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printImage of China as an anti-Muslim “Other” in the Indonesian media
Kyrchanoff M.V.,
Voronezh State University, Voronezh, Russia, maksymkyrchanoff@gmail.com
elibrary_id: 342670 |
Article received: 2022.02.22. Accepted: 2022.11.30
DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2024.01.12
EDN: GRPAIS
Rubric: Orbis terrarum
For citation:
Kyrchanoff M.V. Image of China as an anti-Muslim “Other” in the Indonesian media. – Polis. Political Studies. 2024. No. 1. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2024.01.12. EDN: GRPAIS (In Russ.)
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze, using Indonesian media contents, images of China as an Alien and as a country pursuing a policy that is interpreted in Indonesia as anti-Islamic. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of modern nationalist political imagination in the discursive space formed by the Indonesian media. The author comes to the conclusion that in this imaginary space negative images of China are formed, which subsequently circulate in it and are purposefully promoted with the aim of constructing the image of China in Indonesia as a universal ideological and political Other. The article shows that 1) the Indonesian nationalist imagination, through the media, actively reproduces negative images of China as a subject of the policy of assimilation of Muslim minorities on the territory of the PRC, 2) in the discourses of Indonesian expert and analytical communities, narratives are promoted about the authoritarian nature of the political regime of the PRC and its policies aimed at politicizing Islam and its subsequent integration into the functioning mechanism of this regime. Such a policy is interpreted in Indonesia as ideologically limiting the activities of Chinese Muslims and putting them under the control of communist ideology, which gives grounds to characterize the PRC as a political and ideological Other. Narratives that highlight the unresolved problems between the China state and Islamic communities play an important role in promoting the image of the PRC as an undemocratic and authoritarian state. The results of the study suggest that the evolution of anti-Chinese narratives and the further promotion in the Indonesian political imagination of the image of China as a universal Other and a state politically and ideologically alien to Islam will strengthen the legitimation of anti-Chinese phobias and stereotypes traditional for Indonesian society at both the political and religious levels.
Keywords
Indonesia, images of China, images of the Other, anti-Chinese phobias, discourses, narratives, political stereotypes, political imagination, Islam, Chinese Muslims, Indonesian Islamic nationalism.
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Content No. 1, 2024
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