City Images of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou projected by the media in the West

A favourable city image contributes heavily to economic and social-cultural development of the city itself, that as a result helps to build the image of the nation where the city is located. This paper investigates how China's three biggest cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, that devote lots of resources to promote themselves overseas, strategically collaborate with each other to build the image of China overseas. It examines the media projection of the three cities by using a content analysis approach to analyse the online news reports published on the websites of The Guardian, The Washington Post and The Sydney Morning Herald. The findings demonstrate that cooperation among the three cities is based upon marketing themselves abroad with a clear positioning. To be specific, Beijing as a capital city and political centre of China needs to focus on improving its environmental image and be more responsible at the international stage, Shanghai as the business centre of China can continuously build itself as an economic engine of China, and Guangzhou that is not as well as Beijing and Shanghai overseas should promote itself by taking the advantage of its sport strength.