Chinese press conferences of past 2 decades show a paradigm shift in Beijing's diplomatic narratives

During Hu Jintao’s reign, Taiwan was the only confrontational topic between the two countries, but during the Xi Jinping period, there was a multiplication of these issues leading to a tense atmosphere that did not leave much room for cooperation.

New Delhi: If we study the press conferences conducted during the tenures of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, it has been found that under the leadership of Hu Jintao, China mainly focused on economic cooperation with its neighbours and other nations and confrontational topics were rather avoided. This helped the Communist nation to maintain good ties with most of the countries, but all this changed drastically under the leadership of Xi Jinping as China is being seen taking a harder stance over multiple issues and confrontational topics have multiplied. 

China’s shift from ‘low profile diplomacy’ to ‘assertiveness’ under President Xi Jinping has made Beijing's interactions with other nations confrontational in nature and reduced the scope of mutual cooperation.

Recently, a review essay was published in the Journal of Chinese Political Science titled ‘Studying Chinese Foreign Policy Narratives: Introducing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press Conference Corpus’. The essay, authored by Michal Mochtak and Richard Turcsanyi, includes almost two decades of Chinese foreign policy discourse from 2002-2020. The data set created by the two authors comprises the study of Chinese press conferences over the last two decades that provided readers with a unique glimpse into the diplomatic narratives of the Chinese government.