Documentary diplomacy constitutes a unique tool for China to engage with practitioners in foreign countries and advance public diplomacy goals. This paper explores China’s strategy of documentary co-productions by focusing on the case of Latin America. Adopting a comparative approach including discourse analysis and in-depth interviews, we scrutinise China’s Documentary Diplomacy in Latin America, the main discourses reflected by documentary co-production projects and the significance of these experiences for those involved. We examine professional co-production projects in Argentina and Brazil, as well as the academic exchange programme Looking China. The findings show that these projects not only aid China in reshaping its own image but are also beneficial to Latin American countries and their own PD efforts in China. Furthermore, participants recognise the value of these experiences for the development of their own careers.
Journal of Public Diplomacy, v. 5, p. 23-45, 2025.