China’s opening up to the West, its extraordinary economic rise, and the subsequent internal and global issues, are an object of huge interest and concern. Discourse and Socio-political Transformations in Contemporary China focuses on one aspect of the contemporary Chinese phenomenon, one that is so obvious that it is generally ignored in the mainstream academic departments – that politics, society and transformation are the product of myriad collective linguistic interchanges, some stabilized, some competing, some agonistic, some new and emerging. As an outcome of dialogue between Chinese and Western scholars, the present volume contains case studies that offer a survey of the discourse aspect of Chinese society in social stratification, government service, policy consultancy, higher education, foreign policy, and TV. The conceptual reflections on discourse and critique in different cultures offer new considerations for discourse analysis, including critical discourse analysis, in the context of Chinese society today. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Language and Politics 9:4 (2010).

China's opening up to the West, its extraordinary economic rise, and the subsequent internal and global issues, are an object of huge interest and concern. Discourse and Socio-political Transformations in Contemporary China focuses on one aspect of the contemporary Chinese phenomenon, one that is so obvious that it is generally ignored in the mainstream academic departments – that politics, society and transformation are the product of myriad collective linguistic interchanges, some stabilized, some competing, some agonistic, some new and emerging. As an outcome of dialogue between Chinese and Western scholars, the present volume contains case studies that offer a survey of the discourse aspect of Chinese society in social stratification, government service, policy consultancy, higher education, foreign policy, and TV. The conceptual reflections on discourse and critique in different cultures offer new considerations for discourse analysis, including critical discourse analysis, in the context of Chinese society today. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Language and Politics 9:4 (2010).

After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life in China. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by the political elites. Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for the authority to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society. Written by an international team of leading scholars, this volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences. In particular, the volume focuses on the interplay of politics and media. The book’s intended readership is academics and students of Chinese studies, language and discourse, and media and communication studies.

Significant socio-political changes in China have had great impact on Chinese discourse. Changes to the discourse have become an increasing focus of scholarship. This book examines contemporary Chinese discourse and social practice in China with a focus on the role that language plays in the on-going transformation of Chinese society. With a view to producing new insights into the interdependence between discourse and social practice, this volume explores how discourse has been changing in a context-dependent way; how social practice can lead to shifts in the use of discourse; and how identities and attitudes are constructed through language use. Largely based on empirical studies, this book indicates that Chinese discourse has not only been an integral part of social change, but also Chinese discourse itself is changing, reflecting ideologies, values, attitudes, identities and social practice. The book is a great resource for scholars in diverse disciplinary studies including linguistics, communication, education, media and political studies concerning contemporary China.

This edited volume assesses governance innovation and institutional change under the fifth generation of China’s political leaders headed by Xi Jinping. The configuration of long-term policy innovation without regime change requires skilled political actors who secure strategic majorities and set up coalitions to design and launch new policies. Recalibrations or reconfigurations of the governance model respond to domestic reform pressures or external shocks in order to secure regime survival. Given that most structural constraints and reform pressures do not arise out of a sudden, the thrilling question is why the political elites sometimes decide not to engage in institutional reforms despite of widespread societal support for major restructuring and why they suddenly launch institutional changes in times of relative stability. The authors address these issues by focusing on basic patterns and paradigms of governance and institutional change in China, the actors and drivers of governance innovation, as well as the impact of norms, values, and socio-cognitive orientations. This is added by some reflections on the interplay between abstract ideas, reform debates, and the making of concrete decisions as outlined by the Third Plenum on (socio-)economic reforms in 2013 and the Fourth Plenum on rule-based governance (fazhi) in 2014.

This book examines how Chinese-language newspapers across greater China report on severe mental illness, and why they do so in the ways they do, given that reporting in local newspapers can strongly influence how Chinese readers view the illness. By assessing how the reporting in three leading broadsheet newspapers from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan constructs the illness, the book considers how the distinct social and political histories of the three culturally Chinese communities shape the reporting, and whether it bears out or contests the intense stigma against the illness that prevails locally. The findings can usefully encourage and inform attempts to humanise, include, and empower those with a severe mental illness across greater China and the global Chinese diaspora. Employing a well-tested, transparent discourse analytic approach, the book also includes numerous Chinese-English bilingual news report extracts to illustrate its claims. As such, Reporting Mental Illness in China will be of interest to sinologists, discourse analysts, mental health professionals and public health authorities across the globe, especially in places where there are large Chinese-speaking populations.

Analysing the transformations that China has undertaken since 1989, Wang Hui argues that it features elements of the new global order as a whole in which considerations of economic growth and development have trumped every other concern, particularly democracy and social justice.