Power,Change,and Contlict

U.S.mainstream news magazine all along represent China as an economically rising,politically menacing communist country.By contrast,how U.S.geographic magazines like National Geographic represent China was relatively academically left unattended:though China was represented by National Geographic as a mysterious,backward,reclusive,and autocratic country in the last century,but representation of China in the past ten years has not yet studied.Hence the present study tried to investigate how National Geographic represented China from 2008 to 2017 and whether there is a difference between representation of China in NG and that of U.S.general news magazine.National Geographic's coverage of China from 2008 to 2017 was chosen as the object of study,and representation of the Other,including representational strategies,was the main theoretical framework.Then,National Geographic's coverage of China within ten years and how it applied representational strategies in representing China will be analyzed through content analysis,visual analysis,and textual analysis.According to the results,in the past decade,National Geographic frequently adopted traditional negative strategies like archive,surveillance,and debasement,representing China as a powerful,fast-changing,and conflict-ridden country.This finding basically dovetailed with U.S.General news magazine's representation of China-power,change,and conflict.At the same time,National Geographic also partly represented China as a historically long-standing,naturally abundant,and culturally diverse land through the use of affirmative strategies.These findings proved that,varieties of traditional representational symbols and metaphors,and even power structures abounded with coverage of China in National Geographic and U.S.general news magazine.