The Concept of ‘Community of Common Destiny’ as an Instrument of Chinese Discourse Power Under Xi Jinping

The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November 2012 and the forthcoming President Xi Jinping’s politics stimulated China’s targeted efforts towards international discourse power development. From this moment, the desire of China to influence international agenda and promote Chinese ideas into the outside world has become remarkable. This trend relates not only to original concepts based on Chinese history and traditions or practices of ‘sinicization of Marxism’, but also covers Chinese own interpretations of the key international political discourse concepts such as ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’. At the same time, evaluating the effect China’s discourse power has meets the difficulties caused by both a lack of open data and a fairly high degree of politicization of this issue. The article conducts a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Chinese discourse power via one of the most iconic concepts of Xi Jinping’s era – the ‘community of common destiny’. This idea is important for understanding the Chinese vision of global governance. It also reflects the general principles as well as practical aspects of the Chinese foreign policy (including the Belt and Road Initiative). The article identifies Chinese discourse power characteristics and shows the geography of ‘community of a common destiny’ concept distribution. The content analysis of China’s joint international declarations with its foreign partners in 2017–2023 confirms that the concept under consideration has become more frequently implemented into the official documents. The number of countries that are ready to include this Chinese idea into joint statements has raised as well. However, the process develops unevenly. The study visualizes that Chinese concepts are mainly perceived by the countries of Global South.