IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v12y2025i1d10.1057_s41599-025-05796-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The historical evolution of Chinese political discourse and socio-ideological change: a discourse-historical analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Junchen Zhang

    (The University of Sydney)

Abstract

Adopting a methodological combination of the discourse-historical approach (DHA) and the Chinese discourse studies perspective, the study focuses on how Chinese political discourse evolves along with the socio-ideological change of contemporary China. It scrutinizes the representative discourses from five Chinese leaders: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. Based on the discourse analysis, the study identifies three characteristics of the discursive evolution: (1) discursive adaptation – the political discursive evolution is accompanied by China’s social transformation from a highly authoritarian communist society to a market economy-oriented society, (2) discursive popularization – the discursive construction is transformed from a revolutionary idealism to an emotional popular discourse, and (3) discursive continuation – the current high-profile “Chinese Dream” narrative is a discursive continuum that links the past, presents the current national vision, and projects a future imagined powerful China. Significantly, the study contributes to a critical understanding of China’s political discursive evolution and the embedded social and ideological changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Junchen Zhang, 2025. "The historical evolution of Chinese political discourse and socio-ideological change: a discourse-historical analysis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-14, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05796-7
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05796-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-025-05796-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-025-05796-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05796-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.