The View From Beijing on Black Lives Matter: Why do Black Lives Matter for Beijing?

BEIJING (China); CHINA

Why and how has China covered the Black Lives Matter (BLM), a movement with emerging themes closely related to its domestic issues? To what extent does the Chinese media build a unified discourse on sensitive themes that underpin the BLM? These are important questions given China's complicated history with ethnicity, race, and protests. This article argues that Chinese media uses BLM as a multi-faceted propaganda tool to foster cohesion at ideological level. NVivo-powered coding and thematic media analysis show that mainstream media, including official, semi-official and commercial media, and we-media do not present a uniform discourse on BLM. While they generally converge on criticism towards "protests" and "police" action, they display a nuanced "anti-US" and "Greater China" discourse. Moreover, the BLM coverage is used to undermine the US and strengthen by comparison the party-state's legitimacy. In the absence of a reflective discussion on race, racist undertones emerge in Chinese we-media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Current Chinese Affairs is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)