Evaluating the effectiveness of China’s nation branding with data from social media

Abstract

In the past few decades, the rise of China has become the theme of heated debates, the central question of which is whether China will rise peacefully or as a “threat.” Faced with various speculations and predictions about China’s possible future course of action, Chinese political leaders and eminent scholars began engaging in the making and projecting of China’s soft power as well as a series of nation-branding campaigns. In order to study and evaluate the effectiveness of China’s nation-branding campaigns as well as how well the general public receives them, we looked into the perspectives and attitudes of the populace to find out their attitudes toward China’s national image. In this article, we intend to scrutinize the public opinions toward China as reflected by the questions and answers on social media ( quora.com in this case), using content analysis. As the findings show, the ranking of effectiveness of the different aspects of China’s nation branding is as follows: (1) history, (2) place, (3) language, (4) political and economic systems, (5) culture, (6) people, (7) infrastructure, and (8) social institution. Based on the results of the study, a model for evaluating the success or effectiveness of nation-branding campaigns was proposed.

Branding the Chinese Dream: Reception of China’s Public Diplomacy in Britain’s “Cultural China”

“…Although old methods of ideological control, including censorship by government bodies and voluntary self-censorship practiced by media organisations, are still used, new methods such as political public relations and mass persuasion have become dominant in using the market to set social norms and justify control (Brady, 2008: 3). Various examples of new forms of diplomacy have been recorded in scholarly studies, including the adoption and sophistication of the government spokesperson system (Chen, 2011); China's expanding international media network globally (Zhang, 2021); student and scholarly exchange programs (Polumbaum, 2011); the establishment of the Confucius Institute programme (He et al, 2020); and non-state actors' entanglement with the state's national interests (Tang and Li, 2011).…”

“…China's soft-power work and brand promotion is not unusual in the world; several studies have focused on place branding in recent years (Anholt, 2002;Gertner, 2011;Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013;Wu, 2016). Nation branding has been conceptualised as key to cultural and political diplomacy (He et al, 2020;Hurn, 2016) and the branding of places and nations is now a specific discipline (Wu, 2016) covering the construction and reconstruction of regional identity (Jones et al, 2009), with the usual aim of targeting foreign stakeholders for tourism and marketing purposes (Merkelsen and Rasmussen, 2016;Hassan and Mahrous, 2019). Politically, nation-branding campaigns use marketing techniques to project the brand equity of a nation (Hurn, 2016) and build positive meanings and associations (Anholt, 2010), but message consistency is often difficult to achieve due to the multidimensional nature of places and stakeholders (Gross et al, 2009;Kemp et al, 2012).…”

“…In combating the "China threat" discourse, the Chinese Dream has been used as a discursive power strategy in mediating China's rise in the global community in recent years. Whilst there is a growing body of literature on China's use of soft power (see Li, 2009, among others), there is limited scholarship evaluating China's nation-branding activities, and the subsequent reaction of various audiences (He et al, 2020). This article aims to bridge the gap in the current literature by analysing data from focus groups conducted in the United Kingdom.…”

“…Examining the reception of this messaging in the complex context of ethnicity, politics, and culture is a necessary element of nation-branding success, but remains underexplored (Gertner, 2011;Hassan and Mahrous, 2019;He et al, 2020). While audiences overseas are clearly an important part of China's public diplomacy campaigns, their impact on and efficacy with these intended audiences is less clear at present.…”

Telling China's story through reports on major manned space activities: A case study of the coverage of Shenzhou spacecraft in Chinese and Western media

“…The problem is more prominent in certain areas, such as the economy, trade and COVID-19. From the perspective of audience analysis, a study examined the effectiveness of eight aspects of China's national brands by gathering the public's views on China through Q&As on social media (such as Quora.com ), including (1) history, (2) place, (3) language, (4) political and economic systems, (5) culture, (6) people, (7) infrastructure and (8) social institutions (He et al, 2020). The results show that a ‘country with an ancient civilization’ is still the major impression of China among overseas audiences, and this has become an adverse factor in reconstructing its image as a modern country.…”