ABSTRACT
This chapter shows what can be referred to as the imagery literature provides valuable insights into American representations of China and the Chinese across the centuries of Sino-US relations. The primary concern of the policy literature, to reaffirm, is broadly directed towards the examination of past and current US China policy. John King Fairbank noted that 'the "truth" about China is in our heads', he pointed to the central role of imagery in providing any number of possible realities about that country and its people. Michel Foucault described discourse as 'the general domain of all statements', representing either a group of individual statements, or a regulated practice which accounts for a number of statements. International relations, represents an arena of power that is both political and discursive, wherein discourses create certain political possibilities and preclude others. Power in global affairs is not merely the capacity of states to exert material force; it exists in less conventional forms and spaces.
