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Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China

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Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China politics, society and culture society and politics, discourse approaches to Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China edited by Qing Cao, Hailong Tian and Paul Chilton 54 JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction – disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/dapsac General Editors Ruth Wodak, Andreas Musolff and Johann Unger Lancaster University / University of East Anglia / Lancaster University [email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected] Advisory Board Christine Anthonissen Konrad Ehlich Christina Schäffner Stellenbosch University Free University, Berlin Aston University Michael Billig J.R. Martin Louis de Saussure Loughborough University University of Sydney University of Neuchâtel Piotr Cap Jacob L. Mey Hailong Tian University of Łódź University of Southern Denmark Tianjin Foreign Studies Paul Chilton Greg Myers University Lancaster University Lancaster University Joanna Thornborrow Teun A. van Dijk John Richardson Cardiff University Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Loughborough University Sue Wright Barcelona Luisa Martín Rojo University of Portsmouth Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Volume 54 Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China Edited by Qing Cao, Hailong Tian and Paul Chilton Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China Edited by Qing Cao Durham University Hailong Tian Tianjin Foreign Studies University Paul Chilton Lancaster University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 8 the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Discourse, politics and media in contemporary China / Edited by Qing Cao, Hailong Tian, Paul Chilton. p. cm. (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, issn 1569-9463 ; v. 54) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Discourse analysis--Political aspects--China. 2. Communication--Political aspects--China. 3. Communication--Social aspects--China. 4. Social change--China--21st century. 5. China--Social life and customs--21st century. I. Cao, Qing, editor of compilation. II. Tian, Hailong, editor of compilation. III. Chilton, Paul A. (Paul Anthony) editor of compilation. P302.77.D5665 2014 302.2’0951--dc 3 2014000548 isbn 978 90 272 0645 9 (Hb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 7036 8 (Eb) An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access isbn for this book is 978 90 272 7036 8. © 2014 – John Benjamins B.V. This e-book is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa Table of contents Introduction: Legitimisation, resistance and discursive struggles in contemporary China 1 Qing Cao part 1. Political discourse Chapter 1 Disembodied words: The ritualistic quality of political discourse in the era of Jiang Zemin 25 Maurizio Marinelli Chapter 2 ‘Stability overwhelms everything’: Analysing the legitimating effect of the stability discourse since 1989 47 Peter Sandby-Thomas Chapter 3 A decade of change in China: A corpus-based discourse analysis of ten government work reports 77 Yufang Qian & Hailong Tian Chapter 4 It’s a small world after all? Simulating the future world order at the Shanghai Expo 97 Florian Schneider part 2. Media discourse Chapter 5 Discourse of journalism and legitimacy in post-reform China 123 Jingrong Tong Chapter 6 China’s Road to Revival: “Writing” the PRC’s struggles for modernization 145 Florian Schneider & Yih-Jye Hwang Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China Chapter 7 China’s soft power: Formulations, contestations and communication 171 Qing Cao Chapter 8 Issues in discourse approach to social transformations in China: A synopsis 195 Hailong Tian & Paul Chilton Author biography 209 Index 211 Introduction Legitimisation, resistance and discursive struggles in contemporary China Qing Cao Durham University ‘Without legitimacy, words are invalid; invalid words lead man to nowhere’. (名不正则言不顺，言不顺则事不成。Mingbuzheng zhe yanbushun; yanbushun zhe shibucheng) Confucius (The Analects) ‘Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statement. ‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A ‘regime’ of truth. Foucault (in Rabinow 1984: 74) Two hundred years ago, Napoleon, referring to its potential power, allegedly called China ‘the sleeping dragon’. Three and half decades after its economic reform, the ‘dragon’ is now fully awake. China has been transformed from one of the poorest countries in the late 1970s to the world’s second largest economy in 2010. The gravity of power has shifted to an economically and politically more dynamic Asia- Pacific region. Within this region, China is the single most important country and not only provides an engine for economic growth, but represents a challenge to Western assumptions of economic, political and cultural superiority (Jacques 2012; Shambaugh 2013). Within China, however, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life, in politics, economics, education, social structures, values, tradi- tions and identities. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated signif- icantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by various sources of authority (Liu & Tang 1993; Ji 2003; Chilton et al. 2012; Perry 2013). Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for political elites to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society (Shirk 2008, 2011). People have become, by and large, depen- dent upon a heavily regulated use of language for making sense of and interacting with the world they live in, using discursive resources confined to dominant inter- pretations. However, evolving discursive formulations on crucial socio-political 2 Qing Cao issues reflect key aspects of the trajectory of change in China, and indicate the future direction of its development. This volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences; all against a backdrop of China’s dynamic political, economic and sociocultural pro- cesses. The general questions this volume asks are how and to what extent language use contributes to the management of China’s transformations and to the forma- tion of new identities; with what consequences; and what it can tell us about the nature, mode, tensions and significance of those transformations in China’s pur- suit of a viable road to modernity. In conceiving this book, we have tried to include a range of disciplinary perspectives in examining various types of discourses. In particular, we focus on the interrelated domains of politics and media, but more importantly, place a particular emphasis on their increasingly complex interac- tions. As an authoritarian society, political discourse carries the highest order of importance and, despite the substantial retreat of politics from people’s lives in the post-reform era, still has a pervasive impact upon all aspects of society (Renwick & Cao 2003). Yet, due to transformations in a commercialised mass media, the mode and instruments of political communication have been radically altered (Lee 2009; Stockman 2012). The decline of traditional channels of propaganda and the rise of new media have rapidly changed both the landscape of political communica- tion, and the relationships between politics, the mass media and society (Kluver & Powers 1999; Zheng 2007; Yang 2011). This volume attempts to capture key features of these changing relationships and assess their consequences by examin- ing an array of dominant discourses. It includes both the established discourse of ‘the intellectual’, ‘social stability’ and ‘national revival’ as well as emerging themes of ‘soft power’ and ‘world order’. The operative concept of this volume is ‘trans- formation’, with its breakneck speed of change coupled with rising socio-political tensions, contradictions and even a sense of national crisis (Davis 2007) – though crisis (危机 weiji) in Chinese means both ‘danger’ (危 wei) and ‘opportunity’ (机 ji) and transforming ‘danger’ into ‘opportunity’ has long been
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