China vs. Taiwan in the News: Assessing the Impact of Mediated Public Diplomacy

• In Event: China and Taiwan in the News

Abstract

As an ascending superpower, China has adopted a new public diplomacy strategy to engage with the world in the 21st century. “Wolf-warrior diplomacy,” popularized by China’s former spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, has been exercised more vigorously and widely (Martin 2021) since Xi Jinping took over the helm and demanded that China’s global clout be recognized (Zhao 2022). On the other hand, China’s archrival Taiwan has been struggling desperately on the international stage, aiming to gain as much recognition and support as it can against China’s repression. Taiwan’s measured while flexible approach in public diplomacy has been in stark contrast with China’s counterpart. Moreover, given the island’s scarce leverage and resources, it would be conceptually as well as practically fruitful to examine how a small country like Taiwan has vied for favorable media narrative against a formidable giant.

News coverage of foreign nations can be pivotal to public opinion formation as well as foreign policy-making. This facet of public diplomacy is particularly crucial for Taiwan, for whose international status has been uncertain and constantly debated (Chiang 2018). Mediated public diplomacy is an indispensable part of international relations practice (Fullerton and Kendrick 2016) and has been empirically found to exert a profound impact for the involved countries in the real world (Garud-Patkar 2022). Both China and Taiwan have been keen in this field of diplomatic practice – with markedly different approaches. Given the vast distinction between these two, it would be rewarding to empirically investigate how the respective mediated public diplomacy panned out and what has the news coverage been directly attributed to the leading diplomats based in Germany and the U.S., two of the most important democratic alliances. Furthermore, we are interested in unveiling how either country has been portrayed thanks to the distinct communication styles and value systems these two countries embraced and conveyed to the American and German publics.

The research questions this study aims to answer are:

1. How has the news coverage about China and Taiwan sourced by the diplomats of either country varied – between China and Taiwan and also between the German and U.S. media – during the Xi period?
2. Of the Chinese or Taiwanese diplomats during the Xi period, which team has been sourced more often and given more space across the German and U.S. media?
3. Of the Chinese or Taiwanese diplomats during the Xi period, which team has been linked to more positive media coverage across the German and U.S. media?

Mainstream news media from Germany and the U.S. were selected to analyze its news content that used the diplomats dispatched by China and Taiwan in either country as sources. The U.S. media included in the study sample are the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and TIME magazine; and German media include BILD, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Handelsblatt, and Der Spiegel. These media were selected based on their national prestige, large circulation, and traditional impact in domestic and international affairs. The news coverage yielded from these media outlets was thoroughly searched with all of the names of the Chinese ambassadors and Taiwanese representatives based in either country during the first ten years of the Xi presidency, i.e., from March 2013 to March 2023. Below is the table that reports the number of retrieved news stories from each of the media outlets.

Media Outlet n

New York Times 113
Wall Street Journal 80
Washington Post 96
TIME 46

BILD 43
Süddeutsche Zeitung 22
Der Spiegel 25
Handelsblatt 70

Coding of all relevant news content generated from the above news media of Germany and the U.S. will be executed by trained human coders, who will code each of the news stories to render decisions on its news topics, frame, diplomatic source used, diplomat’s attributes, tone toward China or Taiwan, and the state of bilateral relationship between either China and Taiwan and the country where the media is based. The coding results will be tabulated and analyzed with the appropriate statistical procedure to result in rigorous evidence for addressing the three research questions.

This study will shed new light on the nexus between different public diplomacy practices and media coverage of target countries. Furthermore, the findings will show how a resource-scarce country competes against a global superpower in the mediated space for obtaining recognition, international cooperation, and even strategic advantage. The study will contribute significantly to both conceptual foundation and practice of mediated public diplomacy.

Authors

• Denis Wu, Boston University

• Benita Dederichs, Boston University