A critical discourse analysis of Chinese diplomatic speeches on China-US relations

Diplomatic discourse embodies the political concepts and stances of a government, from a critical perspective, it may imbed the power and ideology of the particular government. Previous studies have primarily focused on foreign political discourse, but few on Chinese diplomatic discourse especially the English texts, which are vital for the international community to accurately comprehend China’s diplomatic concepts. To fill the research gap, this study critically examined the English transcripts of six speeches on China-US relations by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model (1995). The findings revealed that by manipulating various language tactics such as China-related agents, “We-group” pronouns, modality resources with low/medium values, and intertextuality resources with positive/negative implications, the Chinese diplomat tried to construct an authority-driven discourse with a persuasive nature, meanwhile, to frame a positive-self and a negative-others image. All these facilitated the speaker to strive for “power to discourse” for China, convince and control his intended audience to share the same beliefs. It was also found that Chinese diplomacy has been greatly influenced by the philosophy of Confucianism, China hence takes a “Confucian approach to diplomacy”. Besides, Chinese discourse always safeguards its development path and the sole leadership of the CPC. From this sense, the power and ideologies the discourse tried to propagate are in fact in the hands of the CPC.