Communication & Global Power Shifts| The Life and Times of “Chimerica”: Global Press Discourses on U.S.-China Economic Integration, Financial Crisis, and Power Shifts

Abstract

“Chimerica” first appeared in the Anglo-American press in 2007, when it described an interconnected U.S. and Chinese economy in a neoliberal triumphalist tone just before the September 2008 Wall Street financial crisis. The term subsequently gained currency in the wider global English-language press as a particular way of understanding and solving this crisis, and as a means for discussing global power shifts and projecting the geopolitical implications of U.S.–China economic relations. Global English-language press discourses on the life and times of Chimerica reveal continuing Anglo-American ideological and discursive domination and joint ideological work performed by Anglo-American and Chinese opinion elites to sustain the neoliberal capitalist order during a moment of acute crisis. However, the globalist ideology underpinning such an order, though widespread, is also shallow and unstable; moreover, it is paradoxically intertwined with a salient nation-state-centric press frame.