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As U.S.-China relations have deteriorated in recent years, China’s state-controlled media has become increasingly critical of the United States. Why is the CCP stepping up its anti-Americanism now? What are its key messages to its citizens about America? And to what extent has the government’s anti-American messaging impacted Chinese public discourse on the United States? This study will address these questions by analyzing trends in coverage of the United States in Chinese state media, including the People’s Daily and Xinwen Lianbo, and popular forums on the Chinese internet, such as Zhihu. The main hypothesis is that the CCP is employing an evolving set of anti-American narratives to try to shore up its legitimacy in response to rising domestic challenges, including a slowing economy, growing questions about Xi Jinping’s personalization of power, and public dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of Covid-19. This study will inform policymakers about the goals and strategies of the CCP’s anti-American messaging and their implications for U.S.-China relations going forward.
Christopher Carothers
Christopher Carothers
Dr. Christopher Carothers is the Deputy Chair of the East Asia and Pacific Area Studies Program at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. A political scientist by training, Dr. Carothers has researched and written extensively on authoritarian politics in East Asia, with a focus on China. He is the author of Corruption Control in Authoritarian Regimes: Lessons from East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2022) as well as numerous articles in academic and policy journals, including Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs. Dr. Carothers' scholarly focus on East Asia grew out of years spent living and working in the region, during which he learned Mandarin and Korean. In addition to his work at FSI, Dr. Carothers is an associated scholar at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania and a nonresident scholar at the European Centre for North Korean Studies at the University of Vienna. He received his PhD in government from Harvard University in 2019.