The Study Of Biden Administration’s Narrative On China

The “linguistic turn” in international relations study draws more and more attention to the role of narrative in the state’s external behavior.In the narrative research of foreign policy,the existing researches mainly adopt the post-structuralism approach,especially emphasizing the analysis of the uniqueness of narrative,but lack of attention to the narrative structure and content.However,the narrative policy framework(NPF),a policy process theory in the field of public policy,especially emphasizes the narrative structure and narrative content.Therefore,with the help of the narrative policy framework,this paper takes the Biden Administration’s narrative on China as an example to explore the function and influence of narrative in foreign policy.Through studying the Biden Administration’s narrative on China,it is found that by designing narrative elements such as narrative context,roles and plots,the Biden Administration has created the story of America leading the democratic and free world to resist the threat of authoritarian China.At the same time,with the guidance of narrative beliefs based on liberal democracy and the use of narrative strategies such as“angel/demon shift” and causal attribution,the Biden administration has,to a large extent,constructed the justification and legitimacy of its containment policy towards China by shaping the past and present of Sino-US relations according to its own interests.The Biden Administration’s narrative on China has had many negative effects on China.At the macro level,it intensifies the ideological conflicts based on culture/system in the international community.At the mesolevel,it stigmatizes the image of China,triggers the Cold War between China and the United States and increases pressure on third-party countries to “take sides”.It also worsens the perception of China among the international public and leaders at the micro level.Biden Administration’s narrative on China is the product of the Cold War thinking and hegemonism thinking about international issues and China-Us relations under the cognitive bias of “orientalism”.Facing the Biden administration’s stigmatizing narrative on China,China should construct a counter-narrative or competitive narrative to dispel its negative impact.In terms of narrative context,using the “interdependent world” narrative to compete with the “conflicted world” narrative of the Biden administration.In terms of narrative roles,China should reveal that the United States is the destroyer of the international order,while China is the defender,builder and contributor of the international order.In the aspect of narrative plots,the story of China which is progressive because of opening up and the American story which is gradually moving towards conservatism should be told.In terms of narrative moral,the narrative of zero-sum game should be replaced by the narrative of win-win cooperation between China and the United States.