Migrant stories meet great power rivalry? US media narratives of post-pandemic Chinese asylum seekers, 2022–2023

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, American authorities detained unprecedented numbers of Chinese asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. China, much unlike other migrant origin countries, is an industrialised great power rival of the US. This article sheds light on how the US news media frames post-pandemic Chinese asylum seekers amidst geopolitical uncertainties stemming from the border crisis and US-China great power rivalry. It employs a qualitative framework to examine media narratives as a multi-level interplay between narratives and frames. Three narrative frames are identified between texts: Asylum seekers as (F1) threatened Chinese people, (F2) Chinese government threat and (F3) proving Chinese failure and American exceptionalism. The first two frames largely correspond to partisan biases of media outlets by either humanising or securitising Chinese asylum seekers. The third frame appears consistently across bias categories and reproduces the US government’s own strategic narratives about US-China competition.