ABSTRACT
American newspaper, magazine, radio, and television correspondents abroad confront a challenging task. They must make developments abroad intelligible to the American public. American correspondents in China came of age in the late 1930s and during World War II. The American journalists did capture the ineptitude of the Nationalist government, perhaps in exaggerated form and with insufficient stress upon the reasons for the government's problems. Short-term visitors and correspondents accompanying American government officials, in contrast, were introduced to a different China. The amassing of American journalists coincided with demonstrations on Tiananmen Square, thus allowing the student movement and its fate to capture world attention. The problems of China's cultural distinctiveness call upon American journalists to try and interpret a society whose values differ from ours. The same words may have different meanings in American and Chinese societies. Few American journalists in China have had truly excellent language proficiency.
