Is Russia becoming China’s other? An analysis of China’s foreign policy discourses towards Russia

Abstract

Having China’s international identity as the research background, the special position Russia has in its relations with China created a myth for researchers to tackle. China frequently uses Othering in its domestic politics in portraying itself as a victim and a tendency of selfvictimization due to historical sufferings. The reasons for China to see Russia as an Other are not untraceable with China losing Outer Eastern China to Russian Empire due to unequal agreement; however, China simply gave up the disputed area in exchange for a solidified land border and China-Russia relations are ‘at its best’ since the rapprochement. The partnership did not fall apart as previous scholar works predicted. The Crimean Crisis as a key event for analysis adds up to the myth that China as a sovereignty hawk was not weary of Russia’s expansionist foreign policy which led to the annexation of Crimea; instead, China-Russia relations are brought up to the next level through efforts from both sides. The current geopolitical approach left this myth unaccounted. This thesis sets out to shed lights on how China’s identity construction of Russia have changed from March, 2013 after President Xi Jingping’s incumbent until March, 2017 with the Crimean Crisis as the key event for comparison. Based on Hansen’s theoretical framework that foreign policy discourses as the link between identity and foreign policies, this thesis conducts poststructuralist discourse analysis on Chinese official discourses and academic debate on Russia using the intertextuality research model 1 and 3B developed by Hansen (2006). The result has shown before Crimean, both official and academic discourses did not construct Russia as a radical Other but strongly linked with and supplement to the construction of China; after Crimean official discourses’ which represent China’s foreign policy attempts to create new linking to emphasize similarities of the identity construction of China and Russia upon the emergence of competing discourses in academic debate. This research focuses primarily on how the identity construction have changed in the timeframe due to the key event. To unfold the myth, researches on why the identity construction and Chinese foreign policy have changed this way are encouraged. To present a more comprehensive overview of discourses, wider text selection including intertextuality research model 2 and 3A is another angle to tackle.