Geopolitical Allies or Adversaries? The Construction of Geopolitical Identity in Chinese Media’s Coverage of the Russia–Ukraine War

This chapter investigates how Chinese national news media discursively construct Chinese geopolitical identity groups in their coverage of the Russia–Ukraine war. Using Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Studies, the chapter critically analyses a corpus of circa 2,780,000 words, drawn from over 5,000 English-language news articles from China Daily and People's Daily, examining the representation of Russia and Ukraine through referential and predication strategies, and the discursive construction of transitivity. Using van Dijk's (1998) ideological square and the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016), the chapter explores how linguistic labelling and collocational patterns reflect China's pragmatic alignment with Russia while positioning the West as a threatening out-group. The analysis reveals that Russia is routinely portrayed as a key trade partner and non-aggressor, while Ukraine is largely framed in economic terms, with its sovereignty emphasised in ways that deflect parallels to Taiwan. This discursive construction supports the ideological positioning of Russia as a geopolitical in-group member whilst simultaneously legitimising China's stance of strategic neutrality. The chapter contributes to growing scholarship on Chinese media's role in international conflict reporting and offers insights into the intersection of media discourse, state ideology, and global power relations.