elections. Although issues related to China have rarely dominated elections in the United States, China-bashing on the campaign trail does add to the turbulence of the bilateral relationship. Thus, the Chinese media and experts are used to devoting most of their attention to following the candidates’ China rhetoric on the campaign trail. Unsurprisingly, the 2016 presidential election saw no small amount of China-bashing from both parties’ candidates, which raised Chinese concern.
It is worth noting that the manipulation of China issues in this year’s election has been somewhat different from past elections, not only in terms of the specific issues that were brought up, but also because there seems to be more frequent and negative coverage of the China issues during the campaign. For example, Hillary Clinton had on many occasions challenged China’s qualifications as a “market economy,” while claiming on her campaign website that China has used “unfair trade practices to tilt the playing field against American workers and businesses.”44 Donald Trump had also vowed repeatedly that once elected, he would take American jobs back from China, declare China a “currency manipulator,” take punitive measures against China to end its “intellectual property violations,” and levy heavy taxes on China in order to counterbalance China’s “illegal export subsidies” and other “unfair advantages.” As far as Chinese scholars are concerned, these issues are the externalization of domestic issues that relate primarily to the United States’ economy and labor market. Because of the perceived advantages China is gaining over America, both in economy and influence, the presidential candidates have increasingly used China as a “scapegoat” in an attempt to address the American public’s frustration over the American economy’s weak performance as well as other domestic problems.45
Despite the candidates’ intensive criticism of China, however, Chinese policy experts generally agree that campaign rhetoric is not the most reliable guide to the future policy of the next administration. Indeed, trends emerged in the 2016 presidential election that displaced China bashing as a significant cause of Chinese attention. As it turned out, the general narrative of the 2016 election in China was taken over by a different kind of critique—America-bashing if you will—as the faltering of American democracy and the ugliness of the election became the central targets of criticisms and condemnation from the Chinese media and pundits. There is no doubt that the unprecedented America-bashing in the 2016 election changed Chinese perceptions of the United States significantly, but to understand its full implications, it is useful to briefly take stock of Chinese perceptions of the United States from a historical perspective.
CHINA’S HISTORICAL VIEWS OF THE UNITED STATES
Chinese views of the United States today are largely the reflection of the major issues and characteristics of China-US relations across different historical periods. From the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 through the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese perceptions of America were dominated by the irreconcilable differences and extreme hostilities between the two nations.46 As America isolated China politically and economically, recognized the “Republic of China (Taiwan)” diplomatically, and confronted China militarily during the Korean War, China regarded the United States as its archenemy and the “evil imperialist” nation. The Chinese government successfully promoted “a widespread attitude of hatred, disdain, and contempt” for the United States among the Chinese public.47 Chinese hostility and abhorrence of the United States at the time was perhaps best captured by Chairman Mao’s depiction of America as the “paper tiger” with no real strength. As far as Mao was concerned, the United States “invades the world in the name of anti-communism” and “the entire world, including Great Britain, doesn’t like America.”48 Chinese views of the United States before the late 1970s were largely shaped by systematic anti-America propaganda. China’s general public were educated to view America not only as their nation’s biggest threat but also the most sinister Western power trying to destroy their country’s social and political institutions. Meanwhile, China viewed the American “paper tiger” as “deeply wounded by international revolutions and by the erosions of capitalism.”49 The Chinese saw America’s setbacks at home and conflicts abroad as evidence of a struggling nation whose strengths had been substantially undermined by Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. The Chinese opposition to “American imperialism” was so great that during the Cultural Revolution, a number of Chinese political leaders and intellectuals were prosecuted for being “capitalistroaders,” that is following the examples of American values and lifestyle.
As the two countries found a shared security threat in the Soviet Union, the China-US rapprochement in the early 1970s gradually brought about more positive Chinese perceptions of America. With the establishment of China-US diplomatic relations in 1979, as well as the launching of China’s reform and opening-up programs in the same year, China-US relations improved enormously.50 However, the 1989 Tiananmen student protest led to a grave crisis in China-US relations and served to deepen Chinese suspicions of American intentions of meddling in China’s domestic affairs. China’s views of the United States after Tiananmen fluctuated with the ups and downs of the relationship in the 1990s, and Chinese perceptions of the United States dropped to a historical low after the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999.51 While Chinese perceptions of the United States have largely remained balanced and stable since 2000, China’s rapid rise has brought new dynamics to the bilateral relationship as well as major changes in Chinese views of the United States.
CHINA’S RISE AND CHANGING CHINESE VIEWS OF THE UNITED STATES
Since the end of the Cold War, China has perceived the United States to be the sole global superpower and managed to avoid serious conflicts around America’s global interests. Because China was well aware of the considerable gap between itself and America in terms of power and global influence, the Chinese government adopted a low-profile foreign policy that Deng Xiaoping described as “hide your capacities and bide your time.” However, China has begun to reassess its relations with the United States against the backdrop of China’s meteoric rise both in power and in influence. While American diplomats and scholars debate whether China’s rise is good news for US interests or represents a looming threat, their Chinese counterparts have had their own debate about the capabilities and intentions of the United States, that is, whether America is actually in decline (in terms of both its political vitality and economic dynamism) and whether the United States intends to use its power to help or hurt China. In particular, the events after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and more recently the 2008 global financial crisis, have raised further doubts in China as many perceive the United States as a weakened nation bogged down in foreign wars and hurting from the financial crisis.
At the same time, China’s views of the United States have been framed by the broader Chinese perspective of China’s place in the current international system which is propped up by American power and leadership. While some Chinese scholars speculate about whether unipolarity would soon be replaced by multipolarity, others seem convinced that the United States is a revisionist power that seeks to curtail China’s global influence and harm China’s interests.52 As China views the United States with more skepticism and vigilance, Chinese perceptions of the United States are increasingly shaped by China’s acute sense of its own vulnerabilities in the bilateral relationship. To begin with, China worries that its political and domestic stability might
