Brand China in the Media

<p>This book examines China’s identity transformations with a focus on self-perceptions and their representations and communication in the mass media. By considering the internal dynamics of change it explores the emerging multifaceted ‘China brand’.</p><p>With its growing economic clout China has taken a proactive stance in shaping global economic and strategic order through ambitious programmes such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. However as a developing country China is at pains to manage its own transformations while trying to carve out an international identity. Arguably China’s unique sense of history and identities may lead to a ‘contested modernity’ or ‘multiple modernities’; radically different from the prevalent classical theories of modernisation and convergence of industrial societies. To understand China’s trajectory of future development has been a major issue in international affairs. This book is concerned with how China’s hybridised identities are articulated and intertwined with situational institutional and societal dynamics – and how they are interwoven with China’s international outlook which converges with or diverges from China’s historical assumptions and beliefs.</p><p>This book will be of interest to those studying China’s identity in the media; situated at the juncture of past present and future and between China and the wider world. The chapters in this book were originally published in <i>Critical Arts</i>.</p>