| The study of the role of cognitive metaphor in political discourse is of unquestionable significance as it is used as a powerful tool of controlling opinions of people and thus influencing political development. Besides, recent economic development of China and its opening to the international community leads to its growing importance in the world of modern politics. However, relatively few studies on metaphorical image of China have been conducted, especially on the materials of American political discourse, though the USA is one of the most dominant and influential figure in international politics of nowadays. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on comprehensive analysis of metaphorical image of China in political discourse of American press in order to understand how Americans perceive China and to reveal what attitude towards it American media tries to form. To achieve the research aims the method of metaphor modeling suggested by Russian linguist A.P.Chudinov was applied which is, first of all innovative for Western tradition and, secondly, meets all the research objectives.This research produced a number of key findings:it was revealed that due to the national and historical peculiarity it is more characteristic of Americans to see political issues in the light of sports and war concepts. Hence, the image of China is often metaphorized in the terms of rivalry. Nevertheless, it was discovered that China is also reflected in American political discourse as a big creature of great power which is expected to help and support the world in times of economic misfortunes. Besides, according to the statistical analyses of the data,65,7% of the metaphoric expressions that form conceptual image of China have positive pragmatic potential and only 24,1% negative.The main conclusion drawn from this research was that the image of the People's Republic of China created by American press is aimed at producing positive effect on the emotional comprehension of the potential addressees.
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