Subsuming Daguo under “Great Power”

Abstract Interlingual quotation has rarely been recognized as a distinct discursive practice in international politics. This study examines how the United States strategically quotes Chinese official discourse in its annual China Military Power Reports (2000–2025). Extending Discourse-Conceptual Analysis (DCA) with Discourse Theory and translation studies, it adopts a two-step design: a corpus-based mapping of thematic shifts across 25 reports, followed by a semantic-field analysis of the Chinese concept daguo (“big country”) and its shifting English renderings. The analysis identifies several pivotal junctures, notably 2012 and 2020, where quotation volume, ideological lexicon, and (re)translational choices reconfigure alongside China’s more proactive external posture and the fluctuating tenor of Sino-U.S. relations. While Beijing anchors daguo to a non-hegemonic self-image, the CMPRs recurrently subsume it under the Western “great power” framework, reinscribing the very power-political connotations Chinese discourse works to foreclose. It establishes interlingual quotation as a critical site for cross-national conceptual domestication.