THE ‘RISE OF CHINA’ IN AUSTRALIAN AND UNITED STATES
NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF US PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S
AUSTRALIAN VISIT
Stephanie Younane Brookes
University of Melbourne
[email protected]
Abstract
In November 2011, US President Barack Obama made his first Presidential visit to
Australia as part of a nine-day trip to attend a number of key Asia-Pacific political
and economic forums. Addressing the Australian parliament on November 17, the
President outlined a key theme of his trip: “The United States is a Pacific power, and
we are here to stay”. This captured international news attention, which highlighted the
strategic importance the administration placed on Asia and the Pacific in light of the
perceived ‘rise of China’. This paper explores representations of China in Australian
and United States media coverage of President Obama’s Australian visit. It presents a
comparative discourse analysis that highlights a ‘rise of China’ framework in each
nation’s coverage, which drew on long-held fears of China as an unknowable ‘Other’
to connect regional and global stability to national economic and security interests.
These representations of the ‘Other’ were part of a twin discourse that opened up
space for constructions of the ‘self’, drawing on ongoing debates about the shape of
the national ‘we’ in each country. Australian coverage focused on the strengthening of
the US alliance as a way to neutralize fears of the threat to national security posed by
China’s growing military strength and influence in Asia and the Pacific, while US
coverage constructed managing China’s rise as vital for ensuring domestic economic
prosperity and maintaining the US sense of identity as the premier force for peace and
stability in the world.
Introduction
United States President Barack Obama made his first official visit to Australia on 1617 November 2011. This was part of a longer nine-day trip in which Obama attended
a number of key Asia-Pacific political and economic forums: the APEC meeting in
Hawaii, and ASEAN and the East Asia Summit in Bali. Speaking to the Australian
parliament on 17 November, the President outlined the key focus of his trip: ‘The
United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay’ (Obama 2011b). This
received extensive coverage in Australia and the US, reported as an indication of the
1
strategic importance placed on Asia and the Pacific by the Obama administration in
light of the perceived ‘rise of China’.
China has long loomed as an unknown ‘Other’ in Western cultural, social and
political discourses, a ‘different and competing alter ego’ against which ‘we’ are
defined (Said 1978, 332). This has intensified in the last three decades: China has
‘gradually engaged… [in] international political and economic systems’ and is now
commonly perceived as ‘an emerging great power’ (Zhang 2010, 234). Narratives of
China’s economic and military ‘rise’ have become even more prominent as Western
economies deal with the ongoing effects of the 2008 ‘global financial crisis’. In this
context, both Australia and the US have been uncertain about how best to respond to
China’s new geopolitical position. Political, cultural and media discourse in both
nations betrays a tension between a desire to embrace the economic opportunities
China’s growth represents, and a fear of a new era in which Chinese military and
political influence might surpass that of the United States (and its allies). Attempts to
re-imagine their nation’s role in this new global order has led to US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton (2011) forecasting ‘America’s Pacific Century’, and Australian Prime
Minister Julia Gillard positioning Australia in the Asian Century (Office of the Prime
Minister 2011).
This paper analyses Australian and United States newspaper coverage leading up to,
during, and after President Obama’s 27 hours in Australia. It identifies a central ‘rise
of China’ framework in both countries’ coverage, then looks deeper to see how this
positioning of China as ‘Other’ opened space for always-present constructions of
‘self’. In both Australian and US newspapers, representations of China prompted
discussion of each country’s own national identity and place in the world. While US
coverage saw an opportunity to re-invigorate American exceptionalism, Australian
coverage displayed a clear anxiety about how to balance economic and security
relationships with these two ‘giants’.
Theorising National Identity, the ‘Other’ and News Media
2
News media coverage offers a window into the political and cultural contexts that
both inform foreign policy decisions and help members of national communities
construct a sense of individual and collective identity. In a world becoming ‘radically
interconnected, interdependent and communicated in the flows of information and
culture’, news journalism plays a vital role (Cottle 2009, 1). For Simon Cottle (2009,
1), how we ‘collectively recognise and respond’ to global threats and crises ‘depends
in large measure on how they become defined and deliberated, constructed and
contested in the contemporary news media’. This echoes Douglas Kellner’s (1995, 1)
identification, almost two decades ago, of an emerging ‘media culture’ in which the
media provide ‘the materials out of which people forge their very identities’, ‘their
sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationalist, of sexuality, of “us” and “them”’.
As the ‘parameters of existence and imaged horizons’ extend beyond the local and
national to the global, ‘encouraging a sense of the world as a singular, shared space’
(Cottle 2009, 1), the interactions between these levels of identity come into sharper
focus.
Here, the news media play a vital role in ‘constructing and shaping the image of a
country’ (Peng 2004, 53) at the same time as they help to make real the regional and
global. Geoffrey Craig (2004, 177) has noted that the nation is ‘increasingly
perpetuated through the use of symbols, narratives and myths’; ‘a kind of symbolic
power which binds people together through a sense of belonging to a specific place
and culture’. This is located in media ritual as well as content: in the act of reading a
daily newspaper (Anderson, 1983); joining the public broadcast audience (Scannell
1989); or watching the celebrations and crises of national (Dayan and Katz 1992) or
global (Couldry et al 2010) media events.
While myths of nation draw groups together, these inclusive discourses are always
partnered by an image of those who are excluded. As Benedict Anderson (1983, 16)
has theorised, we imagine national communities as necessarily limited, with ‘finite, if
elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations’. These boundaries are the
‘foundations upon which nationalism rests’, allowing the construction of those within
the nation as ‘essentially similar and equal’ while differentiating each nation from
others (Puri 2004, 2). This is a fundamental element of identity construction, which
Edward Said (1978, 332) has argued in his seminal Orientalism involves:
3
…establishing opposites and “others” whose actuality is always subject to the
continuous interpretation and reinterpretation of their differences from “us”.
For Said, ‘each age and society recreates its “Others”’, with ‘self’ and ‘other’ identity
a ‘much worked-over historical, social, intellectual and political process’ involving
contest between institutions and individuals in all societies. This theoretical
perspective positions both ‘self’ and ‘other’ as constructed but always inherently
linked. For Chantal Mouffe (1992, 30), in order to ‘construct a “we” it is necessary to
distinguish it from a “them”’, rendering the ‘other’ an always present ‘constitutive
outside’, exterior to a community but forming ‘the very condition of its existence’.
Research Aims and Method
This foundation informs a comparative language analysis of Australian and US
newspaper coverage of President Obama’s 27-hour Australian visit. The analysis
highlights the operation of a ‘rise of China’ framework as part of a deeper discourse
of ‘self’ and ‘Other’, reliant on long-running debates around national identity and
drawing on narratives of ‘American leadership’ and ‘Australian ambivalence’.
A strong US tradition of quantitative media research has focused on news media
representations of China. It is overwhelmingly dominated by content analyses of
North American newspaper coverage (e.g. Lu 2011; Zhang 2010; Hou and Ma 2009;
Peng 2004; Goodman 1999), while some work takes a multi-national approach (Wu
2009; Lee and Yang 1996). In Australia there has been no such media research
tradition. Academic attention to China has been dominated by foreign policy and
international relations (eg White 2010; Jones 2008; Zhang 2007; Fung and Mackerras
1985), a central goal of which has been to locate Australia’s relationship with China
within the context of its broader regional security and global alliances. 1 Some
historical accounts have sought to uncover ‘Australian representations of China and
the corresponding formation of Australian self-image’ (Strahan 1996, 2). For
example, Kendall (2005) identifies ‘the ways that Australians have come to
1
Similar attention has been paid to China in recent US work that has focused on appropriate responses
to the perceived security and economic challenges presented by China’s rise (Cooney and Sato 2009;
Doyle 2007).
4
understand, or imagine, the People’s Republic of China’ (see also Strahan 1996; and
for a US equivalent Goldstein et al 1991). These studies (with David Walker’s (1999)
Anxious Nation) inform the discursive approach that informs this paper.
Complementary quantitative and qualitative methods are combined in this paper to
reveal central themes in the coverage and allow for analysis of ‘systematic links
between texts, discourse practices and sociocultural practices’ (Fairclough 1995, 16;
see also van Dijk 1985, 4). The paper first outlines the results of an initial content
analysis, which then guides a more detailed discourse analysis. The sample includes
news articles from three Australian and three US newspapers, selected to represent a
mix of ownership, reach, format and demographic (Table One), and was compiled
through a Factiva database search. 2 The dates 11-20 November were chosen to cover
the President’s time travelling from Hawaii to Bali, and to include ‘preview’ and
‘post-mortem’ coverage of his Australian visit.
Table One: Newspapers in Sample
Newspaper
The Australian
Sydney Morning
Herald
Herald Sun
New York Times
USA Today
Wall Street
Journal
Location
Australia;
National
Australia;
Metropolitan –
Sydney, NSW
Australia;
Metropolitan –
Melbourne, VIC
United States;
Metropolitan –
New York, NY
United States;
National
United States;
National
Circulation a
127, 942b
Seventh
198,335c
Fifth
Format
Broadsheet
Ownership
News Limited
Broadsheet
Fairfax
Tabloid
News Limited
469, 377b
First
Broadsheet
New York Times
Company
1,586,757d
Third
Tabloid
Gannett Company
Broadsheet
Dow Jones & Co/
News Corporation
1,817, 446d
Second
2,118,315d
First
Notes:
a) Figures for average total weekday sales; national ranking in circulation data.
b) Print only – official digital sales data not available for these publications at the time of writing. Fairfax was the
only newspaper publisher in Australia to report its digital sales under new rules that encourage voluntary reporting
until mandatory reporting begins in June 2013. Digital sales include replica digital versions, enhanced digital
versions (tablets) and paid website subscriptions (Tullock 2012).
c) Print/Digital figure breakdown: Sydney Morning Herald Print 180,960; Digital 36, 816 (The Newspaper Works
2012).
d) Print/Digital figure breakdown: Wall Street Journal Print 1,566,027, Digital 552,288; USA Today Print 1,701,
777, Digital 115,669; New York Times Print 779,731, Digital 807,026. Digital circulation includes tablet or
2
Both print and online versions of these publications were included; however online articles that were
web duplicates of print articles were excluded.
5
smartphone apps, PDF replicas, metered or restricted-access websites, or e-reader editions (Audit Bureau of
Circulations 2012).
A series of searches identified articles that used one or both of the key terms ‘Obama’
or ‘President’, and then those that also used the keyword ‘Australia’ or appeared in an
Australian newspaper. 3 This yielded a sample of 268 news articles, strongly skewed
towards Australia with 233 Australian and 35 US articles. 4 These were coded first for
significant mentions of China (discussed below), yielding a smaller sample that was
then coded for the presence of 22 ‘key terms’ or groups of terms that referred to the
rise of China, China’s power, China’s economic and military prowess, and China’s
reaction to the President’s visit.5
Analysing the links between media perceptions of China’s rise and foreign relations,
Zhang (2010, 235) argues that in a ‘mediated world’, it is ‘the news media that
construct the world for people’, particularly in relation to foreign countries and
international events. This paper analyses constructions both of ‘Other’ countries and
of ‘our own’, paying close attention to representation (one of Fairclough’s (1995, 5)
three aspects of media discourse). It explores these linked discourses initially in the
quantitative results and then qualitatively through representative sampling, drawing
on relevant examples. The focus is on news content in the tradition of ‘non-linguistic’
media studies of news discourse (Cotter 2001, 418).
A ‘Rising China’: Constructing the ‘Other’
Coverage of Barack Obama’s Australian visit was characterised by a narrative that
placed it (and the President’s speeches and announcements) into broader global
context. Most striking was the frequency of references to China. An initial content
analysis highlighted those articles that focused on China, or used China as a
3
Articles were included where they specifically covered President Obama’s appearances, speeches,
policy announcements or other aspects of his visit while he was in Australia; previewed these in the
lead-up to his visit; or analysed these in the days following his departure.
4
Opinion pieces, editorials and journalists’ personal blog posts were excluded.
5
These categories were developed for a larger project for which this analysis operates as a pilot study;
only relevant results are discussed here.
6
contextual frame. 6 These significant references to China appeared in 46% of articles
in the sample (of 123 total). In the US portion this was 60%, while in Australian
newspapers it was slightly lower at 44%. These figures also varied by publication;
notably, all ten New York Times articles covering the President’s Australian visit
featured or referenced China (Figure 1).
Figure 1: News Articles Referring to ‘China’ as Part of Australian and United
States Newspaper Coverage of President Barack Obama’s Australian Visit, 1120 November 2011
Notes: Article totals by newspaper: Australian 127; Herald Sun 80; Sydney Morning Herald 62; New
York Times 10; USA Today 18; Wall Street Journal 11.
A closer look at constructions of China in these articles offers an insight into the
representation of China as ‘Other’, and to the always-present mirror discourses of
Australian and US national identity. China was most commonly represented as
‘rising’ or ‘growing’, with this language used in 63% of articles across both countries.
Related language that referred to China’s growing ‘power’ and ‘influence’ was also
prominent, used in 51% of articles (Figure 2). This was more frequent in the smaller
6
Incidental mentions, such as the listing of China in groups of countries that were involved in talks or
were signatories to a treaty, were excluded.
7
United States sample, with ‘rise’ terms in 95% and ‘power’ terms in 48% of articles
(compared to 56% and 39% in Australian articles).
While explicit negative representations of China were absent, coverage often included
descriptors that gave an implicit negative impression of China’s rise. In particular,
references to ‘aggressive growth’ (Jackson 2011a) and ‘growing assertiveness’ (AFP
2011) implied that this ‘rise’ was a potential threat to China’s neighbours and
challenge to the geopolitical status quo. This was deepened by representations of
China’s rise as out of control – a ‘rapid advance’ (Calmes 2011b) – and its intentions
as unclear (Meckler 2011b). These constructions of China as militaristic,
expansionist, and unpredictable served as a marker of difference in the sample.
Presenting the ‘Other’ as a threat, these images ‘allow “us” to say what “we” are not’
(Goodall et al 1994, 73), and contrast China with ‘our’ orderly growth.
Figure 2: Use of ‘Rise’ and ‘Power’ Key Words in Australian and United States
Newspaper Coverage, 11-20 November 2011
Notes: Both countries n=123; Australia n=102; United States n=21. Key words were coded to include
alternate word forms eg ‘expand’ included expansion, expanding etc; ‘power’ included powerhouse,
world power, superpower etc.
China’s rise was painted in both military and economic terms, with 31% of articles
using key terms referencing China’s military growth and 30% using terms related to
economic strength. These were commonly paired together as elements of the same
8
trend: ‘economic and military power’ (Calmes 2011c; AAP 2011a). China’s military
rise was constructed in broad terms through references to military strength and power,
and in specific mentions of technology and capabilities. Language such as China’s
‘growing military muscle’ (Calmes 2011a) was common; while more specific
references often relied on ‘expert’ sources (e.g. Hartcher 2011). The impact that
China’s military development might have on its neighbours, and on the balance of
power in Asia and the Pacific region, was another key feature. In particular, China’s
claims to territorial rights in the South China Sea were represented as a threat to
regional stability, with China painted as both ‘ambitious’ (Alford 2011) and
increasingly militaristic (Wolf 2011b). These concerns were linked to control of
resources, as China’s ‘claims to disputed islands’ would give it ‘broad sway over oil
and gas rights in the East and South China seas’ (Calmes 2011c).
While China’s military rise was represented almost exclusively as a threat,
constructions of its economic development were more complex, and frequently linked
to the ‘national interest’. In the Australian articles, this economic growth was
represented as creating a ‘voracious demand’ for Australia’s natural resources,
making China the nation’s ‘biggest trading partner’ (AFP 2011). Similarly, US
coverage painted the President’s trip to the Asia-Pacific region as ‘mostly about
expanding US trade and continuing to grow its economy’, something made possible
by China’s ‘economic ascendance’ (Wolf 2011a). Here, China’s rise was represented
as positive when it opened up opportunities for Australia to maintain its prosperity, or
for the United States to rebuild its economy. However, this was balanced against the
ever-present threat posed by the military and strategic power that is the flipside of
Chinese economic development, evident in this Wall Street Journal passage:
Administration officials argue that US engagement in Asia holds direct benefit
for Americans concerned with the economy, with potential to boost exports
that support US jobs. The engagement is also meant to counter China’s
influence in the region on both economic and security issues (Meckler and
Barkley 2011).
China’s rise was constructed, in this way, as a source of both threat and opportunity,
its growing influence representing a shift in world power balances and reorganisation
of geopolitical hierarchies as well as a potential market for Australian exports and
9
significant US trading partner. Previous research has identified these links in news
media coverage: a ‘developing and threatening China frame’ (Peng 2004, 5) which
increases as China becomes ‘ever more economically successful’ (Lu 2011, 346).
Across the sample, China’s ‘rise’ was positioned as a motivating factor for President
Obama’s trip, his administration’s ‘Pacific turn’, and also for the announcement of a
heightened US troop deployment in Australia’s Northern Territory. Placed in the
context of Asia-Pacific development more broadly, China’s growth was represented
as contributing to a global power shift that required responses from both the US and
Australia. While these responses varied, echoing differences in national identity
discourses, what is significant is that the ‘rise’ of China was not so much the focus of
these articles as it was part of a deeper discourse of ‘self’ and ‘Other’. Through this
lens, painting China as a rising ‘Other’ opens up mirror discourses about the
restoration of US leadership in the world, and Australia’s need to deal grapple with
long-term ambivalence about its cultural allegiances and geographical location.
‘Partners and Allies’: Constructions of American Leadership
The ‘rise of China’ was represented in the US articles in the sample as an opportunity
to regain the position of respected world leader, a construction that relied on the
notion that the national myth of ‘American exceptionalism’ had been challenged by
increasingly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the post-9/11 period and the
ongoing effects of the 2008 financial crisis. China’s economic rise, therefore,
presented trade and investment opportunities that could stimulate the American
economy; and its strategic and military development invited the US to reclaim its role
as a beacon of democracy and freedom.
The clearest manifestation of this in the sample was in language that constructed
American engagement in the region as a response to the demands of ‘smaller’ allies
‘fearful’ of a newly ‘assertive’ China (Calmes 2011c). Representing China as
aggressive and expansionist, in this way, allowed the Wall Street Journal to paint the
US as a guarantor of regional peace:
…China is extending its claims in the region, worrying US partners and allies who
both depend on China for trade but fear it may exercise its power in more forceful
10
ways. As a result, China’s neighbours have implored the US to deepen its
involvement (Meckler 2011a).
The construction of an ‘assertive China which has raised the fears of other Asian
countries’ (Zhang 2010, 249) allowed for a revitalised American ‘exceptionalism’,
with the US as ‘a beacon of light in the darkness and defender of the rights of man’
(Weiss and Edwards 2011, 1). This grants the US ‘moral superiority’ in world affairs
and links into a broader perception of international relations that has been called upon
to ‘account for, or to enable, US leadership during every important period of
geopolitical transition since the late nineteenth century’ (McEvoy-Levy 2001, 23).
Exceptionalism operates, in the sample, as a ‘“nationalistic” expression of a distinctly
American sense of identity’, which relies on ‘comparison with a corrupt, dangerous
“other”’ (McEvoy-Levy 2001, 71). As China is increasingly pressing its influence on
regional security issues, the US is able to reclaim the role of ‘light on the hill’ 7;
evident in this passage from the New York Times:
…[the US] is eager to show its traditional allies in Asia, including Japan South
Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand, that it is no longer distracted by
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that it is advancing democratic interests,
promoting free market economic reform, and counterbalancing the power of an
authoritarian China (Fuller and Landler, 2011).
This image was reinforced in the coverage by frequent reporting of the content of
President’s speeches, which placed him (and therefore the nation) in an active role. In
particular, the President’s response to New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes’
question at the joint press conference with Julia Gillard on 16 November was quoted
extensively. Asked, in the context of China’s absence from negotiations towards a
new Trans-Pacific Partnership, ‘what is it everyone fears so much from China’,
Obama (2011a) responded: ‘I think the notion that we fear China is mistaken. The
notion that we are looking to exclude China is mistaken’. In these comments, quoted
in the New York Times (Calmes 2011b; 2011c) and USA Today (Jackson 2011a;
2011b) the President went on to emphasise that China would be welcome to join the
7
The term ‘light on the hill’ derives from Puritan pastor John Winthrop’s sermon delivered on board
the Arbella as the Puritans set out for America (Soderlind 2011, 2); it is traditionally seen as the earliest
articulation of what would later be referred to as ‘American exceptionalism’.
11
new Partnership but ‘must play by “the same rules” as everyone else’ (Jackson 2011b)
on issues such as intellectual property and currency valuation. Here, the US is
represented as actively policing China’s ‘rise’ to ensure they follow accepted
‘international norms’. Implicitly, this monitoring role is required as an aggressive,
unpredictable China cannot be expected to ‘play by the rules’ of its own accord.
‘Between Two Giants’: Constructions of Australian Ambivalence
The Australian coverage displayed a clear anxiety about how to balance conflicting
economic and security imperatives, a concern about Australia’s ability to maintain a
healthy economic relationship with China while ensuring the strength of the US
alliance. This echoed a long-running ambivalence in Australian public and political
discourse about the tension between the nation’s cultural ties and geographical
location.
This ambivalence manifested in a key theme in the Australian sample, in which ‘rise
of China’ presented a conflict between Australia’s economic and strategic priorities.
China’s strong economy was constructed as vital for Australia’s continued prosperity.
Michelle Grattan (2011) noted, in the Sydney Morning Herald, that ‘our prosperity is
tightly linked’ to China, while an AFP (2011) report in the Herald Sun explained that
China’s ‘voracious demand for Australia’s natural resources’ had made them ‘the
nation’s biggest trading partner’. Despite this there was a consistent anxiety about the
‘dramatic expansion of the Chinese navy’ (Packham 2011) and its ‘emerging power in
the region’ (Coorey and Welch 2011). Here, the focus was not on China as a direct
threat to Australia, but rather on the concern that US international military and
strategic influence (on which Australia bases its sense of security) may be challenged.
These conflicting desires to welcome the economic aspects of China’s development
while fearing the military flipside reflect a deep ambivalence in Australian culture.
This was implicit throughout the Australian coverage, and was made explicit by
Hudson (2011) in the Herald Sun: Australia might ‘have to choose between our
closest security ally and our top trading partner’.
The sense that Australia must ‘steer a course between the two giants’ (AAP 2011a)
appeared throughout the sample as a discourse that celebrated the strengthening of the
12
US alliance on the one hand, and actively downplayed fears about how China would
react on the other. Anxiety about China’s reaction to the announcement of increased
US troop numbers in the Northern Territory manifested in reporting that emphasised
that the decision was not aimed at China and relied heavily on quoting expert
opinions (see, for example, Massola 2011). Politicians were also quoted, among them
then-Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd (AAP 2011b) and Australian Ambassador to the
US, Kim Beazley (Coorey and Welch 2011). Most prominently, the coverage featured
reassurances from both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader that Australia
could balance healthy relationships with China and the United States:
There is no reason why we can’t continue to have a very strong relationship with
America and a strong and improving relationship with the Chinese (Abbott in
AAP 2011c).
It is well and truly possible for us, in this growing region of the world, to have an
ally in the United States and to have deep friendships in our region, including with
China (Gillard in Hudson 2011).
Consistent reporting of these statements betrayed a deeper sense of anxiety about the
potential threat that China poses to Australia, which can be traced back to its earliest
manifestations: from the ‘racial hostility to Chinese goldminers in the late 19th
century’ to ‘yellow peril’ fears of invasion and later concerns about the ‘Red threat’
of Chinese Communism (Dalby 1996, 113). Walker (1997, 132) has argued that
Australian public figures have been referring to the ‘awakening East’ since the late
19th century, using this to scare Australians into reconsidering their place in the world
and getting ‘their house in order’. Here, the fear of losing the nation – whether
through threats to its security, prosperity or ‘way of life’ – provokes analysis of ‘how
it may be defended’ (Walker 1997, 133). The need to manage the ever-present threat
of a populous and powerful China drives these security discourses, which emphasise
the strength of the Australia-US alliance as counter-measure and failsafe. In this way,
the ‘rise of China’ is used both for domestic political purposes and ‘to define
Australia’s place in the world’; it is both threatening ‘other’ and also ‘integral to
Australia’s economic, political and strategic future’ (Kendall 2008, 1).
13
Conclusion
Constructions of an economically ascendant and strategically aggressive China in the
sample framed discussions of the restoration of US global leadership, and of
Australian anxiety over the tensions caused by its increasing economic dependence on
China and ongoing military and cultural alliance with the US. These reflect the
narratives of identity that dominate each nation’s public imagination, and the
differences in size, economic and strategic influence and geographic location that
impact on public debate (Fallows 2012). For both, this was a domestic news story that
located global realignments through a localised narrative, and these discourses
continued to be evident in the months that followed.
Throughout 2012, media coverage in both countries ‘flared up’ around events of local
significance or unusual drama. In Australia, the Gillard Government’s announcement
of a new Defence White Paper, as well as official visits to China by new Foreign
Minister Bob Carr in May and Defence Minister Stephen Smith in early June,
received extensive coverage (see Wen 2012; Garnaut 2012), while new rumours of a
plan to build a US naval base in Perth raised concerns this was ‘likely to antagonise
China’ (O’Malley, Garnaut and Welch 2012). US media highlighted the mid-February
visit of Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping and the dramatic asylum request and flight
of dissident Chen Guangcheng (see Landler and Wong 2012; Richburg and Mufson
2012); and followed their athletes’ battle with China’s to claim first place on the
London Olympics medal tally. Both Australian and US media reported concerns
about the ‘sudden resurgence’ of the Chinese Olympic swimming team which were
linked to memories of China’s ‘drug-fuelled domination of world swimming’ in past
Olympics (Smith 2012); and in early November, the 18th National Congress of the
Chinese Communist Party and once-in-a-decade leadership change was the subject of
extensive coverage and speculation (Feller 2012; Davis 2012).
The same ‘rise of China’ narratives that dominated coverage of President Obama’s
first Australian visit are evident here, unsettling taken-for-granted assumptions about
geopolitical hierarchies and alignments. In this shifting global landscape, media
narratives of a ‘rising China’ will continue to pose challenges for discourses of
14
national identity and offer opportunities for reclaiming ‘American exceptionalism’
and reconfiguring ‘Australian ambivalence’.
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