Beijing capitalness and related challenges – Russian media perspective

As China’s influence in the international arena expands, the country’s authorities have become increasingly concerned with guiding the national narrative. The capital, Beijing, has come to play a key role in this process since enhancement of the city’s capital features, too, seem to bolster the overall narrative. This article examines the image of China, portrayed in Russian media, as well as the extent to which Beijing is present in China’s image. It then seeks to investigate how this presence contributes to the national narrative. In order to establish the roots of the problems resulting from this interaction, the article also presents findings from interviews with experienced Russian journalists writing about Beijing and China. The results of this article show that as a capital, Beijing’s image has an exceedingly strong connection with China’s image compared with other Chinese first-tier cities. Beijing also serves as the symbol of China’s problems, which has a detrimental effect on the capital’s image. To date, Beijing authorities have not been successful at building a clear and focused capital city identity. This along with the fact that Beijing’s positioning heavily depends on the ideology promoted by the central government creates severe limitations in communicating the capital’s brand.