He research is carried out in line with the conceptual metaphor. In the Russian society mass media discourse is closely intertwined with the field of politics, so the relevance of this research is due to the need for studying political metaphors in publicistic discourse. The metaphorical models used by modern Russian media for constructing the image of China are studied in the article. The objective of research is to understand, how the economics, politics and the status of China in the international community are described and characterized with the help of mechanism of metaphorization. Material for the research is based on texts from the Russian mass media of 2008-2017. The main focus is on the sports metaphor as the dominant model. The study used the methods of contextual analysis, modeling аnd frame analysis. The main frames identified and described are: kinds of sport, forecast of competition result, participants in competitions, qualification of athletes, etc. The research has proved that the characteristics of competitions are actively used in the Russian media to describe the political and economic competition between China and other countries. The metaphorical images from the metaphorical model “sport” construct a predominantly positive image of China as it has achieved significant successes on the international arena in economics and politics.