Metaphorical Representations of China in the British Financial Press during and after the 2008 Financial Crisis

Financial journalism would appear to have had a claim to be one of the more reliably fact-based areas of the news media. However, the recent inability of financial journalists to identify the major structural flaws in global financial systems has shattered much of the previous confidence in the authority of this expert discourse. Beyond the repair work necessary within the institutions of financial journalism there is another set of more fundamental issues relating to the structure of financial reporting itself. These relate to the regular use of metaphor as a short-cut to grasping complexities of the financial world within such a fact-dominated field as journalism. What are the implications for the future of financial journalism in its dependence on metaphorical language?

This research takes as its case study the metaphorical representations of China in the British financial press in the contemporary era and assesses the extent to which this coverage is based upon older stereotypes of China. The power of stereotypical metaphors of China lies in the adept utilization and application of our shared understanding and nationally specific imaginations of China. With the upsurge of Chinese nationalism boosted by economic growth, especially after the 2008 financial crisis, understanding of China in news discourse has shifted from exclusive “otherness” to a proximity to the cultural logic of Western ideologies. By identifying the source domain of the dominant metaphorical associations, this research found that metaphor within this fact-based discourse serves as a lazy deployment of tired and outdated stereotypes, emphasizing China’s role as an Orientalist continuum and a threat to the Western community. This research invites us to reconsider the representative power of metaphor as a process that perhaps in a subtle way undermines the facticity of news reporting in areas of global importance such as financial journalism.