A Comparative Study Of The Coverage Of The AIIB Between FT And WSJ

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a multilateral institution committed to the infrastructure development in the Asian region. It was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, and was officially established on December 25, 2015. This is the first multilateral organization founded by China and joined by many major countries across the world. China's this move has attracted wide attention, and many international news outlets have continuously reported about the new bank, including the two most influential financial newspapers - the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. It's worth noting that, on the issue of the AIIB, the Britain broke ranks with the United States, becoming the first western country that have joined the AIIB as a founding member. This kind of action is unusually seen in the history of US-British alliance.Considering that news reporting is often associated with national interest, politics, cultural value and international relations, the FT and WSJ, which are respectively based in the Britain and the U.S., may adopt different reporting styles and attitudes toward the new bank, because their country have different strategic considerations in the institution. Through comparison, this study aims to find out whether there exist some differences between the two newspapers in the reporting style and the attitude toward the AIIB.This study has adopted content analysis as the research method to analyze the articles about the AIIB on the FT and WSJ. The research sample includes 98 articles on the FT and 89 articles on the WSJ. Through analysis, it was found that, the two newspapers have some differences in the coverage of the bank and moreover their attitudes toward the bank are also somehow different. The WSJ is often suspicious of the AIIB, while the FT is wary of China rather than the AIIB.