The leader and the people
Shifting boundaries in Chinese populist discourse
This paper examines the shifting boundaries in populist discourses in China, with a focus on how the political
leader’s discourse socially constructs the people. By combining critical and post-structuralist discourse analysis, we argue
firstly that prevalent Western-centric approaches to the study of populism only partially capture the notion of the people in
contemporary China, the study of which requires a mixture of elements from these approaches. Secondly, that the image of a Chinese
people embracing the Chinese Dream and the promise for a New China, is narrated in a context where the Chinese Communist Party
infuses all levels of society with messages of development, prosperity, peace and freedom. And thirdly, that while previous
leaders would normally address the people in a formal and detached way, the distance between leadership and the people has been
reduced in the Xi Jinping era.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Defining populism in China: A not so easy task
- 3.Research Design and Methodological Choices
- 4.The leader, the people, the party and the nation
- 4.1The October 2019 Speech
- 4.2The September 2019 Speech
- 4.3The March 2018 speech
- 5.Concluding remarks: The “people” (renmin 人民) in Chinese
leadership’s discourse
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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