Chapter 2 - Martyrs in Masks : the “Battle-Hero-Saviour” Story Grammar of COVID-19 Coverage in Chinese Communist Party Media

Summary

Abstract

Using a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, this chapter provides insight into how the Communist Party of China (CPC) constructs and manages discourse around public health crises. Specifically, how the CPC employed a battle-hero-saviour narrative during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan to leverage the Party's revolutionary history and strengthen the legitimacy of its rule, thus informing the larger story of Chinese governance and nation-building under the CPC.

Keywords: Chinese Communist Party media, battle-hero-saviour narrative, crisis response, Chinese governance, nation-building

The disruption brought by the COVID-19 pandemic has both challenged and further legitimised the Communist Party of China (CPC). Domestically, the initial outbreak in 2020 resulted in mass shutdowns and harsh restrictions being imposed upon hundreds of millions of people, including a seventy-six-day total lockdown in Wuhan. It also served as a double-edged sword for China on the international stage—much criticism was directed at the Chinese government for its initial response, but it provided an opportunity for authoritarian China to demonstrate its (initial) success in controlling the spread of the disease and its willingness as a major international power to cooperate with other countries in the provision of aid and medical expertise. Through Critical Discourse Analysis of coverage of the pandemic in the People's Daily, this chapter argues that the CPC has shaped the discourse of COVID-19 in domestic media to strengthen its political legitimacy by employing a set pattern of three distinct, recurring, and intertwined narratives:

• • that the anti-pandemic effort is a battle against the enemy of COVID-19 (battle)

• • that frontline workers are heroic soldiers fighting on that battlefield (hero)

• • that only under the leadership of the Communist Party of China can an ultimate victory be assured (saviour)

The research in this chapter has analysed Chinese-language articles from the People's Daily from the first mention of COVID-19 in January 2020 and through the height of the initial outbreak until May 2020, when control was achieved and coverage shifted away from immediate response measures. Newspaper articles were gathered either directly from the official website of the People's Daily newspaper (paper.people.com.cn) or via the China National Knowledge Infrastructure data - base. Quotations from the People's Daily in this chapter have been translated into English by the author.