Taking China Seriously : The Positioning Towards China in Finnish Printed Media 1950–1953

Abstract

This thesis makes sense of how two Finnish politically affiliated newspapers positioned themselves towards the PRC between 1950–1953 via the lens of critical discourse analysis. The 1950–1953 period included the early nation-building years of the PRC; the beginning and end of the Korean War; and the PRC and Finland’s establishment of diplomatic relations and signing of a trade treaty – PRC’s first with a capitalist, Western nation. Therefore, both newspapers discussed China extensively throughout the period. By critical dissection of the language and form of these two newspapers, this thesis answered three research questions: how Uusi Suomi and Työkansan Sanomat’s China discourses diverged from one another, what discourse hegemonizing strategies were implemented to create these discourses, and how Finland’s bilateral exchanges with the PRC affected these discourses. The research shows that the two newspapers depicted the conditions of PRC nationals, and the nature of the two Chinese regimes, the PRC and the ROC in exile, in diverging ways. The 1952 Helsinki Olympics and the 1953 cultural delegation led by Sylvi Kekkonen were found to have influenced these two discourses. The newspapers’ differing affinities with the Cold War superpowers were also recognized as important building blocks of the discourses. Beyond adding to the anglosphere-dominated corpus of historical China discourse studies, this research promotes the combining of linguistic methods with historical primary literature.