China’s Twitter diplomacy: capital competition and discourse power struggle with Bourdieu’s capital theory as an analytical tool

Abstract

This thesis examines the Twitter diplomacy practices of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs from January 2022 to October 2023. Framed by Bourdieu’s social practice theory, it conceptualises Twitter diplomacy as a strategic endeavour to compete for discourse power within the “international discourse field,” an asymmetric arena dominated by Western powers, in which sovereign states vie for influence through field-specific capital. Centred on three core forms of capital (social, cultural, and symbolic), the study systematically analyses China’s strategic choices and discourse practices in Twitter diplomacy. Focused on Chinese diplomats’ communicative strategies and their manifestations, the study, based on 3,461 tweets from 10 key MFA accounts, highlights a clear strategic prioritisation. The findings reveal that China prioritises the competition of symbolic capital (54.22%) and social capital (37.3%), with cultural capital (5.4%) playing a supplementary role. Symbolic capital competition revolves around three-dimensional reputation building: defender of human destiny, powerful country, and lovable country, to consolidate international legitimacy; social capital competition adopts a dual-frame strategy of “narrow confrontation with Western hegemony and broad cooperation” to reshape relational networks; cultural capital operates through low-conflict value infiltration to mitigate ideological backlash. These practices converge around a cohesive strategic logic: adapting the “using rural areas to encircle the cities” approach to modern international public opinion competition. This strategy reflects China’s attempt to transform its role in global governance amid reputational and relational crises intensified by COVID-19-era international criticism, shifting from an “adapter of the international order” to a “shaper of rules”. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical insights on capital typology to analyse digital and transnational diplomatic practices, this study develops a reusable analytical toolkit for research on digital diplomacy. Empirically, it resolves the scholarly debate over the apparent contradiction between China’s Wolf Warrior rhetoric and cooperative narratives, offering a nuanced interpretation of its unified discourse power strategy. In practice, it enriches understanding of how peripheral actors navigate asymmetric discourse fields, providing actionable insights for Global South nations seeking to enhance their influence in digital diplomacy.

Date of Award	15 Jun 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Nottingham
Supervisor	David Kiwuwa (Supervisor), Jonathan Sullivan (Supervisor) & Hing Kai Chan (Supervisor)