Who you want we are?

Revision with unchanged content. The process of national identity construction involves the perception of and relation with a country’s significant others. For the English-language media in China, it’s never an easy task. PRC’s international legitimacy has always been a problem. Ideologically contra-dictory, many Westerners hold a negative attitude towards the Communist China with a feeling of 'fear and loathing'. Chinese traditional culture, on the contrary, is a convenient and safe solution to answer the question of 'who we are'. Would China Daily, the national English-language newspaper, tend to construct an alternative national identity more from the perspectives of a cultural nation than a political state? If so, how would the paper, as a party propaganda organ, reconcile the crisis of dual legitimation caused by the contradictory attitude of the Party toward Chinese cultural tradition? And how could the paper fulfill its political function of promoting the party-state’s international legitimacy while at the same time avoid keeping its audience away? What strategies has the paper used and how do they work in constructing the national identity? This book is addressed to those who share the writer’s interest in disentangling the tangled relation between Chinese politics and culture in the construction of national identity.