Belt And Road Initiative:China’s Image And Identification In Kazakhstan

This thesis touches upon the issue of China’s image from perspective of Kazakhstan’s identity formation.Specifically,research focuses on ‘Belt and Road’initiative as a distinctive discursive strategy of China,intended to improve Beijing’s image both on official and public level of perception in Kazakhstan.By using basic analytical tools of discourse analysis,supplemented by Lacan’s psychoanalysis concepts,we demonstrate the way BRI discursive strategy perceived through identity formation process.In this context,we are also interested in significant disparity between official and public discourse in Kazakhstan,which became apparent during the public deliberations on The Land Code reform in 2016.This case study demonstrated that divergent perceptions of China’s images are formed on the level of the Kazakh government and on the level of public discourse,namely Kazakh language segment,which had not received much attention from foreign academia.Thesis uses a wide scope of textual data,including official discourse on both Chinese and Kazakh side,academic literature,as well as discussion in the Media,Internet and social network platforms.