Ariane KNUSEL. Framing China

Framing China challenges the myth of a monolithic Western view of China by analyzing the textual and visual media in Britain, the United States of America, and Switzerland that shaped and reflected the perceptions and understanding of China in each of these countries during the first half of the twentieth century. Ariane Knüsel draws from a wide range of newspapers and magazines covering a wide political spectrum in each country, including a total of forty-seven illustrations, and contextualizes the construction of images of China in terms of political, economic, social, and cultural interests during specific time periods. The book has four chapters organized in a chronological order: the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, the rise of anti-imperialist nationalism and of the “Red Menace” in the 1920s, the evolution of “Yellow Peril” imagery until 1945, and the different perspectives on the communist takeover in 1949. Although these periods are familiar to specialists, the chapters present fresh interpretations and meticulous analyses of the diverse portrayals of China by the media in these three Western countries. Who was writing the report on China and what particular interests the reporter sought to satisfy fundamentally shaped the media discourse, the source of information, public opinion and, to some extent, government policies. For example, Britain and the United States had divergent public and media perceptions of China not only because of their different interests but also because of the ways they perceived themselves in relation to China and the world. Most of the British in China were merchants and officials who had “a rather negative view of the Chinese” (p. 53), whereas the majority of Americans in China were missionaries whose influential media reports “portrayed Sino-American relations as a friendship in which the USA adopted the role of a mentor to China” (p. 54). American media discourse interpreted the Xinhai Revolution as inspired by American ideals and portrayed it as the entrance of China into light, liberty, and progress (pp. 60–61). In contrast, Switzerland had limited political and commercial interest in China, and its media paid less attention to China's revolution per se than its relation to the general topics of democracy and imperialism (p. 71).

China · Communism · Economic history · Framing (construction) · Media studies · Nationalism · Newspaper · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies