Brand China in the Media: Transformation of Identities

This book examines Chinas 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.

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, Chinas 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 Chinas trajectory of future development has been a major issue in international affairs. This book is concerned with how Chinas hybridised identities are articulated, and intertwined with situational, institutional, and societal dynamics - and how they are interwoven with Chinas international outlook which converges with or diverges from Chinas historical assumptions and beliefs.

This book will be of interest to those studying Chinas 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 Critical Arts.