Development studies represents a growing and interdisciplinary research area. However, it is rarely explored from a discursive perspective in political interpreting, despite the vital mediating role of interpreters. To bridge this gap, the pragmatist mixed-methods approach of corpus-based critical discourse analysis is applied to the premier-meets-the-press data (1998–2017) to explore the government-affiliated interpreters’ agency and (re)construction of China’s ‘development’ discourse over one-fifth of a century. The study reveals the interpreters’ institutional (over)alignment and frequent strengthening of Beijing’s development discourse in English at different levels using various discursive means. Discursively, this established the interpreters’ role and text ownership in (re)shaping reality, further facilitating China’s development, (re)constructing and disseminating sociopolitical knowledge, and possibly even effecting changes and transformations to the East–West power differentials as vital (re)tellers of the Chinese story. Looking beyond the traditional view of interpreting as a more static and mechanical process in a semi-closed and self-contained system, this article discusses the vital role interpreting plays from a historical, communication, geopolitical and development perspective.