China’s Economic Image Under The Perspective Of Orientalism

When mainstream Western media comment on other countries, especially Eastern ones, they consistently use the discourse system of Orientalism and the universal value of extreme conceit, permeating each report with prejudice. Therefore, China’s international image has been unavoidably controversial.Taking a panoramic view of mainstream Western media’s reports about China, most of them were lengthy and tedious distortion about ten years ago. However, this trend seemed to change after China’s economy became strong, even powerful, with each passing day. For instance, when the time came to March,2015, however, German media exceptionally commented favorably when AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), which was proposed by China, caused a great uproar internationally by drawing many Western countries that usually follow America’s lead to join the ranks of it. Germany’s Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung commented, "China is accumulating financial power to challenge the World Bank, and America’s resistance to AIIB is futile." Moreover, mainstream Western media appeared to be exceptionally China-friendly. For example, Britain’s The Financial Times commented on March 25th, "Britain decides to be a founding member of AIIB, which irritates America. But it doesn’t mean Britain’s decision is faulty. On the contrary, the decision is quite reasonable, although risky."Thus it can be seen that mainstream Western media’s reporting tendency towards China is undergoing a subtle change, changing from demonization to objectification to comprehensive study. World opinion seems to become more and more "tolerant" of China. However it remains to be seen if the "tolerance" is based on abandoning Orientalism discourse power and prejudice or is it just a false peace.Anyway, it is of great significance to study China’s economic image in mainstream Western media’s China-involved reports and to further study a country’s state image from Orientalism point.The first section of this paper covers the background and significance of this research, elaboration the studies of China-related reports and the state image reflected in these reports. Also, it puts forward the research methods and innovation points of this paper.The second section mainly discusses the definition of Orientalism, elaborating the discourse system of it, its formation, and the subtle relationship between Orientalism and discourse power, and then elaborates in detail the relationship between Chinese and Western discourse powers, including self-identity of the east and the west, the background and relationship of Eastern and Western media’s discourse powers, and the relationship between the "self" and the "other" in self-identity. In the discourse system of Orientalism, Western countries always play the role of the "self while Eastern countries like China are placed in the position of the "other". This is the basis of studying the formation of mainstream Western media’s reporting tendency towards China.The third section takes China-involved reports in Economists in 2014 as an example to analyze China’s economic image presented by mainstream Western media, macroscopically analyzing the general framework and microcosmically analyzing diction and sentence structures.The fourth section brings forward some feasible suggestions on the construction of our state image through mass media on the basis of its importance in constructing state image. It discusses the methods for mass media to use in international communication to construct a state image that is strong in both soft and hard power.The conclusion summarizes the issues discussed in this paper and prospects about the construction of common external communication conception and new routes to construct state image.