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This article addresses a research gap in the studies of international migration discourse in China's mass media. The focus on the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-owned commercialised newspaper famous for its nationalist discourse, elucidates how news about this global issue is used to construct China's identity narrative. The empirical part includes the analysis of the data spanning a decade (2012–2022) collected from the Global Times. It is studied with the help of computational text analysis tools, including topic modelling that is used to identify frames in the coverage of international migration. The analysis reveals that the Global Times devotes disproportionate attention to migration-related political, security, and socio-economic problems in the West, reproducing elements of the mainstream discourse in the Western media. Such overrepresentation, coupled with the selective coverage of China's own experience with international migration is used to emphasise the weaknesses of the Other in contrast to the stable Self.

AbstractIn the early 1980s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Japan joined the international refugee regime. This timing similarity is puzzling due to the stark differences between the PRC as a communist and authoritarian state versus Japan as a prime example of capitalist development and democratization. Moreover, although both signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Refugee Protocol without major reservations, neither of them has fully implemented these treaties. Discussions regarding the PRC's and Japan's engagement with the international refugee regime tend to start with the beginning of the Indochina refugee crisis in 1975. However, this article shows that the early decades of their interaction with the international refugee regime are of crucial importance for a full understanding of the timing and form of accession to the international refugee regime. Although the Southeast Asian refugee crisis played an important role as a trigger, it was the changing character of the international refugee regime and the transformations of state identity in both countries that set the ground for the signing of the refugee-related conventions.

The article is devoted to the study of the history of the Astrakhan regional branch of the Union of Composers of Russia through the prism of their position in relation to the processes that are taking place in the music world today and are reflected in the composer's activity. The use of the interview genre as a special analytical technique allows us to become more familiar with the view of musical creativity "from within", through the composer's vision of the influences that the musical and extra-musical environment has on him. An important role in this context is played by the questions compiled for the conversation, which can be divided into two groups: the situation of modern composers in market conditions, located far from the center (living in the regions) and their reflection on the history of culture, the modern world, which is reflected not only in their views, but also in their work. When working on the material of the article, the author used the following methods: interviewing (free conversation), ideographic - when preparing the material of the conversation with the composer, systematization - when analyzing the works of the composer. A special contribution of the author is the philosophical and musicological analysis of L. Butakov's work and the arrangement of his philosophical ideas. The analysis of the interviews allows us to draw conclusions about the prospects for the existence of academic musical art in the regions of the country.

The withdrawal of US troops and the rapid takeover of Kabul by the Taliban (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation) in Afghanistan in 2021 shocked the world community. Even though the PRC actively opposes international terrorism, which the Taliban movement (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation) is accused of supporting, it has become one of the few countries that have begun to cooperate with the new Afghan regime. In the light of these events, China's view of the situation in Afghanistan is puzzling, in particular, we are interested in how these events are reported in Chinese press. In this paper, first, we trace the evolution of the PRC's official position on Afghanistan, and then, using frame analysis, analyze the coverage of the events of 2021 in the PRC by focusing on three authoritative newspapers, Chinese language versions of "People's Daily", "Global Times", and "The Paper". Our study demonstrates that the Chinese press supports China's foreign policy in general and its policy in Afghanistan in particular. Stability in Afghanistan and cooperation with the Taliban (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation) on issues of Uighur separatism are important for China's national security. In the Chinese media, the Taliban (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation) are not presented as accomplices of terrorism, which China is fighting within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization but are described as representatives of the Afghan people who aim to restore the security and stability in the country. When discussing the Taliban (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation) takeover in the Chinese media, the focus is often not on the crimes of the new regime - repression, abuse of power, restriction of rights, but on shortcoming of the US policy. The latter reflects an important discursive practice in the Chinese media, "othering" the United States.

This article explores the Chinese media coverage of anti-Asian hate incidents in the USA during the COVID-19 pandemic. It sheds light on how xenophobia against Asians has been presented and discussed in the PRC press. Qualitative thematic analysis is used to identify key themes in the coverage of anti-Asian hate incidents in the two CCP-controlled newspapers: People's Daily and Global Times. This article demonstrates that hate crimes against Asian Americans, an undoubtedly severe and complex problem for US society and politics, provide CCP-controlled media with a convenient opportunity to criticise the Other and focus on issues important to China's identity. While blaming the discriminatory attitude in the USA towards Asians, the Chinese newspapers also use racialised stereotyping of Asian Americans as a 'model minority' and support the idea of Asians being alien to the USA. Remarkably, the Chinese media rarely devote special attention to victims of Chinese origin. Our observations contradict some earlier findings about discursive and reporting practices used in Chinese newspapers, that is, framing of violence and protests and selection of news sources, and showcase that these practices are pretty flexible and can adapt to better fit the particular context.

Power in international relations implies not only the possession of outstanding material resources, but also the ability to proposeand popularize attractive ideas, values, and norms and thus control discourse. Scholars note that during the presidencyof Xi Jinping, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has joined the struggle for discursive hegemony. This change in China'sforeign policy requires systematic study, for which the concept of a strategic narrative has analytical value. As defined byA. Miskimmon, B. O'Loughlin and L. Roselle, strategic narratives "are a means for political actors to construct a sharedmeaning of the past, present, and future of international politics to shape the behavior of domestic and international actors."This article provides an overview of strategic narratives as a conceptual lens to study international relations, summarizesthe existing research of strategic narratives in general and regarding the Chinese case in particular, and suggestsdirections for future studies. The core idea of Chinese strategic narratives is that the PRC is a new type of great power that iscapable of changing the existing unjust and conflict-prone world order. At the same time, China does not propose to radicallyrevise the international system – it portrays the world as divided into great powers and the rest. Overall, China's strategicnarratives are characterized by a duality that reflects the complexity of China's foreign policy interests and its attempt toexpand the field of opportunity. Aimed to support different agendas, narratives include references both to the "century ofhumiliation" and the more recent successful experience of China's modernization. The content of the narratives suggeststhat China is mainly trying to attract the developing countries of the Global South and thus form its own group of followers.However, there is significant variation in communication processes, namely the formation, projection, and reception ofChina's strategic narratives. The study of this variation, as well as the analysis of the effectiveness of Chinese narratives, isa promising direction for future research.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is one of the first international organizations in which the PRC played a key role. However, according to some researchers, over the past 20 years the Chinese leadership's interest in this mechanism of international cooperation has decreased. This article explores the place of the SCO in Chinese foreign policy by analyzing the representation of this organization in the PRC's media - Chinese-language publications in the newspapers People's Daily and Global Times , which both belong to the Chinese Communist Party. Such focus allows better understanding the value of the SCO to China and its position vis-á-vis other Chinese initiatives in Central Asia. The authors use methods of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, namely counting the frequency of single words, identifying and counting the most common frames, and discussing the ways these frames are constructed. Frame analysis demonstrates that the articles focus on the achievements of the SCO in solving regional problems, while existing difficulties are ignored. The SCO is represented as an important element of China's foreign policy, along with the Belt and Road Initiative, while the details of their interaction are not discussed. It should also be mentioned that the SCO is framed as an association of countries opposing Western hegemonism and advocating a new system of international relations. An extremely positive representation of the SCO serves legitimation of the political regime in the PRC: the articles focus on China's role as a leader in the SCO and its successes in addressing domestic problems, such as poverty reduction and fighting the coronavirus infection. This narrative is often created by quoting the opinions of high-level foreign politicians and average citizens.