Issue narratives in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign policy discourse

This article aims to classify and characterize problematic narratives used in the official foreign policy discourse of Chinese President Xi Jinping to justify his foreign policy, respond to international challenges, and strengthen the country’s position on the international stage. Using content analysis, the authors identify eight of the most frequently occurring problematic narratives in this discourse. Based on empirical data from thematic clustering and critical discourse analysis, they identify three key ones: technological, development cooperation, and security and stability. They analyze the nature of their changes from 2013 to 2024. Based on this, they characterize China’s increased role in the search for answers to foreign policy challenges and the formation of an image of a responsible actor capable of offering an alternative to the Western vision of the global order and new approaches to solving its problems.