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

Introduction

The media and soft power are inextricably linked (Curran, 2002; Klaehn, 2016; van Dijk, 1996). Not surprisingly, the connection between the global expansion of Chinese media and China’s soft power has been the focus of a growing body of literature in the fields of international relations (IR) and media and communication studies (Cao, 2011; Edney, 2012; Flew, 2016; Gao et al., 2017; Lai and Lu, 2012; Sun, 2010, 2015; Zhao, 2013). Among other things, the literature examines where China has increased its media presence (Flew, 2016; Sun, 2010; Zhang et al., 2016), how much soft power China has garnered as a result (Bailard, 2016; Wasserman, 2016), and what motivates Beijing’s media-based soft power push (Sun, 2015; Xin, 2010).

While such issues and questions are undoubtedly important, much of the extant literature is informed by a resource-based conception of soft power and a transmission model of communication (Carey, 1989). Nye’s (2011: 20–21) widely adopted definition of soft power – ‘the ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuading, and eliciting positive attraction’ – implies that attraction and soft power may be a product of (media) construction. Yet for the most part, Nye refers to attraction as ‘a natural objective experience’ (Bially Mattern, 2005: 591, emphasis in original), and defines soft power as resources measurable in terms of a country’s culture, political values, and foreign policies (Nye, 2004: 11; Roselle et al., 2014). Meanwhile, the media are often treated as both a type of soft power resource and a conduit through which soft power resources are amplified and transmitted. This transmission function is no doubt part of how the media contribute to soft power (Warren, 2014). But this resource-cum-transmission approach also neglects the critical role of the media in the production of meaning in soft power relations.

Addressing this neglect, we propose a discursive approach to soft power and the media. Bridging discourse studies of soft power in IR (Bially Mattern, 2005; Callahan, 2015; Feklyunina, 2016; Hayden, 2012; Kiseleva, 2015) and the culture and meaning paradigm in media and communication studies (Carey, 1989; Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Lowery and DeFleur, 1988; Pan and Kosicki, 1993; Potter et al., 1993; Van Gorp, 2007), we argue that soft power is not the effect of naturally attractive resources that can be simply possessed and stockpiled. Rather, it is socially constructed through discourse and, most fundamentally, deals with the identity question of who we are (and who we are not). Given that identity is crafted through language and communication (Bially Mattern, 2005; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 106), critical discourse analysis (CDA) can be used to explore what kinds of media discursive practices are at play in the construction of soft power.

The media construction of soft power in general and China’s soft power in particular is of course not a linear process, but a complex and interactional one in which audience reception and consumption of media products play an integral part (Feklyunina, 2016; Flew, 2016; Hudson, 2015; Roselle et al., 2014). The production and consumption (as well as circulation and reproduction) of meaning are ‘linked but distinctive moments’ (Hall, 1993: 91). A fuller understanding of China’s mediated soft power requires, therefore, analysis of both soft power’s ‘formation and projection’ and its ‘reception and interpretation’ (Roselle et al., 2014: 74–75). Valuable studies of international audience reception of Chinese media have emerged (see, for example, the special issue on ‘Re-evaluating China’s global media expansion’, March, 2018), and further empirical research on audience reception of China’s mediated soft power strategies can shed light on the ‘actual’ soft power effect of such strategies. Yet, the main problem is that we still know little about these strategies in the first place. For this reason (as well as space limitations), this article will focus primarily on the production/formation stage of the communicative process in relation to China’s soft power. In the following sections, the article first critically examines the existing literature’s dominant resource-cum-transmission approach to Chinese media and soft power, and makes a case for a more discursive approach. In the subsequent section, we identify three types of media discursive strategies in soft power construction – defensive denial, charm offensive, and Othering offensive – and specify these in the Chinese context.

In the third section, we provide an empirical analysis of China’s Othering offensive; despite its importance, this is perhaps the least understood of the discursive practices of Chinese soft power. Employing relevant methods and concepts from CDA, which is concerned with problematizing the role of discourse in power relations, we dissect the framing of Donald Trump (and the United States) as the Other by China’s leading official English newspaper China Daily during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. We show that China’s mediated soft power strategy involves not only Chinese media ‘going abroad’ or portraying China in a positive light to ‘attract and entice others’ (Heng, 2010), but also its negative framing of Otherness. In the final section, the article highlights the implications of our arguments for research on soft power.

Media and soft power: From resource transmission to discursive construction

China, suffering from a ‘soft power deficit’ (Shambaugh, 2013: 212), has invested heavily in the media to improve its international image (d’Hooghe, 2010: 4–5; Heng, 2010; Hunter, 2009: 282; Li, 2008: 294, 2009: 27). Li Changchun, then a Chinese Politburo Standing Committee member, stated in 2008 that ‘those with advanced means of communication and powerful communication capacity will be able to more widely propagate their ideas, cultures, and values and be in a stronger position to influence the world’ (Li, 2008a). Building on such thinking, Chinese media have been given generous funding, ‘going abroad’ to places like Africa, Latin America, Europe, the US and Australia (Gao et al., 2017; Sun, 2010; Thussu et al., 2018; Xin, 2009), and undergoing major restructuring (e.g. the creation of a mega-broadcaster called ‘Voice of China’), all tasked with boosting China’s soft power.

Given the growth of Chinese media in quantity, quality, and reach (Hunter, 2009; Shambaugh, 2013: 227–228), some studies have noted an increase in China’s global soft power (Cho and Jeong, 2008; Jacques, 2009: 405; Kurlantzick, 2007: 405). Other analyses, however, show that its media-derived soft power remains limited (d’Hooghe, 2010; Gill and Huang, 2006: 9; Shambaugh, 2013: 227–228; Zhao, 2013). Sun (2010: 69), for example, argues that ‘China’s media globalization is … reinforcing an association of China with coercive, rather than soft, power’ (see also Flew, 2016; Xin, 2009).

Diverse as these analyses may be, most studies explicitly or implicitly treat soft power as resources, and see the media as a transmission vehicle for disseminating and broadcasting such resources. Despite a lively debate on the soft power concept in China (Cao, 2014: 177–178), mainstream Chinese understandings of soft power continue to draw on Nye’s resource-based conceptualization (Li, 2008b: 288; Zhao, 2013). Indeed, when it comes to the study of the media and soft power, the ‘transmission view’ of media communication and the resource-based conception of soft power echo each other, resulting in a ‘distributional bias in research on media and soft power, where evidence of [media] reach is taken to be synonymous with influence’ (Flew 2016: 285, emphasis in original).

Moving beyond the resource-cum-transmission view, we argue that soft power is not merely a resource that exists naturally, ready for media distribution. Rather, it is ‘a narrative- and linguistic-based phenomenon’ (Solomon, 2014: 724) and, akin to Lukes’ (2005) third face of power, is about the ability to shape meanings, norms, identities, and social reality more generally. Yet, as a part of social reality itself, soft power cannot exist outside of the language or discourse that gives meaning to it (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 107). If soft power is constructed in this way, then the role of media communication in soft power also needs to be rethought from a discursive perspective.

The discursive approach echoes the culture and meaning paradigm in media and communication studies, which views media communication as ‘a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed’ (Carey, 1989: 23). Given that ‘the discursive form of the message has a privileged position’ in the communicative exchange process (Hall, 1993: 91), the media are engaged in story-telling and meaning-making in the construction of a ‘discursive community’ (Carey, 1989; Pan et al., 1999; Wuthnow, 2008). One ‘side effect’ in the identity construction of such a community concerns the soft power, or attractiveness, of that community. Thus, a discourse analysis must ask what meanings media discourse tries to construct and, in the process, which meanings are privileged and excluded (Hall, 1997: 228), and then what those meanings and constructs do in social relations and practices.

Although the Chinese state continues to see media communication largely through a ‘transmission’ lens (Sun, 2010: 57), Chinese soft power is nevertheless a discursive phenomenon. Beijing increasingly recognizes the importance of ‘discursive power’ and the need for telling China’s story to the world. ¹ Chinese President Xi Jinping, for example, has urged the official media to ‘spread China’s voice well, let the world know a three-dimensional, colourful China, and showcase China’s role as a builder of world peace’ (Associated Press, 2016), all of which entail story-telling and meaning-making practices. Consequently, we need to know what kinds of discursive practices are at play in Chinese media’s construction of Chinese soft power.

A typology of media discursive practices in soft-power construction

IR scholars have debated how certain resources become soft power resources (Bially Mattern, 2005: 584). Nye (2004: 6) sees soft power as coming from and produced by resources which are attractive to people. But his definition appears tautological (Hall, 2010: 204), for ‘what makes a resource a power resource’ remains unanswered (Guzzini, 2013: 96). Seeking an answer in ‘communicative strategies’, Bially Mattern (2005: 598, emphasis in original) argues what matters most is ‘how the speaker articulates his interpretation to listeners during communicative exchanges’, as opposed to ‘what the speaker says, who the speaker is, or to whom she speaks’. Bially Mattern’s emphasis on communicative strategies leads her to an influential study of a particular communicative strategy called ‘verbal fighting’, which reveals the coercive effect of soft power on the audience: hence, soft power is not so soft. Yet, if ‘verbal fighting’ makes soft power less soft, Bially Mattern’s analysis leaves open the question of what kinds of discursive strategies may help create and maintain ‘soft power’ as soft power.

In response to these unexplained questions, we identify three interrelated strategies: defensive denial, charm offensive, and Othering offensive. Before we explain these discursive strategies in detail, it is worth comparing our concept of discursive strategy/practice with strategic narrative (Roselle et al., 2014). A strategic narrative is a more or less coherent story about particular actors, systems, issues, or events. Filled with specific contents and ideas about the questions of who, what, where, when, and why, a particular strategic narrative can be a soft power resource for a particular actor (but unlikely for other actors). In comparison, the concept of discursive strategy or discursive practice in soft power is more concerned with forms of discursive construction, namely how a story is told. In this sense, a discursive strategy, such as Othering, may be used by any actor to construct its strategic narrative.

Among the three discursive strategies, charm offensive is probably the most familiar. In the soft power literature, this term usually describes the sum total of public diplomacy aimed at promoting positive self-images and winning hearts and minds. But in this article, it is defined more specifically as a discursive practice of constructing the self in a positive light. As such, charm offensive can set the tone for, and provide the underpinnings of, an overall soft power strategy. Notable examples of this practice can be found in discourses such as the ‘American Dream’ and ‘a city upon a hill’ (the United States), ² ‘normative power Europe’ (Europe) (Manners, 2002), and a ‘Russian world’ (Feklyunina, 2016).

Othering offensive refers to the construction of a negative and repulsive Other as a foil for indirectly fashioning a positive and attractive self-identity. Since identity always entails difference, the ‘presence’ of a negative Other is essential to a positive self (Barker et al., 1985; Fürsich, 2010; Pan, 2012; Said, 1981, 1995; Tsygankov, 2017). Of course, not all Othering is necessarily about constructing one’s soft power; its most common use may be in managing one’s ontological anxiety and security (Browning and Joenniemi, 2017), and/or justifying domination and the use of hard power (Pan, 2004). Still, to the extent that such functions lead to the empowerment of the Self, Othering offensive has soft power implications. Kiseleva (2015: 319) argues that ‘“othering” is central to the discourse of soft power’. Indeed, given that the best ‘public diplomacy should not be obviously self-referential’ (Hayden, 2012: 239), the implicitly self-referential nature of Othering may be particularly useful. Citing examples of the American discourses of ‘Evil Empire’ and the ‘Axis of Evil’, Lee (2009: 212) argues that Washington ‘has been particularly adroit in manipulating or creating others’ negative images’ to rally support for US leadership.

By defensive denial, we mean a largely reactive strategy of resisting or denying negative discourses about the Self, often as a response to an Othering offensive by other actors. For example, to refute damaging discourses about Japan’s war atrocities in World War II, the narrative of Japanese wartime victimhood in Japan’s history textbooks often denies or downplays its wartime responsibility, and in doing so ‘serve[s] as the basis for creating [the image of] a post-war, peace-loving society’ (Bukh, 2007: 687).

Some of these discursive practices have been noted in studies of soft power. For instance, two of the six soft power strategies examined by Lee (2009) – creation of self-images and manipulation of others’ images – roughly correspond with what we call ‘charm offensive’ and ‘Othering offensive’, respectively. Yet, by mixing them with strategies such as network effect strategy and heroes and celebrities, Lee’s study is not informed by a coherent discursive approach to soft power. Wang (2016: 59), in comparing the narrative mediatization of the ‘Chinese Dream’ in Chinese and American media, suggests that the Chinese media follow a charm offensive pattern while the US media rely more on an ‘Othering’ approach. Yet, he questions the ‘soft power’ implications of the US Othering practice, thus failing to see the value of Othering as a soft power strategy. Furthermore, while Sergunin and Karabeshkin (2015: 358) mention the negative impact of three Baltic countries’ Othering of Russia on the latter’s soft power, they do not ask how Othering may help enhance the soft power of the countries which do the Othering.

Our three-dimensional typology does not capture all the repertoire of discursive practices relevant to soft power construction. For example, forgetting may be another discursive practice in nation-building and soft power construction (Norquay, 1999; Ricoeur, 2004). Yet, forgetting can be seen as a latent, passive form of discursive practice that is already implicated in the three discursive practices. It is also worth noting that the boundaries of these discursive practices are not clear-cut. In fact, they often overlap and work in tandem in practice. After 9/11, for instance, the US government used strategies similar to both charm offensive and Othering offensive to boost ‘American attractiveness’ (Solomon, 2014: 732).

In the context of China’s international relations, we are familiar with the discursive practices of defensive denial and charm offensive. Both have been frequently used, complementarily, to reassure the world of China’s real capabilities as well as its peaceful intentions. Not long after the end of the Cold War, Beijing faced some powerful international discursive constructs of China, such as ‘China’s rise’, the ‘China threat’, and China as a human rights violator. In response to these negative framings, Chinese media often engage in defensive denial. As late as 2010, Chinese media still claimed that although China’s GDP had become the world’s second largest, it remained a developing country (People’s Daily, 2010). Meanwhile, Chinese leaders as well as the official media repeatedly deny that China would seek hegemony or pose a threat to world peace (see Yee and Zhu, 2002: 23).

Yet, as China’s rise continues, such defensive denial becomes less convincing. Conveying a sense of what China is not, this largely reactive discourse does not offer much in the way of what the country is and what it will do (Pan, 2009: 130). Calling this China’s ‘identity dilemma’, Qin Yaqing (2006: 13) argues that China’s key challenge is articulating positive answers to those questions. This imperative may help explain China’s greater investment in a ‘charm offensive’ strategy (Kurlantzick, 2007: 8).

China’s discursive charm offensive has involved cultivating ‘a national brand that is framed as harmonious’ (Chitty 2010: 190), a nation-branding initiative that defines, apparently in China’s own terms, what China means for the world (Ramo, 2007: 41). This strategy is now manifested in a series of discursive constructs such as ‘Peaceful Rise’, the ‘China Model’, ‘Harmonious Society’, the ‘China Dream’, or simply ‘a good life’ (Kunze, 2018; Lee, 2010; Pan, 2009). In both defensive denial and charm offensive, ‘China’ is the explicit object of such discursive constructions. Concerned with ‘telling China’s stories’, both strategies are defensive in nature (Cao, 2014: 181; Loh, 2017; Sun, 2015).

By contrast, Othering offensive involves framing a significant Other or ‘telling foreign stories’ in a negative way. The construction of Otherness may not explicitly feature the Self, but the Self is never absent in such story-telling. This, we argue, constitutes a hitherto little-understood dimension of soft power strategy in Chinese media discourse. As noted above, these discursive practices are not unique to China, nor do we imply that they are necessarily official or formal strategies handed down to Chinese media organizations and their journalists. While it is worth investigating whether and to what extent Chinese editors and journalists consciously deploy those practices, the value of such an investigation may be limited because it has to rely on Chinese media professionals’ self-reporting of highly sensitive topics. Therefore, instead, we assume the existence and operation of the soft-power discursive practices in Chinese media based on both existing research and our own discourse analysis.

The discursive practice of Othering has been noted in studies of Chinese media and Chinese soft power. Lams’ study of Othering in Chinese official media narratives during China’s diplomatic standoffs with the United States and Japan puts Othering primarily in the context of its relevance to issues of national security and sovereignty, rather than soft power (Lams, 2017). While scholars such as Jing Sun have studied mutual Othering in Sino-Japanese soft power rivalry, they tend to view Othering as a mere tactic or diplomatic trick designed to damage the Other’s ‘existing’ reputation or image (Sun, 2012: 151), rather than granting it a more important role in soft power construction. Callahan describes Othering discourse as China’s ‘negative soft power’ strategy in the sense that its discourse of the West as a colonial or imperialist Other, with China as its victim, is ‘a tool in domestic policy more than in foreign policy’ (Callahan, 2015: 217, 220). He thus downplays the relevance of Othering to China’s soft power diplomacy. But as our case study of the Othering of Trump shows below, China’s Othering offensive is not always domestically focused, and by indirectly painting China in a more attractive light, it is both ‘offensive’ soft power and ‘negative soft power’. Given the relative lack of attention to and much confusion about this dimension of China’s soft-power discursive practice, we now focus on a CDA of Othering offensive in China Daily’s framing of Donald Trump and the United States during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump-bashing in China Daily: Othering offensive as China’s soft-power discursive practice

China Daily is the largest English-language newspaper published by the Chinese government and thus reflects government views and policy (Bailard, 2016: 454; Ostini & Ostini, 2002: 50). With its primary objective of targeting international audiences, ³ and a greater degree of ‘openness and boldness’ than People’s Daily, China Daily epitomizes ‘China’s efforts to attain respected global status’ (Luther and Zhou, 2005: 862, 867). Thus, it is a key player in China’s media-based soft power diplomacy. Meanwhile, we focus on the coverage of the US election not only because the election is ‘the very symbol of American democracy’ (Kluver et al., 2018: 3–4), but also because it has served as a performative screen onto which other countries, including China, project images about themselves (Kluver et al., 2018: 4).

The China Daily data were collected from the database Factiva, based on a keyword search of ‘Donald Trump’ (other keywords such as ‘Candidate AND Trump’ were also used to ensure no relevant data were overlooked). The target period is between 16 June 2015 (Trump’s campaign launch date) and the election day of 8 November 2016, and the database sources include the newspaper’s US, Hong Kong, Europe Weekly as well as mainland editions. In total, there were 723 search results. Excluding duplicated articles and one-sentence stories such as in the newspaper’s ‘In Brief’ section, the remaining 367 articles are divided into four categories. The first includes articles written by China Daily correspondents or Chinese commentators. These articles (134 in total) constitute our main source of data. The second category (20 in total) covers opinion pieces from non-Chinese authors, and their inclusion in China Daily suggests that the views expressed by those authors (despite disclaimers by some) can be seen as part of China’s representations of Trump and the United States. The third category (125 in total) is made up of news reports produced by foreign (generally Western) news agencies (e.g. Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, and Reuters) and reprinted in China Daily. These articles focus almost exclusively on news updates about unfolding election activities. The fourth category (88 in total) includes articles that only reference Trump in passing. Therefore, the third and fourth types of data are not a part of this analysis.

CDA analyzes ‘opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language’ (Wodak and Meyer, 2009: 10). Consisting of various approaches (Fairclough et al., 2011), it draws on a diversity of concepts and methods, such as genre (mixing), style, interdiscursivity, discourse representation or framing, evaluation (value assumptions), predication, transitivity, equivalence and difference, modality, nominalization, metaphor, and collocation (Fairclough, 2003; van Dijk, 2011). To illustrate how China Daily’s discursive practices constitute part of China’s social practice of soft power diplomacy, within a broader discursive approach we now apply some of these conceptual tools and techniques to an analysis of its coverage of Trump and the United States during the presidential election.

Conclusion

One of the key consequences and embodiments of China’s rise has been the growing footprint of Chinese media on the world stage, often seen as a direct proxy of Chinese soft power. While this phenomenon has attracted much scholarly interest, in this article we have drawn attention to an understudied area concerning the complex interplay between Chinese media and soft power: the soft-power discursive practices used in Chinese media. Proposing a three-dimensional typology to capture these soft-power discursive practices, we zeroed in on Othering offensive, and applied this concept to a CDA of the coverage of Trump’s America in the 2016 US presidential election by a leading Chinese newspaper. We argued that China Daily’s meaning-making practices vis-a-vis Trump and the United States are a prime example of an Othering offensive. Through this Othering, a more positive Chinese self-identity has been constructed.

Through this analysis, we have demonstrated that soft power is not just based on pre-existing cultural or reputational resources, but is also essentially a discursive construct that relies on its constructed Other for its ‘soft’ value to be contrasted and better presented. This discursive characteristic of soft power adds a missing dimension to Nye’s largely resource-based approach and much literature that approach has informed. When we seek to understand the dynamics of a nation’s soft power, we should not only look at what cultural resources or how many influential media outlets it has, but also ask what discursive practices it (and its others) has deployed in the discursive constructions of Self/Other. As China’s global media expansion has caused alarm in many countries and its defensive denial and charm offensive tactics have been seen largely as ‘mission impossible’, propaganda, and ‘sharp power’ (Nye, 2018; Sun, 2010; Zhao, 2013: 26), the discursive practice of Othering may play a still bigger role in China’s ongoing quest for soft power. But like all discursive constructs, China’s soft power is inherently unstable, ambiguous, and highly contingent on a larger and transnational discursive context from which it cannot escape, and within which its inevitably pluralistic decoding processes take place. In this sense, this study opens the way for further discursive study of the soft power effects of such Othering offensives, especially in terms of audience reception, framing alignment/contest, and discursive hegemony in the broader ‘competing global political economies and cultural imaginaries’ (Zhao, 2013: 27).