Talking about a Greenish Red: The State-mediated Climate Change Communication in China

Abstract

The complexity and urgency of climate change have caused great concern in political and public debates. Since climate change first emerged on the public agenda in the 1980s, research on climate change communication has seen an upward ascent. Nowadays, climate change communication is all around us, vying for attention and action from people from all walks of life. Besides the tensions among national governments, climate communication also faces competing interests between political parties, institutions, industries, and other social groups. Communicating climate change is thus undoubtedly intricate and challenging. This thesis is a response to the disproportionally scant attention paid to China’s response to climate change. I aspire to explore the climate discourses as practices and actions (re)constructed in the Chinese context, focusing on four heavily involved communicators: the central government, big corporations, climate non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and climate scientists. These communicators ground their claims and expectations of climate actions through selected knowledge and propositions, and bring their values, sometimes without being recognised as such, into the making of climate change in China. They make climate change, a “fact” prior to its entry into the Chinese context, into climate change (or various climate changes) in China. The thesis aims to explore the actors and interests involved in political discussions, business responses, civic actions, and scientific outreach of climate change. It intends to add to our knowledge of: first, how climate communication reflects and affects China’s position and reputation in international climate negotiation and its domestic climate governance; second, how businesses understand their role in the face of addressing climate change and what their expressed climate concern and action actually entail; third, whether Chinese NGOs’ climate actions have the potential to influence political decision-making and how they live with the blurring boundaries between state and society and the country’s authoritarian environmentalism; fourth, how climate scientists perceive and influence public understanding of climate change and public engagement in climate policy. The thesis accounts for a state-mediated climate discourse network in China, with various communicators (re)constructing climate change to defend their interests. For the central government, addressing climate change serves to build up a nationalist but also cosmopolitan political picture. For businesses, there are new “lands” up in the air to further their capital accumulation. For NGOs, potential new modes of state-society interaction are expected through expanded public participation in climate change. For scientists, they do not concern too much about whether they are needed but feel ready to give out climate expertise.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Vladimir Jankovic (Supervisor) & Elizabeth Toon (Supervisor)