Decoding The Images Of Chinese Females In Major American Newspapers, 1998-2005

China's image in the American news media has long been a hot issue in both American and Chinese academic circles. But most of the research focused on China's overall image or reports of certain events in China. Few researches have been conducted on certain specific groups of Chinese people. But images of different groups of Chinese people in the American news media play an important role in forming the American public's perception of China, especially the images of Chinese females who occupy half of the total population. This study examined the images of Chinese females in major American newspapers by both quantitative and qualitative methods, demonstrated their overall images, disclosed two major stereotypes of Chinese females in the news reports and tried to explore roots of the stereotypes from the feminist and ideological perspective. The study chose 151 news articles relevant to Chinese females from five major American newspapers from Jan, 1st, 1998 to Jun, 30th, 2005, from which 162 females images were derived. The examined newspapers were The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Dallas Morning News. The whole study comprised quantitative content analysis and two case studies. The quantitative analysis examined Chinese female images, images of the Chinese government and the U.S. (and other Western Countries). The two case studies concentrated on the victim images and heroine images respectively, outlining overall pictures for the images, analyzing the images from the feminist perspective and making discourse analysis of relevant news reports from the ideological perspective. The research arrived at the following findings. First, as for the overall picture of Chinese female images, young women and rural women were more likely to be covered than others. The female images were frequently associated with social issues and tended to be victims. Besides, most of the images were passive and powerless, with their family relations emphasized in the news reports. And writers' attitudes towards the females were mainly "sympathetic" and "praising". "Victims" and "heroines" images were the two major stereotypes of the reported females. Secondly, case studies on the victim image and heroine image showed that the "victim images" ignored Chinese women's contributions to the Chinese society, confined them in a small area of family, marriage and procreation and stereotyped them as "weak, passive, dependent, incompetent, and family-centered". As for the heroine images, they were often gender-stereotyped with over-depiction of their family and marriage life. Thirdly, quantitative content analysis of images of the Chinese government and the U.S. (and other Western Countries) showed that both the Chinese government and the U.S. (and other Western Countries) appeared in the news reports in high frequency. However, most of their Chinese government images were negative while most of U.S. (and other Western Countries) images were positive. Discourse analysis of ideology in the two case studies showed that most news reports were laden with anti-communist and ethnocentric ideology. Besides, the ideological frameworks served as strong impetus to "victimize" and "heroinize" the images.