Instrumentalisation of Local Knowledge?Unravelling the Patterns of China's Discursive Foreign Policy Practices
This article sheds light on the indigenous knowledge structure of China's discursive power strategy and foreign policy practices, as they relate to the development of norms and historicised narratives. Previous studies into China's interstate and foreign communication tend to focus on the Communist Party of China's (CPC) preference for authoritarian, top-down control of the revolutionary zero-sum game, thereby overlooking the representational images and internalisation of symbols underlying its normative speech acts. This study finds elements of social continuity in China's localised style of discourse securitisation that are subtly implicit in its public communicative intent. The aim of the article is to facilitate understanding of the sociopolitical processes driving China's foreign affairs-related dialogue repertoire.
INTRODUCTION
The intensifying US–China strategic competition in terms of trade, technological supremacy and geopolitical influence has rapidly turned into a contest of strategic discourse, the "linguistic practices through which a nation's security policy is represented".1 The Communist Party of China's (CPC) ambitions to enhance its discursive power reflect its determination to shape global governance agendas, provide public goods and create a favourable international public opinion environment. Backed by the rigid communist ideology, a massive propaganda machine and censorship apparatus, CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping adopted incremental steps on multiple fronts to "safeguard the party's authority", including the weaponisation of social media, culture and history to strengthen the Party's "voice on the international stage".2 In a [End Page 24] speech at the National Party School Work Conference in 2016, Xi reminded officials that "those who have nothing to say will be scolded" (ai ma).3
Particularly since the Trump years, the United States and its allies have perceived China's sophisticated approach to enhancing its international discursive power as a way of ensuring its regime security, of maintaining its reputation and propagating globally its authoritarian ideas and values. China's use of cyber campaigns, political reach of social media platforms and secret surveillance and collection of foreign data are interpreted as attempts to undermine democratic institutions and win global public sentiment.4 American pundits and policymakers have warned that the Chinese aim of exploiting enemy vulnerabilities through such "soft-power tactics" might ultimately create rifts within the US alliance and partnership network.5
Particularly, China's coercive style of "wolf warrior diplomacy", displayed through vulgar language and name-calling, has the potential of creating an atmosphere of chaos and confusion in the international society.6 The phrase "wolf warrior diplomacy" is derived from the 2015 Chinese blockbuster action movie, Wolf Warrior, and its 2017 sequel. It refers to the chauvinistic nationalism and offensive posture exhibited by officials to defend China's national interests and gain discursive power in international politics. For instance, Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, claimed to be a proud "wolf warrior" and vowed to stand in the way of the "mad dogs" that attack China.7 The Chinese Embassy in Caracas disparaged Venezuelan officials on Twitter for referring to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a "Chinese" virus and asked them to "put on a face mask and shut up".8 In the same manner, various Chinese diplomatic centres across the world have circulated "fake news" and disinformation through "public diplomacy" to combat negative international perceptions about its domestic and foreign [End Page 25] policies.9 Such an unprecedented show of diplomatic ire and hoaxes has driven a worldwide increase in negative views of China.10
Political scientists and practitioners generally take a realist perspective in their view of the "wolfish" statecraft characterised by censorship, vilification and perceptual control. This implies the view of the undiplomatic invectives as aimed at displacing the United States and improving China's position within the global order. The tabloid Global Times supports this view:
The days when China can be put in a submissive position are long gone. China's rising status in the world requires it to safeguard its national interests in an unequivocal way. It is no longer satisfied with a flaccid diplomatic tone.11
According to Yang Dali, the "atmosphere of bitterness and mistrust" in the US–China strategic competition prompted the CPC to "take the war over discourse to Twitter to counter American hegemony".12 Zhao argues that this "new feature" of outrage and sarcasm in China's discursive foreign policy reflects the CPC's ideological shift wherein diplomacy has become viewed as "a war against enemy forces that must be defeated".13
Poststructuralist perspectives attribute such discursive tendencies to the Party's mission of expanding its ideological footprint and challenging the liberal international order. Zhao and Tan-Mullins, for instance, adopted a "postcolonial narrative" to highlight how China's voice has been suppressed regarding key global issues and why the leaders have been signalling a change of focus in political communication.14 According to van Noort and Colley, China turned to storytelling and persuasive analogies as complementary tools to resolve its limited discursive power.15 Yang also [End Page 26] noted that the high-profile diplomacy is a "multifaceted narrative strategy to redefine existing norms or create new ones in varied global governance domains".16
The aforementioned works shed light on the fractious tone in China's foreign communication and relationship-building, from its preference for authoritarian top-down control to the revolutionary zero-sum game. However, the assumption that China's discursive foreign policy operates within such a narrow ontology of statecraft fails to encapsulate the representational images and influence of culturally shared concepts and symbolic patterns that underlie China's normative speech acts. This article addresses the prevailing misunderstanding by offering a strategic cultural framework of China's foreign affairs-related communicative repertoire. It provides insights into the social-symbol system that China's international discourse is based on—i.e. what its meanings, contents and ends are, and how the influence–coercion dynamic, innate in strategic narratives, is articulated.
The next section elucidates the national characteristics underpinning the CPC's diplomacy from the perspective of discourse and rhetoric used in modern and ancient public opinion operations. The culture of public opinion is operationalised through a dynamic interplay between foreign policy discourse and action. This article, in acknowledging the premise, offers a better understanding of the cultural and political context within which China's discursive power strategy operates and is manifested.
CONCEPTUALISING THE CPC'S DISCURSIVE POWER STRATEGY
Culture can influence a state's discursive power strategy "not by providing the ultimate values towards which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or tool kit of habits, skills, and styles", from which the elites take reference to "construct strategies of action".17 While rationalist theories perceive actors as being independent of their environment, culturalists argue that the "social construction of cultural content within an anarchic system produces variation in the structural constraints and opportunities for units and therefore leads to variation in outcomes and the patterns of state behaviour".18 Through the input of cultural, ideational and practical information, China has searched for a positive discourse, i.e. new ways of using language so that it tells different stories from those related to China in the international discourse system. Concepts associated with the "China threat theory", such as "sharp power, neo-imperialism, neo-colonialism, new totalitarianism, digital authoritarianism, creditor imperialism, revisionist power, ambitious interventionism, and the Kindleberger trap" [End Page 27] have been condemned by China's policymakers and scholars as a Western "discourse trap" (huayu xianjing) that must be avoided at all costs.19 The effects of such negative stories are potentially devastating on the self-identity and self-esteem of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Therefore, after assuming office, Xi Jinping urged the officials to earnestly overcome the negative consequences of such global discourse.
The use of verbal communication as a deflection or deterrent could hardly be considered a new phenomenon. Various actors have focused on the overt and covert manipulation of language to influence external audiences during wars, periods of geopolitical unrest and peace. The power of discourse had begun to enter all areas of conflict since the era of communications revolution as "wars would no longer be fought just by armies in the field… erasing distinctions between the front line and the home front".20 While leaflets, television broadcasts, balloons and airplanes were still the primary medium for propaganda and disinformation prior to the digital revolution, the dawn of the information era enabled advances in audio-visual and computer technology to diversify China's influence pathways.21
However, China was among the first to incorporate persuasive storytelling and analogies in the practice of strategic discourse operations. Rhetoric (xiuci) was extensively used throughout the rule of the dynasties as an implicit part of propaganda and political manipulation. Encapsulated in public speeches and mobilisation orders of the ruling clique, such rhetorical power played a central role in the formation and projection of narratives that sought to counterattack, control and deceive the enemies.22 The use of metaphors and formulaic language in pre-battle rituals indicated the threat of punishment and the resolve to prevail as victorious over every obstacle that stood in the way.23 The rituals recurrently created through the act of representation were considered by elites and intellectuals as an effective discursive strategy to signal disagreement with the status quo, create "us–them" differences, and exert sovereign power over life and death.24 [End Page 28]
Since the pre-PRC era, the CPC has consistently recognised the importance of constructing a "socialist discourse system" that can convey a "voice of peace and justice" in alignment with "safeguarding national security and development interests and fighting back against the imperialist and revisionist powers".25 The Mao Zedong leadership strived to impose the socialist discourse system onto the Agrarian Revolution, the Anti-Japanese War, Liberation War, Korean War and the Sino–Indian War. The underlying psychology was that "victory depends not only on military operations, but upon the disintegration of the enemy"26 and that "in parallel with military attacks", efforts must be carried out to "disintegrate the enemy's will to fight".27 To compensate for the country's relative deficit in national strength and international influence, Chinese leaders used "political works" (zhengzhi gongzuo) as a way to promote self-identification and influence the adversary's psychology.28
Likewise, leaders after Mao have attempted to shape favourable international narratives, minimise negative Western influence and deconstruct the discourse system dominated by hostile international forces. Amid the post-1989 Tiananmen international sanctions on China, Deng Xiaoping claimed to let the world know that the "Chinese people are not afraid of isolation and will not be bullied. No matter what changes take place in the international situation, China will hold its ground".29 At the dawn of globalisation, Jiang Zemin considered "multi-panoramic propaganda tools", such as television, the internet and mobile media as central to transforming emotions, dividing the enemies and attaining global initiatives.30 Hu Jintao witnessed how the domination of media and discourse gave the United States a "permit" to strike against Iraq, how the effect of "one video clip was tantamount to a division of tanks", and how it was expanding the parameters of conflict from "visual to virtual and the intangible space".31 During the Xi Jinping era, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has endorsed adopting "public opinion warfare" (yulunzhan) to contain the negative impacts [End Page 29] of Western defamation on the Party and state, and domestic interference by unfriendly forces.32 Xi called on the CPC members "to take a clear-cut stand, be courageous in the struggle, be vocal, refute erroneous statements with righteousness and strength, narrate China's story well, and proactively spread China's positive energy" to the world.33
Against this background, what can we take for our discussion from this synopsis of continuity and change in China's discursive power strategy? Considering that linguistic discourse plays an important role in China's discursive foreign policy, has Xi replaced the traditional "keep a low profile" (taoguang yanghui) strategy with a "striving for achievement" (yousuo zuowei) strategy? If such a hypothesis is true, then how can we read the 19th and 20th CPC National Congresses' commitment to "promoting a new type of international relations" and "deepening and expanding global partnerships based on equality, openness, and cooperation"?34 For a country fixated on "creating a better future and passing the torch of peace from generation to generation", the motives for fundamental change seem to be limited.35
The Framework: Culture and Discursive Power
To understand the influence of culture on China's national narratives and discourse formation, it is necessary to explore the "system of symbols" (e.g. argumentation structures, languages, analogies, metaphors) shaping the "pervasive and long-lasting strategic preferences" of China's discursive power strategy.36 Qin Yaqing is an influential scholar in this regard, for his attempt to use the epistemology of zhongyong (doctrine of the mean) dialectics to demonstrate that China's dichotomous strategy of taoguang yanghui and yousuo zuowei is not bound by the rules of the "thesis and anti-thesis, but the co-theses of yin and yang with each inside the other", co-evolving "without mutual [End Page 30] elimination or assimilation but with complementary mutuality".37 He argues that zhongyong is the "most distinct feature of Chinese culture, formed through long practice and the shaping of Chinese people's thoughts and actions within society" and the "key to understanding Chinese behavior, international or otherwise".38 Nonetheless, Qin's Confucian notion of "handling relations" or zhongyong is incompatible with the existence of clearly contrasting discourse practices. In a related vein, Zhang argues that "inclusivism" and "exclusivism" are the "two major traditions in Chinese history of Confucian foreign policy", and the selection of one approach over another is shaped by the "relational conditions of the interaction dynamics between China and other polities, particularly the level of foreign threats to Chinese security and authority".39 His argument, based on the constructive nature of China's interstate relationship-building, however, negates the fact that China's sense of vulnerability and hostility in an international order led by democracies and rooted in liberal values has been a constant in the CPC's foreign policymaking process. Collective memory of and national narratives about the two Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the Japanese encroachment, the Tiananmen incident, and the like, constantly shaped and were reshaped by the interpretation imposed by Chinese leaders "without allowing alternative actors space for contestation".40 Further, the practice of marginalising and silencing critics through the production of diplomatic speeches, political propaganda and digital communication during times of peace or in the absence of threat contexts, suggests that a certain reference point of internalised image and perception exists, one through which the CPC seeks to align the identity of external audiences with its own preferences. As Russett, Starr and Kinsella note, diplomacy seeks to "communicate desires and accomplish goals".41
It is against this background that this article favours the cultural effects of "mutual reproduction of regular (zheng) and irregular (qi) forces" (gongfang hubian, qizheng xiangsheng) as more adequately encapsulating the dynamics of China's discursive power strategy.42 Zheng is the "regular way of doing things", and qi is the irregular variable whose "variation is inexhaustible".43 For each category, two "hidden ideologies that [End Page 31] are subtly conveyed by the use of particular linguistic features" and their consequences on China's discursive power strategy are identified.44
CHINA'S DEFENSIVE STRATEGY OF DISCURSIVE POWER: THE REGULAR WAY
The defensive strategy of discursive power, or the "regular way" or zheng, comprises reasoning (li) and Tao (dao), both of which are deeply embedded in China's sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts (Table 1). These target the belief system through factual persuasion and humanitarian principles, respectively.45
On the Defensive: The Regular (Zheng) Way
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Reasoning
Reasoning plays an important role in the "explanations of decision-making processes in foreign policy".46 Yet, its role and influence in discourse formation have been understudied. China's experiences in and behaviour pertaining to reasoning as discourse were shaped largely by the sociocultural context of ancient public opinion battles. Cogent argumentation and universalist logic were used as weapons to pre-emptively break down the enemy's "line of psychological defense" (xinli fangxian) comprising logic, ethics and emotion.47 The use of "logical persuasion with a scientific and empirical basis" could increase outward "discursive power".48 The effect is amplified when one's rhetorical language can "resonate" (gongmingfa) with the mind and awareness of the audience (the target).49 Conversely, the absence of this overarching narrative could incur disdain and disrespect from other nations and even the aversion of one's own soldiers. Consequently, the attackers would not be able to claim the moral high ground for their violence and aggression (domestically or internationally), particularly in waging unprovoked battles. Rationality thus remains an important condition to encourage everyone's active support, which, in turn, provides morality and legality to an action.
The construction of rational discourse is distinguished from propaganda, which is more concerned with emotions than facts. For instance, while "emotions are associated with the manipulation of propaganda", the adoption of reasoning narratives on information and communication platforms relies on "human rationality" and pursues a specific objective to impact the frame of mind and shape public perceptions.50
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made extensive use of reasoning in its diplomatic discourse to defend its political decisions and ideological beliefs. Regarding the controversial Hong Kong security law, the foreign ministry used words such as "reasonable" and "lawful" to defend the enactment.51 After Australia criticised the Belt and Road Initiative as a propaganda exercise, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs refuted the criticism by portraying the initiative as a "reasonable and lawful" [End Page 33] investment.52 Regarding sanctions on Chinese companies over the South China Sea militarisation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended China's island-building activities as "reasonable" and called the US sanctions "unreasonable" and "illegal".53 The Commissioner's Office of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong also defended its decision to expel US journalists as a "legitimate, fair, and reasonable" action.54 The downgrading of diplomatic ties with Lithuania to the chargé d'affaires level in 2021 was rationalised as "legitimate and reasonable" according to the one-China principle,55 while the mass detention of Uyghurs in re-education camps was defended by the People's Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as a "reasonable effort" to curb terrorism and extremism.56
China's responses to perceived external threats and charges through the use of its reasoning discourse reveal some meaningful patterns. First, consolidation is achieved by recognising the means and methods of external forces, then raising political vigilance and demonstrating a self-confident posture. The aim is to build a solid defence line and stand firm against attempts that discredit the CPC and obstruct its work. Hostile allegations by outside forces that can potentially undermine the effects of China's norms and policies regarding core interests are perceived to be plots and traps that must be exposed pre-emptively through reasoning. The act of rebutting and confronting the opponent should involve goal-oriented "norms, axioms, and facts" that can effectively "clarify and refute" the enemy's "rumours, slander, fake news and verbal attacks".57 The more the enemy's "fake news is exposed" through reasoning, the more the culprit is doomed to be "criticised and opposed by its own public, who would feel deceived and fooled by their government, resulting in doubts and distrust to take root".58 [End Page 34] Similarly, the reasoning discourse can be used to fluster third-party critics and influence their psychological foundations.
Tao
The infusion of Tao into discourse reflects the concept of jus in bello, or right actions or approaches in wars. Chinese classical theorists viewed wars that were predicated on Tao as having enjoyed abundant support; those that were not predicated on Tao found little support. The monarchs would introduce Tao in public speeches to shape the minds of the masses and the psychology of their opponents. Such a cultural tradition has continued through the revolutionary era, during which propaganda leaflets and posters depicting images of "throwing food and medical supplies" were juxtaposed against the images of "bombs" dropped on the battlefield. Similarly, "injured civilians and prisoners of war" were portrayed as being "taken care of" by the Red Army, while the enemy's activities were framed as brutal and inhumane.59 In these ways, the revolutionary Party's appeal to Tao in its sociocultural practices undermined the challenger's authority and popular support, causing widespread estrangement from the leadership.
When incorporated into strategic narratives, the use of Tao could portray one's political communications, diplomatic actions and cultural contact as serving a humanitarian cause. The diffusion of relevant ethical, moral and cultural values through official statements, interviews and printed material, for instance, gradually forces ideological and identity assimilation, as the dialectical nature of such values can obfuscate genuine intentions.
China's diplomats and state-run news agencies have extensively used Tao to shape a positive national image and gain an international reputation. During the peak of the COVID-19 crisis, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided donations and medical expertise across the world as part of "humanitarian assistance".60 Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated: "China's readiness to help is inspired by humanitarianism; it has no ideological agenda and is still less driven by selfish geopolitical interests".61 Wang also [End Page 35] claimed that China would "contribute to international humanitarianism and global health", particularly in Africa and other regions threatened by the outbreak. In response to the accusations against the World Health Organization (WHO) for siding with China, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs argued that "any attempt to oppress or even blackmail the WHO is… a challenge to humanitarianism" and "will not be accepted by the international society".62 The use of Tao could also help China's position as a responsible international leader. For instance, to retaliate against the "falsehoods in US perceptions of China", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that "in the face of the pandemic, China launched its largest global humanitarian operation since the founding of the People's Republic".63 Over charges that China had forcibly repatriated North Korean defectors seeking political asylum overseas, exposing them to the risk of prosecution and a death sentence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded by stating that China "surely handled the cases in a humanitarian spirit".64
The pattern observed in the use of Tao discourse is that the framing of diplomatic actions as humanitarian can function as enhancing "self-confidence" in the face of criticism by external forces.65 First, given its universally altruistic attributes, the spirit of Tao could neutralise negative perceptions and homogenise thoughts, and that consequently could help create new international norms and institutions. More importantly, Tao could draw sympathy from outside parties under the veneer of benevolent attraction, thereby creating the perception that uniting all forces against the prime enemy is necessary and would prove beneficial for all. This process itself serves as an interpretive source of power to reconstruct the meaning of socialism which the CPC views as superior to capitalism. Compared to capitalism which China views as lacking institutional guarantees to impose principles of moral conduct and obligation, Tao could be used as a mechanism to raise the profile of the China-led socialist development agenda around the world and gradually shift the balance of global discursive power. [End Page 36]
CHINA'S OFFENSIVE STRATEGY OF DISCURSIVE POWER: THE IRREGULAR WAY
China's offensive strategy of discursive power, the perspective of qi or the "irregular way", aligns with Sun Tzu's maxim that "indirect methods", or "abnormal manoeuvres must be employed to secure victory" and Mao's dialectical principle of "strategically despising the enemy, but tactically taking it seriously".66 The CPC leadership has long been aware of the hostile international forces' determination to westernise and tacitly alter the socialist regime through means like spending massive amounts of money on international broadcasting, human rights-related propaganda, cultural exchanges, international conferences, and like supporting non-governmental organisations and "freedom" fighters.67 To dissuade the adversaries from pursuing such actions inimical to its strategic interests, China has turned to adopting the irregular discursive strategy of demonisation (yaozhan) and chaos (huozhan) (Table 2).
On the Offensive: The Irregular (Qz) Way
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Demonisation
The demonisation approach involves primarily "public opinion decapitation" (yulun zhanshou), i.e. the use of defamatory information that exposes the opponent's misdemeanour, brutality and conspiracies.68 Chinese classical theories postulate that "taking out the leader" would "break up the enemy's organisation" and "capturing the ringleader could lead to capturing all his followers" (dashe da qicun, literally: "to beat the snake, one must strike seven inches below its head").69 "Methods of exaggerating" (kuadafa) their culpability for causing bloodshed, pain, anxiety and distress could sow internal discord in the opponent's camp by undermining the enemy's popular support and political authority over third parties. During the revolutionary era, the CPC utilised the "condemning the violence" (kongsu baoxing) tactic against the "hegemons, militarists, bellicose elements and reactionary forces" that resisted "the tide of history"; they were warned to "refrain from invoking ridiculous pretexts to mount wars".70
In the new era, Chinese diplomats and state media have used demonisation as a discourse approach in their political communication and public opinion operations to protect China's foreign policy and national security interests. Large-scale operations of disinformation and misleading information are pervasive, all with the intention to instil paranoia and deceive target audiences. Chinese diplomats and state media fired verbal salvos and insults to undermine the reputation of Western leaders and to drive a wedge between Western allies. For example, the posting by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian of a doctored image depicting an Australian soldier holding a bloodied knife to the throat of an Afghan child was deemed to be a use of discourse with roots in traditional culture. The recourse to such demonisation discourse is aligned with the goals of isolation and exclusion of adversaries, and the uniting of third parties in the international community. Likewise, the state media described the US leadership under Trump using such words and phrases to describe Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as "crazy", the "source of all chaos",71 "haunted by the Marxist-Leninist monster", and "dragging the American people into a capitalist black hole".72 The media also labelled the United States under the Trump administration a "habitual liar" with an utter "disregard for basic facts and moral integrity".73 In 2020, the Chinese [End Page 38] state media also held the United States administration accountable for pushing "China–US relations… to their worst point over the past 40 years",74 and the "US political forces" for taking bilateral ties to "the brink of the so-called new cold war".75 Likewise, the state media criticised Australian politicians for not "understanding what national interests are", as they approve of the "China policy led by the US". The media claimed that although "Australia needs to have independent diplomatic thinking… it is doing just the opposite".76
The patterns observed in these cultural agents' use of hate speech and ad hominem argument are the promptness of counterattack and the tendency to exploit the wedge effect in contingent situations. First, the proactive propagation of vilifying information is one such tool to counter the negative international narrative about China's revisionist aims, and it supports the Chinese rhetoric on human rights affairs and relevant agenda. While China aims to provide a different perspective to the global discourse on a wide range of issues, its head-to-head competition over controversies is the first step towards displacing the Western hegemonic discourse. Attempting to quickly launch a counterattack, especially through availing oneself of social network services, is conducive to undermining adversaries' political reputation, encouraging their allies and partners worldwide to distance themselves from the adversary, and psychologically isolating the enemy.77
Chaos
The element of chaos discourse encompasses the ideas of obfuscation and fabrication, i.e. producing basic perceptual changes that evoke misapprehension and illusion, potentially clouding judgement and distorting the opponent's logic process. The Chinese discourse creates chaos in the cognitive domain by revealing contradictions through disinformation, misinformation and partial information. As a dialectical method of discursive strategy, chaos discourse exposes an enemy's apparent weakness and imminent collapse (ruo er shi ruo) to cause it to take rash actions owing to psychological carelessness. The method creates an illusion of its weakness, when in fact, it is strong (qiang er shi ruo). This could lure the enemy into the trap of self-overestimation and belittling the other. Eventually, it creates an illusion of strength, when it is in fact weak (ruo er shi qiang), to manipulate and implant fear and panic in the enemy. [End Page 39] Bluffing and taking advantage of the enemy's weak points open up avenues to proactively strike against it.
For instance, China's news programmes have consistently dramatised the contradictions in Western ethnic, religious and social groups. China's ambassadors and government-backed internet users flood social media with content on violence and social unrest in the United States, such as highlighting the Black Lives Matter movement and gun violence. They push divisive messages, criticise Western human rights conditions and highlight the perceived hypocrisy of the West.78 Paid internet commentators and "social media armies" like the 50 Cent Army, Little Pinks and Internet Water Army (wangluo shuijun) are hired to whitewash the negativity about China on the internet, manipulate public opinion and spread information to benefit the CPC. China has a cyber force of 300,000 soldiers and a 50 Cent Army of over two million individuals who disseminate pro-Party comments on social media.79 CPC-backed Twitter accounts, for instance, have posted threads to prove that no mosques were demolished and that Uyghur Muslims are content and happy in China, as a means to divert peoples' attention from the persecution of the Uyghurs, and hence providing accounts of Xinjiang forced labour with a new narrative.80 Chinese embassies and consulates also outsourced influencers as part of the state's digital operation, hiring private firms to promote the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics by posting "Beijing and China elements", including its "history, cultural relics, modern life of people, new trends", and "touching moments" online.81 Attracting followers, tracking critics, and generating automated bots and hard-to-trace content on demand could undermine accusations of human rights abuses and further advance the authoritarian agenda.
Incorporating chaotic elements within discourse is clandestine in nature; such discourse in fact contains counternarratives that paralyse the mind. First, the Chinese government exploits its diplomatic apparatus, state news media and social network services to spread its propaganda about the deteriorating Western way of life and values, thereby implying Western leaders' incompetency at solving the emerging social, [End Page 40] ethnic and institutional issues. The introduction of such new information could generate confusion, interfere with social order and compromise coherent readiness. The information would tend to "divert" (zhuanyifa) one's mental focus away from sound judgement, present an altered view of reality and mislead enemies and relevant parties into making intellectual blunders. For instance, Chinese embassies and state media continually portray the People's Liberation Army as a "determined defender of world peace" and state that "US interference has been the source of risks in the South China Sea".82 Such misleading content is designed to drive conflict in the parties involved in the South China Sea dispute, cause them to lose track of their goals and eventually offset interventionist policies of third parties.
CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF CHINA'S DISCURSIVE POWER STRATEGY
Continued progress in international relations entails accumulating non-Western knowledge and research programmes that help researchers to understand the constitutive effects of non-material variables on China's identity and strategic behaviour. This article is an attempt to consider the study of culture as a critical research tool into China's international discourse and its discursive power strategy. It associates four cultural trajectories that feature in contemporary discourse practices with regard to unorthodox warfare. Its theoretical contributions lie in the fact that it goes beyond the existing studies' tendency to fixate on China's use of force, violence or the lack thereof, when exploring the influence of strategic culture. It assumes the ontological priority of ideas and knowledge distribution as a priori to material power distributions.
If a state's discourse strategy can be conditioned by time, geographical space and the quality of past interactions, as constructivists argue, the national symbols and cultural parameters that mark out China's particularity should be examined. Failing to do so could skew the research agenda in favour of the Western positivist methodologies in the study of China's discursive foreign policy. Although the doctrines that account for a state's discourse creation and tactical projection may appear similar, there may be unique organisational interests, cultural beliefs, idiosyncratic values and practical input embedded in their sources that produce different outcomes accordingly in different states.
This article argues that the CPC indulges in the wide application of cultural and ideological work to counter the peaceful evolution and bourgeois liberalisation of the Western countries. Its regular and irregular patterns of discursive power strategy are used to exploit, control and manipulate the dominant external discourse system, to [End Page 41] defuse enemy critics and to shape its national image.83 Both patterns could influence the cognitive function and belief system of the international audience, which in turn, renders their logical, ethical and emotional defence lines vulnerable and difficult to sustain (Figure 1).
China's Discursive Power Strategy: Mechanism of Influence
Source: Li Jian and Ma Chong, eds., Junshi xinlixue jiaocheng (Military Psychology Tutorials) (Beijing: People's Liberation Army Press, 1988), p. 177.
The four types of defensive and offensive cultural discourses mentioned in the two frameworks are promoted to influence the cognitive and belief system, which in turn, activates the target's logical, ethical and emotional defence line. When the degree of influence penetrates such that it activates the target's ego into a reaction, then it successfully leads to the target's perspective and attitudinal change. Due to the nature of its non-antagonistic and non-coercive projection of verbal communication, the perceptual effects could be covertly and clandestinely translated into behavioural change.84 For instance, the application of such a gradual, cumulative influence on the mind could generate delusions within the opponents, despite the presence of preexisting knowledge. Likewise, influencing digital and physical space through the discursive power strategy could impede the Western social order, armaments and military execution, and compromise its readiness. It is in this sense that China's international discourse policies are viewed by Western governments as undermining the open nature of democratic institutions and states' ability to think and act rationally.
Second, China's discursive power strategy is not confined merely to the diplomatic realm. Its long-standing sociocultural emphasis on nonviolent strategic struggle as the most pervasive and predominant form of conflict management indicates that the regular and irregular ways of discourse can be similarly applied to conflict resolution in the political, economic, technological and military domains. The social roles of China's many discourse participants could collectively "shift the overall power balance between the two opposing sides" by way of "influencing the emotions, motivation, subjective judgement and behaviour".85 For instance, with the passage of time, China's sharp-power [End Page 42] and influence operations have become increasingly diversified and sophisticated, so that they include a wide array of agents besides the propaganda and foreign affairs institutions, such as the Ministry of Public Security, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Cyberspace Administration of China. For instance, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau has been flooding global social media with fake accounts on Facebook and other online platforms through video-making services purchased from private firms. It also supported high-tech contractors through open tendering to "actively shape public opinion via censorship and the dissemination of fake posts".86 Likewise, the Chinese government has been acquiring foreign media outlets and shaping their coverage, courting foreign officials and journalists to extend its global voice, and sponsoring pro-China demonstrations abroad to combat negative narratives against it.87 Accordingly, the US government required Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International and scores of other entities based in the United States to register as "foreign missions" in 2020.88 Similarly, the CPC's Front Work organs are crucial to expanding China's discursive power. According to Michael Raska, the China Association for the Promotion of Chinese Culture, China Association for Friendly International Contacts and China–US Exchange Foundation are in charge of co-opting host nations' political, business and military elites and institutions.89 The multiple agents of influence constitute a key component of China's overseas political work, as they help to empower the authoritarian regime with influence over political representation and expression.
On a final note, there is a need to gain a better understanding of the norms, values and rules embedded in China's foreign policy discourse and its theoretical implications for international relations. For instance, at a group study session of the Political Bureau on May 2022, Xi said:
With regard to traditional Chinese culture, we should make the past serve the present, break new ground from the old, and carry forward its fine elements. [End Page 43]
We should establish discipline, academic and discourse systems with Chinese characteristics, style, and flair.90
While the CPC's emphasis on co-existence, dialogue and cooperation with hostile forces is conducive to and even inevitable for national development, the Party has perceived the need to engage in novel strategies of struggle, confrontation and estrangement unique to the Chinese culture. The CPC is aware that discourse and strategic narratives are integral to the safe expansion of interests overseas and the broadening of international agenda-setting power, and that a centralised and unified discourse will portend well for China's victory against enemies in its path to national rejuvenation in the new era. Although Chinese officials can intermittently tone down the aggressive posture and hostile rhetoric, as demonstrated in Xi Jinping's call in June 2021 to create a "reliable, admirable, and respectable" image of China, the use of derogatory language and misbehaviour will manifest in one of the four strands of discourse introduced above, depending on what is at stake, what China expects to achieve and how China intends to shape the global public environment. This is the main argument that this article has attempted to explore, with the hope that scholars would remain cautious while delineating and interpreting China's discursive rhetoric and avoid doing so through acultural analytical models.
Chung Youngjune (yjchung81@naver.com) is, at the time of writing, an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Tongji University. He obtained his PhD in International Relations from China Foreign Affairs University. His research interests include Chinese foreign policy and information operations, US–China relations and East Asian politics.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to thank the journal for its editorial assistance and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Footnotes
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