The view from Beijing on Black Lives Matter: why do black lives matter for Beijing?

Abstract

Why and how has China covered the Black Lives Matter (BLM), a movement with emerging themes closely related to its domestic issues? To what extent does the Chinese media build a unified discourse on sensitive themes that underpin the BLM? These are important questions given China's complicated history with ethnicity, race, and protests. This article argues that Chinese media uses BLM as a multi-faceted propaganda tool to foster cohesion at ideological level. NVivo-powered coding and thematic media analysis show that mainstream media, including official, semi-official and commercial media, and we-media do not present a uniform discourse on BLM. While they generally converge on criticism towards "protests" and "police" action, they display a nuanced "anti-US" and "Greater China" discourse. Moreover, the BLM coverage is used to undermine the US and strengthen by comparison the party-state's legitimacy. In the absence of a reflective discussion on race, racist undertones emerge in Chinese we-media.