Kevin Lee- Week 6 Blog Post

            China faces many challenges on its road to forming a national identity. In both of the articles on China, they both mention the struggles China had to face to form their national image. In Sheng Ding’s “Branding a Rising China: An Analysis of Beijing’s National Image Management in the Age of China’s Rise,” Ding talks about how China’s national image came from the many challenges it had to face. China was able to rise in power because of its open-door policy, which finally allowed China to open up and create relations with countries around the world, especially Western powers. As China’s economic development grew, so did its influence on the world, thus the Chinese language became one of the most popular languages in the world, where over 2300 universities offer the language as a course. The popularity of the Chinese language helped brand China’s national image.

Both articles mentioned that the 2008 Beijing Olympics had a play in China forming its national image. In Kevin Latham’s “Media, the Olympics and the Search for the “Real China”,” Latham talks about the impact that the 2008 Beijing Olympics had on China and its national image. China’s reputation is only seen through the media and not through what China actually is. The Beijing Olympics helped China back on the right track because the Olympics showed that the media was wrong about what China was. Even though China was able to show some strong points about themselves through the response and support they gave to the natural disasters that happened in 2008, China still lost face with all the riots and protests that happened during the Beijing Olympics. China is able to move forward with forming their national identity because it relies on its strong points to move forward, but if China also focuses on its weakness and tries to work on improving those weaknesses, there is a chance for China to be fully recognized and to have a national image.

Question: China has always been seen as a threat or has never been fully recognized nationally. Will China ever be able to be equally recognized through its national image? How much longer will it take for China to fully rebrand its national image?

Work cited:

Ding, Sheng. "Branding a Rising China: An Analysis of Beijing's National Image Management in the Age of China's Rise." Journal of Asian and African Studies 46.3 (2011): 293-306. Web. 

Kevin Latham (2009). Media, the Olympics and the Search for the “Real China”. The

China Quarterly, 197, pp 25-43 doi:10.1017/S0305741009000022

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