Evaluating the compatibility of China's soft power strategy in the Australian discourse: Australian frames of China's environmental images

The Chinese practice of soft power and public diplomacy has prompted a great deal of discussion, evaluation, controversy and criticism from both practitioners and scholars. This study attempts to assess the compatibility of China's soft power strategy in the Australian discourse in the climate change context through the examination of Australian framing China's environmental images. Inductive framing analysis is conducted to reveal news frames of China's environmental image in the two Australian broadsheets in three cases. The analysis shows that there are four generic frames, which compose the conceptual framework of the evaluation of environmental image. Moreover, there are eight types of environmental images of China portrayed by the Australian broadsheets. The empirical findings demonstrate the proposition that China's soft power strategy is not compatible with the Australian media discourse in the context of climate change. The analysis of the valence of these eight environmental images also provides some indications to the exercise of China's soft power and public diplomacy in the Australian context, perhaps extendable to the larger Western context.