Metaphors and China’s COVID-19 policies : a diachronic analysis of Chinese-English bilingual news editorials

Liu, Yufeng and Li, Dechao (2025) Metaphors and China’s COVID-19 policies : a diachronic analysis of Chinese-English bilingual news editorials. Text & Talk.

Abstract

China implemented stringent COVID restrictions in 2020 but eased them in December 2022. Since metaphors can both reflect and shape people’s views and stances, it is relevant to study how the state-backed newspaper Global Times used metaphors to frame the policy shift for different target readers. It extends our previous research on the newspaper’s 2020 editorials, revealing the fluidity of metaphors used by the same text producer during a period of significant transition. Despite changes in COVID-19 policies, the newspaper continued to use WAR metaphors between January 2022 and February 2023. However, the gradual increase in JOURNEY metaphors and decrease in WAR metaphors over time suggest a transition from a “militaristic” to a “smoother” portrayal of the pandemic’s progression. While the newspaper consistently maintained pro-China and anti-US stances, it used fewer metaphors to describe the US position. The metaphor shift for China from “a person who does not lie flat” to “a person who rolls up sleeves and works hard” aligns with the government’s change in focus from the pandemic situation to economic recovery. It should be noted that translation practices further affect metaphor perception, with source-text readers exposed to more negative depictions of the pandemic and the US compared to target-text readers. Future research could explore these metaphors’ impact on audiences.