The Image Of China In The TED Talks:the "other Imagination" Of International Industry Elites

A good national image plays a very important role in promoting a country’s international status,enhancing its soft power and international competitiveness.As a global knowledge transmission media,TED has its unique and rich ways,which are different from existing mainstream media,government media and social media in terms of speech theme,speech method,speaker selection,information service and other aspects.Therefore,this study collected and sorted out 50 speeches on "China&Chinese" and China-related topics from the official TED website as analysis samples.The sample collection period was from January 1,2006 to December 31,2021.With TED,speakers and speech texts as research objects,explore how international industry elites view China and tell about China.In the introduction,this study elaborated the research background,research significance,research methods,research purpose and innovation of China’s image,and sorted out the research status at home and abroad.The main part of the article is the selection and analysis of research samples.Firstly,it explores the deep connection between discourse and power,power and knowledge,and the definition and formation of "the other".Secondly,it introduces the development course of TED and qualifies the elite,audience and context.Thirdly,based on the framework theory,the thesis constructs the categories of the TED Chinese keynote speech text,and analyzes the framework of the speech text from six frameworks: topic field,information source,value judgment,reason analysis and countermeasures and suggestions,mainly using the framework significance analysis method.Finally,in combination with the cultural differences between the East and the West,the interaction between knowledge and power,the media shaping environment and other factors,the critical discourse is used to analyze the "China image" imagined by industry elites in TED talks,and the "China image" constructed by them is analyzed scientifically.This study combines quantitative and qualitative research methods,based on Entman’s framework theory,adopts framework analysis method and critical discourse analysis method,and combines cases to study which fields of China are concerned by international industry elites and what kind of China they tell,so as to serve as a reference for us to tell good stories about China.At the same time,based on the concept of "the other" in cultural anthropology and the political identity of nationality(region),the speakers are divided into western developed countries,Eastern Europe,Asia,Africa and Latin America countries,and Chinese Hong Kong,Chinese Macao and Chinese Taiwan(divided by historical reasons)according to their relationship with China.And explore the differences in their perception of China’s image.The research results show that in the elite platform TED talks,(1)the speakers and audiences of TED talks are social elites and intellectuals.(2)Speech topics related to China are getting richer.From the focus on China’s architecture,food culture gradually expanded to China’s politics,economy,society,science and technology,Internet,international relations,public health and other fields,and showed an increasing trend year by year.(3)The speaker’s general attitude towards the image of China tends to be positive.But Western developed countries tend to have a negative image of China.(4)TED speakers’ imaginations of China mainly include "the image of new colonizer","the image of threat","the image of problem maker" and "the image of international economic partner".Therefore,China is regarded by western developed countries as a rival to the current political and economic pattern of the world.China is still the West’s other,and despite the growing number of China-related topics at TED talks,the overall picture of China has not changed qualitatively.In other words,the framework of the text in TED talks has not changed,only the number of talks,subject areas,and so on.Moreover,China promotes its "hard power" far more than its "soft power".To some extent,this has resulted in a generally positive assessment of China’s hard power and a negative recognition of China’s soft power,which is similar to the image of China’s soft power created by other Western news media.Therefore,the image of China in TED talks is still big but not beautiful.