The relevance of this article is determined by the joint statement of leaders of two states according to which 2016 and 2017 were "China-Russia Media Exchange Years". A new level of information exchange has caused considerable interest of the academic community to the study of the content of the Russian news in the Chinese media. The purpose of the article is to analyze the themes, problems, stylistic features of publications that form the image of Russia in the information-evaluation space of the newspaper Renmin Ribao (the People's Daily). We used the method of content analysis of publications in the period from 1 January, 2016 to 1 January 2018. Problem-thematic and stylistic analysis of publications about Russia in the People's Daily reflects the entire spectrum of events in this country, but the overwhelming majority of texts concern politics and economy. Along with the expressive positive evaluation of the activities of the state's leader, culture, language, and traditions of the Russian people are still poorly represented. The language and style of the People's Daily, on the one hand, is distinguished by rigor, restraint, simplicity (the headlines-sentences allow us to determine the subject immediately, they contain keywords that help to understand the main point of the text); on the other hand, the texts are featured by patheticity and arrogance. To form a comprehensive image of Russia, the staff of Renmin Ribao must work on its semantic-stylistic specifics, which is determined by a complex of extralinguistic factors: political, economic, social, spiritual. The author claims that the representation of the spiritual life of the Russian society is also important for creating a positive image of the country. Therefore, along with an expressive positive evaluation of the activities of the first leader of the state, Russian culture, language and traditions of the people should be presented equally.