China Through Foreign Voices: The Multimodal Construction of China in Food Short Videos

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_37How to use a DOI?

Keywords

multimodal interaction; China image; Chinese culture; cross-cultural communication; short video

Abstract

With the enhancement of China’s comprehensive national strength and the promotion of international Chinese education, an increasing number of foreigners are learning Chinese, pursuing education in China, and sharing their experiences on social media. Such “other” narratives led by foreign creators have become an important folk channel for spreading Chinese stories and constructing China’s image, serving as a valuable supplement to official foreign publicity discourse. Based on multimodal interaction theory, this study takes the influential foreign blogger “Chris the Foreigner” on Douyin as a case study. It systematically analyzes modal resources (including images, texts, and sounds) in his short videos, exploring how multimodal symbols collaboratively construct China’s image and how the creator attracts audiences and achieves meaning resonance through modal combination strategies. This research aims to provide new perspectives and practical insights for cross-cultural communication and national image construction.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jinxuan Xie
AU  - Chunhong Qi
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - China Through Foreign Voices: The Multimodal Construction of China in Food Short Videos
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 5th International Conference on Culture, Design and Social Development (CDSD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 322
EP  - 336
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_37
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-541-6_37
ID  - Xie2026
ER  -