Conditional presence: Symbolic politics and the asymmetrical construction of China in the Israel-Palestine conflict

This research investigates how China’s position and role in the Israel-Palestine conflict is discursively constructed, morally evaluated, and futuristically projected across Palestinian and Israeli media. Drawing on a corpus-based analysis of 203 news articles conducted within the framework of the discourse-historical approach, this research reveals stark contrasts in framing strategies, affective orientations, and anticipatory narratives. Palestinian media depict China as a principled peacemaker aligned with multilateralism and historical justice, whereas Israeli media frame it as a strategic disruptor associated with normative ambiguity and geopolitical threat. To explain how symbolic presence and moral legitimacy are distributed unevenly across global communicative structures, the findings develop a three-dimensional analytical model that integrates subjective framing, affective boundary-making, and projected agency. The research further argues that rising powers like China remain highly visible yet structurally constrained in how they may appear, be interpreted, and be imagined in global media. The conclusion reflects on the implications of this asymmetry for international communication research and calls for a critical rethinking of who gets to speak, who gets to be heard, and under what symbolic conditions global legitimacy is granted or denied.