ABSTRACT

Nowadays, with the development of mass media and its influence on people, a growing number of depictions of the image of China in the eyes of the West are derived from the Western mass media. However, little research is done on how images of China are depicted and represented in the Western mass media and, in particular, TV documentaries since the 2010s have scarcely been researched.

This chapter aims to explore and analyse the Western representations of contemporary China in the context of the rapidly changing global power dynamics of the 21st century, by visualising China through the lens of documentary. Through in-depth analysis, the study has found that Western images of China in the analysed documentaries as the discursive practice, are constructed as a two-dimensional depiction. The first dimension indicates that images of China from the analysed documentary series seem to be still under the influence of the Western historical representations of China which are under orientalist despotism and modernity discourse. Second, the media framing and its features of visual and verbal language, together with the background music and the lighting, are found to be another dimension that helps contribute the images of China in the analysed documentary.