Comparing Chinese and European Discourses regarding the “Belt and Road Initiative”

This essay analyses both of Chinese and European discourses under the framework of Belt and Road Initiative. It intends to compare different opinions in the context that rhetoric prevails over substance and a political project over economic gain. As one of the most important international projects designed by the Chinese president, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) combines China’s ancient Silk Road history with Beijing’s contemporary “going out, going global” strategy. It attempts to defend China multilateralism while projecting the Chinese dream. The time frame of this research is from January 2016 to April 2018. We collected BRI-themed news published in four tops European reference press and two Communist Party of China’s reference organs by using media monitors (i.e.,Factiva, Europresse, TweetDeck). Combined with the Twitter discourses analysis of Chinese media and diplomatic institutions in the same period and semi-structured interviews with Chinese-European officials, this paper analyzes in a comparative perspective the content of Chinese-European media framing and perceptions on BRI topics.