The Economist's Report On China

With China's continuous development in economy and society and its strengthened soft power, the international society, especially the traditional and modern media in the West, displays an increasing attention to China's issue as well as China's image. As a crucial member of western media, the Economist attracts a great number of readers owing to its unique viewpoint and humorous writing style. Under the current circumstances, a western media like the Economist, unsurprisingly, attaches great attention to the report on China's issue and China's image. The establishment of column on China is the most obvious example. Nevertheless, in the process of report and description, due to distinct viewpoint and opinions, the western media adopts different perspectives and methods from those of China's. Therefore, it is crucial for us to understand the differences (mostly negative understandings on China) under various perspectives, so we can acknowledge "China's issue and image" in western media from a more objective perspective. Moreover, the Economist also helps us to understand China more comprehesively and communicate with them friendly and justly, so we build and publicize a more objective China's image. The Economist, undoubtedly, provides us with an opportunity to understand Western media and China from various persopectives as well as n introspective mechanism to learn from the West.Based on this concept, this thesis identities its objective and methodology. By analyzing as well as summarizing the column on China, cover and other column related to China in the Economist from September.2014 to August.2015, this paper takes a theoretical foundation. applies the methodology of documents review and analyses, mathematical analyses and qualitative analyses and base on the spirit of journalism to research and study.The thesis discusses the Economist mainly from six aspects. The first chapter is the background and introduction, analyzing the contemporary situation and developmental trend of media in the whole world. It reviews and summarizes the domestic and foreign studies related to media, setting up a theoretical and systematic foundation for this thesis; the second chapter is the the Economist's background, development and its main components, providing a structure for the following parts; both the third chapter and forth chapter is the crucial parts. They respectively summarize and analyzies China-related articles in column on China or other columns, interpreting the position of the Economist. The fifth chapter further discusses the result of the above two chapters. By classifying the types of topics in different columns, it analyses the scale of reports, their trend and writing characteristic of the Economist on China. In the end, it comes to a conclusion on the results of the analyses; The sixth part is conclusion. By overall analysis and discussion, it takes implicit recognition on the Economist's report on China and makes prediction as well as some suggestion.Moreover, the innovative points of this thesis display on three perspective:firstly, the time of the samples corresponds with the current situation. Samples of formers thesis always concentrate from 2003 to 2012. As time goes by, the situation in the former samples is different from the present. Thus, compared to the former one, the latest samples value more and is the prioirty of analysis on the Economist; secondly, the samples picked in this thesis have a more comprehensive coverage. The former theses often focus on the cover or certain column, so an overall analyses of the entire the Economist is missing. This paper analyses all China-related articles regardless of the column type, filling in the gaps of these studies. Moreover, this is a complementary to the former studies. Thirdly, by classifying the topics, the articles of different columns can be classified together. Previously, the articles focus on the document analyses or Chinese characters as the basis. Nonetheless, articles on the Economist concentrating on the topic are still at the beginning stage. As a result, topic-analyses is of great both theoretical and practical significance for understanding the Economist's attitude towards China.It is necessary for us to acknowledge the report radically and to take a transposition thinking in order to understand China's image on the world stage. Moreover, this thesis takes a summary on the various perspectives and opinions inthe Economist and bring out the counter solution and some suggestion related to the publicization of China and China's image, setting up a reasonable example on the various report viewpoints from China's media and western media.