China’s national science system at a crossroads Discursive representation of “academic publications” in People’s Daily (2000–2023)

China is reportedly shifting from pooling resources to support international publishing to advocating domestic publishing, leading to concerns about its future contribution to global science. This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of news coverage in the People’s Daily, China’s official mouthpiece, from 2000 to 2023. It investigates how the official media’s representation of academic publications evolved over time and examines the various discursive strategies employed to construct relevant news discourses. Four main discourses were identified. Findings show that discourses conveying the ideology of scientific globalism remained dominant almost continuously from 2000 to 2021. However, after 2016, when President Xi Jinping called on researchers to “write the paper on the homeland,” discourses promoting scientific nationalism became increasingly pronounced. The discourses of “publication as bargaining chips for success” and “publications as de jure engines of nation-building” surged thereafter, with the latter becoming the dominant one in 2022 and 2023. Positive self-presentation was the primary strategy for constructing the discourses in most cases, while negative other-presentation was often used to construct the Bargaining Chips discourse. This study captures China’s agency in building its national science system, deepening our understanding of how “non-central” countries engage with global science.