There is a myriad of scholarship on the way in which discursive representations of immigrants reflect, construct and reproduce the ideological structure of racialization. To contribute to the existing body of studies, this research integrates a transnational perspective and applies the framework to the relatively under-investigated geographical contexts. It examines the shifting media representations of the immigrant traders in one of China’s household goods marketplaces – the city of Yiwu – over the decade from 2013 to 2023. The time period was chosen due to the establishment of China’s first national-level immigration agency, National Immigration Administration (NIA), in 2018. This research seeks to explore how these changes have influenced the portrayal of immigrants and how the racialized ideology has been displayed. News reports and interviews based on fieldwork will be analyzed using frame analysis and critical discourse analysis. The findings reveal that discursive representations of immigrant traders in Yiwu have undergone three narrative shifts: 1) from a low-key presence to a notable increase in report volume; 2) from neutral tones to predominantly positive portrayals; 3) from unspecified racial diversity to a subtle emphasis of non-African racial groups. Despite ostensibly positive changes, the underlying logics of racialized discourse remain unchanged in two aspects: 1) socio-economic concerns and 2) national concerns with control and management rather than genuine multiculturalism. It has a range of effects, from objectifying immigrants and marginalizing other immigrant groups, towards justifying potential regulation and citizenship. Thus it is argued that while neutral and positive language has been used concerning immigrant traders, the media discourse continues to perpetuate racialized ideologies in more subtle forms. In this way, the dissertation complements and complicates the current understanding of the interplay between migration discourse and socio-political ideologies in contemporary China.