The present paper is a corpus-based analysis of the topic of'Made-in-China'. It aims at using corpus in critical discourse analysis to unveil the dialectical relationship between discourse and ideology as indicated by the issue of'Made-in-China'. It is hoped that findings of the study may offer suggestions to Chinese media and hence, raise the awareness of their publicity.The present study is based on a self-built corpus, referred to as United Kingdom News Texts (UKNT). Articles are sampled from four different media sources, respectively The Times, The Guardian, BBC and The Economist, spanning from 2001 to 2011. The corpus is made up of 417,460 running tokens. With the combination of critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, four key phrases: Made-in-China, Chinese manufacturing, Chinese goods, Chinese workers are analyzed under Sinclair's Model of Extended Units of Meaning. Underlying attitudes and ideologies are explored in details.Main findings are arrived at in the following aspects: the insinuated impression of product quality, the conflicting attitudes of citizens and certain entities, the consciously embedded presence of competitors and the gloomy future presented. By showing readers reliable data, British media gain a secure foothold in readers. Taking advantage of news agency, British media skilfully emphasizes the inferior quality of Chinese goods, implies a bleak future of Chinese manufacturing industry and displays the presence of competitors of China. |