1 Introduction

President Xi Jinping (2022) stated in his report to the 20th CPC National Congress: “We will accelerate the development of China’s discourse and narrative systems, and better tell China’s stories”. he Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee emphasized the need to establish a more effective international communication system. Rich discourse content forms the foundation of international communication (Zhang & Ma, 2024), and China keywords convey the essence of this discourse. Against the backdrop of promoting the international dissemination of Chinese discourse and building a Chinese discourse system, the “China keywords” project is dedicated to constructing an international communication platform for China’s core ideas and development concepts through multilingual and multimedia formats, which aims to advance the global dissemination and recognition of the Chinese discourse system. Among these, the keywords on ecological civilization stand as a vital component of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, which embodies the theoretical foundations, practical approaches, and achievements of China’ s ecological civilization philosophy in the new era.

Against the backdrop of global ecological civilization construction, China’s ecological civilization philosophy, as a vital component of the Chinese development model, has increasingly become a focus of international attention. However, current research on the international dissemination of China keywords in specific fields has predominantly centered on political discourse, while research in the field of ecological civilization remains relatively underdeveloped. In response to this gap, this study employs multilingual big data and large language models, and integrates quantitative and qualitative analytical methods to explore paths and trends of international dissemination of China keywords on ecological civilization. It seeks to uncover the narrative characteristics embedded in their dissemination process, thereby offering a new analytical perspective for understanding the global narrative of China’s ecological civilization philosophy. Through a macro-to-micro analytical approach, this paper aims to optimize the international communication strategies of China’s ecological civilization ideology, enhance its discursive power and influence in global ecological governance and sustainable development agendas, and provide valuable insights for the cross-cultural dissemination of China’s ecological civilization philosophy and the international construction of its discursive system.

2 Literature Review

The China Keywords project was launched by the China International Communications Group (CICG) and China Academy of Translation. It aims to establish a multilingual platform for international communication through multimedia formats, interpreting and explaining core Chinese ideas, culture, and development philosophies to the international community (Li, 2015). Since the platform’s launch, domestic scholars have extensively examined the significant role of China Keywords in international communication, cross-cultural exchange, and the construction of China’s discourse system from a communication studies perspective.

Research on China Keywords from this perspective primarily focuses on the project itself, the communication strategies, and the international dissemination of keywords in specific domains. Studies concerning the project itself mainly concentrate on how China Keywords constructs and promotes the development concepts within international communication, and further contributes to the building of China’s discourse system. Integrating resources and innovating communication methods are key to establishing a new international communication order, and the China Keywords project serves as a bridge in building a discourse system that connects China and the world (Wang, 2019). Furthermore, some scholars have focused on external communication platforms and strategies. For instance, the feasibility of using mainstream international platforms like Wikipedia to disseminate Chinese political discourse has been explored, highlighting the innovative attempts of the China Keywords project in external communications (Ding, 2016). Research on the international dissemination of China keywords in specific fields has predominantly centered on political discourse, such as the analysis of the characteristics of the keyword Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in French media coverage (Li, 2019).

This paper addresses a gap in the research on the international dissemination of China keywords. By employing large language models and quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques, it investigates the conceptual framework and narrative features in the communication of China’s ecological civilization keywords. The aim is to promote the formation of a more multi-layered and comprehensive narrative framework for these keywords in international communication, which enhances China’s discourse power and influence in global ecological governance and sustainable development agendas. This study seeks to answer the following questions:

RQ1: What are the pathways and trends in the international dissemination of China’s ecological civilization keywords?

RQ2: What are the core concepts and narrative characteristics associated with these keywords in international communication?

RQ3: What insights do these narrative characteristics offer for the international dissemination of China keywords?

3 Research Design and Methods

3.1 Data Collection and Analytic Framework

This study collects data on China’s ecological civilization keywords from a multilingual big data system, focusing specifically on English-language reports published or republished by foreign media. The analysis is therefore based on an English corpus derived from this broader multilingual source. Based on the corpus of English reports, high-frequency words will be extracted to identify focal points within the coverage of the keyword themes. After excluding words lacking substantive meaning or clear reference from the high-frequency list, the top 10 meaningful high-frequency terms will be selected. Utilizing large language models, a co-occurrence analysis within the corpus will be conducted for these terms to generate a co-occurrence matrix. The ensemble of concepts represented in this matrix constitutes the conceptual collection within the corpus’s thematic scope.

At the macro level, we will analyze the media sources, volume, and geographical distribution of the original corpus to clarify the current dissemination landscape of the ecological civilization keywords. At the textual level, we will examine the co-occurrence frequency of these high-frequency words within the same texts and analyze their frequent adjective collocations. This approach aims to delineate the conceptual composition and semantic relationships within the keyword themes, construct a narrative system, and further investigate the underlying narrative features of ecological civilization keywords in their international dissemination.

FIG.1  FRAMEWORK FOR MEDIA DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

3.2 Research Methods

1) Construction of a Corpus from a Multilingual Big Data System (with a Focus on English Reports)

The data for the news reports in this paper are sourced from the multilingual big data system of the National Research Center for Language, Culture Translation and International Communication at Beijing Language and Culture University. Big data provides a massive, multilingual source of news corpora. All data are compiled from factual sources and are dynamically tracked and updated, which ensure high timeliness. By collecting and analyzing thematic corpora, it is possible to uncover underlying concerns and socio-public opinion trends within the data. This, in turn, provides robust support for the implementation and optimization of China’s international communication strategy and contributes to the construction of the Chinese discourse and narrative system.

2) Co-word Analysis Based on Large Language Models

Research based on large language models (LLMs) is proliferating, with applications spanning multiple disciplines. Such models are demonstrating particularly significant utility in the humanities and social sciences, especially where research objects involve text or methodologies rely on textual data (Xu, et al., 2024, p.3). As a type of foundation model, LLMs specialize in language-related tasks (Wang, et al., 2024), such as literature review and critique, linguistic and discourse analysis, and lexical semantic detection. This study employs GPT-4o, the latest version of the LLM ChatGPT, to perform statistical analysis of high-frequency word co-occurrence, generate co-occurrence matrices, and create heatmaps for the news corpus. The capabilities of GPT-4o in text comprehension and mining, multilingualism, and multimodal processing make it well-suited for the objectives of this study.

4 Research Procedure

4.1 The Selection of Ecological Civilization Terminology and Keywords

The “China Keywords” project comprises 33 thematic series. The ecological civilization thematic area contains 85 keywords, which span four dimensions: ecological philosophies, priority initiatives, institutional frameworks, and representative cases. These Chinese ecological civilization keywords are characteristic of political texts, often incorporating rhetorical devices such as metaphors and puns. They not only embody the ecological civilization philosophy of socialism with Chinese characteristics but also form part of the Chinese political discourse system.

Considering these characteristics, the selection of ecological civilization terminology and keywords adhered to the following two criteria: first, the translated term for a keyword must be concise and refined without rhetorical flourishes; second, the keyword must hold a degree of representativeness within the framework of China’s ecological civilization philosophy and demonstrate a considerable degree of international recognition.

Consequently, this study selects three logically interrelated four-character terms as the target keywords for data collection: green development (綠色發展), rural revitalization (鄉村振興), and low-carbon development (低碳發展). The concept of green development guides both rural revitalization and low-carbon development. Low-carbon development constitutes a crucial aspect of green development, and rural revitalization represents a strategic implementation of the green development concept (Wang, 2014). Among these, green development enjoys international consensus while also reflecting contemporary China’s ecological philosophy. Rural revitalization and low-carbon development emphasize key priorities in building ecological civilization, as well as bear distinctive Chinese characteristics.

4.2 Data Collection

The retrieved reports are entirely in English, forming an English-language corpus derived from the multilingual big data system. When setting news collection criteria within the multilingual big data system, we first entered the thematic terminology module for Ecological Civilization on the China Keywords website platform, and selected the official translations for “綠色發展”, “鄉村振興”, and “低碳發展”, namely green development, rural revitalization, and low-carbon development. Within the news thematic condition settings, the “must contain all of the following keywords” section was configured for three separate searches: one requiring both “green development” and “China,” another requiring both “rural revitalization” and “China,” and a third requiring both “low-carbon development” and “China.” Second, the setting “appear in the title or body” was selected, and the time frame was set from January 1, 2022, to October 1, 2024. After all data was loaded, it was exported into Excel format. The reports retrieved for the green development, rural revitalization, and low-carbon development terminology keywords numbered 10,972, 2,126, and 2,049 respectively. The Excel documents contained four columns (A, B, C, D) corresponding to: publication time, news title, full news text, and media outlet name.

To further refine the dataset and isolate reports with higher relevance to the Chinese ecological civilization keywords, we set the filtering criteria to select only reports where the terminology keywords appeared in the title. Furthermore, domestic media outlets and open-access journals, such as China Daily and MDPI, were excluded from the results. After this filtering and deduplication process, the number of remaining reports for the green development, rural revitalization, and low-carbon development keywords was 213, 89, and 21, respectively. The temporal span of these filtered reports ranged from February 2023 to September 2024.

Initial corpus retrieved through multilingual big data can relatively comprehensively reflect the dissemination trends of China’s ecological civilization keywords, while the refined corpus are more valuable for the analysis of conceptual systems and narrative characteristics at the textual level. We will conduct multi-level analytical research on this basis.

4.3 High-Frequency Word Statistics

The previous testing revealed that directly extracting high-frequency words using GPT-4o requires corpus segmentation, which makes it less intuitive for presenting high-frequency words across the entire set of news reports. In contrast, the qualitative analysis tool NVivo can generate word frequency statistics with a single operation, while also exporting both frequency counts and weighted percentages, which facilitates further analysis. Therefore, we used NVivo (version 14) for this high-frequency word statistical analysis. Taking the corpus on the theme of “green development” as an example, with the default minimum word length set to 3 characters, and after adding common stop words and removing numbers, the top 20 high-frequency words extracted are shown in Table 1. 

TABLE 1  TOP 20 HIGH-FREQUENCY WORDS EXTRACTED BY NVIVO

When selecting high-frequency content words, words lacking substantive meaning or clear referents from the high-frequency list were excluded. The top 10 content words, apart from the theme-specific keywords, were then extracted, as shown in Table 2. 

TABLE 2  THE TOP TEN CONTENT WORDS FROM THE HIGH-FREQUENCY WORDS

4.4 Co-occurrence Analysis of High-Frequency Content Words

After multiple rounds of testing, we found that it was overly complex to calculate the co-occurrence frequency of keywords across the entire corpus by directly instructing GPT-4o. Therefore, we broke the task down into the following steps and took the “green development” themed corpus as an example. The first step is data cleaning. The publication dates and media names were first removed from the news corpus, leaving only the titles and original article text. The second step is corpus segmentation. The news corpus was segmented into multiple Excel files. Testing revealed that optimal results were achieved when each file contained approximately 30 news items, with a total word count under 20,000 words. Each file was named using the format Keyword + Serial Number. The last step is prompt formulation. The following instruction was used: “Assume you are a linguist. I will provide you with X number of Excel documents. In the spreadsheet within each document, each row represents a single news report, with columns A and B containing the news title and original text, respectively. Using individual news reports from the table as the window size, analyze the co-occurrence frequency of the following keywords within the table and present the results in a co-occurrence matrix. The keywords are energy, carbon, power, cooperation, global, environmental, industry, economic, international, country”. The prompt was explicitly defining the co-occurrence window size, specifying that the analysis should focus on how often keywords appeared together within a single news report.

5 Analysis of Data Statistical Results

Based on quantitative and qualitative analyses, the statistical results of the data are presented from both the news level and the text level. At the news level, the study conducted a comparative analysis of the media outlets, the volume of coverage, and their geographical distribution, which aims to explore the dissemination landscape and international reach of China’s ecological discourse. At the textual level, we combined high-frequency word co-occurrence and adjective collocations to construct conceptual frameworks for the themes of green development, rural revitalization, and low-carbon development in the context of international communication. Furthermore, we analyzed the narrative characteristics of news coverage in the field of ecological issues.

5.1 News-Level Analysis

In the initial corpus, the number of reports related to the terminology keywords green development, rural revitalization, and low-carbon development was 10,972, 2,126, and 2,049, respectively. The acquired corpus consists entirely of English-language reports, most of which are published by Chinese media and subsequently reprinted by foreign outlets. The countries and media organizations publishing or redistributing these reports span five continents, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Malaysia, India, the United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Sierra Leone, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. etc.

The volume of coverage from media outlets reflects their level of attention towards China and China-related topics. Therefore, representative media organizations demonstrating sustained coverage of the thematic content were selected for summary, specifically the top ten outlets by report volume, as shown in Figures 2, 3, and 4. Based on the quantity of reports, green development is clearly a shared focus for both Chinese and foreign media, with its coverage volume far exceeding that of the other themes. This highlights the significant global consensus this topic enjoys, likely related to China’s active promotion of green agendas and policies in international forums in recent years. In contrast, rural revitalization and low-carbon development appear to possess more distinctly Chinese characteristics and comparable global recognition and universality. Meanwhile, Chinese media have ensured consistency of messaging and extensive reach through concentrated coverage via official channels, whereas international media have reported on China’s agenda selectively, based on their respective national contexts and audience interests, which ultimately resulted in a diversified reception of Chinese policies in the global discourse.

An examination of the top ten media outlets by report volume shows no significant disparity in the number of reports between foreign and domestic media. However, it is noteworthy that the majority of foreign media reports are reprints from Chinese media outlets, with independent reporting being scarce. This indicates that the dissemination of China’s ecological civilization concept still relies primarily on the proactive output from its own media (Xu et al, 2025).

FIG 2.  COMPARISON OF TOP 10 MEDIA OUTLETS BY NUMBER OF REPORTS ON THE GREEN DEVELOPMENT THEME

FIG 3.  COMPARISON OF TOP 10 MEDIA OUTLETS BY NUMBER OF REPORTS ON THE RURAL REVITALIZATION THEME

FIG 4.  COMPARISON OF TOP MEDIA OUTLETS BY NUMBER OF REPORTS ON THE LOW-CARBON DEVELOPMENT THEME

FIG 5.  DISTRIBUTION OF PRIMARY MEDIA COUNTRIES

As shown in Figure 5, the primary media countries include Cambodia, South Korea, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Australia. The distribution of these media countries indicates that China’s policies and developments in this area frequently appear in reports from neighboring Asian nations and Middle Eastern countries, which demonstrates the influence and cooperative potential of China’s policies at both regional and international levels. Furthermore, the attention from Western media outlets also reflects China’s significant role in global environmental governance and sustainable development.

5.2 Text-Level Analysis

Given that co-occurrence analysis alone falls short in capturing semantic relationships between words, we integrated conceptual clusters formed by high-frequency noun co-occurrences with high-frequency adjective collocations to ensure analytical rigor. This approach was employed to examine the conceptual frameworks within the thematic texts and ultimately derive their overarching narrative characteristics. To enhance data visualization, the co-occurrence matrices were converted into heatmaps for analysis. In these visualizations, the horizontal and vertical axes represent keywords, while the overlapping areas indicate the frequency of individual high-frequency word co-occurrences. The thematic heatmaps for high-frequency words are presented in Figures 6, 7, and 8 below.

1) Conceptual System Green Development

Through the co-occurrence analysis of high-frequency content words related to green development (see Figure 6), its conceptual system can be found to exhibit characteristics across the following six dimensions.

FIG 6.  HIGH-FREQUENCY WORD CO-OCCURRENCE HEATMAP FOR THE GREEN DEVELOPMENT THEME 

First, energy is the core topic of green development. As shown in Figure 5, the co-occurrence frequency between energy and carbon (109) and power (95) is the highest, reflecting the close connection and internal logic among energy, carbon, and power in the narrative of the green development theme. The focus of implementing the green development concept lies in comprehensively advancing the energy revolution through the synergistic effects of pollution reduction and carbon emission mitigation (Jia & Ji, 2024). Carbon emissions reduction and clean energy development constitute the pathway for the energy revolution under the green development concept. The high correlation among these three terms indicates that energy transition is at the core of the green development agenda, while carbon reduction and clean energy development play crucial roles in achieving carbon neutrality and fostering a comprehensive green transformation in China’s economic and social development.

Second, nation-states play a significant role in green development. The high co-occurrence rates between country and carbon (82), energy (85), and power (67) indicate that the narrative on green development frequently involves carbon emission reduction and energy transition at the national level. This relates to national energy policies or commitments made by countries under global climate agreements. Within the context of China, this high co-occurrence underscores the leading role of the government in carrying out ecological and environmental protection and promoting green development (Liu & Wu, 2024). It also emphasizes that although climate change and green development are global issues, much of the discussion on green development is framed within national contexts, where individual countries play crucial roles in implementing ecological policies.

Third, there is insufficient industrial collaboration. The relatively low co-occurrence frequency between industry and cooperation (45) reflects that in discussions on green development, ecological civilization initiatives remain reflected in macro-level national policies, while the role of micro-level international energy industry collaboration has not been emphasized. Combined with the discussion hotspots revealed by high-frequency words in the corpus, this also indicates that the actors in international cooperation on ecological issues are relatively homogeneous, with discussions primarily concentrated at the national level.

Fourth, the prominence of environmental issues and protection is clearly evident. The adjective environmental primarily collocates with nouns such as protection, conservation and preservation, with its core conceptual focus being environmental protection. Another high-frequency concept relates to environmental issues and challenges, collocating with nouns such as concerns, problems and challenges. This indicates that within the theme of green development, environmental protection is regarded as a key issue. When discussing green development, the primary focus of media attention is on how to achieve sustainable development goals through environmental protection. This also reflects the consensus on the importance of environmental protection in both international and domestic policy and public discourse. The emergence of environmental issues and challenges as high-frequency concepts demonstrates that green development is not only a positive goal but is also accompanied by numerous difficulties and challenges involving specific issues such as climate change, pollution and resource scarcity.

Fifth, there is a close linkage between economic and environmental issues. Economic forms a conceptual set with its highest-frequency collocates development, growth and benefits, which reveals that, at the policy and discourse levels, how to promote economic growth while protecting the environment has become an integral part of green development. Green development is not merely an environmental protection policy but integrates economic growth with environmental sustainability, and pursues a win-win model. This illustrates the importance of economic growth within the green development framework and the emphasis placed on economic development in the practice of the green development concept. The conceptual set of economic, development, and growth implies that within the context of green development, the green economy or circular economy has become a significant driver and goal for promoting an environmentally friendly economic transition.

Sixth, international cooperation is of remarkable significance. The highest-frequency collocate of international is cooperation, and it also frequently appears alongside nouns referring to international organizations. This highlights the significance of multilateralism in the green development agenda. Green development is not merely a task for individual countries or regions but a challenge and objective faced collectively by the globe. The green development agenda is typically advanced through the joint efforts of multiple nations, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations, such as the Paris Climate Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The implementation of these cooperative mechanisms relies on close collaboration within the international community. Therefore, the frequent reports of the concept of international cooperation also reflects the crucial role of multilateralism within the green development framework. Environmental challenges and climate issues on a global scale require countries to jointly formulate and implement environmental policies, technical standards, and cooperative projects to achieve sustainable development goals.

Overall, the focus of news coverage on the theme of green development centers on energy transition, environmental protection, and economic development. The reports highlight the dominant role of nation-states in ecological issues, while simultaneously emphasizing the importance of international cooperation within the green development framework. However, at the global level, as a key lever for green development, international collaboration still remains relatively insufficient.

To ground the conceptual clusters in actual discourse, we extract two representative excerpts from the Green Development corpus, demonstrating how macro-level narratives and cooperation frameworks are articulated in international media.

Excerpt 1: From CPEC plays pivotal role in promoting green development in Pakistan: experts (Pakistan Today, 2023-02-28):

“China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has been playing a pivotal role in promoting green development in Pakistan... The cooperation between Pakistan and China under the CPEC in the fields of energy, transport, agriculture and industrial production has helped Pakistan boost green, low-carbon sustainable development.”

This excerpt reflects a macro narrative by situating green development within the framework of national policy (BRI) and international cooperation, while also embodying a cooperation and shared-benefit framework through its emphasis on mutual gains in sustainable development.

Excerpt 2: From “Experts Laud China’s green development efforts at a global eco forum” (ZBC NEWS, 2023-07-11):

“China’s role in tackling climate change is vital. The country is a world leader in the application of renewable energies... China has managed to bring down the prices of renewable energies... much faster and much earlier than other countries.”

A dual narrative is evident: it acknowledges the global challenge of climate change while presenting China’s proactive solutions and achievements. The excerpt also reinforces a macro narrative by positioning China’s efforts within a global environmental governance context.

2) Rural Revitalization

As shown in Figure 7, the conceptual system related to rural revitalization primarily exhibits characteristics across three dimensions.

FIG 7.  HIGH-FREQUENCY WORD CO-OCCURRENCE HEATMAP FOR THE RURAL REVITALIZATION THEME

First, localized development is the core, and regional development integrates with agricultural advancement. As shown in Figure 6, the frequency of terms such as province (64), county (46), village (66), and local (58) indicates prominent regional characteristics in the narrative of the rural revitalization theme. The terms province, county, and village reflect a clear hierarchical relationship, and their high co-occurrence with “development” demonstrates a focus on local development in the reports. The figure also shows a high co-occurrence frequency between county and agriculture, indicating that agricultural development is one of the central topics of discussion. The overall discourse revolves around regional development and local agriculture. The partial co-occurrence of agriculture and farmers in some reports reflects specific discussions concerning rural areas, agriculture, and farmers.

Second, industry serves as the cornerstone of rural revitalization. The relatively high-frequency appearance of development and industry (46) indicates that development and industry are key focuses of discussion in the rural revitalization narrative. The 19th National Congress of the CPC made the major decision to implement the rural revitalization strategy. Building on the foundation of building a new socialist countryside, it explicitly put forward the general requirements of building rural areas with thriving businesses, pleasant living environment, social etiquette and civility, effective governance, and prosperity to comprehensively enhance the connotation of rural development. From the perspective of ecological civilization construction, rural areas are the main regions for the ecological environment, and ecology is the greatest development advantage of the countryside. From the figure, it is evident that the narrative focus of rural revitalization remains on agriculture and development, without prominently highlighting the green and ecological connotations of its strategy.

Third, the centrality of individual farmers is relatively weak. As one of the high-frequency words, the term farmers appears significantly less often in the corpus compared to other high-frequency terms. However, its co-occurrence frequency with other words is relatively high, which indicates that the development of rural areas and agriculture is closely linked to individual farmers. At the same time, though farmers are an important part of the rural revitalization strategy, macro-level policy or development discussions typically focus more on specific agricultural themes.

In summary, coverage of rural revitalization emphasizes local development, industrial growth, and agriculture-related content. However, when it comes to individual farmers, the discussion is more often situated within specific agricultural or regional contexts, while macro-level keywords such as development and industry hold greater centrality.

The following excerpts illustrate how the narrative features of localization and dual problem-solution framing appear in coverage of rural revitalization.

Excerpt 1. Global Times: Major ball games catalyst for rural revitalization amid China’s mass sports plan (AP News, 2023-07-03):

“Village sports have been recently making headlines for their immense popularity... As China is years into the drive of rural revitalization, modern sports events taking place in mountain villages have recently popped up… combining sports and culture was the key to success.”

This excerpt exemplifies a multi-level perspective narrative by connecting national policy with local cultural practices and community engagement. It also reflects a dual narrative by presenting both the challenge of rural development and a cultural-sports fusion as a viable solution.

Excerpt 2. MANGO INDUSTRY LEADS BAISE ONTO THE BRIGHT “MANGO” ROAD TO rural revitalization (Bernama, 2024-04-12):

“Baise City... has become the ‘golden key’ to prosperity for the people... The continuous breakthrough of double million targets in planting area and output has made Baise the largest mango production base... lifting nearly 200,000 people out of poverty.”

This excerpt demonstrates a localized narrative within a multi-level framework, focusing on a specific region and industry. It also aligns with a cooperation and shared-benefit framework by highlighting how industrial development leads to shared economic uplift and poverty alleviation.

3) Low-Carbon Development

Figure 8 reveals the co-occurrence trends of concepts related to low-carbon development and exhibits two main characteristics.

FIG 8.  HIGH-FREQUENCY WORD CO-OCCURRENCE HEATMAP FOR THE LOW-CARBON DEVELOPMENT THEME

First, enterprises are key actors in the practice of low-carbon development. As shown in Figure 8, the conceptual set formed by “enterprises” and “cooperation” indicates that businesses are not only leading players in economic activity but also one of the primary sources of carbon emissions. In the context of low-carbon development, enterprises are crucial forces for implementing low-carbon policies and achieving related targets. Within this conceptual framework, enterprises represent the primary agents of action for low-carbon development. This reflects that, at the corporate level, collaboration among multinational companies, partnerships between enterprises and governments or international organizations, provides a platform for the innovation and dissemination of low-carbon technologies.

Second, climate issues have become a global issues. The relatively high frequency of the keyword global, often modifying climate, illustrates that climate change is perceived as a global, cross-border issue. This emphasizes the need for the international community to build consensus and take coordinated action in addressing climate change, which highlights the universal and extensive nature of climate problems. Conceptually, this reinforces the necessity of integrating low-carbon development with global cooperation.

The selected excerpts below demonstrate how low-carbon development is framed through narratives of international cooperation and global responsibility.

Excerpt 1. “Sino-African Cooperation on Green and low-carbon development: New Initiatives and EVs” (APP, 2024-09-02):

“The session... was a beacon of hope for a new development model that places people’s needs at the forefront... while upholding a steadfast commitment to environmental sustainability... They urged China to invest more in green infrastructure and industrial development.”

This excerpt clearly illustrates a cooperation and shared-benefit framework, emphasizing Sino-African collaboration in green and low-carbon development. It also reflects a macro narrative by linking low-carbon development to a broader global development model.

Excerpt 2. Sharing Green and low-carbon development Experience with the World: Shenzhen's Climate Action Showcased at China Pavilion (PRNewswire, 2023-12-05):

“Shenzhen’s latest initiatives and achievements in addressing climate change... were presented to the world... promoting international communications and cooperation in the field of green and low-carbon development.”

A dual narrative is present: it showcases Shenzhen’s achievements in low-carbon development while implicitly addressing the global challenge of climate change. The excerpt also reinforces a macro narrative by situating local actions within an international context of knowledge sharing and cooperation.

4) Narrative Features

Macro-level narrative is the primary feature in the international dissemination of ecological civilization. News reports typically revolve around macro-level national policies, international cooperation, and global trends. These narrative features aim to emphasize the overarching significance and importance of these grand issues. High-frequency collocations such as international cooperation, environmental protection, and economic development demonstrate the global perspective of news coverage, framing the issues within an international context and stressing that ecological matters are not merely local or regional concerns but tasks to be collectively addressed and advanced worldwide. Simultaneously, within ecological discourse, this macro-level narrative emphasizes the central role of the state as both policymaker and implementer, which highlights the importance of state-led policies in driving green transformation and energy transition. This is evident in excerpts such as the CPEC report (Pakistan Today, 2023-02-28), which frames green development within a national and international policy context.

A dual narrative centered on problems and solutions constitutes the second prominent feature in the international dissemination of ecological civilization. The concurrent presence of concepts such as environmental challenges and environmental protection, as well as economic development and green growth, in the news corpus reflects a binary narrative structure that constructs a dual narrative of both problems and solutions. This narrative approach first presents environmental issues and challenges, then introduces pathways to solutions such as international cooperation and a green economy to demonstrate hope and progress. This narrative model guides the audience to recognize current environmental crises while conveying the possibility of solutions and ongoing efforts, thereby shaping a positive, action-oriented vision for green development. For instance, the ZBC NEWS report (2023-07-11) on China’s renewable energy leadership exemplifies this dual structure by acknowledging climate challenges while highlighting technological solutions.

The third prominent feature is a framework narrative advocating cooperation and shared benefits. The high-frequency collocations of adjectives in the news corpus, such as international and cooperation, demonstrate a narrative framework centered on collaboration and mutual gain. This narrative not only emphasizes the importance of cooperation but also conveys a logic of mutual benefit and win-win outcomes, which suggests that countries can jointly address environmental issues through collaboration, and achieves shared economic and technological progress. This narrative feature helps attract in-depth participation from various stakeholders, as well as construct an inclusive and appealing framework for green development narratives. The Sino-African cooperation excerpt (APP, 2024-09-02) clearly articulates this framework, emphasizing mutual gains in green infrastructure and industrial development.

The Multi-level perspective narrative is another distinctive feature of the international communication of ecological civilization. The news corpus includes not only global and macro-level discussions but also makes the issues more relatable to audiences through localization and contextualization. This multi-level narrative approach can render the topic of green development more comprehensive and concrete, which enable audiences to understand the opportunities and challenges brought by green development at different levels. In the theme of rural revitalization, high-frequency words such as province, village, and local reflect the focus on local and regional development in the reports. This localized narrative is exemplified in the report on Baise’s mango industry (Bernama, 2024-04-12), which links regional industrial development to national poverty alleviation and rural revitalization goals: “Baise City... has become the ‘golden key’ to prosperity for the people... The continuous breakthrough of double million targets in planting area and output has made Baise the largest mango production base... lifting nearly 200,000 people out of poverty.” These terms construct a hierarchical and localized narrative characteristic, These vocabulary construct a hierarchical and localized narrative feature, which future concretizes the discourse of rural revitalization at various local administrative levels.

6 Conclusions

Based on a corpus assembled from multilingual big data and co-occurrence analysis utilizing large language models, this study has investigated the international dissemination landscape and narratives of three core ecological civilization keywords: Green Development, Rural Revitalization, and Low-Carbon Development. The findings reveal that the international dissemination of China’s ecological discourse is characterized by a Chinese media-led pathway with limited original reporting by foreign outlets, relying heavily on republication. Geographically, coverage is concentrated in Asia and the Middle East, while its reach and impact in Western nations remain areas for further development. At the textual level, international media narratives construct a multi-level framework that integrates macro policy discourse with localized practices, emphasizing state leadership and international cooperation while employing localization to enhance relatability. Furthermore, the prevalent use of a problem-solution dual narrative and a cooperation and shared-benefits framework highlights the global nature of ecological issues and the necessity for collaborative governance.

These findings provide clear answers to the three research questions guiding this study. Regarding the pathways and trends of dissemination, the current landscape is still dominated by China’s self-driven media output, with limited original coverage from international media, indicating a stronger self-communication than communication by others. While Green Development enjoys the broadest global consensus, Rural Revitalization and Low-Carbon Development carry more distinct Chinese characteristics and have relatively narrower international recognition. In terms of core concepts and narrative characteristics, discourse on Green Development revolves around energy transition, environmental protection, and economic growth; Rural Revitalization emphasizes local development and industrial support; and Low-Carbon Development focuses on corporate roles and global climate governance. The overall narratives demonstrate characteristics of macro-perspective, duality, cooperation, and multi-layeredness. These narrative features offer valuable insights for optimizing international communication strategies. Future efforts should focus on diversifying communication channels and strengthening content collaboration and co-narration with mainstream international media. Narratively, there is a need to better integrate macro-level policy discourse with micro-level case studies, and use relatable, tangible local practices and win-win cooperation projects to enhance the affinity and persuasiveness of the discourse.

On a theoretical level, this study represents an attempt to apply big data analysis and language models to research on the international dissemination of ecological discourse, and provides empirical evidence and methodological exploration for understanding the global narrative construction of state-led developmental concepts. On a practical level, it offers actionable strategic references for the international communication of China’s ecological civilization. On one hand, efforts can continue to solidify the construction of a responsible major country image within the macro narrative. On the other hand, it is crucial to actively collect and promote local practices and cooperation cases that resonate easily with both domestic and international audiences, forming a narrative chain of global issues-Chinese approach-and local action. This can enhance the acceptance and influence of the discourse across multiple levels.

This study, however, has certain limitations. First, the data period is relatively focused and does not reflect longer-term trends. Second, the corpus is limited to English-language media, which potentially overlooks dissemination dynamics in the non-English-speaking world. While co-occurrence and frequency analyses can reveal conceptual associations and narrative frameworks, deeper interpretation of semantics and the actual reception effects among audiences require supplementation with qualitative methods, such as interviews and surveys. Future research could extend the observation period, incorporate multilingual data, and integrate audience studies to more comprehensively and dynamically grasp the effectiveness and evolution of the international dissemination of China’s ecological discourse.

In summary, enhancing the international influence of China’s ecological civilization discourse requires not only continuous content output and channel expansion but also, more importantly, the organic integration of global issues with Chinese practices within the narrative logic that emphasizes empathy and dialogue in communication methods. This will gradually help build a multi-level, highly resonant, and sustainable international discourse system.

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