The ‘China Threat’ through the Lens of US Print Media: 1992–2006

China scholars have examined the ‘China threat’ theory from various theoretical perspectives, offered a range of explanations for the theory's emergence and forecast the potential implications for US–China relations. However, few scholars have empirically studied the ‘China threat’ theory through the lens of the US media. This is a critical oversight, because the media plays a pivotal role in shaping US public opinion and US foreign policy, and the media is a key channel for ‘China threat’ dissemination and popularization. This study seeks to redress this oversight by empirically examining ‘China threat’ coverage in the US print media over a 15-year period from 1992 to 2006. We use content-analysis methodology to systematically collect, code and analyze ‘China threat’ data from five major US newspapers and to track the frequency and content of this coverage over time.

Our analysis reveals many interesting patterns in ‘China threat’ media coverage. First, the initial emergence of ‘China threat’ arguments in the US print media corresponded with the sharp upward turn in China's economic growth rates in the early 1990s. However, since the early 1990s, ‘China threat’ coverage has not mirrored China's steady growth. Rather, the media coverage was cyclic, featuring three key peaks (1996, 2000 and 2005) followed by subsequent declining interest. Second, our analysis reveals that the focus of these stories also varied over time. Perceptions of China as a political/ideological threat dominated media coverage in the earlier years (1992–1994) but steadily declined after 1995 and totally disappeared from the US print media after 2001. Perceptions of China as a military/strategic threat replaced political/ideological concerns in 1995, and the military focus has dominated media coverage ever since. Perceptions of China as an economic/trade threat persisted steadily throughout the 15-year time period with a clear uptick in recent years. We conclude this analysis by turning to the literature on realism, agenda setting and information processing to offer possible explanations for these empirical trends.     

China Goes to Africa: a strategic move?

Entering the twenty-first century, particularly under the reign of Hu Jintao, China began to pursue an increasingly pro-active diplomacy in Africa. Most analysis on China's offensive diplomacy in Africa focuses on Beijing's thirst for energy and raw materials, and for economic profits and benefits. That is why it is often called ‘energy diplomacy’ or ‘economic diplomacy’ as if China, just like Japan in the 1980s, became another ‘economic animal’. But if one looks at the history of the PRC's foreign policy, Beijing has seldom pursued its diplomacy from purely economic considerations. Is this time any different? This article exams China's diplomacy in Africa from a strategic and political perspective such as its geo-strategic calculations, political and security ties with African countries, peacekeeping and anti-piracy efforts in the region, support for African regionalism, etc. It argues that China's diplomatic expansion in Africa, while partially driven by its need for economic growth, cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration its strategic impulse accompanying its accelerating emergence as a global power. Africa is one of China's diplomatic ‘new frontiers’ as exemplified by new Chinese leader Xi Jinping's maiden foreign trip to Africa in 2013.     

One Rising China,Multiple Interpretations: China's 60th anniversary celebration through the lens of the world's printed media

What does a rising China mean to the world? While some countries take China as a salient threat, others regard China as their role model for development and governance. However, limited research has offered a systematic comparative analysis in this regard. China's spectacular celebration of its 60th anniversary uniquely showcased its increasing military might, mounting economic wealth and carefully-maintained mass support. Taking advantage of simultaneous worldwide news coverage of this all-in-one event, we scrutinize how different societies responded to a rising China. We find significant variance in the news coverage from 42 top printed media in 21 sampled societies. Moreover, these societies' political features affect their newspapers' reporting styles the most. This analysis significantly enriches our understanding of the rise of China.     

Domestic constraints and international competitiveness: A research note on the China case

This article examines China toward the end of the twentieth century through the perspectives of both the theory of relative political capacity and the geopolitical theory. While the latter theory explains a country's development as a consequence of international events, the former theory emphasizes the efficiency and competency of a government as the cause of the nation's political and economic status. We believe that the two theories should be connected in analyzing a nation's political and economic behavior; international and domestic factors reinforce each other in shaping a government's policies, strategies, and priorities. A synthetic analysis of the two scenarios shows that China is likely to continue to move toward a market economy and political democracy.     

Rethinking the Chinese World Order: the imperial cycle and the rise of China

Looking to China's imperial history to understand how China as a great power will behave in the twenty-first century, some scholars have rediscovered the concept of the traditional Chinese world order coined by John K. Fairbank in the 1960s in the reconstruction of the benevolent governance and benign hierarchy of the Chinese Empire, and portrayed its collapse as a result of the clash of civilizations between the benevolent Chinese world order and the brutal European nation-state system. China was forced into the jungle of the social Darwinist world to struggle for its survival. As a result, China's search for power and wealth is to restore justice in an unjust world. China's rise would be peaceful. This article finds that while imperial China was not uniquely benevolent nor uniquely violent, the reconstruction of China's imperial past to advance the contemporary agenda of its peaceful rise has, ironically, set a nineteenth century agenda for China in the twenty-first century to restore the regional hierarchy and maximize China's security by expanding influence and control over its neighborhoods.     

China and the Asian Economies: mutual acceptance,economic interaction and interactive dynamics

The objective of this article is to explore the economic relationship between China and the surrounding dynamic Asian economies. It delves into China's influence over the Asian economies and whether this relationship has evolved in a market- and institution-led symbiotic manner. The three principal channels of regional integration analyzed in this article are trade, FDI and vertically integrated production networks. Another issue that this article explores is the so-called China ‘threat’ or ‘fear’ in Asia. The China threat implied that China was crowding out exports from the other Asian economies in the world market place. Also, as China became the most attractive FDI destination among developing countries, it was understood that China was receiving FDI at the expense of the Asian economies. These concerns were examined by several empirical studies and the inference was that they were exaggerated. The article concludes that China methodically expanded and deepened its economic ties with its regional neighbors. At the present juncture, China's integration with the surrounding Asian nations is deep. Both China and its dynamic Asian neighbors have benefited from this synergy.     

China and Central Asia: a new Great Game or traditional vassal relations?

Central Asia and China have been closely intertwined in history and today that relationship has begun to re-emerge. This article analyses the reasons for the close cooperation which has re-emerged in the 1990s and boomed in the twenty-first century. Domestic and internal factors, as well as political and economic considerations are included in the search for an explanation for current relations and future expectations. Despite the fact that China has emerged as one of the world's most powerful states, its dependence on the Central Asian states in regard to oil and gas but also domestic security is intriguing. The future of Sino-Central Asian relations is deeply embedded in joint problems and common interests, but also in fear of domination and external intervention.     

China's Unbalanced Economic Growth

This paper summarizes empirical findings and results from the author's most recent research publication in Chinese: China's Unbalanced Economic Growth. It studies China's economic growth with a special emphasis on its regional disparities. It provides an analysis of China's overall economic landscape as well as an empirical study of China's unbalanced regional development. Based on its quantitative findings and results, the author predicts the emergence of ten Chinese metropolitan economies in the early twenty-first century and recommends a regional development strategy as well as implementation policies for China's future development. The major empirical findings, results and conclusions of this research are outlined in three sections: the first describes China's economic future—the emergence of ten regional metropolitan economies, the second reports the empirical findings of China's national and regional economic disparities and discusses policy implications, and the third investigates China's future economic growth and discusses its growth limitations.     

China in Global Food Security Governance

The Chinese public's domestic expectation is that its state will ensure a safe and affordable supply of food. However, in doing so, China has acquired large amounts of farmland abroad which has raised concerns among many developing countries. It has been argued that land grabbing in the developing world is a form of neo-colonialism. This role of a colonial power is in conflict with China's historical role, which presents China as a leader of the developing world. In order to bring these role expectations into conformity with each other, China has taken a more active role in global food security governance. It has brought food security to what is becoming the core of the global governance decision-making system, the G20. China's historical role, together with its growing economic power, has helped to push the G20 to understand the importance of food security. This has shifted the G20's understanding of economic global governance away from the traditional fields of banking and trade regulation toward understanding the developmental-oriented economic structure.     

How did China's Transitions Impact People's Welfare Benefits in the Reform Era?

This article examines changes in China's welfare programs in the context of economic transition from planned economy to a market-oriented economy. Using the 1988 and 1995 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), we develop analytical models to study the critical impacts of institutional variables such as economic ownership types and economic sectors on key welfare programs in both rural and urban areas in China. Our findings show that the Chinese government drastically reduced welfare coverage for its citizens during the economic transitional period even though Chinese urban residents' welfare income was primarily determined by the type of their employment. Outperforming many other factors, work unit's ownership nature played a significant role in the provision of welfare benefits while the economic sectors largely failed to have any significant impacts. These findings indicate that China has been moving away from the active state model in welfare provision. Yet, an industrialization and resource-based welfare system has not been realized in China in the reform era.     

China's Future Economic Regionalization

This paper investigates China's economic growth potentials and limitation up to 2020 and recommends a trend of economic regionalization. A sustainable growing economy is a necessity for China's future stability. The growth sustainability of the Chinese economy depends essentially on its continued commitments to institutional reform and economic deregulation. China's relaxation of government intervention in economic activities has led and will be leading China to decentralize its central governmental authority over economic planning and control. This will consequently stimulate the emergence of regional economies in Mainland China. In the next two decades, there will likely be 10 regional economies with relatively independent industrial structures emerging in Greater China (or the Chinese Economic Area of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and the Mainland) as a result of economic liberalization and decentralization.     

The China Model: can it replace the Western model of modernization?

China's economic success under an authoritarian political system in the past 30 years has raised a question about whether the China model will replace the Western model of modernization. This paper seeks answers to this question by exploring to what extent China offers a distinctive model of economic and political development and whether the China model represents a successful co-existence of a free market and an authoritarian state in order to maintain economic growth and political stability, as well as discussing what the appeals and limitations of the China model are.     

External Contradictions of the Chinese Development Model: export-led growth and the dangers of global economic contraction

China's development model faces an external constraint that could cause an economic hard landing. China has become a global manufacturing powerhouse, and its size now renders its export-led growth strategy unsustainable. China relies on the US market, but the scale of its exports is contributing to the massive US trade deficit, creating financial fragility and undermining the US manufacturing sector. These developments could stall the US economy's expansion, in turn triggering a global recession that will embrace China. This is the external constraint. These considerations suggest that China should transition from export-led growth to domestic demand-led growth. This requires growing the economy's demand side as well as its supply-side. To avoid stalling the US economic expansion, which is critical to China's growth, China should significantly revalue its currency as part of a generalized East Asian upward currency revaluation. Longer term, China should raise wages and improve income distribution. Under export-led growth, higher wages undermine employment. Under domestic demand-led growth, they support it. The challenge is to raise wages in an efficient decentralized manner. History shows that this requires independent democratic trade unions. However, such unions are currently unacceptable to the Chinese political leadership. Creating a domestic demand-led growth regime therefore requires solving this political roadblock.     

‘Peaceful Evolution’, ‘Regime Change’ and China's Political Security

This article explores the enduring impact of the Western strategy of ‘peaceful evolution’ (heping yanbian) on China's political security. This non-military strategy is given an added significance in an era of the lone superpower, when American military might can provide the buttress. ‘Peaceful evolution’ can also overlap with the US notion of ‘regime change’, which often entails military intervention to bring about a desired political transformation in a particular state. Specifically, the strategy of ‘peaceful evolution’ still constitutes a serious threat to China because it needs to continue opening up to the West for the sake of economic modernisation.     

China's Rise in Southeast Asia: implications for the United States

During the past few decades, China's economic success has permitted it to pursue a greater role on the international stage. China is recognized both as a regional and aspiring global power. Nowhere is this more evident than within Southeast Asia, where China's more active diplomacy is reflected in growing trade relations, proposals for stronger security ties, and the signing of numerous cooperative agreements on issues as varied as environmental protection, drug trafficking, and public health. As a whole, the region has received China's activism with both enthusiasm and trepidation. China has expended significant effort to assuage the fears of its neighbors by adopting a foreign policy approach that is active, non-threatening, and generally aligned with the economic and security interests of the region. This positive diplomacy has clearly yielded some success, most notably in the trade realm, where China is rapidly emerging as an engine of regional economic growth and integration that may well challenge Japanese and American dominance in the next three to five years. In the security realm, China's diplomacy, while rhetorically appealing to regional actors, has yet to make significant inroads in a regional security structure dominated by the United States and its bilateral security relationships. Most significantly, however, if China is to emerge as a real leader within Southeast Asia, it will also need to assume more of the social and political burden that leadership entails. As China continues to advance itself as a regional leader, its policies on issues such as health, drugs, the environment and human rights will face additional scrutiny not only for their impact on the region but also for the more profound question they raise concerning the potential of China's moral leadership. For the United States, China's greater presence and activism suggest at the very least that it cannot remain complacent about the status quo that has governed political, economic and security relations for the past few decades. Shared leadership within Southeast Asia will likely include China in the near future, with all the potential benefits and challenges that such leadership will entail.     

Accounting for Taiwan's economic policy toward China

This article explores the ideas, institutions, and interests in which Taiwan's economic policy toward China is embedded. The authors indicate that the ideas behind Taiwan's economic policy toward China are as vibrant as ever, the political foundation for a coherent and feasible policy is eroding, and commercial interests are digressing from the Taiwan government's policy goals. Political forces around ideas have strong hearing on the formation of Taiwan's economic policy toward China. The truthfulness or falseness of the security argument is of intrinsic value to Taiwan's decision makers. The authors also point out that in order to have a complete picture of cross‐Strait economic relations, we need to specify how trade and investment with China influence Taiwan's distribution of political interests.     

Economic Reform and Social Welfare: The Chinese perspective portrayed through a social survey in Shanghai

This article starts with a brief comparative analysis of China and East Europe in terms of their stark differences in approaching economic reform and social welfare. Perhaps China has the benefit of learning, from the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, of the undesirable social costs incurred by economic reform. Henceforth, it has adopted a pragmatic and gradualist approach towards economic reform. This article reports the findings of an attitude survey in Shanghai, which by and large are compatible with the gradualist approach of the Chinese Government toward economic reform and social welfare. The survey finds that the Chinese in Shanghai positively rate economic reform in light of the benefits that it has brought about, but they are also aware of the large income disparities caused as a result. In the light of the evidence, the article suggests that China's economic reform has not transformed people's beliefs to be in line with the market system. The Chinese are still, in general, in favor of a large role for the state in welfare and they themselves are not willing to shoulder heavier welfare responsibility. In the concluding section, the article explains this mixed pattern of public perceptions and pinpoints the likely developmental trend of China's welfare system.     

China and Major Power Relations in East Asia

Tremendous changes have taken place in East Asia in the post-Cold War era, which have a great impact on Chinese foreign policy and its relations with major powers in East Asia. This new power configuration is related to as 'two ups' and 'two downs', which have become apparent since the early 1990s. The 'two ups' concern the rise of the United States and China. The United States' rise to sole superpower status has given Washington a dominant role in all four dimensions of world affairs: political, strategic, economic, and technological/cultural. Meanwhile, China has achieved a spectacular economic performance for the past two decades, sustaining high growth rates, and escaping, so far, the Asian economic crisis of 1997‐98. This expansion has greatly increased China's influence in regional and global affairs. The 'two downs' refer to the downturns of Russia and Japan. This article provides a detailed analysis of China's international environment in the context of the changing dynamics of major-power relations in East Asia. Special attention is paid to the crucial Beijing‐Tokyo‐Washington triangle. The examination focuses upon political, economic, and strategic dimensions.     

Understanding the New Rural Co-operative Movement: towards rebuilding civil society in China

Along with the emergence of the ‘three rural issues’ and rural crisis, a new co-operative movement has been witnessed in rural China, which is different from the former revolutionary communalist co-operative movement. This social movement can help to understand and rebuild civil society in China, which has, more often than not, been criticized as not genuine, civil nor society-based. Following the debate's background of the juxtaposition of a fast economic reform together with slow social and political reforms in China, the paper addresses a crucial question on the impact of economic development on civil society dynamics in China. By identifying the causal mechanisms of the new co-operative development and the conditions needed for them to develop, the paper presents some implications of the co-operative model in today's society. These causal mechanisms are set within the context of one historical process evolving with a path dependency. Using this theoretical framework, it further presents the empirical observations. Through the findings it is concluded that the new co-operative movement in rural China can be considered as a mild liberalization within civil society's sphere. While questioning a popularly used perspective examining the voluntary/non-profit nature of civil society organizations and excluding the economic aspect within civil society studies in China, the paper suggests an alternative approach representing an inclusive third sector with diverse organizations that combine both economic and social aims.     

Reform ideology,political commitment and resource transfor: An alternative model for the explanation of China's economic reform∗

One of the most intriguing ironies of our era is the result of recent changes in the former communist world. Whereas the “democratizing” Russia and Eastern European countries are caught in repeated political as well as economic crises, the “unrepentant” authoritarian China and Vietnam are seeing their economies booming and more market‐oriented. Such an irony poses many important questions. One of the questions is how China has managed to get where it is. This paper represents an attempt to address this question. Firstly, it will briefly outline where economic reforms have brought China so far. Secondly, it will discuss two popular models used to explain China's economic performance. And finally, it will develop an alternative model that combines politics and economy in accounting for China's reform experience.