India, Oct. 2 -- China's engagement with South Asia has grown significantly over the past decade, particularly under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While research on the material aspects of China's engagements in the region has expanded, including by measuring its growing economic capabilities and security footprint, the discursive and ideational aspects remain understudied. As China's role in the region becomes more complex, this limited knowledge of Chinese semantics could lead to practical consequences, such as the loss of valuable signals and consequent policy misjudgements about China's goals and intentions in the region.

This paper uses discourse analysis to examine and interpret hundreds of mostly Chinese-language texts. Thes...