After the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, the Chinese leadership identified itself as a staunch ally of the Soviet Union in ideological, political, military, and economic terms and regarded the United States as the archenemy of China. China’s perceptions of the United States drastically changed to the negative.
THE HISTORICAL CONTRAST
The image of the United States was particularly dramatized by the U.S.-China confrontation during the Korean War in 1950-1953. On October 26, 1950, one day after the formal participation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Korean, the central leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) issued an internally circulated document instructing the Party to conduct anti-American propaganda.[2]
This document was probably the first authorized attempt to systematically shape the image of the United States in China. It called for a “unified understanding and position on U.S. imperialism” and a thorough, resolute political campaign to “wipe out the pro-American reactionary thoughts and the American-phobia psychology, and to foster a widespread attitude of hating, disdaining, and despising the United States.”
The document described the United States in three images. First, eight historical events were listed to illustrate that the United States was the Chinese nation’s enemy. Second, three reasons were given to explain why the United States was also an enemy of the whole world: (1) was the headquarters of launching wars of international aggression, and it made profits by killing people with advanced weapons; (2) was the headquarters of opposing democracy and fostering fascism in other parts of the world; and (3) was an enemy of civilization and the headquarters of human spiritual degeneration. Finally, the document depicted the United States as a “paper tiger.” According to the propaganda line it prescribed, Americans were not only politically isolated but also militarily weakened by overstretching, and they were no longer monopolizing the atom bomb.
It was not this document but the Communist leader Mao Zedong who first created the “paper-tiger” analogy in 1946 when he was interview by an American correspondent, Anna Louise Strong. Mao commented in the interview:
Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters, the U.S. reactionaries, are all paper tigers too. Speaking of U.S. imperialism, people seem to feel that it is terrifically strong. Chinese reactionaries are using the ‘strength’ of the United States to frighten the Chinese people. But it will be proved that the U.S. reactionaries, like all the reactionaries in history, do not have much strength.[3]
The defeat of Chiang Kai-shek proved to the Chinese communists that he and his American supporters were indeed paper tigers, This view was reinforced by the result of the Korean War, in which China claimed victory over the world’s most powerful imperialist country, one armed with nuclear weapons. During and after the Korean War, the accusation of tendencies in China of qinmei (pro-American) and kongmei (American-phobia) became a customary propaganda effort, and fanmei (anti-American) feelings were officially stimulated.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States attempted to isolate the PRC politically and economically and contain it militarily, and it sent its troops to protect Taiwan from any Chinese effort to take the island to achieve national reunification. The image of the United States as the archenemy of China and of the whole world was consolidated. Meanwhile, China saw the U.S. paper tiger as deeply wounded by international revolutions and by the erosions of capitalism. The Vietnam War, the Cuban revolution, and a number of other setbacks in the U.S. conflict with the Soviet Union as well as in the Third World undermined its strength. The civil rights movement in the 1960s, especially the vehement struggle represented by Martin Luther King Jr., presented an image to the Chinese that the paper tiger was suffering from serious problems at home.
In addition to viewing the United States as China’s primary security threat, the Chinese people were being educated to believe that the United States was the most sinister Western power and was trying to corrode the Chinese culture and national identity by spreading decadent bourgeois ideas and lifestyle. Such efforts before 1949 were exemplified by American missionary activities, the Open Door policy, and the refunding of part of the Boxer indemnity to establish Western schools and hospitals in China and bring Chinese students to the United States for training. John Foster Dulles, secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration, made himself known to every Chinese with political consciousness by making a statement in June 1957 that his government should do everything possible to contribute to the end of the Communist rule in China.[4] Therefore, the United States was also seen as a real, ferocious, but hypocritical tiger capable of threatening China’s political and cultural survival. During the Cultural Revolution, a number of political figures (such as the wife of State Chairman Liu Shaoqi) and intellectuals were accused of being U.S. agents or followers. Virtually nothing related to the United States was perceived as positive.
The rapprochement between the two countries in the early 1970s gradually brought about a new U.S. image in China. The Soviet Union, called the “new czar” and “social imperialism,” eclipsed the United States as the most dangerous threat to China’s national security and domestic stability. An apparently weakened United States was described as defensive in international politics, playing the role as a counterweight to Soviet expansion. However, the Chinese lament of the decline of U.S. power was confined to geopolitical calculations in facing the Soviet threat. U.S. role in world affairs, particularly in world economics, continued to be seen as negative.
After China entered the reform era in 1979, a year also marked by the establishment of China-U.S. diplomatic relations, positive elements were found in America’s image in China. Although the official line continued to call for vigilant against U.S. political and cultural penetration, Chinese students and the intelligentsia at large became quite enthusiastic about U.S. politics, culture, education, and society. Some were obviously inspired by America’s liberal democratic ideas in promulgating their own proposals for reforming China. In the 1980s, especially between 1986 and 1989, owing to a combination of factors, the positive part of America’s image culminated among the Chinese population. Among those factors were the official denunciation of the Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong, the Sino-U.S. strategic coordination against the Soviet block (including tacit U.S. support for China’s border war with Vietnam), an unprecedented aspiration for opening and reform, the burgeoning market economy, and the emphasis on higher education and scientific research.
This contrast of images was dramatically sharpened by the 1989 Tiananmen turmoil, during which a number of student demonstrators, while listening to the Voice of America broadcast support of them, believed they were representing contemporary Chinese democratization. Indeed, the relaxation of East-West relations, glasnost in the Soviet Union, and political upheavals in Eastern Europe seemed to have convinced the student activists and their sympathizers that Western-type democracy was the tide of the day. However, the Tiananmen movement soon ended with a resolute crackdown, followed by a more vigorous authorized effort to reintroduce the traditional political education about the harmfulness of U.S. thinking and “conspiratorial schemes” about China.
The 1990s witnessed some interesting flip-flops in Chinese perceptions of the United States, reflecting the ups and downs in the U.S.-China relationship throughout history. Growing commercial ties led to U.S. products—including Hollywood movies and the McDonald’s—becoming exceedingly popular among Chinese citizens. The zeal for studying and working in the United States only grew. The positive image reached its peak in 1997—1998 when President Jiang Zemin and President Bill Clinton exchanged official visits and stated their shared interest in “building toward a constructive strategic partnership” between the two countries.
At the same time, during the 1990s the image of the United States was tainted by a number of events as well as U.S. actions abroad. The annual debate in the U.S. Congressional over whether to grant China most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status, the Clinton administration’s decision to issue a visa to Taiwan’s Lee Teng-hui in 1995, continued U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and Washington’s human rights pressures on Beijing were often referred to as indications of U.S. hostility toward a country that had harbored no antagonistic intentions. To this extent, the Chinese government was successful in convincing its citizens that the United States was a sinister hegemon trying to dominate the world and interfere in China’s domestic affairs. According to China’s official guideline, U.S. policy toward China was aimed to Westernize (xihua), divide (fenhua), and contain (ezhi) the People’s Republic with ulterior motives.
Chinese disillusionment with the United States was coupled with impressive economic performance and social progress in China. Beijing claimed that China’s achievements were due largely to political stability at home and resistance to U.S. calls for freedom of speech and democracy. Radical nationalistic feelings were vented by a controversial but popular book, China Can Say No, published in 1996. The accumulated agony about U.S. hegemonic behavior in world affairs soared in May 1999 after U.S. bombs hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and killed three Chinese reporters. The embassy bombing once again evoked the collective memories of China’s one hundred years of humiliation after the Opium War. The trauma was so deep that the vast majority of Chinese elites still believe today that the bombing was intentional, not a “mistake” as the U.S. government claimed. Any random interviews with Chinese citizens could affirm this conclusion.
Since 2000, the Chinese public has generally held a more balanced and stable view of the United States than in the past. In the global power equation, the United States seems to loom even larger in Chinese overall strategic thinking, as the post-September 11 America has been more aggressive in taking military actions and as the U.S. economy continues to have an edge over European and Japanese economies. On the other hand, Beijing’s official pronouncements have played down the themes of “multipolarity” and “opposing hegemonism” and have described Beijing’s relationship with Washington as correctly improving. Generally, Chinese media have reported U.S. domestic and foreign affairs in more detached and objective terms.
The air collision between a Chinese fighter plane and a U.S. spy plane, known as EP-3, over the island of Hainan in April 2001 triggered a political crisis in China-U.S. relations. During the period of crisis, the “enemy image” of the United States resurfaced, although the public reaction to the EP-3 incident was less emotional than the reaction to the Belgrade embassy bombing in 1999, largely owing to the more measured government handling of the incident.
The September 11, 2001, tragedy came five months after the EP-3 crisis, just as the U.S.-China relationship was returning to normal. China’s leadership wasted no time in sending sympathies and condolences to the Bush administration, taking this opportunity to improve its image in the United States. Beijing also extended various forms of important but largely unreported support, including intelligence sharing, to the U.S. combat against terrorism in Afghanistan and elsewhere. In contrast, the general public in China harbored mixed feelings toward the 9/11 attacks. Some people were genuinely sympathetic with Americans, others got excited to see the dramatically shocking video pictures, and still others did not hide their pleasure in watching Americans suffer from, in their view, much deserved “punishment.” The divergent reactions to 9/11 among Chinese citizens can be attributed to many factors. Notably, the apparently restrained Chinese media coverage of the tragic event did not fully report on sacrifices of Americans, moving stories about the rescue workers, or the mourning ceremonies.
Chinese perceptions of the United States became even more diversified when massive demonstrations occurred around the world in the spring of 2003 against an imminent U.S. war against Iraq. At that time, Beijing was trying to remain disengaged from the Iraq controversy. Since early 2002, China’s official media had conspicuously refrained from castigating “U.S. hegemonism,” which was featuring in the Chinese press for years in the 1990s.
Under the surface, however, China’s political and intellectual elites debated heatedly about U.S. behavior in waging the war in Iraq. On one end of the debate, more than 400 intellectuals, retired officials, and Chinese overseas signed an emotional statement—which they distributed on the Internet—against America’s “flagrant aggression.” They accused the United States of being “a country that owns the largest amount of destructive weapons, a country that used to slaughter other nations and peoples with weapons of mass destruction, and a country that is always raising a butcher’s knife and has never stopped killing and looting.” “Is there any justification,” they asked in the statement, “for that country to impose weapons inspection and make the most inhuman military attacks on a nation and a people (Iraq) that dares to resist its rude and unreasonable savage act?”[5]
At the other extreme, some Chinese thinkers were firmly convinced that the United State was morally justified and highly principled in its campaign to topple the Saddam Hussein and to “liberate the Iraqi people.” In their eyes, the confrontation between the United States and Iraq was one of “democratic values against dictatorship.” One cynical commentator pointed out in an Internet chat room that certain arguments of this wing of thinking were “more pro-American than Americans themselves.”
Such a gulf of opinion was never reflected in China’s making of foreign policy. The Chinese leadership seemed unperturbed in viewing the United States pragmatically as the only global superpower with which China must manage to strengthen ties, particularly economic cooperation. Meanwhile, the official view remained that China should say no to U.S. exhortation of democracy and human rights because these U.S. schemes would impinge upon China’s sovereignty and subordinate China to U.S. hegemonic domination of the world.
CONTEXTUAL CONTRAST
Along with the noticeable decrease in ideological indoctrination in China in the reform era, there has been little deliberate effort on the part of the Communist Party to shape the U.S. image in Chinese society, as was done in the 1950s-1970s. To be sure, the official line continues to point to the United States as the mainstay of the “hostile forces” that try to destabilize China and refers to the United States as the hegemonic power that threatens global security. However, it is up to individual observers to shape up their ideas regarding the U.S.economy, society, culture, politics, and foreign policy. It is encouraging that a substantially revised history textbook, in which descriptions of the United States are admiringly objective, has been adopted in China as of autumn 2004.[6] A new generation of educators, researchers, and analysts—many of whom studied in the United States or other countries and have been more exposed to a diverse range of views of the United States — is now assuming important government positions. This bodes well for more pluralistic observations of the United States.
In Chinese history since 1949, several images of the United States can be identified: a paper tiger that would be defeated by the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cuba, or other revolutionary, anti-imperialist forces around the world; a superpower at par with the Soviet Union that could serve as a counterweight to the Soviet threat to Chinese security; the only hegemonic power that threatens world peace and stability in the post-Cold War era; an opponent to the rise of China that violates China’s territorial integrity and prevents it from achieving national reunification; an economic engine that drives world economy and, to an increasingly extent, the Chinese economy; an admirable society that boasts having the most advanced scientific and technological know-how and the best educational system; a model of modernization from which China has a lot to learn; and an ideologically driven power that wants to influence China’s political destiny. Different parts and layers of Chinese society may look at the United States through their own prisms and see different dimensions of that nation.
Strategic and Security Dimension
The first dimension is strategic and security dimension, in which the United States is a Leviathan in Chinese eyes today. Some sophisticated strategists, diplomats, and international relations specialists see some value in the U.S. role in international affairs as a stabilizer and a balancer.
This understanding has an impact on Beijing’s strategic thinking, as recorded in China’s official statement that it welcomes the “positive role” of the United States in East Asia. Most of the time and probably to most Chinese observers, however, the United States is an insatiable, domineering country that believes only in its absolute power, one that would never allow any other country to catch up with it. Some of these Chinese may want to call the Unite States a “rogue empire,” while others are less emotional but nonetheless puzzled by the U.S. habit of “putting its figures in every pie” in global affairs.
One frequently raised question in recent years is: why does a domestically democratic nation act in such an undemocratic way in world affairs? Chinese refer to the unilateralist tendencies in the Bush administration’s diplomacy, the U.S. propensity of resorting to the use of force in settling international disputes, and the apparent arrogance in U.S. attitudes toward other nations. In particular, they see little legitimacy for the Bush administration to launch a war against Iraq in opposition to the opinion of the obvious majority of international society, including many traditional U.S. allies. The increased aggressiveness in U.S. foreign policy today has added to the Chinese disillusionment about the United States being a benign superpower.
Without any doubt, the single most important issue that arouses Chinese indignation about the “hegemonic behavior” of the United States has been its policy toward Taiwan. Few, if any, Chinese on the mainland doubt that Taiwan is a Chinese territory and that people in Taiwan belong to the same Chinese nation as the mainlanders. Therefore, the U.S. rejection of China’s territorial claim of Taiwan and continued arms sales to the island as part of the plans to thwart Chinese efforts to reunify it are regarded as showing hostility to the Chinese nation. One remarkably popular view is that the U.S. commitment to the defense of Taiwan is aimed at preventing China from becoming a unified nation that is rising up as a great power in the world.
Socioeconomic and Cultural Dimension
The second dimension is socioeconomic and cultural dimension, in which the United States is generally regarded as a vanguard. Business- people, educators, students, scientists, technicians, and people of other professional backgrounds tend to be immensely impressed with the U.S. economic performance, standard of living, technological prowess, educational levels, and cultural product. Regardless of their political judgment of U.S. external behavior of the United States, they do not hesitate to visit that remote foreign land. In this regard, the vast majority of these people do want China to be more like the United States.
One telling example of Chinese seeing the United States as a vanguard, which is certainly not peculiar to China, is the unswerving desire of students and professionals to seek training in the United States. A great many Chinese parents and grandparents, including those who hold strong anti-American political views, do not conceal their pride in having their children or grandchildren study in the United States. They eagerly tell people that their children or grandchildren have become U.S. citizens or are holding a green card. Chinese in China who express favorable views of the United States are often accused of being pro-American, unpatriotic, disloyal to China, or being traitors; but Chinese who have opportunities to live in the United States or have obtained U.S. citizenship are often admired in Chinese society.
Political and Ideological Dimension
The third dimension is political and ideological dimension, where America’s image is split into a variety of faces. The mainstream official thinking in China that is presented, as well as represented, by ideological and propaganda institutions depicts the United States as a powerful infiltrator and meddler that interferes—with ulterior motives—in China’s domestic affairs. This image of a U.S. threat is most often prpagated by those organizations that are responsible for maintaining China’s internal order or carrying out religious policy. Outside of those political circles, however, it is not a very widely held point of view because the U.S. role as a troublemaker in Chinese domestic political affairs is not really relevant to the daily life of the general public. It is undeniable that the image of the United States as a “beacon of freedom” does exist in the Chinese intelligentsia; however, such reference is rarely heard outside of a small number of intellectuals and political dissident groups.
One may argue that these images of the United States are contradictory. However, it is not difficult to imagine that they coexist in the Chinese heart, depending on the context and the moment of history. A “typical” Chinese intellectual or professional between the ages of 40 and 50 may be quite critical of U.S. international behavior, expecting more setbacks in U.S. occupation of Iraq and hoping to see stronger counterweight, such as Russia and Europe, to U.S. power in the international arena. That same person, however, is not particularly interested in world politics as it is too remote from daily life. What may be more attractive to this person are things that can symbolize the U.S. lifestyle or their own American dream: a laptop computer (IBM), a personal car (a Buick), a big apartment, more hi-tech products, a freer working environment, an opportunity to tour the United States. Memories of Tiananmen in 1989 have faded; gone with them is the image of the Statue of Liberty. The United States may be distinctively impressive for the way the country runs its own politics and society, but China has such a long and entrenched tradition that America’s experiences can only be selectively and gradually borrowed, not totally adapted. Will China become more like the United States when China follows its own path of development? Most might privately, although reluctantly, answer yes.
AMERICAN IMAGE, OR CHINA’S MIRROR IMAGE?
China’s image of the United States is to a great extent its mirror image and reflects its own national aspirations, identity, traits, and culture. In fact, changing China’s images of the United States is more the result of changing Chinese realities than changing U.S. realities.
In China’s modern history, the United States has always served as its reference for modernity, nation building, and great-power status. Chinese gradualist reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, liberal-minded intellectuals like Hu Shi, and revolutionary leaders like Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong all used to express their respect for America’s national experiences and experimentation. And all of them used to praise American political institutions and showed a strong desire to learn from them.
Meanwhile, the Russian revolution in 1917 and the triumph of the Soviet Union in achieving industrialization and great-power status caused the Chinese communists and their sympathizers to viewed the Soviet Union as an alternative model of modernization. After 1949, the PRC made painstaking efforts to follow the Soviet model until the Chinese leaders clashed with and were disillusioned by the Soviets in the 1960s. However, the departure from the Stalinist model since then has not been, and is not meant to be, a completed process. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt a heavy blow to those Chinese who harbored nostalgic feelings about the Soviet model, apprehensions about possible downfall of Chinese socialism prevented Chinese leaders from denying the values of Soviet experiences and from looking at the United States as an alternative.
Thus, perceptions of the United States, especially the expressed views of its values, political ideas, institutions, and international strategy, are politically very sensitive because a value judgment of the United States may well be interpreted as a value judgment of China itself. In many cases, it is indeed a value judgment about where China should be heading. For example, criticisms of the U.S. presidential elections for being influenced by money imply that China should not introduce such democratic mechanisms. By the same token, censure of the U.S.-led North Treaty Organization (NATO) military operations in Kosovo as “humanitarian intervention” served the purpose of guarding against possible U.S. intervention in China under similar circumstances. In another example—this in a positive sense—advocates for China’s gigantic plans for developing its automobile industry often refer to the fact that, on average, most U.S. household owns more than one car.
Understanding of the United States by the Chinese people is by necessity subject to their own cultural interpretation. For example, Chinese rejection to the U.S. claim to a leadership role in global affairs is partly on Chinese definitions of leaders and their qualifications. To the Chinese, leadership, or lingdao, must be essentially a hierarchical order, a superior-inferior relationship. Therefore, to the Chinese, because the most important principle in the world of nations is national sovereignty and international equality and because China is one of the greatest civilizations and the most populous country in the world, China cannot be led by the United States or be subordinated to it.
It is also self-evident in Chinese culture that a good ruler or leader must be a moral example, showing conscience and benevolence for the people rather than putting personal interest before the interest of the citizens. However, in Chinese eyes, external U.S. behavior is driven by its own interest, not the interest of the other countries it wants to lead. Moreover, Americans unscrupulously admit it! The tradition of justifying one’s behavior by showing good intentions and selflessness puts those Chinese who want to defend U.S. foreign policy in an embarrassing position because they are hardly able to present a United States that works to serve the interests of other nations.
To most Chinese observers, American people are characteristically pragmatic and driven by personal interest, as portrayed in Hollywood movies and witnessed in personal encounters. Also a very pragmatic, Chinese people find it difficult to imagine and comprehend American’s adherence to their basic values in general and their religious faith in particular. To be sure, the Chinese people used to adore Mao Zedong almost as a living god and regard Mao Zedong’s Thoughts as a faith, but Chinese society is mostly atheist. The personal cult for Mao is seen today as an aberration and anachronism. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese people have overcome the ideological fervor that marked that era and have become increasingly materialistic.
To many Chinese, young and old, ideology and religion are nothing but a disguise to cover up material interests, instrument to achieve particular economic or political goals. As a result, they are skeptical of U.S. concerns about human rights in other countries and tend to think these concerns are simply a policy instrument to serve other policy goals. In the Chinese imagination, Americans believe in social Darwinism and the law of the jungle. As such, the foreign policy of the Bush administration, galvanized by Americans’ interest in dominating the world and guided by “hard realism” or “offensive realism,” reveals the true colors of the United States.
The disparity between the two nations’ social institutions also results in Chinese misperceptions. The Chinese polity has always been hierarchically organized, and government intervention is omnipresent. Civil society remains an alien notion. It is not easy for an ordinary Chinese to imagine that a city mayor in the United States may not take orders from a state governor, and a state governor may not follow the instructions from a U.S. president. Neither is it easy to understand how a nongovernmental organization (NGO) can work abroad on its own without being supported by the government. Ordinary Chinese believe an “invisible hand,” be it Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government agency, give directions and coordinates NGO programs abroad. Thus, conspiracy theories are particularly popular among Chinese in explaining U.S. international behavior.
Chinese perceptions of the United States are primarily developed by China’s own conditions and experiences and less so much by transformations in U.S. society, politics, and foreign policy. Nonetheless, a stable and fruitful U.S.-China relationship and a better U.S. understanding of China will help reconstruct U.S. images in China in a more positive way.
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[1] 本文原是提交给2004年4月在上海召开的“美国在中国的形象”学术研讨会的论文。该会议由中国社会科学院美国研究所、复旦大学美国研究中心、美国战略与国际问题研究中心（Center for Strategic and International Studies）联合举办。原载会议后出版的论文集：Carola McGiffert, ed., Chinese Images of the United States, Washington D.C.: The CSIS Press, 2005.
[2] “Zhnggong Zhongyang Guanyu Zai Quanguo Jinxing Shishi Xuanchuan De Zhishi,”(The instructions of the CPC Central Committee on the nationwide propaganda about the current events), October 26, 1950. Reprinted in Jianguo Yilai Zhongyao Wenxian Xuanbian (A Selection of Important Documents Since the Foundation of the PRC), Vol. I, Beijing: The Central Documentation Press, 1992, pp. 436-448.
[3] “Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong, August 1946,”Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume IV, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1975, p. 101.
[4] “Dulles’s speech on China policy to the Lions International, San Francisco, June 28, 1957,” reprinted in Sino-American Relations, 1949-71, documented and introduced by Roderick MacFarquhar, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972, pp. 134-142.
[5] “Zhongguo Xuezhe Lianming Fanzhan” (Chinese scholars sign up to oppose the Iraq War), 21 Shiji Huanqiu Baodao (Global Tribune of the 21sh Century), February 17, 2003.
[6] Chen Wutong and Li Weike, eds., Lishi (History, senior high school textbook), book 2 (Beijing: People’s Education Press, 2004), especially unit 6, pp. 118-133.
