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Abstract
The relationship between the United States and China carries with it paramount implications for international order and stability. The rapid rise of China's economic power during the past three decades makes it more so. Since the bulk of existing political science literature on bilateral relations focuses on the official stance and moves that shaped the bilateral interactions, the social and cultural aspects have been largely marginalized. This paper aims to fill the gap by exploring the US media portrayal of China in the new millennium and its implications for US-China relations. The study of the US media coverage of China is expected to shed light on the broader social and cultural context in which US foreign policy towards China operates. This knowledge will help to broaden our understanding about both the opportunities and challenges for bilateral interactions between the two powers in the future.
Keywords. China threat, US media, bilateral interactions, foreign policy, human rights
1.Introduction
After three decades of "opening up" and economic reform, China has achieved extraordinary economic progress that attracted worldwide attention. The rapid economic growth unsurprisingly was also accompanied by modernization of its military and projection of its soft power worldwide in recent decades. All these combined propelled China further into a central position of power, causing strong repercussions in the international community thereof. As the Chinese economy further expanded, so did the doubt and speculation from the international community. Despite the degree of interdependence between China and the United States and a positive response to a rising China among certain scholars and policy makers, the rapid emergence or resurgence of China as a world power had been approached with more caution than acclaim in the United States. The US discomfort about China had to do with a myriad of issues that have been constant causes of diplomatic entanglements between the two powers, ranging from trade disputes, human rights concerns, military modernization, geographical influence, Taiwan, international role, etc. The discomfort on the US side became heightened in the 1990s. "China Threat" rhetoric was born as a result. The intensive debate of China's threat reached its peak in 1997 when Foreign Affairs carried an article by Burnstein and Munro entitled "The Coming Conflict with America" (Bernstein and Munro, 1997). The...