Research On The Construction Of China’s National Image In German Media During Merkel’s Period From The Perspective Of Political Symbolism Theory(2006-2021)

On May 31,2021,when presiding over the 30th collective study of the Political Bureau of the 19th Central Committee,Xi Jinping emphasized that telling a good Chinese story,spreading a good Chinese voice and presenting a true,stereoscopic and comprehensive China is an important task to strengthen China’s international communication capacity,which once again emphasises that the country’s image is an important part of China’s great rejuvenation.From the perspective of the shaper of the national image,the national image is divided into two parts:self-shaping and other-shaping.While emphasizing the importance of actively building China’s national image and practices,we should also pay attention to other-shaping and the dissemination of its national image in other countries.In this globalized world,as the number of actors and the degree of interaction increase and as the way in which they interact becomes more complex,understanding each other to a larger degree depends on the participation of symbols.The audience relys on modern and convenient ways to use certain aspects or content as representative vehicle and make a holistic assessment of a country.This "simplification" of national image judgment has a great impact on the formulation of national image strategy.The evolution of the image judgement among countries from the traditional hostile imagery’ to the ’judge from appearance”of the globalised world has significantly increased the importance of understanding the other-shaping of national images.It is important to understand how China’s national image is communicated in other countries and to analyse what national images are constructed in those countries in order to adjust its polices and communication strategies.China and Germany,which is the axis of the European Union,formed an all-round strategic partnership in 2014.Since then,the two countries have frequently exchanged high-level visits and the development level of bilateral relations has been continuously improved.Public opinion generally believes that China-Germany relations were in a "best period in history" during Merkel’s administration.However,under the background of cooperation,there are still some frictions and estrangements between China and Germany,and China’s national image in Germany has not been improved due to close contacts.This study analyses the communication of China’s national image in Germany during the Merkel years from the perspective of political symbolism theory and a combination of journalism,communication and political science approaches.Firstly,this study uses the theoretical tool of political symbolism to analyse the structure of the national image,expressing the"construction" and "reproduction"relationship between symbols and symbolic objects through a ternary structure model of symbolism.According to the existence of their objective form,subjective form and expression form,the national image is divided into the triple structure of original preimage,reflection and presentation.Then,with the help of psychoanalytic theory,the process of reflection to representation is depicted:by mining the "primitive image" of China’s national image continuously constructed by the German media in the transversal structure and unidirectional structure of appearance.And Summarize the "archetype" mode used by the subject to construct discourse.Finally combine the social practice of historical culture,social environment and ideology to explore the"collective unconscious" of discourse constructors,so as to restore the process of reflection to presentation.Secondly,according to the theoretical framework of political symbolism,a statistical analysis of German media’s reports on China during Merkel’s period is carried out.By sorting out the German media’s China-related reports,dig out the breadth,reporting situation and focus of German media’s China-related reports,and summarize the continuation and changes of China’s image constructed by the media.Thesis analysis reveals that the German media’s coverage of China is characterised by a close focus on China,with a wide range of areas covered,a close focus on the countries and regions around China and Europe,a focus on China with the United States as an important subject of discussion,and the new epidemic as a "black swan event" with unprecedented devastating effects.An analysis of the German media’s coverage of China over the four periods reveals a general overview of the image of China constructed by the German media:On the one hand,it continues to construct the image of China as an authoritarian country with underdeveloped human rights,and more specifically,it constructs China’s international affairs.On the other hand,there are also changes in the image of China constructed by German media,from the image of the Middle Kingdom to the image of an emerging economy to the image of a superpower,and the image of China in various fields is ’gradually enriched and separated.Thirdly,typical cases of economic,political,human rights and public health issues related to China are selected for the analysis of the transversal structure of the German media’s construction of China’s image.And the "China Threat" theory is used for an analysis of the evolution of China’s image.Then it analyzes the four characteristics of the discourse mode in The Chinese-related reports of German media,which influence the readers’ construction of China’s image through the strategies of setting up conflict frame under the objective appearance,setting up critical frame by selecting specific roles,carefully selecting information and deviation interpretation,and setting up a pan-political frame.Finally,according to the conclusion of the Chinese national image constructed by the German media during the Merkel period and the discourse patterns used in constructing the image,combined with the social practices in historical,cultural,social environment and ideological aspects,this research concludes that the German media’s shaping of China’s image is influenced by the journalists’ own reporting philosophy,the market pressure on German media operations and the national interests and cultural differences in Germany.It also regresses empirical analysis on theory to summarise the structure and evolution of the national image embodied in the German media’s image of China.Based on this,the strategy for the dissemination of Chinese images in Germany is proposed:the global communication capacity should be enhanced and a discourse system with Chinese characteristics should be constructed;the communication capacity of both official and private media should be improved;abstract concepts should be made tangible and the discourse narrative should be opened up and diversity.