CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Mo, Fei Vincent |
|---|---|
| Title | Chinese Strategic Narratives in European Contexts: Chinese Public Diplomacy in Austria and Hungary |
| Summary | The evolving international order is shaped not only by realpolitik among states but also by narratives that construct global governance and state/social relations. This dissertation examines the Chinese strategic narratives in Europe. This dissertation investigates how Chinese strategic narratives speak to and reach the European public. It focuses on the construction and projection of Chinese strategic narratives by highlighting and analysing local narratives and the translation process in European local contexts. While existing studies on China-EU relations often focus on elite political narratives and state-driven policies, this research adopts a less state-centric approach by bringing the public into the discussion. This study explores how China’s strategic narratives are translated into local narratives in Confucius Institutes (CIs) and the Chinese media outlet Nouvelles d’Europe in Austria and Hungary, both of which are considered as part of public diplomacy. The research employs thematic analysis on the Chinese language textbooks used in CIs and news reports from Nouvelles d’Europe, as they are considered as different communication conduits of political narratives. This dissertation deconstructs the meaning-making of strategic narratives by looking at those sociocultural, discursive, and less strategic local narratives. This comparison reveals the dynamics of Chinese strategic narratives’ translation processes into local narratives when they face different audiences through different communication conduits. The dissertation contributes to both international relations and communication studies. It argues that local narratives can be political and strategic, and it is necessary to take the public and local narratives into account to analyse strategic narratives on the top level. It also reveals the role of cultural institutions and media, as part of public diplomacy, in shaping political narratives. By unpacking the translation process of strategic narratives, this research advances the understanding of the power of strategic narratives and suggests new directions for analysing the contestation of strategic narratives and interactions between strategic narratives, local narratives, and the public. |
| Supervisor | Merlingen, Michael |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/mo_fei.pdf |
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