- Xi Jinping's Report to the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress: keywords and discursive trends

Abstract

This contribution focuses on discursive trends in the text of the Report to the 20^th Chinese Communist Party Congress presented by Xi Jinping in October 2022. The study aims to highlight the value and discursive implications of a selection of terms which, based on their pervasiveness and collocation and their political relevance, appear either significantly central or significantly peripheral in the text. In order to foreground continuity and discontinuity in the political project expressed by the Chinese leadership, the analysis compares the 2022 Report with the Report presented by Xi Jinping at the 19^th Party Congress in 2017. By applying a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology, highly frequent terms and keywords are identified, their collocations and concordances are observed and their implications are analysed in order to discuss words and expressions that stand out for their discursive and political poignancy.