Othering as soft-power discursive practice: China Daily’s construction of Trump’s America in the 2016 presidential election

AuthorBenjamin Isakhan,Zim Nwokora,Chengxin Pan
DOI10.1177/0263395719843219
Published date01 February 2020
Date01 February 2020
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-173n5hBUgpE1kF/input 843219POL0010.1177/0263395719843219PoliticsPan et al.
research-article2019
Article
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(1) 54 –69
Othering as soft-power
© The Author(s) 2019
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discursive practice: China
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719843219
DOI: 10.1177/0263395719843219
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Daily’s construction of
Trump’s America in the 2016
presidential election

Chengxin Pan
Deakin University, Australia
Benjamin Isakhan
Deakin University, Australia; University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Zim Nwokora
Deakin University, Australia
Abstract
The relationship between Chinese soft power and Chinese media has been a focus of a
growing body of literature. Challenging a resource-based conception of soft power and a
transmission view of communication that inform much of the debate, this article adopts a
discursive approach to soft power and media communication. It argues that their relationship
is not just a matter of resource transmission, but one of discursive construction, which begs
the questions of what mediated discursive practices are at play in soft power construction and
how. Addressing these oft-neglected questions, we identify a typology of three soft-power
discursive practices: charm offensive, Othering offensive, and defensive denial. Focusing on
the little-understood practice of Othering offensive, we illustrate its presence in Chinese
media through a critical discourse analysis of China Daily’s framing of Donald Trump and the
United States, and argue that the Othering offensive in Chinese media that portrays Trump’s
America as a dysfunctional and declining Other serves to construct a Chinese self as more
responsible, dynamic, and attractive. Adding a missing discursive dimension to the study of
soft power and the media, this study has both scholarly and practical implications for analysing
a nation’s soft power strategy.
Keywords
China, Donald Trump, media discourse, Othering, soft power, the United States
Received: 21st November 2018; Revised version received: 11th February 2019; Accepted: 19th March 2019
Corresponding author:
Chengxin Pan, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, VIC 3216, Australia.
Email: chengxin.pan@deakin.edu.au

Pan et al.
55
Introduction
The media and soft power are inextricably linked (Curran, 2002; Klaehn, 2016; van Dijk,
1996). Not surprisingly, the connection between the global expansion of Chinese media
and China’s soft power has been the focus of a growing body of literature in the fields of
international relations (IR) and media and communication studies (Cao, 2011; Edney,
2012; Flew, 2016; Gao et al., 2017; Lai and Lu, 2012; Sun, 2010, 2015; Zhao, 2013).
Among other things, the literature examines where China has increased its media pres-
ence (Flew, 2016; Sun, 2010; Zhang et al., 2016), how much soft power China has gar-
nered as a result (Bailard, 2016; Wasserman, 2016), and what motivates Beijing’s
media-based soft power push (Sun, 2015; Xin, 2010).
While such issues and questions are undoubtedly important, much of the extant litera-
ture is informed by a resource-based conception of soft power and a transmission model
of communication (Carey, 1989). Nye’s (2011: 20–21) widely adopted definition of soft
power – ‘the ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the agenda,
persuading, and eliciting positive attraction’ – implies that attraction and soft power may
be a product of (media) construction. Yet for the most part, Nye refers to attraction as ‘a
natural objective experience’ (Bially Mattern, 2005: 591, emphasis in original), and
defines soft power as resources measurable in terms of a country’s culture, political val-
ues, and foreign policies (Nye, 2004: 11; Roselle et al., 2014). Meanwhile, the media are
often treated as both a type of soft power resource and a conduit through which soft power
resources are amplified and transmitted. This transmission function is no doubt part of
how the media contribute to soft power (Warren, 2014). But this resource-cum-transmis-
sion approach also neglects the critical role of the media in the production of meaning in
soft power relations.
Addressing this neglect, we propose a discursive approach to soft power and the
media. Bridging discourse studies of soft power in IR (Bially Mattern, 2005; Callahan,
2015; Feklyunina, 2016; Hayden, 2012; Kiseleva, 2015) and the culture and meaning
paradigm in media and communication studies (Carey, 1989; Gamson and Modigliani,
1989; Lowery and DeFleur, 1988; Pan and Kosicki, 1993; Potter et al., 1993; Van Gorp,
2007), we argue that soft power is not the effect of naturally attractive resources that can
be simply possessed and stockpiled. Rather, it is socially constructed through discourse
and, most fundamentally, deals with the identity question of who we are (and who we are
not). Given that identity is crafted through language and communication (Bially Mattern,
2005; Laclau and Mouffe, 2001: 106), critical discourse analysis (CDA) can be used to
explore what kinds of media discursive practices are at play in the construction of soft
power.
The media construction of soft power in general and China’s soft power in particular
is of course not a linear process, but a complex and interactional one in which audience
reception and consumption of media products play an integral part (Feklyunina, 2016;
Flew, 2016; Hudson, 2015; Roselle et al., 2014). The production and consumption (as
well as circulation and reproduction) of meaning are ‘linked but distinctive moments’
(Hall, 1993: 91). A fuller understanding of China’s mediated soft power requires, there-
fore, analysis of both soft power’s ‘formation and projection’ and its ‘reception and inter-
pretation’ (Roselle et al., 2014: 74–75). Valuable studies of international audience
reception of Chinese media have emerged (see, for example, the special issue on
‘Re-evaluating China’s global media expansion’, March, 2018), and further empirical
research on audience reception of China’s mediated soft power strategies can shed light

56
Politics 40(1)
on the ‘actual’ soft power effect of such strategies. Yet, the main problem is that we still
know little about these strategies in the first place. For this reason (as well as space limita-
tions), this article will focus primarily on the production/formation stage of the commu-
nicative process in relation to China’s soft power. In the following sections, the article
first critically examines the existing literature’s dominant resource-cum-transmission
approach to Chinese media and soft power, and makes a case for a more discursive
approach. In the subsequent section, we identify three types of media discursive strategies
in soft power construction – defensive denial, charm offensive, and Othering offensive
and specify these in the Chinese context.
In the third section, we provide an empirical analysis of China’s Othering offensive;
despite its importance, this is perhaps the least understood of the discursive practices of
Chinese soft power. Employing relevant methods and concepts from CDA, which is con-
cerned with problematizing the role of discourse in power relations, we dissect the fram-
ing of Donald Trump (and the United States) as the Other by China’s leading official
English newspaper China Daily during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. We
show that China’s mediated soft power strategy involves not only Chinese media ‘going
abroad’ or portraying China in a positive light to ‘attract and entice others’ (Heng, 2010),
but also its negative framing of Otherness. In the final section, the article highlights the
implications of our arguments for research on soft power.
Media and soft power: From resource transmission to
discursive construction
China, suffering from a ‘soft power deficit’ (Shambaugh, 2013: 212), has invested heav-
ily in the media to improve its international image (d’Hooghe, 2010: 4–5; Heng, 2010;
Hunter, 2009: 282; Li, 2008: 294, 2009: 27). Li Changchun, then a Chinese Politburo
Standing Committee member, stated in 2008 that ‘those with advanced means of com-
munication and powerful communication capacity will be able to more widely propagate
their ideas, cultures, and values and be in a stronger position to influence the world’ (Li,
2008a). Building on such thinking, Chinese media have been given generous funding,
‘going abroad’ to places like Africa, Latin America, Europe, the US and Australia (Gao
et al., 2017; Sun, 2010; Thussu et al., 2018; Xin, 2009), and undergoing major restructur-
ing (e.g. the creation of a mega-broadcaster called ‘Voice of China’), all tasked with
boosting China’s soft power.
Given the growth of Chinese media in quantity, quality, and reach (Hunter, 2009;
Shambaugh, 2013: 227–228), some studies have noted an increase in China’s global soft
power (Cho and Jeong, 2008; Jacques, 2009: 405; Kurlantzick, 2007: 405). Other analy-
ses, however, show that its media-derived soft power remains limited (d’Hooghe, 2010;
Gill and Huang, 2006: 9; Shambaugh, 2013: 227–228; Zhao, 2013). Sun (2010: 69), for
example, argues that ‘China’s media globalization is … reinforcing an association of
China with coercive, rather than soft, power’ (see also Flew, 2016; Xin, 2009).
Diverse as these analyses may be, most studies explicitly or implicitly treat soft power
as resources, and see the media as a transmission vehicle for disseminating and broadcast-
ing such resources. Despite a lively debate on...

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