Recently, the National Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences issued a notice on rolling funds. “Research on the Centennial Communication of China’s National Image in Western Mainstream Media under the Vision of a Community with Shared Future for Mankind” (Project Approval No.: 19ZDA322), a major project of the National Social Science Fund, hosted by Professor Zhang Kun, has passed the mid-term assessment and received a rolling fund grant of 600,000 yuan.

This project takes “centennial China’s national image” as the research object. Under the vision of a community with shared future for mankind, it analyzes and interprets the centennial image of China in the Western mainstream media with interdisciplinary and multiple methods, in order to grasp the long-term laws of the communication China’s image. The project deconstructs the formation mechanism of the western mainstream media’s perception of China’s image, and constructs a multi-level, multi-faceted, and multi-dimensional national strategic communication system that conforms to national interests and the laws of communication.

Since the approval of the project at the end of 2019, many offline tasks have been suspended or postponed due to the impact of the global epidemic. However, the research team has adopted various methods, learning and working under epidemic prevention. Therefore, the overall implementation of the research plan is smooth, and the sub-projects were also being carried out in an orderly manner and further advanced, and a series of high-quality phased research results have been achieved. The research team held a discussion meeting on the topic in October 2020, and experts at the conference spoke highly of the topic and put forward constructive opinions. Besides, the “Global Public Opinion Index ( 2020)” launched from December 2019 to February 2020, as China’s first large-scale authoritative poll conducted simultaneously in multiple countries around the world, covered 13 major countries that exceed 50% of the global population. A series of high-level academic papers have been published in first-class journals, and the research results have been reprinted and quoted many times in full text. The team also published two national image Blue Paper “Report on China’s National Image Communication”, and hosted the “National Communication Strategy Summit Forum” for 2 years based on relevant research findings. The project contributes intellectual resources and serves high-end platforms to the national communication strategy, and has been reported by 400 media worldwide, including People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, and Social Science News, and has extensive social and academic influence.

The Major Projects of the National Social Science Fund is currently the highest-level, the most funded, and the most authoritative project category in the current National Social Science Fund system. To a certain extent, the research findings represent the highest level of national social science research, also one of the important indicators to measure the development level and scientific research capabilities of philosophy and social sciences in universities. The research team, led by the chief expert Professor Zhang Kun, aims at the major needs of the national communication strategy under the new domestic and international situations, and gathered strength and worked hard to tackle tough problems with constant innovation. With first-hand literature, data and solid research results in the mid-term evaluation, the project received affirmation and support from reviewing experts.