Research on China’s National Image Construction From the Perspective of Conceptual Metaphor: A Case Study of the Culture-related Reports in the Japanese Version of People’s Daily

China's mainstream media constitute the major carrier of discourse and the vital communication platform for its national image construction.This research adopts the conceptual metaphor theory and a corpus-based approach, to analyze both qualitatively and quantitatively the culture-related discourse in the Japanese version of People's Daily, which is among China's mainstream media.Specifically, the conceptual metaphor types utilized, the features of the culture-related discourse, and China's national image thus constructed are closely examined.Results suggest that substance metaphor, war metaphor, plant metaphor, and travel metaphor are commonly used to represent the culturerelated discourse, which features vigor, interaction, a driver of cultural exchange, and readiness to be embraced by foreign readership.Based on this, a reliable, lovely, and respectable national image of China, which is culturally rich and confident, is successfully formed.