ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a content analysis of UpClose, a program on CCTV News featuring lifestyle interviews, and in particular, an analysis of its series dedicated to the “Chinese dream.” UpClose has been the only CCTV show to provide extended coverage of the Chinese dream from a non-political, non-economic perspective. The program’s style, based on face-to-face interviews with foreign and Chinese celebrities, offers an ideal angle to explore the connection between different dimensions of the Chinese dream and the way it is presented to an international audience in English. The chapter explores the program as an example of “soft power” directed towards both domestic and foreign audiences (Cao), and also as an attempt at “cultural translation” (Sakai) that presents Chinese past and present culture to the external world. These differing communicative strategies appear to converge in the UpClose Chinese Dream series, which promotes a universal and attractive version of the Chinese dream mediated through the hybrid, cosmopolitan status of its guests.
