This paper focuses on the description of China in leading German daily and weekly newspapers during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. On the basis of a brief outline of the main China narratives in German media since the 1950s, this paper analyses China-related articles which were published during the period August 8-15, 2008. It argues that reports on China are mostly based on well established German notions of China and centre around the image of a despotic and/or dangerous China. Therefore, they primarily refer back to the source culture and contain little information of value regarding the target culture.