International audiencePh.D. research theme: Highlighting the social dimension of the relationship in China's public diplomacy practice: toward a global engagement

Falling Toward Charged Black Holes

The growth of the "size" of operators is an important diagnostic of quantum chaos. In arXiv:1802.01198 [hep-th] it was conjectured that the holographic dual of the size is proportional to the average radial component of the momentum of the particle created by the operator. Thus the growth of operators in the background of a black hole corresponds to the acceleration of the particle as it falls toward the horizon. In this note we will use the momentum-size correspondence as a tool to study scrambling in the field of a near-extremal charged black hole. The agreement with previous work provides a non-trivial test of the momentum-size relation, as well as an explanation of a paradoxical feature of scrambling previously discovered by Leichenauer [arXiv:1405.7365 [hep-th]]. Naively Leichenauer's result says that only the non-extremal entropy participates in scrambling. The same feature is also present in the SYK model. In this paper we find a quite different interpretation of Leichenauer's result which does not have to do with any decoupling of the extremal degrees of freedom. Instead it has to do with the buildup of momentum as a particle accelerates through the long throat of the Reissner-Nordstrom geometry.Comment: v4: typos correcte

Panda engagement" in China's digital public diplomacy

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Polyphonic contents and monophonic core: Comparing Chinese diplomatic Twitter accounts in Ottawa and Brussels for public diplomacy

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Panda seems like a new “cat” : China’s digital panda public diplomacy on Twitter: affective sign, image promotion, and the permanent Chinese diplomat

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Personalized Estimate of Chemotherapy-Induced Nausea and Vomiting: Development and External Validation of a Nomogram in Cancer Patients Receiving Highly/Moderately Emetogenic Chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) is presented in over 30% of cancer patients receiving highly/moderately emetogenic chemotherapy (HEC/MEC). The currently recommended antiemetic therapy is merely based on the emetogenic level of chemotherapy, regardless of patient's individual risk factors. It is, therefore, critical to develop an approach for personalized management of CINV in the era of precision medicine.A number of variables were involved in the development of CINV. In the present study, we pooled the data from 2 multi-institutional investigations of CINV due to HEC/MEC treatment in Asian countries. Demographic and clinical variables of 881 patients were prospectively collected as defined previously, and 862 of them had full documentation of variables of interest. The data of 548 patients from Chinese institutions were used to identify variables associated with CINV using multivariate logistic regression model, and then construct a personalized prediction model of nomogram; while the remaining 314 patients out of China (Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) entered the external validation set. C-index was used to measure the discrimination ability of the model.The predictors in the final model included sex, age, alcohol consumption, history of vomiting pregnancy, history of motion sickness, body surface area, emetogenicity of chemotherapy, and antiemetic regimens. The C-index was 0.67 (95% CI, 0.62-0.72) for the training set and 0.65 (95% CI, 0.58-0.72) for the validation set. The C-index was higher than that of any single predictor, including the emetogenic level of chemotherapy according to current antiemetic guidelines. Calibration curves showed good agreement between prediction and actual occurrence of CINV.This easy-to-use prediction model was based on chemotherapeutic regimens as well as patient's individual risk factors. The prediction accuracy of CINV occurrence in this nomogram was well validated by an independent data set. It could facilitate the assessment of individual risk, and thus improve the personalized management of CINV

General wetting energy boundary condition in a fully explicit non-ideal fluids solver

We present an explicit finite difference method to simulate the non-ideal multi-phase fluid flow. The local density and the momentum transport are modeled by the Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations and the pressure is computed by the Van der Waals equation of the state (EOS). The static droplet and the dynamics of liquid-vapor separation simulations are performed as validations of this numerical scheme. In particular, to maintain the thermodynamic consistency, we propose a general wetting energy boundary condition at the contact line between fluids and the solid boundary. We conduct a series of comparisons between the current boundary condition and the constant contact angle boundary condition as well as the stress-balanced boundary condition. This boundary condition alleviates the instability induced by the constant contact angle boundary condition at $\theta \approx0$ and $\theta \approx \pi$. Using this boundary condition, the equilibrium contact angle is correctly recovered and the contact line dynamics are consistent with the simulation by applying a stress-balanced boundary condition. Nevertheless, unlike the stress-balanced boundary condition for which we need to further introduce the interface thickness parameter, the current boundary condition implicitly incorporates the interface thickness information into the wetting energy

On Pitfalls of Test-Time Adaptation

Test-Time Adaptation (TTA) has recently emerged as a promising approach for tackling the robustness challenge under distribution shifts. However, the lack of consistent settings and systematic studies in prior literature hinders thorough assessments of existing methods. To address this issue, we present TTAB, a test-time adaptation benchmark that encompasses ten state-of-the-art algorithms, a diverse array of distribution shifts, and two evaluation protocols. Through extensive experiments, our benchmark reveals three common pitfalls in prior efforts. First, selecting appropriate hyper-parameters, especially for model selection, is exceedingly difficult due to online batch dependency. Second, the effectiveness of TTA varies greatly depending on the quality and properties of the model being adapted. Third, even under optimal algorithmic conditions, none of the existing methods are capable of addressing all common types of distribution shifts. Our findings underscore the need for future research in the field to conduct rigorous evaluations on a broader set of models and shifts, and to re-examine the assumptions behind the empirical success of TTA. Our code is available at \url{https://github.com/lins-lab/ttab}.Comment: Accepted at ICML 202