Abstract China’s official discourse on cybersecurity has undergone significant evolution in response to evolving governance challenges. This study examines how cybersecurity is discursively constructed in China through a longitudinal analysis of authoritative political speeches delivered between 2013 and 2025. These texts are treated here as a systematic corpus that provides access to the recontextualization of security threats, policy rationales, and normative frameworks over time. Integrating Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical approach (DHA) with corpus-based methods, the analysis proceeds along three dimensions: discourse themes, discursive strategies, and socio-historical context. Findings indicate a stage-based evolution, shifting from confrontational security defense to institutionalized governance, and then to cooperation and coordinated development. Thematic priorities include macro-level governance, public opinion guidance, techno-economic development, and international cooperation. Discursively, a recurrent argumentative pattern of “risk-necessity- responsibility” emerges, serving as a key legitimizing device.
Jian et al. (Wed,) studied this question.