Australia's Fear And Greed Over China's Rise:A Textual And Discourse Analysis Of Mainstream News Coverage Of The Belt And Road Initiative

China's rise in economic,political and military strength has stirred up world-wide debate about its geo-economic and geopolitical implications.In Australia,China has been one of the most significant keywords in its government foreign and strategic policies and on news media.In the past decades,Australia has been benefiting tremendously from trading with China,but the economic benefits also bring anxiety.China's rise intensifies its dual functions of benefit provider and security offender to Australia and the tensions between greed of economic gains from China's growth and fear of China's increasing geopolitical strength and influence.The“fear and greed" narration is well-presented in Australian mainstream media.Tony Abbott has reportedly commented that Australia is caught between the "fear and greed" of China and Malcolm Turnbull labeled China as Australia's "frenemy",a seeming friend but underlying rival.Such ambivalence can also find its expressions in the recent typical case of China's rise—the Belt and Road Initiative,the largest development strategy initiated by the Chinese government.It is worthwhile to find out how Australia's ambivalence to BRI and China's rise is represented on media and to draw the sociopolitical inferences behind "fear and greed".The thesis is going to take BRI as a typical example of China rise to examine the ambivalent t"fear and greed" of China and China's images on Australian mainstream news media.Data sample includes news reports of BRI from ABC news,The Australian,The A ustralian Financial Review The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age from September 1st,2013 to October 31st,2017.Under the theoretical framework of media framing,discourse analysis is adopted to identify themes of reports,major frames and overall tone in the coverage of BRI and further discover China's images and implications of Australia's ambivalence.The analysis on media frames and China's images finds that Australia is rather biased against China,regarding China both as a lucrative friend and a threatening enemy and constructing China as one of the "other".This Orientalist thinking of China lingers on for centuries,generating mistrust,misunderstanding,and anxiety.Profit drives Australia to establish closer economic ties with China but value differences wouldn't allow too much proximity but maintain a robust alliance with its allies.Australia's position between its major economic partner and traditional allies has caused much concern and will have a long-term influence on its policy-making decisions.