ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the representation of China’s trade conflict with the United States in four Western newsmagazines: Time, The Economist, L’Express, and Der Spiegel. Based on both quantitative and qualitative approaches, the research of this chapter draws on two analytical frameworks from the realm of critical discourse analysis, Van Leeuwen’s (2008) socio-semantic inventory of social actor representation and Van Dijk’s (1980) notion of macro-rules as the overarching approaches, supported by multilingualism and translation, to understand the changing dynamics of international relations and the global economy through Western media.
The sample in this chapter consists of 80 headlines and the time frame stretches across a period of 12 months in 2010. The findings obtained from the empirical research have revealed that China was reported unfavourably across a broader range of areas spanning economics, politics, and military affairs. This chapter makes the following two key contributions to scholarship: the inclusion of information drawn from primary sources in French and German to complement English-language sources, along with their translation into English where necessary; as well as the inclusion of one French and one German newsmagazine to complement the coverage by one American and one British newsmagazine, thus giving a fuller Western perspective on China.
