A Corpus-based Discourse Study of Sustainability in the Chinese English-language Press Across 2013 and 2024

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2026.i28.1762

Keywords:

Sustainability, News discourse, Diachronic studies, Corpus-based studies, China Daily

Abstract

Sustainability is a major global concern in this era of heightened climate change awareness, yet its discursive production in China’s official media remains underexplored. Therefore, this article conducts a diachronic corpus-based study of the discourse of sustainability represented in China Daily. The corpus is divided into two periods: from 2013 to 2018 and from 2019 to 2024. The findings from the data of these two periods indicate that China has consistently been an active participant in sustainability, with the economy serving as its key engine. Compared to the first period, in which domestic sustainability issues were the main concern, the second period gives greater prominence to international sustainability. During this transition, China’s focus has gradually shifted from domestic reform to a global orientation, and its image has evolved from an active practitioner to a regional leader in sustainability issues. It is suggested that China may further integrate social and environmental dimensions to present a more holistic narrative of its understanding and actions in sustainability.

Author Biographies

  • Ruby Rong Wei, China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing
    • Ruby Rong WEI is an Associate Professor of linguistics at China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing. Her research interests include ecolinguistics, systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies. She has authored the monograph Systemic Functional Framework for International Ecological Discourse Analysis (2022, Wuhan University Press). Also she has co-authored the two books Functional Semantic Analysis of Chinese (2017, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press) and Functional Semantic Analysis of English (2017, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press). Ruby Rong has her recent publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Text & Talk, Functions of Language, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, and Journal of World Languages. 
  • Joanna Zijing Yin, China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing
    • Joanna Zijing Yin is a senior undergraduate student majoring in English at China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing. Her research interests include ecolinguistics, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and intercultural communication. Joanna has a recent publication in the Chinese journal Comparative Study of Cultural Innovation.
  • Robert Poole, University of Alabama

    Robert Poole is an Associate Professor of TESOL and Applied Linguistics at the University of Alabama. His research interests include corpus-assisted discourse analysis, corpus-assisted ecolinguistics, and the use of corpora in language teaching and learning. His most recent book, Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistics, was published in 2022 by Bloomsbury Academic. Additionally, Robert has recent publications in Applied Corpus Linguistics, Corpora, the Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies, and the Journal of World Languages. He is currently serving as the lead academic editor of the forthcoming The Bloomsbury Handbook on Ecolinguistics. His current book project focuses specifically on language change of ecological relevance within US English language use—it will be published in 2026 with Routledge Publishing.

References

Adams, William M. The Future of Sustainability: Re-thinking Environment and Development in the Twenty-First Century. IUCN, 2006.

Angst, Mario and Nadine Strauß. “Discourses Surrounding Sustainability and Digitalization in Europe on Twitter over Time.” GAIA-Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 32.1 (2023): 10-20.

Baker, Paul. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum, 2006.

Baker, Paul, et al. “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press.” Discourse & Society 19.3 (2008): 273-306.

Bednarek, Monika and Helen Caple. The Discourse of News Values: How News Organizations Create Newsworthiness. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Biggeri, Mario, et al. “Policy and Political Challenges for a Better World: The United States and China Pathways towards the 2030 Agenda.” Ecological Economics 209 (2023): 107821.

Brundtland, Gro Harlem. Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Chi, Fulin. “Towards a Fair and Sustainable Market Economy.” Academic Journal 5 (2012): 242-245.

Dahl, Trine and Kjersti Fløttum. “Verbal-Visual Harmony or Dissonance? A News Values Analysis of Multimodal News Texts on Climate Change.” Discourse, Context & Media 20 (2017): 124-131.

Drucker, Johanna. “Sustainability and Complexity: Knowledge and Authority in the Digital Humanities.” DIGITAL Scholarship in the Humanities 36 (2021): 86-94.

Else, Tim, Sonal Choudhary and Andrea Genovese. “Uncovering Sustainability Storylines from Dairy Supply Chain Discourse.” Journal of Business Research 142 (2022): 858-874.

Elsoufy, Ayman Mohamed. “Media Bias through Collocations: A Corpus-Based Study of Egyptian and Ethiopian News Coverage of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.” Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 11.1 (2024): 1-15.

Feola, Giuseppe and Sylvia Jaworska. “One Transition, Many Transitions? A Corpus-Based Study of Societal Sustainability Transition Discourses in Four Civil Society’s Proposals.” Sustainability Science 14.6 (2019): 1643-1656.

Fleurbaey, Marc, et al. A Manifesto for Social Progress: Ideas for a Better Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Ghosh, Aditya and Maxwell Boykoff. “Framing Sustainability and Climate Change: Interrogating Discourses in Vernacular and English-Language Media in Sundarbans, India.” Geoforum 99 (2019): 142-153.

Grober, Ulrich. “Deep Roots: A Conceptual History of ‘Sustainable Development’ (Nachhaltigkeit).” (2007): 33 https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/11077. Last visited 30/01/2026.

He, Donghang. “China’s Actions for Sustainability and High-Quality Development of Economy and Society.” Journal of Shanxi University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 47.1 (2024): 1-11.

Huan, Changpeng and Menghan Deng. “Partners or Predators? A Corpus-Based Study of China’s Image in South African Media.” African Journalism Studies 42.3 (2021): 34-50.

Huang, Shizhong. “The Origin and Evolution of Sustainability and Sustainable Development.” Accounting Monthly 45.1 (2024): 3-9.

Jaworska, Sylvia and Anupam Nanda. “Doing Well by Talking Good: A Topic Modelling-Assisted Discourse Study of Corporate Social Responsibility.” Applied Linguistics 39.3 (2018): 373-399.

Li, Zhuoran and Ronghui Zhao. “Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of China’s Image in News Discourse on Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality in China Daily.” Acta Psychologica 255 (2025): 104945.

Liu, Chen, et al. “A Chinese Route to Sustainability: Postsocialist Transitions and the Construction of Ecological Civilization.” Sustainable Development, 26.6 (2018): 741-748.

Liu, Ming. “Discursive Construction of China’s Ecological Images: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study.” Modern Foreign Languages 46.1 (2023): 83-96.

Liu, Xiaoyan. “Thinking on Shaping of State Images by the Media.” Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication 2 (2002): 61-66.

Munteanu, Ionela, Liliana Ionescu-Feleaga and Bogdan Stefan Ionescu. “Financial Strategies for Sustainability: Examining the Circular Economy Perspective.” Sustainability 16.20 (2024): 8942.

Näyhä, Annukka and Venla Wallius. “Actors, Discourses and Relations in the Finnish Newspapers’ Forest Discussion: Enabling or Constraining the Sustainability Transition?” Forest Policy and Economics 169 (2024): 103331.

Nervino, Esterina, Joyce Oiwun Cheung and Jiayi Chen. “Charting the Path of Sustainability Discourse Research: A Systematic Review of Applied Linguistic Studies.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 34.3 (2024): 862-883.

Ngai, PB. “Local interpretation of the global discourse of sustainability and sustainable development in rural Cambodia.” Environmental Communication 14.8 (2020): 1079-1096.

Nguyen, Minh Hieu and Brian Clancy. “Representations of LGBT People in Vietnamese Online Newspapers: A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Study.” Discourse & Society 37.2 (2025): 267-287.

Power, Kate. “‘Sustainability’ and the Performing Arts: Discourse Analytic Evidence from Australia.” Poetics 89 (2021): 101580.

Purvis, Ben, Yong Mao and Darren Robinson. “Three Pillars of Sustainability: In Search of Conceptual Origins.” Sustainability Science, 14.3 (2019): 681-695.

Ren, Jingjing. “Historical Significance and Contemporary Value of the Bandung Spirit: An Analysis Focusing on Global South Cooperation.” Yunnan Social Sciences 5 (2025): 12-22.

Rychlý, Pavel. “A Lexicographer-Friendly Association Score.” Proceedings of Recent Advances in Slavonic Natural Language Processing, RASLAN 2008. Edited by Petr Sojka e Aleš Horák. Brno: Masaryk University, 2008. 6-9.

Schulhof, Vera, et al. “Conceptualizing Sustainability in China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Longitudinal Analysis of Scholarship (2013 - 2024).” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 212 (2025): 107891.

Touri, Mariam and Natalia Koteyko. “Using Corpus Linguistic Software in the Extraction of News Frames.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 18.6 (2015): 601-616.

Van Dijk, Teun A. News as Discourse. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988.

Wei, Ruby Rong. “Agency and Responsibility in Environmental Reporting in the Chinese Press: A Corpus-Based Diachronic Analysis.” Text & Talk 43.3 (2023): 357-379.

World Bank Group. 2019. Belt and Road Economics: Opportunities and Risks of Transport Corridors. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31878 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO. Last visited 30/01/2026.

Xiao, Wei. “Challenges and Empowerment in Implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” Journal of Shanghai Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 54.2 (2025): 39-47.

Xue, Kun Deng Yong and Wang Shiyan. “What Factors Influence National Image in Disaster Reports? Evidence from China.” Quality & Quantity 49.3 (2015): 1257-1265.

Xu, Jingya and Song Zhouying. “Spatial Temporal Coupling between the Global Digital Economy and Sustainable Development.” Geographical Science 45.1 (2025): 164-175.

Yang, Mei and Wang Ziwei. “A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis of China’s National Image Constructed by Environmental News in the New York Times.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10.1 (2023): 545.

Zhang, Danqing, et al. “The Evolution of Sustainability Ideas in China from 1946 to 2015, Quantified by Culturomics.” Sustainability 14.10 (2022): 6038.

Zhang, Ping. “The Transformation and Prospects of China’s Macroeconomic Narrative (1978-2025).” Journal of Beijing University of Technology (Social Sciences Edition) 23.5 (2023): 93-110.

Zhang, Shaofeng, Chen Shiyi and Fang Lingying. “The Construction and Adjustment of the Socialist Market Economy System.” Inner Mongolia Social Sciences 46.4 (2025): 128-135.

Zhang, Xiaolian and Wenhua Li. “Framing China’s Climate Action: A Corpus-Assisted Discursive News Values Analysis in Chinese Media Discourse.” Environmental Research Communications 8.2 (2026): 25019.

Zhou, Hongchun, Shi Zuoting and Jiang Xiaojun. “30 Years of Sustainable Development in China.” China Population, Resources and Environment 31.9 (2021): 171-178.

Zhu, Boyan, et al. “China’s Domestic Image and Media Use: A Case Study and Empirical Analysis of China’s Post-90s Generation.” Sustainability 14.9 (2022): 5553.

Zhu, Xuefeng and Wang Qin. “Gender Issues Discussed in Media and the Promotion of China’s Voice in the World: Comparing China Daily and The New York Times on Reporting ‘Leftover Women’ in China.” Journal of Chinese Women’s Studies 1 (2021): 124-128.

Downloads

Published

2026-09-11

Issue

No. 28 (2026): Narratives of Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Insights and Ecolinguistic Perspectives

Section

Articles: Special Section

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Ruby Rong Wei, Joanna Zijing Yin, Robert Poole

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

 Iperstoria is an Open Access journal.

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 BY License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of their work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. We kindly ask authors to inform us of any instances of re-publication.