Webinar: “Tell China’s Story Well”: How China Projects Its Discourse Power in Southeast Asia

Date and Time: Aug 19 2022 | 9:00am – 10:00am (Singapore Time)

Registration via Zoom [new window]

About the Webinar

Under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has actively projected its discourse power, or huayuquan (话语权), to shape favourable international public opinion for its foreign policy goals, particularly in Southeast Asia. Its entire state-party apparatus has intensified and diversified various outreach conduits in the region, including through media, political parties, and think tanks in Southeast Asian states. How has China projected its discourse power in the region through these engagements? What are China’s key messages, and have they served to “build a credible, lovable and respectable image of China” among the Southeast Asian audience? This webinar aims to address these questions by analysing data from three primary sources, namely Chinese embassies in Southeast Asia, the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party, and Chinese state media. In doing so, this webinar hopes to shed light on new trends of China’s discourse outreach in Southeast Asia.

About the Speaker

Wang Zheng is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at University at Albany, State University of New York. He studies ethnic politics in Southeast Asia and China’s engagement strategies in the region. His dissertation, supported by the Southeast Asian Research Group (SEAREG), examines how framings of ideology shape state policies towards the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. He was previously Wang Gungwu Visiting Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and visiting fellow at the Department of Politics and Government at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. He is also coordinator of the New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN) – Public Universities Consortium.