China's Global Image Making : The Belt and Road Initiative in the Islamic World

China’s international political prominence is currently facing a strategic challenge and significant dilemma due to its image abroad. To address this, China is utilizing the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to shape its global image and enhance strategic engagements in the Afro-Eurasia region and beyond. This study employs a longitudinal content analysis method to examine China’s political, cultural, economic, technological, and social image in the most influential Islamic English news media. It critically analyzes China’s construction, interpretation, and dissemination of its global image in the context of the BRI. Furthermore, it sheds light on the historical and current relations between China and the Islamic world, including future prospects and potential challenges to China’s rise as an alternative global power for the Islamic world.

"This book provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of China’s strategic efforts to shape its global image through the Belt and Road Initiative in the Islamic world. By analyzing influential Islamic English news media, it sheds light on the historical and current relations between China and the Islamic world and offers valuable insights into future prospects and potential challenges. This book is essential for scholars and policymakers interested in comprehending China’s evolving global image and its impact on Sino-Islamic relations."

—Wu Fei, Qiushi Distinguished Professor, Director of International Communication Research Center, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

"It is increasingly important that, with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) now on the books for a solid decade, we begin to take stock of its global impact in granular terms. This timely, well-illustrated book, which explores the nexus of BRI and China’s image as constructed in select English-language news media, does that with compelling, insightful analyses and with effulgent statistical data to boot in, and about, a region that is an archetypal Islamic influence. "

—Cornelius B. Pratt, Professor Emeritus of Global Communication and Leadership, Temple University, Philadelphia, United States