Examining Strategic Narratives in Chinese Official Discourse under Xi Jinping

Research suggests that over the last two decades China has undergone dramatic changes in its communication climate. The former mono-glossic environment has made way for a plurality of voices, now debating (non-sensitive) political, social and economic issues on online fora. While this has contributed to a more consultative state-society relationship, the leadership still wields the conductor’s baton over the ensemble of voices to ensure adherence to the main melody. The uneasy coexistence of transformation and conservatism is especially salient when it comes to propaganda and soft power, which the Chinese authorities fully deploy to disseminate their vision of the ‘China story’ abroad and to legitimize continued CCP rule at home. This paper examines the various strategic narratives that cumulatively constitute this ‘China story’, designed for the international as well as domestic audiences. It looks into divergences/convergences with the political discourse of previous generations of leadership by examining argumentation patterns and discursive strategies used in speeches and texts produced by top-level officials and their ‘core’ leader, Xi Jinping. While, on the surface, new slogans, such as ‘the Chinese dream’, the ‘New Normal’, the ‘Four Comprehensives’, the ‘Community of Common Destiny’ appear to be Xi Jinping’s hallmark, and cumulatively contribute to the all-encompassing official doctrine of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, no paradigmatic ideological change emerges from the narratives. Yet, the strategies utilised to spread ‘the China story’ are more diverse, the conductor’s baton is held more tightly, the main melody is chanted more loudly and the echoes are carried further abroad over the mountains and seas via the new Silk Road initiatives to present an alternative world order of ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’.