Shared Victimhood: The Reporting by the Chinese Newspaper the People’s Daily on the 1999 NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia

Zhou Yuguang ()
Additional contact information
Zhou Yuguang: Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany

Comparative Southeast European Studies, 2022, vol. 70, issue 2, 202-223

Abstract: This article examines the reporting by China’s most important newspaper, People’s Daily, on the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The 1999 intervention was significant in China, as its embassy in Belgrade was bombed. The author looks at the newspaper’s bombardment-related reports of and commentaries on Yugoslavia, NATO, Russia, and China, as well as other countries, and its reporting on the embassy bombing itself. The author shows that there was clear sympathy for Yugoslavia and “the Yugoslav people”, a term used synonymously with Serbs. The 1999 conflict was portrayed as a struggle between good (peace and independence) and evil (hegemonism and power politics). Contrary to most Western societies, the image of Yugoslavia/Serbia in China was largely positive. This image informed the build-up of a narrative of a shared victimhood between China and Yugoslavia/Serbia, which has remained a topos in their bilateral relations until today.

Keywords: China; Yugoslavia; NATO bombing; discourse; ideology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/soeu-2021-0027 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:soeuro:v:70:y:2022:i:2:p:202-223:n:9

DOI: 10.1515/soeu-2021-0027

Access Statistics for this article

Comparative Southeast European Studies is currently edited by Sabine Rutar

More articles in Comparative Southeast European Studies from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().