ABSTRACT
Before 1995, few Chinese leaders or scholars publicly refuted the ‘China Threat Theory’ (Zhongguo weixielun). The People’s Daily (Renmin Ribao), the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) official newspaper, first responded to the China threat issue in October 19921 after the Bush administration decided to sell 150 F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, and the publication of an article by Ross Munro sounding the China threat alarm.2 The People’s Daily article pointed out that the Bush administration had used the ‘China threat’ as an excuse to sell warplanes to Taiwan. Yet the response of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the China threat issue remained sporadic during 1993 and 1994. Until the end of 1994, only five articles in the People’s Daily directly responded to the issue (with titles containing the characters ‘China threat’), while only one scholar addressed the issue.3
