How ‘public’ is communicated in China’s public diplomacy: communicating environmental justice in the case of air pollution in China

This study re-evaluates the media communications of the domestic public’s interests related to environmental justice in the case of China’s air pollution in China’s public diplomacy initiatives. It examines media representations of environmental justice by China’s state-sponsored China Daily, and compares them with the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, and British and American mainstream newspapers. The examination starts from 2015, when Beijing issued the first ever red alert for air pollution, to 2018, when air pollution still haunted the country. This study finds that, besides the general policy schemes of smog mitigation, China Daily extended coverage to the general causes of smog and the domestic public’s detailed demands for smog mitigation. It mainly adopted a neutral tone in covering environmental justice. The obvious discrepancy in coverage patterns between China Daily and other news media appears in the tone of covering ‘adequacy’ in environmental justice, with the former being neutral and the latter adopting more critical voices. This study offers a better understanding of China’s evolving governmental stances in dealing with environmental justice issues in the case of air pollution.

Attitudinal stance towards the anti-extradition bill movement in China Daily and South China Morning Post

Based on Appraisal Theory and critical discourse analysis, this corpus-assisted study examines how China Daily (CD) and South China Morning Post (SCMP) used appraisal resources to express their respective stances towards the anti-extradition bill movement. The results show that both newspapers employed negative resources of Judgement and the predication strategy to convey their stance, but SCMP seemed more refrained in the use of appraisal resources. CD openly stated that any illegal actions should be punished, and SCMP also criticised these actions. Besides, CD emphasized the consequences brought by violence and attributed the breakout of the protests to the opposition camp’s political intention for their own benefit, whereas SCMP highlighted Hong Kongers’ widespread opposition to the bill. These differences in language use and stance might be explained by the different press systems they respectively belong to and related to their respective historical and socio-political contexts.

Media portrayals of the Hong Kong Occupy Central Movement’s social actors

We investigated how two English-language newspapers – Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) and the mainland China Daily (CD) – portrayed key social actors (police, students, protesters, and governments) during the Occupy Central/Yellow Umbrella movement. We examined emotional valence, arousal, and dominance characterizations in 1,180 news articles via a multilevel, multivariate outcome regression and critical discourse analysis. The findings reveal that emotional sentiments associated with students and protesters in SCMP were generally more positive than in CD but that this was reversed for the police and the government. Whereas SCMP deployed personal stories to construct a humanized image of protesters and students, CD relied on expert authority, rhetorical questions, and imagined scenarios to convey empathy towards Hong Kong residents, creating a villainized image of protesters. Our mixed-methods approach reveals how SCMP and CD portrayed students differently via the discursive frames of “optimistic dreamers” and “powerless scapegoats,” respectively.

‘Enough is enough: this cycle of violence has to come to an end’: Practical reasoning in the editorials during the extradition bill crisis of Hong Kong

Practical reasoning as an important form of argumentation in politics has received limited research attention in critical discourse studies despite the proposal of an analytical model. Focusing on argument development surrounding events related to the extradition bill crisis of Hong Kong, this paper analyzes 48 editorials published in the South China Morning Post during the crisis period adopting Fairclough’s model. A number of recurrent themes have been identified in the corpus in association with the four argument components within the model – Claims, Goals, Values and Circumstances – which may increase understanding of the social contexts of the extradition bill crisis. It is further argued that, although Fairclough’s model may not capture the arguments in individual editorials comprehensively, the model can be usefully applied to analyze a collection of interrelated editorials to reveal more insights about an ongoing political crisis.

Libraries in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The South China Morning Post reported China's first confirmed COVID-19 case may be traced as early as November 17, 2019. On December 8, 2019, Wuhan, China had its first patient with symptoms similar to coronavirus. The disease was believed to have emerged in the Huanan seafood market. By December 15, the total number of infections stood at 27—the first double-digit daily rise was reported on December 17—and by December 20, the total number of confirmed cases had reached 60. December 31, 2019, China informs the World Health Organization (WHO) about a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province. The virus is still not understood. March 11, 2020, the WHO assesses that COVID-19 can be officially described as a pandemic due to the rapid increase in the number of cases outside China. As coronavirus cases began to skyrocket, libraries had to function in unique situations. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an in-depth review of libraries and case studies amid the COVID 19 pandemic.

Cultural co-orientation revisited: The case of the South China Morning Post

The freedom of press is one aspect that leaders from the West often criticise about China. As former British colony, Hong Kong has been able to preserve its special status with constitutional rights and liberties that also include the freedom of press. However, in recent years, sentiments of increased influence from Beijing have led to fears that it would curb the freedoms enjoyed by residents of the Special Administrative Region. However, instead of clear unambiguous interferences, Beijing has opted for an indirect approach that is predominantly characterised by the salience of economic considerations in reporting news binding the media outlets closer to the position of Beijing. This article shows that the South China Morning Post has undergone an editorial shift that moves it closer to the position of the Chinese government.

Dynamic Co-Evolutions of Peace Frames in the United States, Mainland China, and Hong Kong

This chapter employs semantic network analysis to investigate the online database LexisNexis to study the dynamic co-evolutions of peace frames embedded in the news coverage from the Associated Press (AP--United States), Xinhua News Agency (XH--Mainland China), and South China Morning Post (SCMP—Hong Kong). From 1995 to 2014, while the war and harmony frames were relatively stable in AP and XH respectively, there was a trend toward convergence of the use of war frames between AP and XH. The convergence of semantic networks of coverage of peace in AP and XH may have left more room for SCPM to develop a unique peace frame, and the divergence of semantic networks of coverage of peace in AP and XH may lead SCPM to develop strategies of balancing the frames employed by AP and XH, thus creating a hybrid peace frame.

Concordant VS. Discordant Xeno Cardiac Transplantation; The past, the present and future Trends

There is a huge waiting list for recipient of heart for people in need of, yet the pool of donors are limited to less than 10% of all brain death cases coming out of road accidents. NHSA reports 2700 Transplants were harvested out of 55000 road accident brain deaths in 2014. A country (China) expects a record number of transplant this year mainly harvested from executed prisoners (world number one in execution followed by IRAN), despite a new ban applied this year (The south China Morning Post). So one of the most exciting donor pool which also is very close genetically to Human being is Baboon, in which we will try to reignite interest in research and development for farming and harvesting their organs for use in people in need of Cardiac Transplant.