China's Image In The Economist From Perspective Of Cultural Soft Power With China

Founded by British businessman and banker James Wilson and launched in 1843,The Economist is a weekly published magazine that mainly focuses on factual news and the analysis of world events with a unique style of witty,humorous and even a mixture of burlesque with a serious intention.The underlying reason for its popularity is that this magazine unceasingly pursues to provide rich but insightful world information in short and pithy articles.Famous by its basic theory of the Big Mac index,the magazine's majority of readers are of elite class with high income,independent and critical mind.This study collects the cartoon images of China portrayed by The Economist from 2007 to 2014,discusses and analyzes their understanding of China in the context of Western ideology and values in a bid to enhance our creativity in Sino-foreign discourse,inspiring capacity with the aim to win worldwide credibility by broadcasting Chinese voice,telling Chinese stories and explaining to the Western world our Chinese characteristics.This thesis will be presented in five chapters:The opening chapter mainly serves as an overall guide,including the research background,methodology,significance and research ideas.The second chapter ranges throughout the background of Chinese image,cultural influence,concepts and theories related to news and comics as well as the critical survey of the current studies.The third chapter illustrates the characteristics and trends of cartoons related to China in The Economist from 2007 to 2014 by the method of quantitative research.The fourth chapter analyzes of comic images of China portrayed in The Economist,summarizes the underlying reasons of the westernizing China,and examines the causes behind this phenomenon.Then discusses how to improve our cultural soft power so as to build a culturally powerful nation and how we should actively promote international cultural exchange.The fifth chapter draws a reasonable conclusion.