This thesis examines the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, which was an unprecedented effort by the Chinese Party-state to reinvent Chinese national culture for consumption at home and abroad. Director Zhang Yimou delivered a spectacular event – three-thousand chanting Confucian scholars, two-thousand Ming Dynasty sailors, a grid of giant dancing printing blocks and an endless display of fireworks presented a sensational spectacle of Chinese culture and history. How should we interpret these symbols representing a romantic Chinese past? I argue that the “ancient” history on display in the Opening Ceremony is actually a product of China’s recent past: its interactions with the West, revolution, nationalism and communism, and the turn toward capitalism and authoritarianism. This thesis pulls the Opening Ceremony back into this historical context, closely examining three of its most prominent symbols: Zheng He and his voyages to the Indian Ocean, the Four Great Inventions, and Confucius. My results show that, 1) far from being a product of China’s history alone, these symbols are a co-production of China and the West, in which both identities were mutually constituted; 2) they are created in the context of political power, and take on different meanings in response to political shifts; 3) they suggest a state desire for power and status rather than simply a revival of cultural heritage. This research will contribute to an understanding of the modern political uses of Chinese history. / Graduate

<p><strong>UNIVERSITY OF KALMAR - SWEDEN</strong></p><p>The institution of Social Science</p><p>Project: Master Essay 15points</p><p>Title: Olympic Games – An instrument for Environmental Political Change?</p><p> </p><p><em>-A case study exploring the Environmental Political views of the Olympic Games – with special focus on the 28th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. </em></p><p> <strong>ABSTRACT                                                               </strong></p><p>The essay´s aim was to explore the complex political environmental opinions and opportunities to use the Olympic Games as an instrument for environmental political changes, with special focus on the 2008 summer Olympics Games in Beijing. </p><p>In the light of two environmental political theories (The Green Business and Critical Ecology Theories)  The International Olympic Committee's (The IOC) third pillar, the environment, the Beijing Olympic Committee 's motto (BOCOG) “Green Olympics” and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO:s) such as Greenpeace and their motto “Green Games” have been reviewed. The aim was to see the organisations aim to use the Beijing Olympics as a tool for environmental political changes.  </p><p>The study involves six qualitative interviews, one group interview, one written questionnaire and participating observations, during an eight week field study, during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.</p><p>The conclusion of the study demonstrates that the Olympic Games can be used as important instrument to address the organisations environmental work toward a “Greening” of Olympic cities with firstly technical measures under political control.  The Olympics are also used as an instrument to raise the environmental awareness of the public in Beijing and China.</p><p>The City of Beijing was seen as a showcase of green standards hopefully to be spread nationally. The “Greening of Olympics” is still though a complex social and scientific matter. Countries and cities have different conditions, knowledge, interests and ambitions. Universal standards are not always universally understood.</p><p> </p>

UNIVERSITY OF KALMAR - SWEDEN The institution of Social Science Project: Master Essay 15points Title: Olympic Games – An instrument for Environmental Political Change?   -A case study exploring the Environmental Political views of the Olympic Games – with special focus on the 28th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.  ABSTRACT                                                               The essay´s aim was to explore the complex political environmental opinions and opportunities to use the Olympic Games as an instrument for environmental political changes, with special focus on the 2008 summer Olympics Games in Beijing.  In the light of two environmental political theories (The Green Business and Critical Ecology Theories)  The International Olympic Committee's (The IOC) third pillar, the environment, the Beijing Olympic Committee 's motto (BOCOG) “Green Olympics” and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO:s) such as Greenpeace and their motto “Green Games” have been reviewed. The aim was to see the organisations aim to use the Beijing Olympics as a tool for environmental political changes.   The study involves six qualitative interviews, one group interview, one written questionnaire and participating observations, during an eight week field study, during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The conclusion of the study demonstrates that the Olympic Games can be used as important instrument to address the organisations environmental work toward a “Greening” of Olympic cities with firstly technical measures under political control.  The Olympics are also used as an instrument to raise the environmental awareness of the public in Beijing and China. The City of Beijing was seen as a showcase of green standards hopefully to be spread nationally. The “Greening of Olympics” is still though a complex social and scientific matter. Countries and cities have different conditions, knowledge, interests and ambitions. Universal standards are not always universally understood.

This thesis explores the distinctive forms of journalism that have emerged in mainstream news websites in mainland China. Two case studies, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, are employed to identify features in Chinese and Western news online. Specifically, a comparison is made between the in-depth news sections of popular mainstream news websites in China and those in the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The study finds that the Chinese version of mainstream web news genre differs significantly from the Western version. This thesis argues that journalists’ practice is strongly context dependent. Distinctive economic, organizational, social and cultural factors contribute to shaping Chinese web journalism in a way that contradicts the notion of a homogeneous worldwide journalism or of a single set of norms for journalism. The study challenges the dominance of the political explanatory framework that considers political factors as the most important approach to study Chinese web-based media. In the face of a sparse literature and sporadic studies concerning the development of the internet as a novel platform in China for news production and transmission, this thesis aims to bring more academic interest to an overlooked research area and to contribute to a broader understanding of the actual diversity of global communication research.

Chinese propaganda nowadays is focused on producing soft-sell messages international consumption instead of hard-core propaganda of agitation. emphasis on "image design" as Jiang Zemin coined it, rather than on propagation of Communist ideals. This shift from the past is brought government's new publicity strategy masterminded by Deng Xiaoping. strategy Chinese media have been enlisted in the ideological construction national images. Image construction for the nation-state has become the Chinese government and its news media in terms of international communication. This shift is symbolic of the rapid changes taking place in China. I draw Andrew Wernick's notion of "promotional culture" (1991) to describe changes, and in particular, their impact on government publicity, domestic reporting, and international journalism in China. I argue that a form of "promotional culture" has made a positive impact on government publicity as much on international journalism in China. The shift of focus in propaganda more of a government initiative than a spontaneous pursuit of international journalism in China. The latter still practices government scripts rather creative in form and diversified in content as is domestic reporting. This examines government publicity materials and news media reports concerning Beijing's Olympic campaign to reveal this extension of promotional government publicity and its implications for Chinese journalism.

abstract: The People's Republic of China's inexorable ascendancy has become an epochal event in international landscape, accentuated by its triple national ceremonies of global significance: 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, 2009 Beijing Military Parade, and 2010 Shanghai World Expo. At a momentous juncture when the PRC endeavored to project a new national identity to the outside world, these ceremonial occasions constitute a high-stake communicative opportunity for the Chinese government and a fruitful set of discursive artifacts for symbolic deconstruction and rhetorical interpretation. To unravel these ceremonial spectacles, a public memory approach, with its versatile potencies indexical of a nation's interpretive system of social meaning, its normative framework of ideological model, and its past-present-future interrelationships, is contextually, conceptually, and analytically diagnostic of a rising China's sociopolitical constellations. Thus employing public memory as a conceptual-methodological matrix, my dissertation focuses on the prominent texts in these ceremonies, excavates their historico-memorial invocation and sociocultural persuasion, and plumbs their discursive agenda, rhetorical operation, and sociopolitical implication. I argue that the Chinese government deliberately and forcefully strove for three interrelated communicative objectives at these three ceremonies--re-imaging, re-asserting, and re-anchoring its national identity as an ancient, emergent superpower. Yet in contemporary Chinese context, its discursive (con)quest to recast its leadership as a historically continuous, culturally orthodox, and ideologically legitimate regime has always been compromised by its mythologized historical representation and hegemonic rhetorical reconfiguration, countervailed by its political and ideological fragility, and contested by domestic and global publics. Besides its contributions to the current conversation on the PRC's ceremonial phenomena, discursive formations, and communicative dynamics, this dissertation further offers its diagnosis and prognostication of this projected leading country in the 21st century. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication Studies 2012

近年來，中國環境污染不斷惡化，隨著動態的傳遞過程，境內受到污染的物質隨著河流、海洋、空氣的流動而移轉，甚至以人爲移動的方式傳遞至其他國家，形成跨國界的環境污染，全球因為環境污染造成的經濟損失與治理的成本難以估計。 中國環境污染的問題，有其歷史的淵源，又與各時期領導者政治思維、經濟發展及環保政策相關。面對國際社會的關注和環境惡化的壓力，中國被迫嚴肅正視其環境污染問題，在「北京奧運」舉辦前後，中國政府展現整治控制的決心及投入，確實使北京環境因為奧運短期成效，讓世人驚豔。 深入探討中國環保政策面臨問題，根源於政策體制缺陷、國內參與不足及國際化程度不深等因素。對中共而言，面對發展與環保、地方與中央及國內與國外情況，已不僅是一個專業問題，更是一個政治問題，挑動政權敏感神經及智慧，左右為難。

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