Professor Pál Nyíri

ISRF Mid-Career Fellow 2013-14

Professor Pál Nyíri

ISRF Mid-Career Fellow 2013-14

ISRF Pál Nyíri

The World Seen From China: How the Emerging Circuit of Chinese Foreign Correspondents Shapes China’s View of the World

The proposed research is an ethnographic study of foreign correspondents who work for major Chinese media: the national television CCTV, the official English-language newspaper China Daily, and the highbrow weekly and online newsmagazine Caijing/Caixin. The study will focus on London and Johannesburg, where the main European and African offices, respectively, of the three companies are located.

Driven both by business interests and a government that sees global expansion of Chinese media as a policy goal, all three companies have recently set up bureaux in Europe and Africa, and are currently in the process of manning them. The study will follow the lives and reporting of selected correspondents for one year, ideally from the beginning of their assignment, and will document how and under what influence their views of Europe/Africa and the world change; how their reporting and personal blogs reflect that change; and how their readers respond.

The aim of the project is to contribute to an understanding of how China’s new mobile elites are changing dominant perceptions of the world in China’s public discourse. Studies of China’s emergence as a global investor have so far focused on the political and economic motives and impact of this process. Some studies of Confucius Institutes have emerged as an example of China’s “soft power,” but with very few exceptions these are focused on the political intentions they represent rather than on what actually happens in them. Such an approach focuses on proving or disproving China’s neocolonial intentions and overlooks the agency of the new elites (intellectual, managerial etc) who are involved in Chinese globalization. Yet China’s new urban middle classes are themselves keen to engage with the world in new ways. This study allows to interrogate potential cosmopolitanisms that emerge from the intersection of state policy, business interest, and individual aspirations.

Contacting Fellows

If you would like to contact any of our Fellows to discuss their ISRF-funded work, please contact Dr Lars Cornelissen (Academic Editor) in the first instance, at [email protected].