ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the current attitudes of the emerging Chinese elite towards the United States. It is based on surveys conducted among a group of 261 randomly selected Chinese college students of international affairs and mid-level bureaucrats enrolled in China’s leading Master of Public Administration programs. It argues that with the spread of the internet, the rise of multiple media outlets in an emerging market economy, and the decreased ability of the Chinese government to control people’s beliefs, China’s emerging elite’s understanding of America has become more objective and sophisticated. Although there is discontent and suspicion over American foreign policy and U.S. intentions towards Taiwan, the image of “the American” has not deteriorated. Although pressing issues such as the Middle East crises and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues may occupy President Bush for the next few years, hard-liners who considered China a strategic competitor during Bush’s first term will likely push the America’s China policy back onto the agenda. Those hardliners with a realist’s understanding of international relations believe that an increasingly powerful China would eventually become assertive and expansive enough to be a threat to American supremacy and global stability. China could upset the balance of power in East Asia, challenging American strategic interests in the region, which could very well lead to a U.S.-China military confrontation over Taiwan. Others, however, see that China’s reform and growing economic integration with the outside world has made and will continue to make the country more open, spurring the development of a Chinese middle class that could press for capitalism, democracy, and peace, making China’s international behavior more predictable and benign. In fact, there is an increasingly popular hypothesis among observers that growing economic interdependence may gradually create a context, both on international and domestic levels, in which constraints will be placed on Chinese international behavior, making it more cooperative and less destabilizing.
