With the eruption of the global Covid-19 pandemic, the US-China long-standing tension also reach the unprecedented level than ever before. Under such circumstances, EU -as the semi-global and full regional power- suffered the serious pressure to deal with the situation. Based on this reason, it would not be surprise to see the discursive rift within EU regarding the situation aforementioned. The focuses of the relevant discourse are on the ‘China’s anti pandemic diplomacy’. Based on the specific characteristics like the stance and phrasing preferences of such discourse, it would be reasonable to distinguish one main fault lines (discursive rifts) combined with two sub fault lines within them. The main one stands between different member statesbased on the situation of their internal divisions centering around ‘China’s anti pandemic diplomacy’. According to the indicator above, the paper would distinguish the member states into four groups which is said to be the countries with serious internal discords (group A), the countries with minor internal discords in favor of China’s anti pandemic
diplomacy (group B), the countries with minor internal discords being critical of China’s anti pandemic diplomacy (group C) and the countries keeping the theme in minor key (group D). Within the country of each group, the two sub fault lines exist: The first one stands between the governing political elites and the mainstream medias, while the former has been always trying its best to keep the neutrality to appease the controversial of pandemic origin and emphasized the importance of global collaboration to fight against the pandemic at this moment, the latter preferred more to follow the Washington DC’s harsh tone accusing China’s covering up the truth of the pandemic such as the hiding the real timeline of the first case and the possible leaking of the virus from Wuhan P4 laboratory. The second one stands between the governing political elites and the oppositional politicians -especially the one from the populist camp. The distribution of this rift is quite similar to the first one. In order to do this, the essay would introduce the DA (Discourse Analysis) approach. For the conclusion of the analysis, the paper would try to point out that such discursive rift would be one of the important mirrors reflecting the ambivalence EU’s self-strategic position under the pressure of US-China’s full-scale
confrontation.
Primary Language | English |
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Subjects | International Relations |
Journal Section | Research Article |
Authors | |
Publication Date | November 5, 2020 |
Submission Date | September 1, 2020 |
Published in Issue | Year 2020 Volume: 4 Issue: 2 |