Political discourse analysis in operation

Abstract After implementing of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for four years, the Chinese government convened the BRI Summits in Beijing in 2017 and 2019, respectively. This article will address the questions of how the summits were covered in translated news by using empirical data from news published on the Reference News , a state-owned newspaper that publishes translated news, in comparison to news carried in People’s Daily , an authoritative national newspaper in China. Situated in the framework of political discourse analysis (PDA) within critical discourse analysis (CDA) and using the method of qualitative thematic analysis, the study shows that translated news is a platform where contentious ideologies are at play and where dominant ones leave little room for the confrontational. In this process, translators are submissive actors whose work is navigated by the agenda set by the authorities in either legitimizing or representing frames in mainstream media.