The Images of China in TIME: A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis

With the help of corpus statistics, this article compares the China-related covers and reports of TIME over its 100 years of existence and divides them into four periods. As a real-time political news publication, TIME has the characteristic of closely matching the development of the times. In different historical periods, China’s image, China-related cover characters and headlines, and the content of China-related reports vary greatly. The image and report on wartime China are more objective and positive, with a more positive tone. In the Redified China phase, the China-related reports were mainly negative, trying to create a chaotic and bloody image of Communist China for Western readers. In the reforming or Changing phase of China, the coverage shifted from the negative terms to a neutral and objective one, unfolding China’s change and development to the Western world. While in the diversified development phase of China, China-related cover stories and terms on TIME were more objective. The characters and images that TIME tries to highlight were also inconsistent in different historical periods, indicating that the shaping of TIME’s China cover image is deeply influenced by the ideology, news values, culture, and worldview differences of the reporters.