Sino-US Trade Friction in Western and Chinese Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Since US President Donald Trump took office, Sino-US relations have undergone a significant change. The Trump administration ignored WTO rules and made a series of allegations against China. In 2018, the trade war between China and the United States broke out, which has aroused widespread concern worldwide. In order to expose the ideology behind the media reports, taking Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, Fairclough's three-dimensional model and corpus analysis as theoretical basis, this thesis conducts contrastive analysis of news reports on trade friction from China Daily, The New York Times and The Guardian, finding that China Daily always represents Chinese government’s position, emphasizing bilateral consultations and peaceful resolution and establishing a positive and responsible image of a big country; The New York Times does not always stand by the side of the US government, especially of President Trump; as a third party in Sino-US trade, British mainstream medium, The Guardian, adopts a neutral attitude in most cases, but some of its reports make negative comments on China and the United States both. Therefore, through critical discourse analysis, the public can be helped to improve their sensitivity to news reports and not to be the stupid crowd.