Comparative Analysis of Chinese and International Media Coverage of the Overseas Activities of China’s National Oil Companies

In this paper, we examine how English-language daily media worldwide portray China and its National Oil Companies (NOCs). Our analysis focuses on a specific topic: the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) activities of the China National Petroleum Company during the 2010s. This study combines Michel Foucault’s sociological insights on discourse with a critique of the idea that wealth alone equals power. We look at how the oil market, despite being limited to a few NOCs, affects various sectors of the modern economy and consumer prices, thus impacting citizens globally. China plays a significant role in this market. We aim to understand how general daily newspapers, widely read by the public and the expert communities, shape perceptions of China and its primary NOCs. Our focus is on uncovering how this image is formed, similar to Foucault's emphasis on the process of subjectivization within discourse rather than on individual subjects, explaining discourse as a system of dispersion.