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<p>The rapid expansion of China’s green energy sector has attracted worldwide attention, especially from the U.S. media. As a leading U.S. newspaper, <i>The New York Times</i> (NYT) plays an important role in shaping global perceptions of China’s environmental policies and national image. Against this backdrop, we retrieved from LexisNexis and collected 121 news reports from NYT about China’s green energy, totaling 172,480 tokens. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis theory (CDA), and using AntConc and KH Coder, we conducted a quantitative analysis of the high frequency words and the co-occurrence network of the target news, as well as a qualitative analysis of the discursive strategies employed by NYT, in order to reveal the ideological tendency and discourse logic of the U.S. media. The results show that the topics in NYT’s reports on China’s green energy go beyond environmental issues and frequently extend to the economic domain. By adopting flexible and diverse discursive strategies, such as nomination (tropes, membership category devices, and labels), predication, and argumentation strategies, NYT explicitly recognizes China’s achievements and status as a “green pioneer” in contemporary ecological governance. However, it also implicitly portrays China as a “profit maximizer” that leverages the green transition to dominate key raw materials, scale up its new energy vehicle industry, and flood the global market with cheap electric vehicles. In doing so, NYT constructs a complex image of China being technologically advanced in green energy but economically benefited in the green industry. The findings suggest that such reporting not only mediates international understanding of China’s green transition, but also reflects a broader struggle over discursive power in global climate governance.</p>

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Green pioneer and profit maximizer: China’s green energy image constructed in The New York Times

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月10日

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  • Wei Gong,
  • Cuiying Zou

摘要

The rapid expansion of China’s green energy sector has attracted worldwide attention, especially from the U.S. media. As a leading U.S. newspaper, The New York Times (NYT) plays an important role in shaping global perceptions of China’s environmental policies and national image. Against this backdrop, we retrieved from LexisNexis and collected 121 news reports from NYT about China’s green energy, totaling 172,480 tokens. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis theory (CDA), and using AntConc and KH Coder, we conducted a quantitative analysis of the high frequency words and the co-occurrence network of the target news, as well as a qualitative analysis of the discursive strategies employed by NYT, in order to reveal the ideological tendency and discourse logic of the U.S. media. The results show that the topics in NYT’s reports on China’s green energy go beyond environmental issues and frequently extend to the economic domain. By adopting flexible and diverse discursive strategies, such as nomination (tropes, membership category devices, and labels), predication, and argumentation strategies, NYT explicitly recognizes China’s achievements and status as a “green pioneer” in contemporary ecological governance. However, it also implicitly portrays China as a “profit maximizer” that leverages the green transition to dominate key raw materials, scale up its new energy vehicle industry, and flood the global market with cheap electric vehicles. In doing so, NYT constructs a complex image of China being technologically advanced in green energy but economically benefited in the green industry. The findings suggest that such reporting not only mediates international understanding of China’s green transition, but also reflects a broader struggle over discursive power in global climate governance.