Abstract This study focuses on the media representations of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in China Daily . By combining critical discourse analysis and the theoretical concept of friendship in international relations, it aims to provide insights into the strategic representations of China’s English-language coverage of the conflict. Meanwhile, it seeks to contribute a critical analysis to the ideological influence of national friendship on the news discourses of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The study identifies four main themes surrounding Russia, Ukraine, America and China, namely, “Russia masters the situation”, “Ukraine fights against aggression”, “the United States-led West is a troublemaker”, and “China is a peacemaker”. Under the main thematic frames, it analyses their representative discourses by drawing on the discourse-historical approach and applies the friendship concept to critically analyse the power and ideologies that are embedded in the news representations. It argues that the friendships between China and the involved major states impact on China’s news discursive representations of the conflict, which offers a new analytical dimension that friendship is a power element that can be used to analyse news discourse and also a key factor in China’s geopolitical consideration.
Junchen Zhang (Thu,) studied this question.