Under The Perspective Of National Interests Of The United States Related To The Chinese Public Opinion

China's present development needs a favorable environment of world opinion. America's status as an opinion leader in the world forces us to attach great importance to the opinion about China in the U.S.A.In order to understand the complicated reality of U.S.opinion about China in depth,the dissertation analyzes the U.S. opinion about China in the recent ten years in the light of national interest.To have a complete understanding,the dissertation analyzes the opinion from the U.S.media, government and public.In the part of literature review,the dissertation first explores the multi-subjects of interests and opinion.Then it looks into the historical dimension,the combination of subjectivity and objectivity of the concept of national interest,and different standards of judging national interest.On the basis of this,the dissertation illustrates the complication of opinion concerning foreign countries.Then the dissertation provides an insight into the interaction of the government,media and public in the opinion process concerning foreign policy.With the theoretical background,the dissertation goes further to review the historical development of U.S.national interests and U.S. opinion about China.The dissertation applies an empirical approach in the research.It focuses on eight milestones in the development of Sino-US relationship,namely,Crisis at Taiwan Straits in 1996,Clinton's visit to China in 1998,Bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999,Agreement on China's entry into WTO in 1999,Spy plane incident in 2001,Bush's visit to China in 2002,Wen Jiabao's visit to the U.S.A.,and nuclear test of the D.P.R.K.in 2006,which can better reflect the development and interaction of national interests.The dissertation selects New York Times and Washington Post as the data source of media,U.S.Department of State Bulletin and Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents as the data source of government documents open to public and various poll results by different organizations.The dissertation focuses on six variables according to the most controversial issues concerning judgment of national interest and the interaction of government, media and public,namely,content of national interest,scope of national interest,the role of China in the interaction of national interests,means to protect national interest, attitudes of media and public towards government's handling of national interest, news source of media. In the part of empirical study,the dissertation analyzes the opinion about China period by period according to the eight milestones.The dissertation tries to compare the data of newspapers with that of government and analyzes the poll results as a frame of reference.As a summary of the study,the dissertation comes to conclude the trend of U.S opinion about China.According to the six variables,the dissertation summarizes the features of opinion in times of friendship and conflicts and focuses on development of opinion of U.S government,media and public respectively.In terms of content of national interest,the dissertation finds(1) ideological influence is deep rooted,but is declining;(2) in times of conflicts,attention to foreign relations and security rises;(3) media plays up sensitive content;(4) government first covers more content then focuses on certain content;(5) public show increasing interest in the content closely related to their own life.In terms of scope of national interest,the dissertation finds(1) global influence of America and mutual interests of America and China are played up in normal situation, while international interest gets increasing attention in the later period studied;(2) in times of conflicts relative interest concerning China gets more attention;(3) media focus more attention on narrow interest;(4) government tends to care about wider scope of interests;(5) public relates relation framework with wider scope of interests but focus on narrow interest on concrete issues.In terms of China's role,the dissertation finds(1) media provide more unfavorable images;(2) government shows more positive role of China;(3) negative impression appears more often among public,but is being improved.In terms of means to protect national interest,the dissertation finds(1) media focus on negative means;(2) government advocates positive ones;(3) public shows pragmatism in choice of means.The dissertation also summarizes the trend of media and public attitudes toward administrative performance.(1) Media show negative attitudes more often,but are becoming more positive recently;(2) public show support more often,but their support is experiencing a change from peak time to decline after 911.The news sources of media reflect the elite perspective,although sometimes media try to balance it with sources form different walks of life.Finally,the dissertation summarizes the interaction of government,media and public in terms of opinion about China.(1) They have the same fundamental interest; (2) media agenda tends to center around government agenda,while public sometimes deviates form agenda set by government and media(3) public get influence from both government and media in ideology(4) public's negative impression about China mainly derives from media(5) in times of conflicts public tends to support administrative policy.Based on reality of opinion in America,the dissertation gives advice on how to improve the situation and provides strategies aimed at U.S.government,media and public respectively.The dissertation also points out the limitations of the present study and gives advice for improvement in further research.