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Defense white papers play a crucial role in shaping national identity and garnering publicity, serving as a key component of a country's national policy. As China's comprehensive national power grows, its international status rises, drawing increased global attention to its foreign propaganda materials, including the "White Paper of the Chinese Government." Through a discourse-historical analysis framework and corpus linguistics methodology, this study examines the theme and discourse strategy of the Belt and Road Initiative white paper to unveil China's propaganda tactics in image construction. The white paper portrays China as a responsible great power, emphasizing keywords like China, BRI, countries, cooperation, and development, while also projecting an image of a socialist great power with diplomatic openness and inclusiveness. Three main discourse strategies are identified: a naming strategy employing personal pronouns and spatial references, a predicative strategy using positive predicates to showcase China's role in BRI, and debating strategies centered on responsibility and favorability arguments to shape China's national image.
Yue Su (2024) studied this question.