Hong Kong English-language Media, How To Shape The Image Of Mainland China

National images exert profound influence in many fields such as international politics and international relationship. For a fast- developing country like China, its national image as a soft power is playing a more and more important role worldwide.Mass media serve as the most effective vehicle of portraying and conveying national images in our information age. Due to certain factors, China's image on international media, mostly western, is usually incomplete, unstable and mostly negative. On the other hand, the positive image of China offered by Chinese media is difficult to gain international recognition for lack of credibility. Under such circumstances, China's image portrayed by Hong Kong-based media tends to be objective and fair, hence has won acceptance among both western and Chinese audience, thanks to its unique geographic location, historical background, cultural tradition, political and economic status as well as its independent media environment. The paper first offers a general review on the definitions, features, functions, communication process of a nation's image, as well as researches on media-image relationship. Then the paper uses South China Morning Post(SCMP), the most representative among Hong kong media, as a case study and content analyzes its ten-year coverage on China in terms of report numbers, themes, backgrounding and news sources, in an effort to explore two research questions. Finally,the paper offers suggestions for Chinese media to carry out effective international communication on the basis of the analysis of SCMP China coverage.