Ecological Civilisation Discourse in Xinhua’s African Newswires: Towards a Greener Agency?

Abstract

How does Chinese central media represent Africa through its environmental news? This article argues that the way in which Chinese central media organisations have reported environmental issues across the African continent has altered from a reactive "charm defensive" towards the promotion of a developmental model: "Ecological Civilisation". Based on a critical discourse analysis of headline African news published by the Xinhua News Agency, this research illustrates the emergence of this new, unexpected turn in Chinese representations of Africa, as well as highlighting the coherencies and tensions within this discourse. Questioning why this change in the emphasis of content has occurred, it investigates explanations at the macro-, mezzo-, and micro-levels of analysis, concluding that the evidence indicates that Xinhua's content remains closely linked to the soft power goals of the Chinese Communist Party. However, the presence of risk discourses in some reports indicates that the hegemonic discourse is altering. This could potentially be the result of Xinhua's own commercial objectives in Africa, or of the subjectivities of individual Xinhua journalists seeping into reports. This research provides significant contributions to an understanding of Chinese soft power in Africa, the ecology of Chinese media in Africa, and the development of environmental discourses.

From growth obsession to ecological promotion: The discursive construction of party image in Chinese political discourse on ecological civilization

“…CPC’s governance idea of ecological civilization is often carried by political discourses in the form of documents and speeches. Previous studies have exposed some significant findings as regards the motivations, efforts, and means in the construction of EC via discourses (Boughen, 2021; Geall and Ely, 2018; Huang and Westman, 2021; Marinelli, 2018; Wang et al, 2014). For example, Geall and Ely (2018) look at ecological civilization ( shengtai wenming ) as a slogan that has gradually evolved to become an official narrative to realize green ambitions, helping reassert soft or discourse power in environmental diplomacy.…”