Leveraging Chinese economic presence in the post-lockdown Ghanaian market space and the growth of China's public relations and diplomacy

Recent research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected the socioeconomic life of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Consequently, the paper's purpose is to explore how the economically bottom-class citizens in Ghana - small-scale vendors - are navigating themselves out of their predicaments. Using a mixed method, I combined a structured questionnaire with unstructured interviews to collect data and examined 384 small-scale vendors in four urban centres with content analysis and SPSS descriptive statistics. I find that Ghanaian small-scale vendors are leveraging the Chinese economic presence in the Ghanaian market space to navigate themselves from the negative impacts the pandemic brought on their socioeconomic life. I argue that China's international image-building effort is growing and achieving desired outcomes in Ghana as a result of pegging economic engagement as a soft power resource. The economic engagements may further Chinese public relations and diplomacy - transforming Chinese cultural assets into soft power. I base the theoretical argument on the new public diplomacy framework.