The rapid development of the People’s Republic of China (China) from an impoverished, communist country to an economic and geopolitical power has challenged existing economic and geopolitical paradigms dominated by western nations. Part of this change has been China’s increased diplomatic and economic engagement abroad and a pointed effort to foment positive public opinions of the country abroad. Under the current leadership of Xi Jinping, this campaign to win hearts and minds of the public has evolved into a comprehensive discursive strategy that includes a highly curated and cohesive set of narratives about China’s past, present and future that is deployed abroad to tell the “China story”. This story presents China as a new kind of world power which is naturally aligned with the global south therefore if countries cooperate economically or diplomatically with China, they will have a different and better experience than if they were to engage with western world powers. These narratives frame China as a global leader that offers viable alternatives for multilateral collaboration that will bring new opportunities and benefits for participating countries and by extension the world.There are multiple other actors simultaneously contributing different narratives about China that may or may not align with the curated story preferred by the Chinese state. Some of these narratives are direct rebukes of the “China story”, others may repeat past historical narratives about the country and culture, while others may reflect experiences with entities associated with China but not controlled by it, such as Chinese corporations or Chinese diaspora communities. Thus, China’s image abroad and the Chinese state’s power to change this image is not as simple as the dissemination of this curated story and its uptake or rejection by foreign audiences. Instead, it is a dynamic process of negotiation of these multiple narratives on China with the different audiences that inform their opinions on China. To contend with this complexity, I conceptualize China’s national image as a “brand” that is strategically curated and deployed by the brand liaisons (such as diplomats) to foreign audiences that is then negotiated within these locally-specific political, economic, and social terrains to create a unique image of China. China’s national image is therefore multitudinous rather than monolithic and China symbolizes many different things for different people regardless of the efforts of the Chinese state to present a harmonious and cohesive “China story”. Therefore, in this dissertation I explore how China’s brand image is formed in Mexico, and more specifically for the public of Tijuana. Tijuana is a city at the crossroads of transpacific relations and hemispheric relations that has seen a large influx of Chinese migrants, Chinese capital, Chinese businesses, and Chinese diplomatic visits. I combined ethnographic methods with critical discourse analysis and survey methodologies to examine different arenas of meaning making, where new actors had the opportunity to take up various narrative threads and reconfigure them to suit their own priorities or perspectives. In doing so, I illuminate how new interpretations and understandings of China are created within the Mexican public that ultimately shape public opinions on future relations. Pragmatically, this approach allows me to identify which parts of its positive image campaign are the most salient and where and why public views may diverge from the official narratives on China. From a broader perspective however, this research allows me to raise questions about how we measure and identify China’s discursive power. I conclude that its power is produced in these moments of new meaning making in which individuals who are the recipients of China’s brand messaging incorporate parts of it into their own understanding of the world which may expand the limits of what they believe is possible under current global and national conditions.
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