Discursive construction of Chinese foreign policy: A diachronic analysis of the Chinese government’s Annual Work Report to the NPC

The article carries out a diachronic analysis of the topics and schemata of foreign policy sections (FPSs) in the Chinese government’s Annual Work Report (AWR, 1993–2007) to the National People’s Congress (NPC). The analysis shows that: (1) all the reports are constructed with similar topics and schemata decided by the general rules set in the FPS of the report in 1986, which work as “orders of discourse”; (2) topical selection and schematic structure, as two sides of a mental model for the production and understanding of the discourse, are ideological mechanisms for the government to manipulate power control over policy construction and implementation; (3) the discourse is actually the final product of the struggle and interaction between new discourse and “orders of discourse”; (4) the discourse is a reflection of social changes and works as a catalyst to shape people’s view toward social reality and to mold China’s foreign policy practice.