The “Chinese Dream” as a discursive symbol

Abstract

Abstract This study examines the political discursive construction of the “Chinese Dream” and its representations in global media by drawing on the methodological combination of the discourse-historical approach, corpus linguistics, and framing analysis. The data for analysis consists of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official speeches and news coverage on the Chinese Dream by the China Daily, the South China Morning Post, and The New York Times for around six years (2012–2018). The analysis identified that the Chinese Dream discourse largely aims to serve toward Chinese nationalism, the reinforcement of the ruling Party’s legitimacy, and the Chinese leadership’s authority. Meanwhile, it was also found that the three media adopted different dominant frames to reshape the Chinese Dream, namely China Daily’s Chinese national-centric frame, South China Morning Post’s multiculturalist-oriented frame, and The New York Times’ US-centric “othering” frame. These news frames were tactically designed to serve their sociopolitical and ideological interests. Through corpus-assisted discourse analysis, the article aims to 1) reveal the discursive strategies and patterns of the Chinese Dream; 2) shed light on the discursive representations of the Chinese Dream in specific global media; and 3) bridge the gap between the original political discourse and its discursive reproduction in media representation.