Author(s)

Guangming Gao ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Marxism, Wuyi University, Jiangmen, Guangdong, China

Corresponding Author

Guangming Gao

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how three Fijian English-language news outlets made sense of China-related issues during a period of intensified Pacific regional debate from 2022 to 2025. Drawing on a cleaned corpus of 178 articles from FBC News, The Fiji Times, and Fiji Sun, and a close qualitative reading of 75 theoretically rich texts, it argues that Fijian media do not simply reproduce external narratives. Instead, China-related coverage is shaped by issue-conditioned narrative mediation. Development, health, agriculture, climate, and infrastructure stories are commonly localized into partnership narratives when attached to concrete Fijian and Pacific needs. By contrast, policing, defence, military-base concerns, PIF/Chinese Taiwan disputes, influence-related reporting, and infrastructure accountability are more likely to be securitized or risk-framed. Across both processes, Pacific agency matters. Fijian and regional actors use sovereignty, consensus, balanced diplomacy, the Ocean of Peace, and regional priorities to filter external frames.

KEYWORDS

Fiji; Pacific Islands; media framing; securitization; localization

CITE THIS PAPER

Guangming Gao. Between Partnership and Risk: Localizing and Securitizing Narratives about China in Fijian News Media, 2022–2025. Media and Communication Research (2026). Vol. 7, No.2, 9-18. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/mediacr.2026.070202.

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