Think Tanks' Role In The U.S. Decision-making To China In The Post-Cold War Era

As the decision-making outside brain in the American political powerstructure,think tanks play extremely significant roles.Among them,there arethree types of roles cast by think tanks including"Blue Team"——the HeritageFoundation who advocated the"China threat"theory in 1992,"PurpleTeam"——the Rand Corporation who released"China's military power report"in 2003,and"Red Team"——the Brookings Institution who actively promotedthe policy of engagement with China.The dissertation is arranged as follows:Apart fom the introduction and epilogue,this dissertation comprises tenchapters.First,the theoretical part of the body consists of three chapters to laya theoretical and conceptual base for the following discussion.Second,ChapterⅣand ChapterⅤ,respectively from macro-and meso-perspective,investigate the roles of U.S.think tanks.The last five chapters,frommicro-perspective,introduce five cases for the specific analysis on the waysand channels launched by U.S.think tanks to influence U.S.decision-makingto China.The introduction is the core of this dissertation.In this part,the authorexpounds his main purpose for this study,status quo of research at home andabroad,the key point of view,the theoretical and analytical framework,writing methods,innovations and future research directions.ChapterⅠdefines the concept of think tanks,traces back the origin andhistorical evolution of think tanks,clarifies think tanks' division of differenttypes,and points out the think tanks involved into the scope of this study.ChapterⅡstates U.S.think tanks' political conditions by which theysurvive and being well-developed,which includes special political culture,traditional diplomatic thoughts,the characteristics of the political system,decision-making mechanism of foreign affairs as well as pluralistic politicalecology of the United States.ChapterⅢdiscusses the relevant theories for this study that aims to lay a theoretical foundation for further analysis of the full text of this dissertationand establishes the analytical framework with the theory of Hierarchicalpower.From the vertical and macro perspective of the Post-Cold War,ChapterⅣinvestigates the role of U.S.think tanks,facing the background of China'srise,on the the three stages of U.S.strategies to China.From the horizontal and meso-perspective,ChapterⅤexpounds U.S.think tanks' policy distinctions toward China.Among them,in accordance withthe spectra of their policy assertations,think tanks are divided into threefactions as"Red Team"(engagement),"Blue Team"(containment) and"PurpleTeam"(congagement).The author conducts an introductory list of the currentmainstream think tanks and their research on China,policy positions toChina as well as some China hands,experts and scholars that areheavyweights on the study of China.From the micro-perspective,ChapterⅥtoⅩprovide five specific cases ofthink tanks to investigate how they influenced U.S.decision-making to China.Among them,ChapterⅥstudies the prevalence of"China threat"theory andthe Heritage Foundation;ChapterⅦexplores the Brookings Institution'srole for the the formation of"engagement"policy to China;ChapterⅧobserves the case of the Rand Corporation's role for the the formation of"congagement"policy to China;ChapterⅨshows the case of symbiosis thatdifferent teams in the same think tank who called Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace;ChapterⅩforecasts the direction of Sino-U.S.relationson the analysis of the new Democratic government of Obama's choice of braintrust from think tanks during the election campaign,which closely touch thecurrent affairs,and extracts the three key words"sustainability,cooperationand friction."In the epilogue,author implements the comprehensive assessmenttoward think tanks' roles in the U.S decision-making to China,and analyzesthe relevent factors,which include not only their foundation period,acdemicbackground,ties to U.S.government as well as U.S.partisan politics,interest groups and the Cold War thinking,that caused different policy propositions toChina advanced by think tanks.In the end,the dissertation put forwards somepolicy recommendations for the building and development for Chinese thinktanks.