Globalism or Nationalism? The Paradox of Chinese Official Discourse in the Context of the COVID-19 Outbreak
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Globalism or Nationalism? The Paradox of Chinese Official Discourse in the Context of the COVID-19 Outbreak Yifan Yang 1
& Xuechen
Chen 2
Accepted: 11 September 2020/ # Journal of Chinese Political Science/Association of Chinese Political Studies 2020
Abstract By employing discourse-historical approach and corpus linguistics, this paper examines media reports to analyze the Chinese official discourse in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. The results demonstrate that a paradox of globalism and nationalism has been simultaneously reflected when reporting the global pandemic. Based on a polarizing discursive construction of positive “self” and negative “others,” on many occasions, the globalist and nationalist arguments have been closely intertwined and complement each other to reinforce the legitimacy of the ruling party at home and the international reputation of China under the leadership of the ruling party. Keywords Globalism . Nationalism, national identity . Identity discourse . COVID-19 .
China
Introduction The future of globalization has been overshadowed by the coronavirus outbreak in the early 2020s as has changed the landscape of world politics in opposing directions. On the one hand, global leaders are calling for more cooperation on global health while, on the other hand, they exacerbate nationalist sentiment for tighter border control against globalization. Although not the only case, China is frequently in the spotlight due to the China-centered global supply chains and their growing impact on globalization at a * Yifan Yang [email protected] Xuechen Chen [email protected]
1
Department of Politics, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
2
Faculty of Politics and International Relations, New College of the Humanities, London, UK
Y. Yang, X. Chen
time when the US-led Western world refrains from assuming global responsibility [39]. China was the first country that reported the confirmed cases of coronavirus to the World Health Organization (WHO) and has pioneered in promoting global cooperation after the declaration of a global pandemic. This is consistent with China’s longstanding diplomatic discourse on globalism after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, evident in its official discourse on the “Community of Shared Destiny for Mankind” and “Global Community of Health for All.” Chinese top leaders publicly emphasize the importance of international cooperation against COVID-19, to protect global public health by proactively collaborating with multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the WHO, and other G20 countries and providing funding and clinical support for developing countries affected by the global pandemic [60]. Chinese officials argued that leading global cooperation, upholding multilateralism, supporting vulnerable regions, and strengthening macro policy coordination are essential in Chinese foreign policies in response to the COVID-19 outbreak [63]. However, nationalist sentiment had also been rising after COVID-19 spread was successfully c
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