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This report provides a framework for understanding China's discourse-power ambitions--what Chinese officials and scholars have said they are, the strategy China has developed to achieve them, and an initial assessment of the successes and limitations of these efforts to date. The report begins by tracing the evolution of China's conception of discourse power, from China's period of reform and opening in 1978 to the current era under President Xi Jinping, and how it came to occupy a central role in China's national strategy. The next section takes a closer look at how the party-state has been restructured, in part, to help operationalize China's goals to gain "the power to speak" and "the power to be heard." The third section focuses on China's strategy for gaining dis- course power by centering itself in the ecosystem of global connectivity. Lastly, this report provides a brief assessment of both the successes and limitations of China's discourse-power operations. China's ambitions to supplant the current liberal international order presents the most viable challenge to the ideological consensus around open societies since the end of the Cold War. It has embarked on an ambitious strategy to gain the discourse power it needs to achieve this task, and this report illustrates the scope, intentions, and purposeful implementation of this integrated strategy