Power Relations, Hegemonic Ideology, and the PRC’s Communicative Practice of Interacting with Oceania through Infrastructure Aid Projects

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China has engaged with Oceania, particularly the Pacific Island countries, using the communicative practice of providing infrastructure aid projects. As the dominant state, China uses its material capability to dominate social relations with the island states to influence their behaviors and policies in order to advance its economic, strategic, security, and diplomatic interests. China as the Center state benefits from its dominance and inequality of social relations with island states as the Periphery state. Through its economic resources, Beijing controls social relations as indicated by the views of island leaders on the PRC’s infrastructure aid projects. Their discourses reflect their belief systems in the social relations’ normal and natural order with China, reproducing power, but they cannot perceive inequities in reality. Structures of language, while reflective of harmony of interests between the dominant state and dominated states, reveal distorted speech situations. China’s material force forms part of its domination and is normalized in Pacific Island societies through the existence of hegemonic ideology. Thematic findings show why the PRC communicatively practices such action. It wants to gain access to natural resources, create business opportunities for Chinese companies, expand the Belt and Road Initiative, establish a military presence, and constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. However, there are contextual explanations that reveal deeper-level power structures and meanings behind Beijing’s action. The marginalized meaning structures are as follows: donors use aid to shape recipients’ decisions to get access to projects built; linking aid to relations provides leverage to donors and traps recipients; providing aid influences the behavior or policies of recipients; enhancing reputation helps stabilize the party’s domestic rule and image; and access to resources and business deals promotes the donor’s existential interest. These five theoretical propositions provide a multiplicity of meaning structures or deeper-level power structures and meanings behind China’s communicative practice. These propositions align with what the literature states through the framework of power relations and hegemonic ideology, which the surface-level meanings have failed to explore. Yet, through partnerships with traditional partners (West) and with China, four alternative futures offer communicative dynamics: opportunities for emancipation (utopia), the prevalence of Western norms (order), the West cannot compete with China’s resources (status quo), or both the West and China abandon the region (catastrophe). Discursive reflection could occur in specific scenarios to alter existing communication order, potentially leading to unforeseen consequences.