City in the midst of China’s turnaround

Guangzhou has a long history as a port city and it can be said to be one of the early global cities. This paper will analyse how Guangzhou joined to the global economy after China started its reform policies. The study discusses how Guangzhou was perceived by the international newspapers, The New York Times and The Guardian. Even though newspapers rarely discuss about Guangzhou it is possible to build up an image through the contexts and associations. The image is path dependent; the history of the city guides the ideas and reflections of the writers. Guangzhou’s image in the early 1980s is contradictory and conflicting. Guangzhou is at the same time backward and modern, open to the new ideas and Chinese. It’s the port city of the opium and the smuggling base of televisions and radios. It is the capital city of Guangdong province which is at the forefront of reform policies but it is also at the periphery. It is far away from Beijing and therefore less powerful of changing whole China.