Representations of Africa in a Hong Kong Soap Opera: The Limits of Enlightened Humanitarianism in The Last Breakthrough

Several studies have looked at “Africa” in the Western imagery, and explored how it is constructed for Americans through popular media. This article offers a preliminary query into whether Chinese popular media functions in a similar way by examining a 2004 Hong Kong-produced soap opera that uses a medical humanitarian mission in Kenya to advance its plot and central themes. While many tropes regarding Africa found in Western media are repeated, there is a conscious effort in this production to embody a more enlightened approach. Nevertheless, the core relationship is marked by humanitarianism, and necessarily one embodying unequal power relations. The soap opera thus avoids critical questions of development, globalization or even post-colonial solidarity, and instead rests more on older, safer paradigms of modernization. Still, an analysis of the drama reveals contradictions and unresolved tensions in which the relationship with Africa parallels Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China. This study posits that popular culture can offer unique insights into understanding dynamics affecting the evolving relationship between China and Africa.