This study examines how award-winning Chinese international communication journalism transforms "China stories" into cross-cultural expressions through cultural translation and audience positioning. A census-based, cross-sectional content analysis was conducted on all 40 international communication entries in the 35th China News Award catalogue: six first-prize, 12 second-prize, and 22 third-prize works. Award level, publishing institution, platform, and title-language configuration were recorded as manifest variables, while issue domain, narrative frame, cultural-translation cues, and imagined audience position were coded at catalogue-title level. Frequencies, percentages, cross-tabulations, exploratory Cramer's V statistics, and close readings of contrasting titles were used. Development and cooperation (25.0%), social and human-interest topics (20.0%), and culture and heritage (17.5%) formed the leading issue cluster. Foreign-language elements appeared in 57.5% of titles, but explicit cultural glossing appeared in only 17.5%, indicating that linguistic access was more common than contextual explanation. Witness and learner positions each accounted for 35.0% of the works, whereas partner/dialogue positioning accounted for 17.5%. Platform differences were visible but non-deterministic: similar translation strategies appeared across domestic and international outlets, and global social/video platforms did not automatically produce dialogic positioning. The study concludes that cross-cultural expression is best understood as an alignment among communication context, cultural mediation, narrative framing, audience role, and platform conditions rather than as foreign-language publication or overseas distribution alone. Because independent second-coder data were unavailable, interpretive associations are reported as exploratory pending intercoder validation.
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