Description
Existing scholarship in international political economy, international business, and media studies generally suggests that Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) behave - and are likely to be portrayed - differently from their U.S. counterparts. At least in Western media outlets. Divergent institutional environments, media dynamics, and intensifying geopolitical pressure would all lead us to expect differences in how firms from the two countries are portrayed in the same media outlet. Yet our analysis of approximately 85,000 environmentally relevant news articles published between 1980 and 2023 in leading U.S. (The New York Times), mainland Chinese (China Daily, Global Times), and Hong Kong (South China Morning Post) newspapers reveals a different pattern: Chinese and U.S. MNEs receive broadly similar aggregate levels of negative environmental coverage within the same media outlets, despite originating from different political-economic systems. Why does convergence emerge where existing scholarship would expect divergence?
Drawing on liberal, constructivist, and realist perspectives, this paper develops a framework linking convergence to market pressures, transnational norm diffusion, and strategic state interests. By attempting to explain why U.S. and Chinese MNEs are evaluated similarly on an aggregate level, the paper contributes to debates on corporate legitimacy, global governance, and the relationship between conflict and cooperation in the contemporary international political economy. Doing so, the paper underlines media as an important arena in which corporate legitimacy is constructed and contested.