How ready is China for a China-style world order? China's state media discourse under construction

Abstract

What exactly is the China-style world order that Chinese officials and intellectual elites have recently been talking about, and how ready is China for it? An examination and analysis of discourses on ‘Africa Live’ on CCTV Africa, the first overseas news center of China Central Television (CCTV), yields some highly noticeable features and significant themes, confirming that although China has shifted from a low-profile approach to a more assertive one, in an attempt to change the global order, its verbal challenge and sometimes harsh criticism of the American-led international system is accompanied by an obvious absence of a clear vision of what the new world order should be like. This lack of a clear vision may be due to the fact that the Chinese discourse on world order is still a work in progress, constrained by internal practices, and Africa is its testing ground for the construction of a discourse that China envisages as an alternative.

Keywords:

• international community
• new world order
• Sino-African relations
• soft power
• state media discourse
• testing ground

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiaoling Zhang

Xiaoling Zhang is associate professor in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham, UK. Her research includes the transformation of media, culture and society in China. Her publications include China's information and communications technology revolution (ed.) and The transformation of political communication in China.