Challenges for China’s international communication: Yiyi Lu

Abstract

Chinese policy-makers and scholars have clearly become fascinated with the idea of soft power in recent years. The term now appears frequently in media stories, official speeches and academic publications. As Mingjiang Li reports, his search of a major Chinese database of journal articles found that, on average, eight soft power-related articles were published annually between 1994 and 2000. The number increased to 53 in 2000-2004, before further jumping to 314 in 2005-2007.1 An increasing number of books and articles have explored various aspects of China’s real or potential soft power. For example, there have been studies of China’s effort to establish Confucius Institutes overseas to spread Chinese language and culture;2 Chinese soft power generated by its trade, investment and aid to other countries;3 Chinese soft power initiatives that use concepts such as “peaceful development” and “harmonious world” to try to convince other countries that China’s rise as a major global power would have a benign impact internationally;4 and the ascendance of the “Beijing Consensus” and the “China Model,” which many consider to be posing an ideological challenge to the Western development model based on democracy and free market.5 In the last couple of years, one aspect of China’s soft power strategy-efforts to improve China’s image by strengthening its international communication capacity-has received more attention. After the Beijing Olympics in 2008, China made a major commitment to creating its own media empire to compete with established international media. Both Chinese and foreign press reported that the Chinese government was prepared to invest huge sums of money in this endeavour.6 Since 2009, this investment has supported a rapid expansion of Chinese media targeting foreign audiences. For example, a new English newspaper, Global Times, was launched in April 2009; Arabic language programmes were added to the international broadcasting of China Central Television (CCTV) in July 2009; and Xinhua News Agency set up LED screens in European countries to broadcast live news.7 China’s determination to create its own international media has sprung from its belief that Western media cannot be trusted to portray China in an objective manner. The feeling that Western media have inherent biases was reinforced by the perceived hostile coverage of China in the period leading up to the BeijingOlympics, when events such as Steven Spielberg’s protest against China’s policy on Darfur and the riots in Tibet gave rise to many highly critical reports in the Western media. Despite China’s deep dissatisfaction with the way it is portrayed by foreign media, until it succeeds in building up its own media empire that can effectively challenge Western media’s dominance, its international image will continue to be shaped largely by foreign media. Therefore, China’s ability to communicate with the outside world through foreign media will be crucial in deciding the extent to which it can improve its international image. The main part of this chapter is devoted to analysing this ability. The rest of the chapter discusses the obstacles for turning Chinese media into successful global players. Before getting into those discussions, I first briefly review China’s current international image.