An investigation into the translation and cross-cultural communication of key political terms is helpful to improve the mass communication feedback mechanism as well as China’s international discursive constructions. This paper, combing the three-dimensional discourse analysis model proposed by Fairclough with a corpus analysis, aims to examine how this political term is disseminated and received in US and UK news reports published in mainstream media. The analysis reveals that there are various translations adopted for the term in the two countries’ media outlets. The use frequency for each of them presents a distinctively diachronic change, among which “reform and opening up” is becoming increasingly popular. It is also found out that the media of US and UK take mostly neutral and positive attitude towards the term while there have also been some misunderstandings.