This is a draft‐ please do not cite without permission‐   All the News That's Fit to Compare:  

Comparing Chinese Representations in the American press and US representations in the Chinese Press 

 Sophie Clavier, PhD.  and Luke Barnesmoore 

Department of International Relations San Francisco State University 

sclavier@sfsu.edu luke@barnesmoore.com 

Laurent El Ghaoui, PhD. and Guan‐Cheng Li Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences 

University of California, Berkeley Elghaoui@berkeley.edu 

guanchengli@berkeley.edu  Abstract: 

Through a careful statistical study of semantics in large collections of news items in both countries, we present in a visual and intuitive manner, a comparative study of media representation of the US in China news, of China in the US news, and of the ways each country depicts important world events or issues. We use innovative tools to visualize the dynamics of these images over periods of time. In doing so, we are able to quickly summarize how the news media in the respective countries construct the other' s identity.1 

  

Introduction

In the post-Cold War era, Sino-American relations have been the topic of many

expert scholarly analyses, which insist on the interdependence of the two economies,

their rivalries or, their potential conflicts. Yet, what first interests us in this research, is

not what experts know, but what the “average” Americans and Chinese are told about

each other’s country in their respective mainstream media. This paper, building on

previous research2 and on recent technological developments, is the first part of a

comparative study of media representation of the US in China news, and of China in the

                                                        1 At this point of the research, we have finalized the visualization tool, and we have collected and analyzed data on the American side. We have preliminary results and raw date on the Chinese side. Full analysis will be forthcoming. 2 Sophie Clavier , Laurent El Ghaoui, Radka Cahlikova and Andrew Stimson, "Country Profiling: Media, Foreign Policy Orientation, and the Limitations of Framing Theory."," International Studies Association (New Orleans: ISA, 2010). 

US news, using the results of a statistical study of semantics in large collections of

printed news items in both countries, summarized in a visual and intuitive manner. We

use innovative tools to visualize the dynamics of these images over periods of time. In

doing so, we are able to quickly summarize how the news media in the respective

countries construct the other's identity alongside the repetition over time of a few

attributes. In addition, we will survey US and Chinese media portrayals of events outside

of the bilateral relationship of both countries, for example Tibet, Human Rights, the

financial crisis or, Europe. Our web-based visualization toolkit StatNews3 offers visually

observable empirical evidence, not only of frames but also more importantly of the

framing process, as it applies to foreign countries or international issues. Quantitatively,

we compute the frequency of keywords and the statistics of co-occurrence with others.

The visualization helps us rapidly identify when and where we need to seek more details

and, a full text reading of articles, which are easily accessible using the same tool.

Following these quantitative and “visual” leads, we offer a qualitative analysis of our

results in which we seek to confirm that the construction of each other’s identity intends

to justify to the public policies aimed, on the part of the United States at containing a

rising China and, on the part of China at rivaling the United States in global leadership. In

doing so, our goal is to contribute to the ongoing debate on the relationships between

foreign policy orientation and public opinion.

Preliminary considerations on framing as an analytical technique

Enough has now been written on the role of media in framing the political agenda

that, while it has become a necessary step in any study of mass communication, we can

                                                        3 At statnews.org. 

afford to be brief in our summary of its major points. The concept of framing starts with

psychological considerations that Walter Lippmann first brought to attention when he

wrote in Public Opinion: “Man .[ . .] is learning to see with his mind vast portions of the

world that he could never see, touch, smell, hear, or remember. Gradually he makes for

himself a trustworthy picture inside his head of the world beyond his reach”4. Key is then

how to identify what factors influence this learning. In the early 90’s, Entman posited that

our learning of the world is built on frames which he defines as “information-processing

schemata”5 that operates” by selecting and highlighting some features of reality while

omitting others”6. Media studies incorporate these definitions by showing the role of the

media in creating these frames, stating for example that “through choice and language

and repetition of certain story schemas”, the media “organizes and frames reality in

distinctive ways”7. Following Goffman, we agree that the analyst’s task therefore is to

identify frames in media discourse8 within the understanding that media framing, under

the guise of informing, can deliberately influence public opinion. Indeed most of the

literature on framing and subsequent agenda –setting literature argues that frames are

purposely created. According to Entman: “to frame is to select some aspects of a

perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as

                                                        4 W. Lippman, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1922). 5 R. M. Entman, "“Framing U.S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of the KAL and Iran Air incidents”," Journal of Communication 41.4 (1991): 6‐7. p. 7 6 R. M. Entman, "“Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm”," Journal of Communication 43 (1993): 52‐57. p. 53 7J. M. McLeod, G. M. Kosicki, Z. Pan, “On Understanding and Misunderstanding Media Effects,” in J. Curran & M. Gurevitch eds, Mass Media and Society, (London: Edward Arnold: 1991), 246 8 E. Goffman, Frame analysis: An essay on the Organization of Experience, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974). 

to promote a particular problem, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation”9.

According to Pan and Kosicki, operationally, the existence of framing devices renders the

detection of frames in news text objective and verifiable and thus helps to improve the

validity and reliability of framing analysis.” 10

At the same time, we need to keep in mind that it is a two way process,

highlighting Pan and Kosicki’s position that, ‘there is no one-to one correspondence

between signifying elements and meaning, but the functional relations between them may

be exploited by newsmakers or news consumers to maximize the probability of getting

their intended or preferred meanings across”.11 The media creates frames, but the news

consumers, in their understanding of what is offered, operate within the framework of

their own cognitive consistency. Quoting Lippmann again: “For the most part, we do not

first see, and then define, we define first and then see.12” Michael Kunczik summarizes

Wolfgang Donsbach’s 1991 study on the selective perception of newspaper readers that

clearly confirms that the selection rule applies only when positive information is offered -

when negative information is offered, both supporters and opponents of a certain position

behave almost the same. “Selective perception works against information that might

result in a positive change of opinion, but not against information that might produce a

negative change of opinion”.13 This understanding has thus a great impact on the

reproduction of negative opinions, including that about other countries.                                                         9 R. M. Entman, Projections of power framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2004). 10 G. M. Kosicki and Z. Pan, ""Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse"," Political Communication (1993): 55‐75 p. 59.  11 Loc.cit 12 Lippmann, Op.cit., p.81 13 Michael Kunczik, "“Globalization: News media, images of nations and the flow of international capital with special reference to the role of rating agencies”," International Association for Media and Communication Research Conference (Singapore, 2000) 4. 

Framing and the perception of other countries.

Kiousis and Wu attract our attention to the particular importance to international

public relations and mass communication scholars, of the images of foreign nations as

objects14. Kunczik concurs that, “mass media reporting of foreign affairs very often

governs what kind of image of a country or a culture predominates.”15 In terms of

portrayal of other countries, frames tend to be easy to observe as popular news media

tend to establish simplified dichotomies of “we” versus the “other” and, they classify data

under those two categories, often outlined as mirror images of positive attributes versus

negative ones. In doing so, they create for their consumers, collective simplified

cognitive maps of shared meanings that form the preconceptions with which the public

selects and analyses any subsequent information. Several studies support this viewpoint,

including that of Kunzcik, who argues that the simplification of other countries results

from the constraints of “day-topical media that have to focus on short-lived events

which tend to ignore long term social processes”16. In addition, the public itself tends to

operate within strong cognitive consistency, thus easing the spreading of negative

stereotypes about other countries.17 As a result, overtime, the public develops images of

nations that calls “ hardened prejudices” which Kunzcik defined as “expressed the

convictions of a particular group (or its members) about an alien group (or individuals

because of actual or assumed membership of the alien group) without consideration of

                                                        14 Spiro Kiousis and Xu Wu, "“ International Agenda‐building and Agenda‐setting: Exploring the Influence of Public Relations Counsel on US News Media and Public Perceptions of Foreign Nations”,," The International Communications Gazette 70.1 (2008): 58‐75 p.58. 15 Kunczik, Op. cit p.7 16 Ibid, p. 6  17 Ibid, p. 5 

their correctness”18. He finally highlights the special importance to political action of the

benevolence or malevolence imputed to other nations in the images, as well as the

historical component of the image.”19Indeed we need to keep in mind that these

prejudices- or preexisting political rationalities- not only impact understanding of current

conditions, but explain how the public analyses the past, and what it expects for the

future.

Limitations of Framing Analysis

There is no doubt that the studies of framing provide an important analytical

technique to identify what is embedded in discourse. However it suffers from practical

limitations including the burden of identification and analysis often using laborious by

hand methods for gathering data. First, framing tends to be easier when devoted to

understanding crises. Indeed, Entman in Projections of Power: Framing News, Public

Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy for example, looks at the Korean Airlines v. Iran air

tragedies (chapter 2); at Grenada, Libya and Panama (chapter 3), at the war with Iraq

(chapter 4)20. In Studies on framing during the Cold War, Nicholas Berry analyzes

Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, Johnson and Vietnam, Nixon and Cambodia, Carter and

the Iranian Hostage crisis, Reagan, and Lebanon;21 Philip Hammond’s book Framing

Post Cold War Conflicts, looks at Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq;

Steven Croman’s edition, Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Strategic Communication to

                                                        18 Ibid p. 4 19 Ibid, p. 10 20 R. M. Entman, Projections of power framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2004). 21 Philip Hammond, Framing Post – Cold War Conflicts: the media and international intervention (New York: Manchester University Press, 2007). 

Combat Violent Extremism revolves around framing the global war on terror (and the

difficulties the Bush administration experienced in doing so convincingly).22

Secondly, all aforementioned cases not only offer an identification of the frames

introduced in, or by, the media, but they also offer an analysis of their content. Both

exercises, identification and analysis, require complex qualitative and/or quantitative

efforts that prohibit a quick understanding of what the public is presumed to know at any

given time, and thus preclude a quick prediction of how the public may react to a foreign

policy orientation. The identification of frames presents further challenges including

methodology and subjectivity on the part of the analyst. Qualitatively, the identification

of frames presupposes a careful reading of all discourse on a topic, isolating figures of

speech or the use of certain words, and of pertinent qualifiers. An easy example is

presented by some study of Bush’s speeches after 9/11 and the way his framing of the

war on terror (some would argue that the phrase ‘war on terror’ is itself a “frame”) was

articulated around a good v. evil dichotomy23. This is a useful but fairly painstaking “by

hand” method of identification.

As a response, quantitative methods and software have been developed to allow a

more systematic identification of frames. In most cases, user select keyword as

indicators and their frequency is collected more or less systemically.24 In addition, several

algorithms allow the identification of frames present in textual data through clustering

methods, such as hierarchical cluster analysis or factor analysis. The Cathie Marsh Centre

compiles a good summary of those, for Census and Survey Research at the University of

                                                        22 Steven R. Corman and Anglea Thretewey and H. L. Goodal Jr., eds. Weapons of Mass Persuasion: strategic communication to combat violent extremism (New York: Pater Lang, 2008). 23 S. Clavier and Laurent El Ghaoui, "“ Marketing War Policies: the Role of the Media in Constructing Legitimacy”," Kansas Journal of Law and Policy XIX.2 (2010): 212‐233. 24 See for example,  Triandafyllidou & Fotiou, 1998: 3.7; Miller & Riechert, 2001 a 

Manchester in the UK. The Center introduces various word clustering packages such as

Leximancer, Alceste, AutoMap, Hamlet, Tropes, T-LAB, and Sphinx Survey Lexica but

concludes that “the best known algorithm to detect frames quasi automatically via the

keyword approach is implemented in Miller's (1997) VBPro program. VBPro was

specifically developed for frame analyses and detects frames via hierarchical cluster

analysis using data in plain text format.” 25

Regardless of the method: by hand or computer assisted, the very selection of

keywords by the analyst introduces his/her subjectivity in the identification of the frames.

For example, if we are looking at the hypothesis that the media is framing “Palestinians”

as “terrorists”, we will look for the co-occurrence of these two words (as we would do it

on a Google Boolean search for example). We will undoubtedly get a sizeable number of

such co-occurrences leading us to the conclusion that there is indeed a frame. We may, in

the process, bypass the possibility that the most frequent co-occurrence could have been

“refugees” or “agriculture ”, or we may overlook the fact that perhaps the content of all

articles containing both words Palestinians and terrorists together were intended to warn

against the conceptual association of the two terms.

The concern about intent, and thus semantic content, has been addressed but is

also replete with issues. Once frames are identified, their meaning needs to be analyzed.

Once again, it is either a “by hand” proposition or one facilitated by some technological

innovation. Software has also been developed to assist in the measurement of the

substantive content (or system of meaning) of frames, especially in terms of positive or

negative connotations. For example, DICTION or CAQDAS can aide more qualitative

oriented framing studies in the coding of data. We trust again the findings of the Cathie                                                         25 http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/publications/frameanalysis/software.html 

Marsh Center that CAQDAS, MAXqda and QDA Miner have been shown to be most

suitable for the use in mixed-methods approaches to framing26.

Furthermore, regardless of the method used to identify the content of the

frame, we still do not know if its intent has reached the public, nor if the all members of

the public will interpret the subjective nature of the frame in the same way. Indeed,

individuals are able to process with varying extent and depth, subtle information

contained in news articles. The process by which readers build different representations

of the world is extremely complex and varied. Our goal however is to look is to look for

the lowest common denominator. What is told to the average news consumer? How

often? And in what semantic context simplified to a few key words? We ask, after

reading news articles from a given source over a long time, what do people collectively

know about several countries? What do these different perceptions about the country

have in common?

Our approach Our main hypothesis is that the common part in the readers' representations of certain

topics can be found via a careful statistical analysis that discovers the few words that are

the most predictive of the appearance of the query term in the corpus. In other

words, when we talk about what is shared across the readers' minds, the subtleties and

nuances of the different news articles, and the varying degrees of understanding of

individual readers, do not matter so much as the distribution and frequencies of the words

that tend to co-occur or not co-occur with a query term that needs to be free of subjective

                                                        26 http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/publications/frameanalysis/software.html  

interpretation in itself27.

The proposed technical approach rests on new optimization and machine learning

tools that rely on the crucial concept of “sparsity,” in order to provide results that are

interpretable for a non-expert in statistical learning. Consider one central task in text

analytics, classification, which arises, say, in spam filtering for email. While a classical

approach would aim solely at getting the best performance (classification error), a sparse

approach would, in addition, try to provide an interpretable result: what are the few

important keywords to watch for in an incoming email, in order to successfully decide

about its spam nature? This classification approach can be leveraged to summarize a

topic (say, “China”) from documents in a large corpus, such as news. First, the whole

corpus is separated in two classes (e.g., one for the documents that mention the query

term “China,” the other documents falling in the other class), and then the corresponding

sparse classification task is addressed. Sparse learning algorithms will then find a short

list of terms that are good predictors of the appearance of the term “China” in any

document. This short list is a “summary” of the topic in the corpus. Similar methods can

be used to find a few documents that accurately “embody” the query term and its short

summary list.

                                                        27 Clavier, El Ghaoui, et al. Op. cit.  

Another important task in text analytics is the clustering documents or words, in order for

example to better understand the various topics that are evoked in a large corpus (a task

referred to as topic modeling). Topic modeling is a crucial component of many clustering

algorithms, allowing for example to group documents. Here, the sparsity requirement can

be addressed with a variant of the classical “Principal Component Analysis” (PCA)

method, which scales very well with the size of the corpus and produces good results.

Sparse machine learning methods constitute a very active area of research, cutting across

several fields (in signal and image processing, the field is generally referred to as

“compressed sensing”). Our innovation is to apply these techniques to text, in particular,

to efficient summarization of large text corpora.

With  effective  summarization  in  place,  we  can dramatically  reduce  the  task  of  translating  foreign‐language  corpora,  since  only  a  few  terms  need  to  be translated.  The  figure  shows  the  results  of  a  query involving  an  English  search  term  (“Lybia”)  that  has been  automatically  translated,  and  submitted  as  a query  to  a  Chinese‐language  news  source  (People’s Daily,  Feb.‐Apr.  2011).  The  resulting  terms  are  then translated  back,  and  provide  a  glimpse  on  a  foreign source’s treatment of a topic.  

This example shows how a sparse machine learning method known as sparse PCA is able to automatically discover topics in a corpus of 300,000 articles (NYT, 2001‐2011). The algorithm ran unsupervised, without any knowledge of which sections the articles belonged to. 

Visualization. One of the key advantages of sparsity and interpretability is to allow real-

time, interactive visualizations of large text databases. Still, there are several challenges

involved in visualizing text, even in the form of short lists. The approach in this project

will rely on recent visualization tools (built on the open-source software D3) that allow

quick prototyping of our ideas.

Our results Observations

The graphs below highlight the words co-occurring with specific keywords (in bold),

which we will later show, provide indeed the frames of the China narrative in the US.

The dates are important as they provide initial motivations.

Looking at graph #1 and tracking the co-occurrence of words with the word China within

New York Times articles spanning from the end of WWII, 1945, through the present,

2012, we see that the most prominently used word is red, followed a couple rows down

by the word communist.

Following this indication, if we change the query to “communist” and change the time

frame to the last 12 years, the results are as follow. In Graphs (2a) through (2d) we see

the connection between China and communism, and a spike in this connection during the

later years of the decade. While China’s communist past seems to have been perennially

connected to reporting on the region, as evident on the long term in graph 1, and on a

shorter term, as shown in (2a) through 2(d), the spike that occurs at the end of the decade

and early parts of the next decade coincides directly with the economic down turn within

the U.S.

A narrower time frame of research and queries looking at graphs 3 (AP) through 6 (WSJ),

of the past twelve years show however first a brief shift in the portrayal of China, with

more emphasis on co -occurrence of “Chinese/ China” with “trade” and a net decrease in

the use of term “communist” at the time of US support for China’s entry into the WTO.

Then over time (as China’s position as creditor and investor developed over the decade

following its entrance into the WTO), in graph number 3 (AP) and graph number 4

(NYT), we see a transition over the 2000’s decade from a rhetoric concerning trade to a

rhetoric concerning currency. There is simultaneous emergence of “imperial “, in

graphs (7a) through (7c).

Similarly, the appearance of Tibet in graph #4 (NYT) illuminates another node by which

China is framed as a human rights violator. Further illustration of this lexical field can

be seen in the appearance of the word artist in graph 4b and graphs 8 through 10 as well

as the artist’s name, Ai Wei Wei, found in graph #10, the words “detained” and “activist”

found in graph 9.

Finally, in Graphs #4 (NYT) and 5 (WP), we see use of the word trade give way to use

of the words military and sea in the latter half of the 2000’s and early 2010’s.28

Going back to our focus of interest, how can these frames be received/interpreted by the average news consumers?                                                         

28 Our methodology allows rapid visualization of those themes. There are confirmed by a by hand study conducted by Alexander Liss, entitled ”Images of China in the American Print Media: A survey from 2000 to 2002”, offering a comparison of recent positive ( WSJ)  v negative media ( NYT, LAT, WP)  remarks the occurrence of the  following themes: “a focus on the coming conflict between the United States and China, a focus on the coming conflict between the PRC and Taiwan, a focus on China’s human rights abuses and/or repressive political system, a focus on China’s internal instability and unrest, breakdown within the social order, and backwardness and corruption within the political system” Alexander Liss, ""Images of China in the American Print Media: A survey from 2000 to 2002"," Journal of Contemporary China 12.35 (2003): 299-318.

We agree with Liss’s initial observation that most readers are not experts in

international affairs and do not seek more complex analyses about China. Consequently,

we may safely assume that “they will probably imagine China as a land of political

repression, crime, and Soviet-style mistreatment of its citizens”29

We need to address the historical narrative about China that is meant to have entered the

public consciousness. Beginning with the racism faced by Chinese immigrants

throughout the history of the United States West Coast and the development of the

transnational railway and all the way through the Chinese Exclusion Act and hatred and

fear of Asian’s resulting from WWII, internment, Vietnam, and their fanciful Hollywood

representation, the cultural bias and misconceptions regarding Asians within the U.S.

cultural consciousness is vast and has been normalized in the minds of multiple

generations30.

Indeed, ideological identity formation within the United States regarding its perceived

enemies tends to focus on racial, sexual or governmental differences. Overtime, the

process has often been residual racially motivated fear. Modern perceptions of China can

often build on this residual fear of Asians in general and Chinese in particular. In other

words, the public is probably more likely to accept negative images about China and

Chinese people, than positive ones.

In addition, China as a communist country, also conjures up old entrenched images of the

Cold War and the ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union. During the Cold War,

the U.S. containment strategy aimed at defeating the Soviets and enlisting consent for

                                                        Emma Broomfield, ""Perceptions of Danger: the China Threat Theory," Journal of Contemporary China 12.35 (2003): 265‐286 p.45.29 Ibid, p. 315  30 See for example Roger Daniels. Asian America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988. Cartoons and other propaganda reinforced the view that the Chinese "worked cheap and smelled bad" (Daniels 52); 

U.S. projects across the developing world was attained through the manufacture of a fear

for communism and socialism.

Over time, as outlined by Stuart Hall in his discussion of the Neoliberal turn in England

and the U.S., as the hegemonic norms manufactured through times take root within the

public consciousness, it is the reproduction of these ideas, be it in the news media or

political rhetoric, which grants them their normative, commonsense perception31.

Impact on current discourse

Consequently, the rise of a nation, which is both Asian and Communist,

(notwithstanding the fact that China had developed into an authoritarian free market

economy), as the leading rival of U.S. hegemony, has lead to an un-easiness within the

U.S., framed by some scholars, members of the corporate elite and politicians alike, as

the China Fear Paradigm. Broomfield well summarizes the basic tenets of those in the

United States who posits that there is indeed a Chinese triple threat: economic, strategic

and ideological. The logic of Chinese threat uses the following arguments: - 1) China

wants to “to restore itself to its once pre-eminent position in the world as the ‘Middle

Kingdom” 2) China uses its economic growth “to expand its influence in the region and

challenge the West on a global level”. 3) The totalitarian dictatorship of the Chinese

Communist Party cannot co-exist in peace with the United States; 4) Conclusion:

“China’s re-emergence on the world scene as an economic and military powerhouse

presents an indisputable challenge to America’s security and the very survival of

democracy throughout the world. Its search for regional dominance and renewed power                                                         31 Stuart Hall, "Popular Culture and the State," Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta, the Anthropology of the State: a reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) 360-380. (p.365)  

status will inevitably collide with America’s interests and the security of its allies in the

future”32. Broomfield remarks the overwhelming tendency in this anti Chinese literature,

which our study of the popular media confirms, not to refer to the country as just ‘China’,

or even the ‘People’s Republic of China’, but repeatedly as Communist China33.

The impact:

One cannot ignore the domestic agenda. Having a “negative” counterpart help

creates national cohesion around the perceived opposite positive attribute. If China is bad,

the US is good. Roya Akhavan-Majid and Jyotika Ramaprasad argue that the American

Press covering the women’s conference in Beijing, was much less interested in covering

feminist issues than it was in asserting dominant American values,34 mainly stating that

“within the American society, capitalism, anticommunism and male world view maybe

considered as examples of dominant ideology”35.

However it is the international interest of the United States that dominates the

agenda. Let us first look at trade and economic policies. Polices have changed, as noted

in the change of tone and use of words in the aforementioned graphs. In a first phase,

American business interests heavily supported the entry of China into the WTO. First it

was a way to achieve greater protection of our Intellectual Property through TRIPs.

Second, the acceptance of China into the WTO was aimed at drawing China and the

Chinese government further into the neoliberal fold for the sake of U.S. business and

                                                        32 Emma Broomfield, ""Perceptions of Danger: the China Threat Theory," Journal of Contemporary China 12.35 (2003): 265‐286 p.45. 33 Ibid, p 267 

34 Roya Akhavan‐Majid and Iyotika Ramprasad, "Framing Beijing: Dominant Ideological Influences on the American Press Coverage of the Fourth UN Conference on Women and the NGO Forum," International Communications Gazette 2000 (2000): 45‐59. 35 Ibid, p 49   

outsourcing needs. In a second phase however, policies had to be reframed. China’s

position as creditor and investor developed over the decade following its entrance into the

WTO. China’s rise in economic legitimacy lead to the expansion of Chinese influence, as

well as the long-term stability of the RMB through accumulation and production of gold36

and investment in infrastructural projects throughout the developing world.37 As a result,

many American pundits, corporate news media groups and government officials have

attempted to contextualize China’s new position as creditor in the developing world as a

new form of imperialism.38 China’s rise has lead to a heated debate, especially within the

U.S.39. As Susan Strange outlines, the structural power of the United States stems from its

influence in the shaping of an economic system and structure that convince other nations

to participate in the global political or economic spheres on their terms.40 As a result, the

rising legitimacy and stability of the RMB leads to a breach in U.S. structural power, as

governments are provided an alternative to the Washington Consensus and the $Dollar in

the form of the Beijing consensus and the RMB. In a January 7, 2012 Republican

presidential debate, republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, cited “China’s artificially

suppressed currency” as “[killing] jobs in America.” Some authors, like Robert Kaplan,

have started advising for a U.S. containment strategy to counter China’s rising

influence.41 It seems that the media concur in shaping the public opinion in accepting this

strategy as policy.

                                                        36 "China increases its gold reserves in order to kill two birds with one stone," U.S. government cable (http://cables.mrkva.eu/cable.php?id=204405 , 2009).  37 Horace Campbell, "China in Africa: challenging US global hegemony," Third World Quarterly (2008). 38 Horace Campbell, “China in Africa: challenging US global hegemony,” Third World Quarterly (2008).    Graph 7a‐7c 39 Sujian Guo, China's "Peaceful Rise" in the 21st Century (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006). 40 Suan Strange, States and Markets (London: Blackwell Printers, 1988). 41 Robert D. Kaplan, "How we would fight China," The Atlantic Monthly June 2005: 49‐64. 

In terms of security issues, the modernization of China’s military and its

seemingly aggressive strategies, for military and economic or energy consumptive

reasons, and its positioning within the South China Sea, seem to push the U.S. corporate

news media to highlight the Chinese as a threat to U.S. dominance in the Pacific and

more specifically the South China Sea. It is appears to answer a need to enlist consent for

sustained military spending in the South Pacific, at a time where many are calling for

blanket cuts to government spending, which would directly affect the U.S. military

budget and thus the percentage of GDP assigned to the military industrial complex.

Policy prescriptions aimed at social reproduction and thus normalization of this

subjectivity can be seen in the deployment 2500 new marines to Australia in late 2011 as

well as in the closer military ties with other actors in the region such as Vietnam, Korea

and Japan. It has also lead officials like Leon Panetta, as well as other military and

defense experts, to demand that any cuts to military spending exclude cuts in the Pacific

theater.

GRAPH #1: New York Times 1945-2012: Co-Occurrence with CHINA.

Graph #2a: New York Times

Graph # 2b: AP

Graph # 2c: Washington Post

Graph # 2d: Wall Street Journal

Associated Press: Graph #3

New York Times: Graph #4a

New York Times: Graph #4b

Washington Post: Graph #5

Wall Street Journal: Graph #6

Graph #7a: New York Times

Graph # 7b: Wall Street Journal : Sino pec

Graph # 7c: Washington Post

Graph #8: New York Times

Graph #9 Wall Street Journal

Graph 10: Washington Post

Associated Press: Graph #11

IMAGES OF THE US IN THE CHINESE PRINT MEDIA

To make a comparison between US and Chinese sources, we have collected a decade

(2000-2011) of the entire set of articles from the People’s Daily, and ran analyses to find

the most predictive set of terms for a number of queries. Our interactive displays are

given as links below.

Initial observation

The question is whether or not the news media in the United States, where there is a

perceived freedom of the press and thus autonomy from the government, has a

substantively different effect on the public perceptions of the subjects of representation

(be they countries, or political issues) than in an authoritarian government, where there is

no feigned autonomy from the state owned news media, whose reporting is thus viewed

as propaganda, or at the very least, state’s policy? In other words is there more trust in the

media in the US than there is in China?

COMPARING NEWS COVERAGE OF THEMES

1. 'europe' http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/pd_europe/ http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/wapo_europe/ PD: europe osce, asem, europe cfe, gazprom WP: nato, europe belfast, europe belgrade, antitrust, debt, crisis

2. 'tibet' http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/pd_tibet/ http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/wapo_tibet/ PD: lhasa, tibetan buddhism, dalai clique, tibet autonamous WP: panchen lama, peasants, immortality, riots, unrest, protests, exiled tibetan 3. 'financial crisis' http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/pd_fin_cri/ http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/wapo_fin_cri/ PD: global financial crisis, imf, protectionism, mantega WP: cutbacks, bailout, threatens, derivatives, discourage

4. 'human rights' http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/pd_hum_rig/ http://atticus.berkeley.edu/guanchengli/showcase/chi/wapo_hum_rig/ PD: racism, disabilities, impunity, violations, self-determination, covenant WP: prisoners, intimidation, human rights activist, syrian observatory, ugandan, egypt

From the lists we clearly see the difference of viewpoints between the two-- ** PD is less negative in terms of relating to business ideas (1) (3). WP is opposite. ** PD treats tibet issues as domestic, while WP uses riots, unrest, exiled tibetan .. ** PD clearly defines 'human rights' differently, see 'racism' and 'disabilities', while WP is more prone to point out the basic human rights which are not possible in certain countries-- 'syrian observatory', 'ugandan', 'egypt' per se, which 'China' is less willing to mention being afraid of metaphor to her people.

Preliminary observations Chinese representation of the United States and other Global Issues Financial Crisis

Frequent discussion concerning the IMF, UNCTAD, ASEAN + 3, as solutions to

the current global financial crisis comes as a result of the Chinese government

neoliberal institutional foreign policy strategy.42 In this way, the Chinese

government is able to impel neoliberal changes in the Chinese economic and

social spheres through exchange and interaction with international institutions

allowing for a feigned sense of autonomy between the dominant Chinese class

and the waves of neoliberalization sweeping China.

The frequent occurrence of the dates 1997-98, 1997-1998, harkens back

to the East Asian financial crisis and the Chinese desire to frame the crisis as a

result of Western speculation. China’s frequent framing of the financial crisis as

the Global Financial Crisis comes as an attempt to illuminate the western

sources of the economic crisis. Also, during the East Asian Financial crisis,

China’s dynamic growth and provision of loans facilitated the regions rise out of

recession.43 Through focusing on the previous financial crisis, China draws on

pre-existing political rationalities resulting from its ability to stabilize the region

during said previous crisis in order to impel increased faith in the ability of the

Chinese economy to sustain growth within this new recession and assist its

regional allies in escaping recession.

                                                        42 Sujian Guo, China's "Peaceful Rise" in the 21st Century (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006). 43 Peter Gowan, The Global Gamble: Washington's Faustain Bid for Wold Dominance (London: Verso, 1999). Horace Campbell, "China in Africa: challenging US global hegemony," Third World Quarterly (2008). 

As much of China’s domestic legitimacy rests upon its ability to continue

its current pace of growth and development,44 use of the word Growth and

Revives comes in order to affect public perception, through convincing the

general public the economic recession is receding, in order to retain domestic

stability through political legitimacy.

Human Rights

To begin our discussion, we look at the appearance of the word anti-china. The

frequency of this usage comes as a result of the macro Chinese strategy, in

terms of international human rights identity formation, which looks to illuminate

the inherent ironies in the constant U.S. media of China as the perennial human

rights violator in relation to the incongruities between U.S. human rights rhetoric

and its the adherence of its actual policies to international human rights

standards. Through frequent use of the words self-determination and Pinochet,

China frames the discussion on human rights in stark contrast to that of U.S.

media rhetoric on the topic. The example of Pinochet calls into question U.S.

rhetoric on democratic self-determination and questions the U.S. involvement in

the coup. While the U.S. frames its own identity as the global protectorate of

Human Rights, Chinese representation focuses on the stark contrast between

U.S. rhetoric on Human Rights and the realities of the tangible results of U.S.

policy. Rhetoric concerning torture, racism, Guantanamo, extrajudicial

killings, and disappearances all point directly to the disjuncture between the

                                                        44 Baogang Guo, "China's peaceful Development, Regime Stability and Political Legitimacy. ," Sujian Guo, China's "Peaceful Rise" in the 21st Century. (Ashgate Publishing Limited. , 2006) 39‐60. 

U.S. discourse and its practice. The frequent use of the words hrw, Mary

Robinson, rights unhrc and unhrc reflect the Chinese international soft power

strategy. Thus, we see that the Chinese macro nation branding strategy is

structured by challenging the western media frame of China as an inherent

human rights violator, as a result of its governmental structure and racial identity,

through illuminating the incongruence in the relationship between western,

universalist human rights rhetoric and the tangible results of western social,

economic and political policy.

Europe

Throughout, we see the promotion of a high-level of political, cultural and

economic exchange between China and Europe. Via the China peaceful

development paradigm, as outlined in numerous white papers published by the

Chinese government and handily described by professor Sujian Guo,45 Chinese

foreign policy is predicated on institutional, political and economic cooperation

ala neoliberalism. Thus, as the euro block represents the heartland of institutional

liberalism, it makes sense that the Chinese government would frame European,

as opposed to American, as the western identity to culturally emulate in order to

further its domestic project of public neoliberalization.

Looking at the domestic Chinese level, there is a conflict of interests that

illuminates this differential between Chinese representation of European and U.S.

identity. On the one hand, the current high-level of Chinese military spending is,

in large part, publically legitimized based on the aggressive nature of U.S. foreign

                                                        45 Sujian Guo, China's "Peaceful Rise" in the 21st Century (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006). 

policy. On the other, domestic neoliberalization has, in many ways, been

publically legitimated though the valorization of western individualism and

consumerism.46 This conflict has been resolved, it seems, through shifting the

frame of western valorization away from the United States and towards Europe in

order to retain the legitimacy of domestic neoliberalization as legitimized by

valorization of western cultural individualism while simultaneously framing the

United States as a threat to sustain public consent for the exorbitant, and rising,

percentage of Chinese GDP going to military spending.

                                                        46 Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: experiments in neoliberalism, sexuality, and public culture (Duke University Press, 2007).