As an international student in China, I often see a lot of Western media reports about China. Many of these reports are not objective, but rather they direct public opinion in a negative direction. How can we make China's voice heard on the international stage, dispel the misconceptions of the outside world (audience groups) about China, and build a relatively positive image of China? What is the significance of personal narratives and what role do personal stories play in this? These are the questions I have been thinking about during the past two years, and they are important questions that China will need to address in the long run.
This is not an easy thing to do. China does not hold a global voice, and its image abroad (in the West) in recent years can hardly be called positive. In just the first half of 2020, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic spread, the Western media (including social media) did not show a truly objective stance on the epidemic. At the same time, some policymakers in the West have made no secret of their unwarranted accusations against the Chinese system, creating a hostile attitude toward China and the local Chinese diaspora in the West, from official to private. Trump repeatedly and deliberately wrote the official World Health Organization name "2019 coronavirus" as "Chinese virus," while U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo insisted on calling the coronavirus the "Wuhan virus" during the G7 video summit on March 25, 2020. "This led to the failure of the G7 to reach a common statement. I did a related project as an undergraduate to articulate the discrimination and injustice experienced by those around me. Then the indiscriminate attacks on Asians in the streets intensified. It was not until January 28, 2021 that the Biden administration issued a policy specifically banning the "Chinese virus" and similar terms from the official narrative.
Unfortunately, the demonization of China in both the Western media and official narratives, regardless of the facts, cannot be reversed with a ban. Indeed, in addition to serious public health crises like COVID-19, other Chinese policies are difficult to interpret in a comprehensive and objective manner. The Belt and Road Initiative, for example, was described in the West at its inception as China's "Marshall Plan," saying that China intended to use it to expand its economic influence in Eurasia. China's ethnic, religious and Internet policies have also been the hardest hit by Western criticism. A large number of Chinese companies have been accused of "stealing technology and intelligence" in their treatment of Chinese companies. China's cultural image is also often portrayed in the West as dark and evil. As early as the 1920s and 1930s, the Hollywood screen featured a supervillain called "Dr. Fu Manchu," an image that focused on the worst of Hollywood's imagery of the Chinese. Until the 2007 Hollywood movie "Pirates of the Caribbean", the pirate "Sao Feng", played by Chow Yun Fa, still retained the classic look of "Fu Manchu": two long, thin black mustaches hanging down from his upper lip, the image is obscene and vicious.
In conclusion, why is China's image so bad overseas? What should I, or others, do to face the problem of China's image abroad? It is worth thinking about and exploring. Through academic research methods, we can analyze these reports relatively objectively, so that more people can get to know China through different perspectives, and that is why I want to do related projects.
In my critical response paper to the question: What is/are the projects of cultural studies. Most people will say that cultural studies is a 'political' project. But what does that mean? I have explained and explored why would I want to study China-related topics. In this paper, I am using more evidence from reading that I read in class to support my ideas. If you are interested in seeing more, the link will guide you to the essay, and reading references are at the end. The next paragraph is from my critical response paper, and I have asked many questions, and those are still great topics that I want to explore about China.
"For me, the challenge is how to use what I learned in the Program to put into practice in the area that I am interested in. I want to use Cultural Studies to address Chinese social issues, which are different from American issues. How did the dynasty changes in history have an impact on the form of the dominant culture in China? How does the Party in China impact people's daily life? China has 56 different ethnicities, and is there any discrimination in between? What did the country or history do to make those ethnicities stay together as a whole? Those are some of the questions that I am interested in. Those are some detailed questions as an example of what Cultural Studies can do. More than this, Hall has mentioned in the article that "It has to analyze certain things about the constitutive and political nature of representation itself, about its complexities, about the effects of language, about textuality as a site of life and death. Those are the things cultural studies can address." Those are topics or directions that could provide people with some ideas about using Cultural Studies in their unique ways. "