May 12, 2008, a devastating 8.0 magnitude earthquake took place in Sichuan province, China. From May 12 to 12:00 am, June 14, 2008, the earthquake has caused 69,197 death, 374,176 injured, and 18,289 disappeared. 15.15million people were forced to leave their homes，which added up to 45.55 million victims, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China (MCA). The 2008 Sichuan Earthquake was the most devastating in the record since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China.
The earthquake also caught intensive media attentions in the international community. Mainstream English media outlets such as the New York Times, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, BBC, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC had consecutive news reports on the crisis. Chinese state media such as the Xinhua News Agency, CCTV and the China Daily also sent out a large amount of correspondents to the frontlines.
The earthquake occurred at a critical time – it was 3 months before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Opening, and 3 months after the 2008 Blizzard Crisis and the 2008 Tibet Riots outbreak. The timing of this disaster makes the government’s public/media diplomacy even more worthy or the digging. It will be interesting to look into how Chinese government use soft power to manage crisis communication in a sensitive situation,
Facing such devastating natural disaster, Chinese government seems to have no choice but facing the challenge and taking the responsibility to fix the damages. The corrective of offensiveness and bolstering strategies are better than shifting the blame or avoiding the responsibility – they are actually the only and the best options for Chinese government at the period of time. Both the strategies directly deal with the trauma and the victims.
It is more importantly that strategies are imbedded in effective discourse. The framing and media agenda setting have effectively imbed those strategies in the news papers. The key message was conveyed through the president’s New Year’s speech, and the message which can arouse national morale was incorporated in the various special events and entertainments. Chinese government implemented the strategies in subtle ways – the effective discourse has facilitated the persuasion for the Chinese public.
Lessons
However, Chinese government failed to seize the first place to announce the earthquake, therefore causing the unexpected panic among the Chinese public. Meanwhile, besides consoling the Chinese people by organizing mourning events and special memorials, it could be better if the government applied the mortification strategy to directly address apology to the general public. By doing this, it would win the government more credits because the public knows the occurrence of the disaster is not the government’s fault and it is considerably humble and caring for the government to issue such an apology.
This case study provides the crisis communication strategies that Chinese government implemented during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The government has chosen the right strategies – Framing and Agenda Setting, Bolstering and Corrective of Offensiveness to counter the negative effects of the trauma, repair the national image of China and to generate the Chinese people’s morale. This study also found out that Chinese government failed to seize the first place to inform the domestic public of the crisis thus risking being accused of being irresponsible for its people. This failure might be the result of the influence of the deeply rooted Chinese culture and values of “saving face” and the risks of damaging the rising international reputation that China is getting since the last decade.
Future study about government crisis communication could dig more into the context and historical position where the administration is in, thus the researchers might be able to discover some correlations between the crisis communication strategies applied and the historical context and position in the world that the government possesses.
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