Media Framing of China’s Aerospace Achievement: A CDA Perspective

Abstract

This study employs a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) method to explore how People’s Daily, the official newspaper of Communist Party of China (CPC), constructs ideological narratives in 43 front-page headline news covering China’s aerospace achievements from 2003 to 2023. Drawing on Fairclough’s and van Dijk’s frameworks, the research examines lexical choices and rhetorical strategies that frame aerospace advancements within China’s state ideology. Findings reveal the systematic use of nationalistic vocabulary, collectivist pronouns, verb expressions with neat parallelism, and emotive language to link technological success in China’s aerospace with political legitimacy. Rhetorical devices such as syntactic parallelism, metaphor, and presupposition reinforce narratives of national unity of Chinese and the historical destiny to develop aerospace. The discourse naturalizes CPC’s leadership and positions readers into a shared identity cantered on technological pride, and demonstrates how state media functions ideologically to shape public consciousness of building their nation and legitimize the legitimacy of the Party in power. This research enhances our understanding that technology-focused news coverage also serves a symbolic function in shaping China’s political narrative.