This paper selects four representative American mainstream media CNN, Fox News,
New York Times, Washington Post, and builds a Chinese-related reporting corpus. With the help of
“wordsmith” software, this paper analyzes the Chinese-related reports of the four media during the
2020 election from the perspective of reporting trends and frequency, high frequency words and related
collocations. This paper discusses the discourse representation embodied in the Chinese-related reports
of the American mainstream media in order to reveal the characteristics of the political polarization
of the American media, the“ Chinese image ”as a tool of the Party’s contention and the ideological bias
hidden in the“ rhetorical trap ”of the Chinese-related reports.