In the context of increasing deglobalization trends, the evolving and intricate host country media landscape presents formidable challenges to the internationalization process of China. The crucial decisions regarding how this environment affects the entry strategies of multinational enterprises into international markets lack systematic empirical validation. Leveraging sentiment analysis technology and web crawling techniques, conducting textual analysis on over 8.3million discourse items related to China from the period 2015 to 2022, constructing a China-related public sentiment index and systematically examined the impact of the host country media environment on the entry mode selection of Chinese enterprises operating abroad. The research findings reveal that as the host country media environment deteriorates, Chinese enterprises are more inclined to opt for joint venture models over wholly-owned subsidiaries when entering international markets. Furthermore, compared to cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Chinese enterprises exhibit a stronger inclination toward greenfield investments as their entry strategy. The ownership structure of multinational enterprises and their internationalization experience exert a positive moderating effect on these relationships. In terms of the underlying mechanisms, the host country media environment influences the choice of investment mode by affecting the regulatory, normative, and cognitive legitimacy of enterprises. The conclusions provide valuable recommendations for multinational enterprises to appropriately select their entry modes into international markets, actively mitigate or reduce reputational risks, and enhance their investment and operational strategies in host countries.