Framing China’s mask diplomacy in Europe during the early covid-19 pandemic: seeking and contesting legitimacy through foreign medical aid amidst soft power promotion

Abstract

This analysis discusses China’s soft power push in Europe, specifically focusing on mask diplomacy during the early stage of Covid-19 outbreak. Using a sample of 233 articles published by European-based news media such as the BBC, Euronews, Politico, French 24, and Der Spiegel, from March to September 2020, we argue that China’s mask diplomacy acted as two overlapping legitimacy-seeking tools, one that demonstrated the legitimacy of the CCP’s governance (authoritarian frame) and one that sought foreign gratitude and acceptance of China as a responsible global leader (leadership frame). We also argue, however, that China’s soft power effort was overshadowed by two other dominant frames found in the articles: compensation for the government's early cover-up (remedy frame) and infringement on EU solidarity and security (threat frame). Our results also show that European media tend to default to longstanding stereotypes of Yellow Peril and Orientalism. Most reports othering China as the source and spreader of Covid-19 critically portray China’s medical aid as propaganda and compensation, thereby undermining China's soft power efforts and their credibility. Additionally, the study opened up a minor, though rather novel, discussion on China's top-down management model's positive impact on handling the health crisis in China.

Keywords:

• framing analysis
• China’s soft power
• mask diplomacy
• European media
• political news

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank anonymous reviewers for their insightful revision suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jingwen Qi

Jingwen Qi is a Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Communication Studies at Ghent University. Currently, her Ph.D. research topic involves exploring the coverage of China’s soft power in the European news media.

Stijn Joye

Stijn Joye is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Ghent University. His areas of research include international news media with a focus on the representation of suffering alongside issues of domestication and colonial heritage. Another of his lines of research focuses on sequential filmmaking and the practice of artistic imitation in film.

Sarah Van Leuven

Sarah Van Leuven is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Ghent University and the head of the Center for Journalism Studies (CJS). In her work, she studies questions related to political communication and news representation (news sources, women in news, and issues such as climate change). She also coordinates longitudinal profiling studies of Belgian journalists that collect data on their socio-demographic backgrounds, work conditions and professional praxis, and opinions of their profession.