Abstract
The paper aims to address the development of China’s narrative power during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on world order. It argues that in the post-pandemic world, the emergence of the authoritarian sub-order would be prompted by China’s more proactive narrative power, given that the climate of opinion is ambiguous when faced with the uncertainty of the pandemic. (This does not imply the end of the existing liberal order; instead, it features the coexistence of both orders.) To understand how China’s narrative power has encouraged the emergence of the authoritarian sub-order to coexist in parallel with the dominant constitutional order, the article first reviews the existing literature concerning the changing world order. In this section, it also briefly defines and differentiates between the constitutional and authoritarian orders, what defines world order, and what distinguishes authoritarian from constitutional liberal order. Second it looks at the theoretical grounding. The nature, role and power of narratives are explored. Ideas about strategic narratives and the economics of attention are discussed. This theoretical background paves the way to examine China’s narrative power during a pandemic. Lastly, it switches to the Chinese perspective to address its support for the plurality of orders and its awareness of the strength of narrative in influencing dominant ideas. It looks at how China’s narrative power has been exercised from three perspectives (formation, projection and reception). Here, it mainly tackles how China has used its narrative power to spin the pandemic to its advantage in the reorganization of world order: improving its international image and advocating the authoritarian order as an alternative. China has been building its narrative along with its changing strategic diplomacy – from restrained and low-profile to proactive and assertive. In the conclusion, some reflections on China’s narrative power and the implications for world order are considered.
Highlights
COVID-19 is definitely not the first or the worst epidemic to cause a global crisis, yet it has tremendous implications for International Relations (IR) and world order
Admitting that resurrecting the existing order will be impossible and insufficient, Haass believes that “the world is not yet on the edge of a systemic crisis” ([12]:30), and presumes that the role of the US needs to be further strengthened. Those who adopt the alternative stance concerning the transformation of world order believe that there is a long-term shift in the global system, in which the liberal international order is already irretrievable and suffering from a “grave systemic crisis” [15, 16], and the world order will be more diversified as well as pluralistic, giving way to different mixtures oforders [17,18,19]
To ensure the proper use of state authority, the promulgation and enforcement of positive law are necessary. It is the democratic legislative and judicial processes that define political authority that construct the special virtue of constitutionalism, which “lies not merely in reducing the power of the state, but in effecting that reduction by the advance imposition of rules” ([26]:23)
Summary
COVID-19 is definitely not the first or the worst epidemic to cause a global crisis, yet it has tremendous implications for International Relations (IR) and world order. In this paper, the author seeks to explore China’s international narratives concerning the COVID-19 pandemic as a diplomatic strategy to alter global perception and their possible influences on the emerging world order. To link theory to evidence, the paper adopts an analytical framework involving three levels of narrative (international system, national and issue narratives) and three aspects of the communication process (narrative formation, projection/diffusion, and reception) to study the empirical cases and examine carefully the narrative power exercised by China amid the pandemic crisis. The paper will review China’s role and its influence on the formation of the new emerging multicomplex world order, from the perspective of the country’s narrative strength in dealing with the pandemic crisis on the international stage. Stressing the narrative perspective and the coexistence of the liberal and authoritarian orders adds value to and supplements the existing literature, in which material strength is foregrounded and a dichotomy between liberal and authoritarian order is manifested
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