Reporting the same events? A critical analysis of Chinese print news media texts

Abstract

This article examines the discourse strategies of several Chinese-language news reports in two ideologically opposed newspapers, namely mainland China's official mouthpiece People's Daily, and Taiwan's KMT (Nationalist Party) newspaper Central Daily News, on two separate controversial events. Two case studies comparing how the People's Daily and Central Daily News reported the civil unrest in South Africa (22-8 March 1985) and in Argentina (31 May-1 June 1989) are presented, critically analysing how various textual elements might be employed for justificatory purposes - in this case, the justification and legitimization of certain foreign policies adopted by the regimes in China and Taiwan. The article investigates how discourse features, such as lexical choices, grammatical elements, headlines and thematic structures, may be varied or manipulated in the construction of a version of political reality written for the two different readerships.