Introduction: Imagining Demons: the rise of negative imagery

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Source: Journal of Contemporary China (2003), 12(35), 235–237

The study of mutual perceptions has gained increased attention in the field of Sino–American relations in recent years. The contributors to the symposium of articles in this issue find that perceptions on both sides have hardened and become increasingly negative during the latter half of the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century. Given the importance of US–China relations in world affairs, this trend is of concern. Mutual images have not always been so negative. This introductory article argues that while negative images have been present over time, they have traditionally been offset by equally positive imagery— thus representing an ambivalent dual nature to mutual perceptions.

The study of mutual perceptions and images has recently received new emphasis and has achieved an important place in the scholarly literature on Sino–American relations. This recent focus has a longer history dating back to the work of earlier scholars during the 1950s–1990s.1 Much of this previous research posited that the United States and China held ambivalent and contradictory mutual perceptions and images of each other. That is, Americans and Chinese held fundamentally contradictory cognitive stereotypes of the other.

Americans both romanticized and demonized China and the Chinese—consider-
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* David Shambaugh is Professor of Political Science & International Affairs and Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. He is also a nonresident enior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program and Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. His most recent book is Modernizing China’s Military: Progress, Problems and Prospects (University of California Press, 2002).
1. During the 1950s, see Harold Isaacs, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (New York: John Day, 1958); and Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu (New York: MacMillan, 1960). During the 1960s, see John King Fairbank, China Perceived: Images and Policies in Chinese—American Relations (New York: Knopf, 1974); A.T. Steele, The American People and China (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966); and Wu Yuanli, As Peking Sees Us (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1967). During the 1970s, see Tu Weiming, ‘Chinese perceptions of America’, and Warren Cohen, ‘American perceptions of China’, both in Michel Oksenberg and Robert Oxnam, eds, Dragon and Eagle (New York: Basic Books, 1978); and Benson Lee Grayson, The American Image of China (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1979). During the 1980s, see my Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Harish Kapur, ed., As China Sees the World: Perceptions of Chinese Scholars (London: Frances Pinter, 1987); Steven Mosher, China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1990); and Harry Harding, ‘From China with disdain: new trends in the study of China’, Asian Survey 22(10), (1982), pp. 934–958. During the 1990s, see T. Christopher Jesperson, The American Image of China, 1931–1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Richard Madsen, China and the American Dream (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Jianwei Wang, Limited Adversaries: Post-Cold War Sino—American Mutual Images (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Hongshan Li and Zhaohui Hong, Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.—China Relations (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998).
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ing them to be cultivated and erudite as well as despotic and heathen, earthy yet superstitious, ideological yet pragmatic, stoic yet sadistic, conservative yet extremist, calm and introspective yet warlike and aggressive, weak yet formidable, and so on. For their part, the Chinese respected and sought to emulate the United States, while also feeling revulsion over many aspects of American society and culture and contempt for American behavior abroad. The United States was, for many Chinese, a ‘beautiful imperialist’ (Mei Di).

Sometimes these contradictory and dualistic images existed simultaneously in the collective mindsets of each, while during other periods one set of stereotypes became dominant and held sway for some time before swinging back in the opposite direction. Either way, scholars noted that this ambivalence produced a ‘love–hate syndrome’ in mutual imagery.2 This dual syndrome played directly into a fairly repetitive cycle in the relations between the two countries: Mutual Enchantment ---Raised Expectations ---Unfulfilled Expectations ---Disillusion and Disenchantment ---Recrimination and Fallout ---Separation and Hostility ---Re-embrace and Re-enchantment. And then the cycle repeats. While not always mechanical and predictable, the Sino–American relationship over the past century has tended to follow this pattern while ambivalent mutual images have paralleled and underlaid the pattern. The result has been alternating amity and enmity.

Two other aspects of Sino–American mutual perceptions have also been evident over time. The first is that neither side seems comfortable with, or is able to grasp, complexity in the other. While it is apparent that mutual images have become more diversified and realistic over time as a result of mutual contact and interaction,3 the perceptions of the other are still often reduced to overly simplistic stereotypes and caricatures which lack nuance and sophistication. Consequently, because they are derived from overly generalized image structures, they do not tend to easily accommodate incongruous information that contradicts the stereotypical belief— thus producing reinforcing cognitive dissonance and misperception. Certain images—such as the Chinese perception of American hegemony or the American perception of the Chinese government’s despotic nature—become so hardened and ingrained that behavior of the other is filtered through these dominant image constructs and does not allow for nuance or alternative explanations.

The second noticeable element is that perceptions of the other tend to say much more about the perceiver than the perceived. That is, there has been a persistent tendency to externalize beliefs about one’s own society and worldview on to the other. Writers, elites, and officials in each society are so imbued with their own worldviews that they not only instinctively impose it and its underlying assumptions on to the other, but reveal an extreme inability to ‘step outside’ of their own perceptual mindsets and see either the other or themselves as the other would. This results in mutual ‘deafness’ and unnecessary arrogance on each side.
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2. Stanley Karnow was the first to identify this syndrome as such in his ‘China through rose-tinted glasses’, Atlantic Monthly, (October 1973), p. 74.
3. Compare, for example the findings in my Beautiful Imperialist, and by Philip Saunders, ‘China’s American watchers: changing attitudes towards the United States’, China Quarterly 161, (March 2000), pp. 41–65.




Recent trends
While these tendencies and patterns have demonstrated substantial tenacity over time, and remain pertinent today, there does appear to have been a notable shift in Sino–American mutual imagery in recent years. The shift is towards the hardening of negative and demonized images in both countries. While the diplomatic relationship between the two has exhibited elements of both confrontation and cooperation over the last decade, mutual images have steadily grown more and more negative. The ambivalence noted in previous years has seemingly given way to a predominantly disapproving and critical set of mutual perceptions. To be sure, a series of difficult and unpleasant events—the Tiananmen massacre, the Yinhe ship affair, the Cox Commission inquiry, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the EP-3 incident, and other mishaps—have all contributed to the increased negativity. But, increasingly, positive perceptions of the other are rarely articulated and have been increasingly replaced by strong invective and mutual demonization in the national media and specialist publications in each country.

The four articles that follow are evidence of this new trend of demonization. These four case studies were written by students in my graduate-level seminar on US–China relations in the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University during the spring semester of 2002. Two (by Samantha Blum and Rosalie Chen) survey the perceptions of Chinese international relations specialists of American foreign policy, particularly the issue of US ‘hegemony’. Both delve into the major international relations journals published by leading Chinese government-affiliated think tanks, while Ms Blum also taps into a number of recently published books in China. The two other articles examine American views of China. One, by Emma Broomfield, carefully surveys the ‘China threat’ literature in the American media and policy-oriented publications, while the other (by Alexander Liss) surveys the four major newspapers in the United States (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal) offering a content analysis of their China coverage during the period 2000–2002. While all four articles reveal a range of opinions, and even debates, they are collectively notable for the generally negative and critical portrayals that journalists and analysts in each country articulate of the other. This trend is of concern to the broader bilateral relationship, and deserves more academic study as well as programmatic efforts to understand the sources of the negativity and to rectify it. American philanthropic foundations and non-profit educational organizations such as the National Committee on US–China Relations should devote resources to supporting these efforts.

As these ensuing articles illustrate, the sources for studying mutual perceptions
in Sino–American relations have never been richer. On the Chinese side, a wide
variety of specialist periodicals and books can be accessed, as well as the national
media, provincial press, and even public opinion polling. In the United States, there
is a similar spectrum of data available. Scholars, students, and intelligence analysts
should all tap into these sources and pay more attention to the role that perceptions
and images play in the US–China relationship.