China is one country that we hear so much about but know so little about.

The dominant views we hear on the news and in the classroom are communism, human rights, overpopulation, pollution, censorship and economic growth to name but a few. The western nations paint a fairly dismal picture of the most populous nation in the world.

I recently had the opportunity to conduct my first visit to China. How was it? Incredible! It changed my entire perspective about the country and compelled me to consider issues relating to China's prosperity, governance and geo-strategic role on the world stage.

Within a couple of days of arriving, I began to formulate some initial thoughts on Beijing. Despite a population of 17million people the city is very clean and safe. It is heavily congested and thousands of taxis, a string of Audi's and other high end vehicles contribute to the congestion. The infrastructure is far beyond what I expected. Whilst the city is filled with very modern mid-rise buildings construction of more buildings continues to take place virtually everywhere, an indication that the city is booming.

The highways are very new and in excellent condition and the road system seems to do a fantastic job of handling the millions of cars. Although I must admit, the weaving of cars through traffic is a daunting experience. But reassuringly there seems to some order in the chaos.

China is not as homogenous as it might seem at first or as it may often appear in mainstream media outside the country. The contradictions in calling the society either capitalist or communist are striking. There is clearly great wealth and abject poverty; people can own their own businesses but can only watch certain TV channels. Being at such crossroads between old and new, modern and traditional, communist and capitalist is what makes China interesting. But just like any country China is beset with its fair share of inherent domestic problems.

Beijing also seemed to keep the culture of China alive (as much as could be in a rapidly modernising metropolis) and eventually I witness its beauty and architectural richness. Seeing some of the big cultural landmarks like the Great Wall, the Summer Palace and Forbidden City, helped to improve my impressions of Beijing and China overall.

In fact it was during my visit to these landmarks that I learnt that as a black person I was actually like a "panda" in Beijing. I stood out obviously due to the colour of my skin but was quite amazed at the local's attitude towards me. The Chinese people were very friendly and not once did I feel I was being judged by the colour of my skin as I have felt in some other parts of the world. Because of that I couldn't resist several requests by Chinese people to have me in their photos at these historical landmarks. And not to take lightly that a picture of me probably hangs in several households across China. The most indelible mark was left by a woman well beyond her 60's who despite the language barrier showed me how happy she was for me to oblige.

Visiting the Silk Market for the first time was an experience I will never forget. The Silk Market is a famous market in Beijing where you can buy a variety of goods ranging from clothing to jewellery, and where no fixed prices exist. The aggressiveness and bargaining skills of the store-keepers is overwhelming. In terms of bargaining, the prices were very flexible! Generally, one could bargain down to 1/8th of the starting price and sometimes even more. I never thought that the same characteristics that exist at the market in my home country (mostly in second hand clothes trading) would be prevalent in China. But here it was and you have to be a skilled negotiator to take on these sales persons who are mostly women that can communicate in fairly good English.

China is known as a country that places heavy restrictions on the media. In Zambia many conversations about China do not end without the mention of information control or censorship. Most of us wonder how a nation, in this day and age, can deny free speech and access to information.

It's no secret that the government in China controls information mainly for the sake of stability in the country. Despite being aware of internet censorship (the great firewall of China, as one colleague called it) I never knew exactly what the Chinese web browsing experience would be. As it turned out not all my perceptions were true.

While I discovered that popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter were hard to access, it was refreshing to find that western news sites such as the BBC and British newspapers were available on certain days during my stay. A significant discovery that I am sure the Chinese government want to keep a tab on in terms of what is being reported in Western media.

It was therefore very interesting to later learn that amid all these information controls, the media at the local and provincial level in China is by and large free and actually thriving, just like in many parts of the West and across certain parts of Africa.

Reading through some copies of the Beijing Today newspaper I saw a number of things I would not have expected in a communist country having no freedom of the press. Experimental sex education programs were being started in some schools partly because too many children were learning about sex from pornographic websites. Some Beijing taxi drivers were also demanding that private taxi firms be allowed to flourish.

In the China Daily newspaper and on CCTV9 News (China Network Television) citizens were protesting the demolition of their homes to pave way for the expansion of the Beijing city. A look around the streets also revealed a multitude of special interest magazines with the women's sector topping the list.

This change in media was put into perspective through separate discussions with academics during the course of the study tour.

It was noted that the media in China has changed from the "official party line message " into a more developed and diverse media representing a market that is similar to that of the West where newspapers jostle for circulation while television networks imitate those of their western counterparts. In these discussions, the one dimensional view of Africa in China was attributed to this commercialisation of the media.

It is however interesting to note that these views differed from the prevailing view by some Chinese journalists that all news about Africa in the Chinese media must be good news.

Throughout my stay in Beijing it became apparent to me that Chinese people and Africans have a lot of similarities but lack general understanding of one another. I learnt that the two sides could not understand one another simply by reading about politics and foreign policy but by understanding one another's people, culture and history. This comprehension is vital for the national interests of both Africa and China.

Therefore what I have learnt I will share with my students and colleagues to give them a broader understanding of China from my perspective. Hopefully they too can share this knowledge with some of their colleagues and most importantly it will be from an African perspective.

(Carole Phiri Chibbonta teaches in the Department of Mass Communications at the University of Zambia in Lusaka.)

The article first appeared in Fahamu's Emerging Powers in Africa newsletter

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