This study examines how Chinese political concepts are re-contextualised in international communication. It focuses on core concepts about the “Belt and Road” (B&R), a grand scheme not only central in China’s development agenda but also involving many other countries in Asia, Europe and Africa. Two sets of research questions are explored: (a) How is the B&R labelled in the Chinese government’s presented discourse and its re-presented discourse through institutional translation? How is it labelled in the perceived discourse by the English media? (b) Is the image of the B&R constructed in the perceived discourse the same as in the re-presented discourse? Through corpus-based discourse analysis into a comparable corpus of discourse on B&R comprising the “Sub-corpus of China’s Translated/Interpreted Discourse on B&R in 2015–2018” and the “Sub-corpus of The Economist on B&R in 2015–2018”, it uncovers the linguistic manifestations of political and ideological mediation through the agency of translators/interpreters and through the agency of public media.