A Comparative Study of Ideological Differences in News Reports on the US and China Trade War
Jianfen Chen

Abstract
This comparative study aims at examining the ideologies that are in play in the news coverage of the pressing trade conflicts between the US and China. Employing critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework and the tools of “othering” and “stance-taking”, this study surveyed the dataset comprising 40 news reports on the trade disputes of the two countries from August 2017 to January 2019, with 17 covered by The Washington Post and 23 appearing in China Daily. The findings of the study revealed the divisive ideologies regarding the trade war in the USand the unified and consistent ideologies in China, indicating the superficial language variations are caused by differences in ideologies as the hidden and driving forces behind the discursive discourse forms. This study further contextualized the trade conflicts within the nexus of the US hegemony, the increasing national power of China, and the concept of “China threat” to interpret the complex ideological differences hidden in the newstexts in the time of national conflicts.

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