Reading into the Rise of China

Collective and individual reactions to the rise of China vary across nation-states within East and Southeast Asia. While political scientists have investigated changes in China’s relative power from many distinct levels of analysis and theoretical perspectives, they have focused less on its impact on public sentiments. The complexity of public sentiment formation becomes more apparent when exploring different sentiment trends in Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. These distinct national publics espouse various levels of trepidation towards China, despite facing similar challenges and opportunities from the increasingly powerful People’s Republic of China (PRC). While I do not dispute the fact that there are many causal forces shaping public sentiments, I contend that national media sentiment framing China is a necessary force in understanding its formation and evolution. I perform multiple tests using national corpuses of online newspaper articles and public opinion polls to explore the relationship between media sentiments and public sentiments. Drawing from the unique insights of Social Identity Theory (SIT), Self-Categorization Theory (SCT), and Media Effects, I model the role of nationalism, the cohesion of the nation-state, and the relevance of history in the formation of public perceptions towards China. I find media sentiments to be reliable predictors of public sentiment towards China, both collectively and individually.

Author

• Seng-White, Erica Lauren

• China
• East & Southeasst Asia
• Media Effects
• Nationalism
• Sentiment Analysis
• Social Identity Theory

Identifier

hdl:1920/13798

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:MARS:1920/13798