Images of China : An Empirical Study of Western Tourist Material

Abstract: This thesis aims to explore and describe the images of China in the Western tourist material. There is much literature talking about images of China; however, among the existing scholarship so far few have investigated from the angle as we do. We use social constructivism and representation as main theories and combined with central concepts of the tourist gaze, stereotypes and the other, and post-colonialism and orientalism. Moreover, we conduct a case study by applying qualitative discourse analysis in order to find out the stereotypes and orientalist ideas of China depicted in the tourist material. The findings show that in the perspective of western tourist material, China is representative of the Orient. The analysis also concludes that China is seen as a country with 5,000-year civilization whose people have lots of virtues; a developing economic power; a not so democratic socialist country; a potential threat and a global actor with increasing influences. Our thesis contributes to the existing literature on China research and tourism research—marketing and political implications for its national image improvement and tourism development.