Hcss report

HCSS REPORT
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comprehensive database of – what these countries themselves say about this. 
Unfortunately there are no equivalents to GDELT for this. As we briefly described 
above, HCSS therefore decided to create the HCSS ‘Off-Base’, a database containing 
all text-based webpages of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of 7 great powers, 
including China and Russia. In this section we will just zoom in on all occurrences of a 
basket of terms that can be said to convey a sense of that country’s assertiveness. 
We will examine which other terms also occur around those assertiveness-related 
terms on these web-pages. To the extent possible, we use the same coding 
conventions as we did for GDELT. As with GDELT, this is pioneering work. As such, it 
remains subject to a number of important caveats that are described in more detail in 
our supporting material
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. But HCSS strongly feels that the field of foreign and security 
policy analysis is in dire need of more systematic datasets. We therefore use any 
opportunity to push the boundaries of our possibilities. It is in this spirit that we 
constructed this new dataset and present this preliminary analysis.
China: Professing Positive Assertiveness... Except in its ‘Near Abroad’
In order to be able to zoom in on all instances of China’s possible assertiveness (as 
opposed to Chinese claims about other countries’ assertiveness), we used the 
following ‘basket’ of expressions: 
“
China assert”
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OR “China want” OR “China 
need” OR “China claim” OR “China reaffirm” OR “China provoke” OR China 
“defamation”. 
The results suggest that China seems to position itself as a great power by promoting 
its own aspirations for a peaceful rise, and denouncing assertiveness and assertive 
behaviors of others – especially those threatening its interests. On its website, China 
portrays itself as a great power that is increasingly asserting its national 
grandeur
. This 
assertiveness is most firmly (and increasingly) expressed in matters of territorial 
sovereignty and tends to be voiced at the regional level (Southeast Asia and East Asia, 
including Japan). Our findings suggest that the international economic and political 
spheres – more so than the military sphere – are deemed increasingly important in 
the making and promotion of China as a great power. 
All key words that were analyzed have significantly gained in importance in recent 
years (particularly since 2007-8) in terms of normalized frequency of occurrence.

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