The Great Powers Competition and Increasing Entropy in the Local Media Across Africa and Asia

Abstract The current United States National Defense Strategy prioritizes strategic competition with Russia and China, whereas for the previous two decades, the priority was counter-terrorism. This research aims to measure the extent to which competition among great powers is intensifying and identify where such intensification is taking place. To achieve this, we utilize a large, open-source dataset called GDELT 2.0, which provides an archive of global news articles. We calculate the entropy for local press coverage of great powers (e.g., the United States, China, Russia, France, and India) across 96 African and Asian nations to measure static competition levels. Additionally, we identify African and Asian nations where competition levels have changed significantly between 2015 and 2020. Our findings show that seven countries are experiencing increased competition among great powers, whereas seven other countries experience increased domination by one great power. When we aggregate the data geographically, we find that Southeast Asia is the only subregion where there is a significant decrease in competition. Our results align with the primary concern of the National Defense Strategy: that American influence is decreasing. Specifically, we have identified increased competition across Africa and increased domination across Asia. These trends are due to a relatively higher reporting of Chinese in-country public and private entities between 2015 and 2020.