Portrayal and Transformation: Analyzing the Representation of China’s Rural Left-behind Children in State Media Discourse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52152/RCR.V13.2.Keywords:
Portrayal, Transformation, Rural Left-behind Children, Sate-media Discourse, NarrativesAbstract
Through the portrayal of rural left-behind children in Chinese state media, this study investigates the evolution of narratives and the societal consequences. The research seeks to uncover its media depiction of left-behind children and how these constitute cultural and policy priorities. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was carried out using a qualitative research approach in order to analyze 20 peer-reviewed studies. Thematic analysis highlighted major shifts in media narratives moving from early portrayals that favored the idea of material deprivation to the more recent narratives that revolved around behavioral and psychological challenges. Visual and linguistic techniques of media encourage empathy and the alignment of narratives with family responsibility and resilience often detract from the realities of systemic problems such as rural to urban inequalities. Differences between the state media and the independent media are highlighted in cross cultural comparisons, Chinese state media emphasizes social harmony and policy alignment, while independent media features systemic critiques. The study’s findings highlight the role of media in helping to form societal values and bolstering policy objectives. More balanced narratives, which integrate systemic critiques, are needed for deeper public awareness and policy reform, as well as scholarly understanding and practical strategies for media practitioners and policymakers.
References
Atkinson-Sheppard, S., & Hayward, H. (2018). Conceptual similarities; distinct difference: Exploring “the gang” in mainland China. The British Journal of Criminology, 59(3), 614-633. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azy051
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
Chen, H. (2019). Toward traditional or atypical parenting: Mediated communication in Chinese transnational families. International Journal of Communication, 13, 1805-1824.
Chen, Q., Sun, X., Xie, Q., Li, J., & Chan, K. L. (2019). The impacts of internal migration on child victimization in China: A meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 20(1), 40-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838016683458
Chen, X. (2024). China’s left-behind children. https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978837171
Coleman, R., & Chen, T. (2020). Forgotten frames: Proposing the concept of “digressive framing” using left-out frames in Chinese media coverage of left-behind children. International Journal of Communication, 14, 6005-6025.
Dong, S. (2023). Exploring the lived experience of Chinese young adults who were “left-behind” in rural China: A qualitative study (Doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK). Retrieved from https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/33910/1/Dong-SH-Psychology-PHD-2023.pdf
Evans, B. A., & Hornberger, N. H. (2005). No child left behind: Repealing and unpeeling federal language education policy in the United States. Language Policy, 4(1), 87-106. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-004-6566-2
Fang, X., & Bi, L. (2018). “Rude tribes and wild frontiers”: Treatment of ethnicity in Chinese children’s literature. Southeast Asian Review of English, 55(2), 173-189. https://doi.org/10.22452/sare.vol55no2.13
Gan, Y. (2023). Choreographing digital love: Materiality, emotionality, and morality in video-mediated communication between Chinese migrant parents and their left-behind children. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 28. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad006
Gu, X. (2021). “Save the children!”: Governing left-behind children through family in China’s Great Migration. Current Sociology, 70(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392120985874
Gu, X., & Yeung, W. J. J. (2019). Hopes and hurdles: Rural migrant children’s education in urban China. Chinese Sociological Review, 52(2), 199-237. https://doi.org/10.1080/21620555.2019.1680970
Guo, K., & Spyros, S. (2024). Category construction and knowledge production in childhood studies: Rethinking “left-behind children” through the case of “liushou children” in China. Children S Geographies, 22(4), 628-642. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2024.2328025
Hirschman, E. C. (2003). Afterwords: Some reflections on the mind’s eye. Representing Consumers, 400-416. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203380260-24
Hsu, C. (2010). Beyond civil society: An organizational perspective on state–NGO relations in the People’s Republic of China. Journal of Civil Society, 6(3), 259-277. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2010.528949
Hu, H., Lu, S., & Huang, C. C. (2014). The psychological and behavioral outcomes of migrant and left-behind children in China. Children and Youth Services Review, 46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.07.021
Huang, W., & Zou, W. (2023). “Them” in an abnormal world: Media construction and responsibility attribution of left-behind children in rural China. The International Journal of Childhood and Children’s Services, 37(6). https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12729
Lam, T., Ee, M., Anh, H. L., & Yeoh, B. S. (2013). Securing a better living environment for left-behind children: Implications and challenges for policies. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 22(3), 421-445. https://doi.org/10.1177/011719681302200306
Lan, X. (2022). “Parents are gone”: Understanding the unique and interactive impacts of affective and cognitive empathy on left-behind youth’s academic engagement. Current Psychology, 42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03952-9
Laurent, M. (2023). The politics of privilege and resistance: Filial citizenship, education markets, and middle class parents in the People's Republic of China (Doctoral dissertation, Université Paris Cité; Université Concordia, Montréal, Canada). Retrieved from https://theses.hal.science/tel-04548378v1
Li, Z. (2015). The role of narrative in identity formation among new generation rural migrant women in Chongqing, China (Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, Athens, OH). Retrieved from http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1426855888
Liang, L., & Wang, H. (2024). Living with contradictions: A corpus-assisted analysis of grown-up left-behind children discourses in Zhihu. Discourse & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/09579265241263969
Liang, L., Wang, H., & Zhang, W. (2024). Decoding paradoxical identities: The discourse construction of left-behind children in news reports. Discourse & Communication, 18(4), 535-556. https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241239895
Liu, P. L., & Leung, L. (2016). Migrant parenting and mobile phone use: Building quality relationships between Chinese migrant workers and their left-behind children. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 12(4), 925-946. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-016-9498-z
Mu, G. M. (2018). Building resilience of floating children and left-behind children in China. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315148182
Mu, G. M., & Hu, Y. (2016). Living with vulnerabilities and opportunities in a migration context: Floating children and left-behind children in China. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Murphy, R. (2020). The children of China’s great migration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
National Bureau of Statistics of China, UNICEF China, & UNFPA China. (2023). What the 2020 census can tell us about children in China: Facts and figures. Retrieved from https://www.stats.gov.cn/zs/tjwh/tjkw/tjzl/202304/P020230419425670560273.pdf
Qi, C., & Yang, N. (2024). An examination of the effects of family, school, and community resilience on high school students’ resilience in China. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1279577
Ramasubramanian, S., & Banjo, O. O. (2020). Critical media effects framework: Bridging critical cultural communication and media effects through power, intersectionality, context, and agency. Journal of Communication, 70(3), 379-400. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa014
Seeberg, V. (2024). The social and educational impact of rural migration in China. Chinese Education & Society, 57(1-2), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10611932.2024.2377002
Sheng, Y. (2022). The impacts of internal migration on rural Chinese children: An overview of left-behind children (Senior theses, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA). Retrieved from https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2980
Si, Z., Du, W., Guo, W., Shi, M., & Song, X. (2023). A multi-modal interactive picture book for Chinese left-behind children: A case study based on dear ducklings. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 325-332. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49212-9_41
Sun, X., Tian, Y., Zhang, Y., Xie, X., Heath, M. A., & Zhou, Z. (2015). Psychological development and educational problems of left-behind children in rural China. School Psychology International, 36(3), 227-252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034314566669
Tang, W., & Guan, B. (2021, September). Discussion on the reportage of left-behind children from the perspective of critical discourse analysis: A case study of China Daily. In 6th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities. (Philosophy of Being Human as the Core of Interdisciplinary Research)(ICCESSH 2021) (pp. 161-166). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210902.027
Tao, L. (2015). Media representation of internal migrant children in China between 1990 and 2012 (Master’s thesis, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/54510
Wang, Y. (2021). Representing ethnic minority cultures in China: Museums, heritage, and ethnic minority groups (Doctoral dissertation, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK). https://doi.org/10.25392/leicester.data.17099732.v1
Wei, L., Yang, Y., Zhang, J., & Si, L. (2022). Rural-urban migration, family arrangement, and children's welfare: Evidence from China's rural areas. Family Relations, 72(4), 1586-1606.
Yan, Z. (2018). Geographies of the ethnic minority children in Chinese cinema (1990s and 2000s): Rurality, ethnicity and nationalism (Doctoral dissertation, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia). https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/3426
You, C. (2018). New realities and representations of homelessness in Chinese children’s literature in an era of urbanization. Children’s Literature in Education, 50(4), 365-380. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-018-9364-8
Zhao, C., Wang, F., Zhou, X., Jiang, M., & Hesketh, T. (2018). Impact of parental migration on psychosocial well-being of children left behind: A qualitative study in rural China. International Journal for Equity in Health, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-018-0795-z
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The philosophy of the journal is to be open and to make all articles accessible. It is our belief that open access is a must in the future of science.
Authors who publish with RCR accept a slightly modified Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
You, as author, retain the copyrights for your paper, but the Review of Communication Research is granted exclusivity for publication of the article. The agreement allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and publication in this journal. We do not want third parties to make a commercial use of the article, unless we agree it with authors.
The journal will run an open review process as well as a traditional peer review process.
When the manuscript is accepted for publication, it will get a doi number and get available online to facilitate early citation.
The journal will post the published article to many public repositories for further diffusion and permanence.
You, as author, are permitted and encouraged to post your work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on your website), as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
If you have any doubts, please, contact the editor: editor@rcommunication.org
Many thanks for submitting your work to this journal.