Founded in 1843, The Economist is a world-renowned weekly news magazine which has a deep focus on current global affairs. No less prominent is the tendency for the magazine to engage in wordplay in the headlines and visual rhetoric in cover design (Alexander, 1986).
Before starting the research, I counted the frequency of China-related covers in the last decade using the method of content analysis (Table 1), so as to make a general statement on the covers’ trend (Bell, 2001). From 2013 to 2018, the covers focus on the emperor-like features of Xi Jinping. After 2019, the features have taken place by various elements instead. The proportion of Chinese covers has also increased, showing that they have a more comprehensive focus on China after the epidemic.
Frequency statistics of China-related cover in The Economist
This essay will select three representational covers in 2022 for the analysis, then examine the covers separately by using the social semiotic framework and offering critical analysis, to explore how The Economist portrays China from different angles in the post-pandemic period. The three covers depict China from aspects of politics, economy and living in the post-epidemic era. Picture 1 shows the latest 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (hereinafter referred to as the CPC), which shows the party’s ambition to centralize power. Picture 2 uses illustrations to deliver Xi Jinping's wrong strategy leading China's slowdown continuously. Picture 3 depict a city under lockdown, revealing the oppression brought by the zero-Covid strategy to the citizens and the damage to the economy. Although there are still other covers in the post-epidemic era, those are either too specific or blended with irrelevant elements. Therefore, I chose the three covers shown below, which are also intrinsically related.
Picture 1, the political theme cover (Murphy, 2022)Picture 2, the economic theme cover (Reynolds, 2022)Picture 3, the living theme cover (Getty Images, 2022)