The Reporting Features And Frame Construction Of The China-US Trade War In The Chinese And American Mainstream Financial Newspapers

In recent years,with the rise of trade protectionism,global economic and trade frictions increases rapidly,which have hampered the growth of the world economy.After taking office,Donald Trump preached the idea of American First and implemented the protectionist policy.Trump has imposed additional tariffs on China four times,which caused Sino-US economic and trade frictions escalating continuously.At the 2019 G20 summit,Sino-US trade relations gradually improved,and in 2020 China and the United States signed the first stage of economic and trade agreement.From 2016 to 2020,the China-US Trade War has attracted the world's attention,and become the top issue in international news.The news media's coverage to China and the United States affects the reader's perception of the roles of the two countries in the China-US trade war.The worldwide news report influences the construction of the two countries' international image.The thesis takes China-US Trade War as the research object,analyzes the media presentation of this issue by Chinese and American mainstream financial newspapers,and selects Wall Street Journal and Economic Daily for in-depth study.The research divides the development of the China-US Trade War from 2016 to 2020 into three stages,the initial conflict period,the highly confrontation period,and the later consultation period.The research aims to explore two questions.First,what characteristics does the Wall Street Journal and the Economic Daily report on the China-US trade war? What are the similarities and differences between two newspapers? Second,what reporting framework do the Wall Street Journal and the Economic Daily set up? Are there any differences at three peiods? Through the cluster sampling and equidistant sampling,the research obtained 371 samples of The Wall Street Journal and 269 samples of Economic Daily.Next,the thesis summerizes the reporting characteristics of the two newspapers through content analysis,as well as the framework construction of the two newspapers by Gamson's Interpretation Package theory.Based on previous conclusions,the thesis furtherly makes the comparative analysis between the two newspapers.In terms of the characteristics of news reports,the Wall Street Journal's economic reports are professional,and the reports are penetratede with the strong ideology which hided in expression.The media focus on the field of trade and finance,and is good at analyzing and interpreting the economic trend by pictures and data tables.when reporting the tariff policies,the Wall Street Journal takes lots of balances news to show the objective and conceals the ideology by news discourse.When international news reports involves national interests,Economic Daily usually emphasizes political stances to defend national interests.Therefore,Economic Daily fails to balance financial reports and political reports.The newspaper focuses on macro-analysis of the trade and finance field,but lacks the interpretation and analysis to the micro-economy.Regarding to the reporting framework,the Wall Street Journal takes the Zero-Sum Game as the guiding concept,and adopts the Blame China and Forced Counterattack as the framework.The reporting frameworks set the relation between China and the United States full of competition and opposition,which are conflicting and aggressive.The Economic Daily takes Mutual Benefit and Win-Win as its guiding concept,and adopts the Rebellion Against the United States and Resolve Friction as the framework.The reporting frameworks put China and the United States on an equal relationship which are political and serious.