Othering as soft-power discursive practice: China Daily’s construction of Trump’s America in the 2016 presidential election

Abstract

The relationship between Chinese soft power and Chinese media has been a focus of a growing body of literature. Challenging a resource-based conception of soft power and a transmission view of communication that inform much of the debate, this article adopts a discursive approach to soft power and media communication. It argues that their relationship is not just a matter of resource transmission, but one of discursive construction, which begs the questions of what mediated discursive practices are at play in soft power construction and how. Addressing these oft-neglected questions, we identify a typology of three soft-power discursive practices: charm offensive, Othering offensive, and defensive denial. Focusing on the little-understood practice of Othering offensive, we illustrate its presence in Chinese media through a critical discourse analysis of China Daily’s framing of Donald Trump and the United States, and argue that the Othering offensive in Chinese media that portrays Trump’s America as a dysfunctional and declining Other serves to construct a Chinese self as more responsible, dynamic, and attractive. Adding a missing discursive dimension to the study of soft power and the media, this study has both scholarly and practical implications for analysing a nation’s soft power strategy.

Struggling for Recognition? Strategic Disrespect in China’s Pursuit of Soft Power

“…However, the findings of this study echo Pan et al (2019) [38] in that disrespect, as invested in the soft power identity, functions as external diplomacy in a broad global context, particularly in the developing world. By contrast, this study does not support the view of Callahan [7], in that the postcolonial victim narrative applies primarily to China's domestic policy.…”

“…In seeking to clarify these questions, this study aligns itself with prior research that views soft power and identity construction as a discursive and linguistic phenomenon. These studies seek distance from the abovementioned resource/impact-based understanding of soft power, in favour of an identityrelated narrative construction [4,45,14,38].…”

“…In their view, soft power is produced through media discourses of identity. As one of various strategies to create attractive identities, Pan and colleagues refer to the well-known 'charm offensive' and to what they term the 'othering offensive' ( [38], p. [5][6]. While the former refers to a discursive strategy to construct Self in a positive light, the latter refers to a strategy to construct a negative and repulsive Other as a foil to the attractive Self.…”

Introduction to the special issue: Elections, rhetoric and American foreign policy in the age of Donald Trump

“…It rhetorically signals the future intent and aspirations of the speaker both in content and style, and the foreign policy of the president-elect supposedly by and large follows this rhetoric. This in turn affects how outsiders anticipate and use (discourses on) the direction of US foreign policy (Pan et al, 2020).…”

Perceptions of democracy and the rise of Donald Trump: A framing analysis of Saudi Arabian media

“…Among the many criticisms that have been levelled at Trump, and the 2016 US presidential election cycle that brought him to office, it has been said that it may have damaged global perceptions of democracy and severely undermined America’s efforts to promote its form of government across the world (Bremmer, 2016; Carothers, 2017). At its worst, this would enable various non-democratic regimes to continue the argument that their tight grip on power is preferable to democracy and to justify the maintenance of their oppressive rule (Denyer, 2016; Kluver et al, 2016; Chou et al, 2017; Pan et al, 2019). This article seeks to hold such criticisms up to empirical scrutiny by focusing on one such oppressive regime – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) – and the ways in which the 2016 election and the rise of Trump were framed in a key state newspaper, Arab News .…”