A Critical Study Of China’s Image In Africa In The New York Times

The opening of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in Beijing in 2000 is a great beginning of the development of China-Africa relationship, which makes China playing a more important role on the world stage. That attracts the attention of Western countries, and their news reports on China-Africa relationship are countless. Because not all news reports are honest to the fact, personal opinions or attitudes are represented in the reports that affects readers’ understanding. Thereby, it’s of great significance to study Chinese image constructed in Western news reports.By integrating Halliday’ Systemic-Functional Grammar and Fairclough’s three-dimensional model, by taking 56 pieces of news reports published in New York Times as data, the author tries to analyze the issue of Chinese image in Africa in detail at three levels, say, text, discourse practice and social practice. Text analysis aims to analyze the linguistic features of news reports by bringing in analytic tools of van Dijk’s headline analysis, Halliday’s classification and Fairclough’s metaphor. The discourse practice level focuses on the analysis of news sources and words reporting, social practice the influence of tension between China-America in Africa and institutional factors on news reports.The study shows that New York Times mainly emphasizes the negative impression of China in Africa, for example, ignoring human rights of African workers and expropriating their natural resources. It’s apparent that news discourse does not honestly reflect the fact. In the reporting of Chinese activities, New York Times is not free from being affected by American mainstream culture and social attitude, and the struggle of economic interests struggle between China and America in Africa.