Public Opinion, The Media And Its Impact On Sino-us Relations,

The interaction of media, public opinion and foreign policy has become a hot topic concerned by the international relations experts in terms of media's increasingly prominent role in international politics. Sino-US relation, a commonly accepted special relation, by that term, we mean a combination of fragility and tenacity, is substantially influenced by media and public opinion. The research on the interaction of these three helps establish a theory and an analysis framework used to make clear how media and public opinion influence Sino-US relation. Media and public opinion are originally the categories of domestic politics. Media tells people what to concern and meanwhile influences them how to view it. Public Opinion can exert great pressure on foreign policy maker and thus possibly affect the final policy result because of its representative of public will towards policy. Although media always claims its neutrality, it often turns to be the tool exploited by government and elites. Public opinion concerning foreign policy in particular is likely stired by the media controlled by government or elites behind the scene. Therefore depending on the advantage of gaining news, government and elites are admitted the final agenda-setter and issue-framer. Weather the public can realize their policy will hinges on policy maker's attitude and the policy-making environment. The particularity of Sino-US relation has its historical reasons. Ideology significantly shapes the public opinion atmosphere between the two countries, which is disadvantageous to a steady Sino-US relation, in some expert's words, it acts as an opinion dike. This is partly because the anti-China powers in America followed by some media can not give up their thinking way of the cold war, which consequently upsets Sino-US relation. And on the other hand, owing to the entirely different political culture, Chinese people and American people tend to think and identify Sino-US relation differently. Fortunately, as we can see from the resolve of the two crises, one is the US-led NATO bombed Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, the other is the US surveillance plane collided with the Chinese fight jet in April 2001, the governments of the two countries could restrain themselves before the outburst of the public opinion and solve the crises calmly at last. This proves that both of them can treat the mutual relation from a long-term point of view. To sum up, media and public opinion of China and America are molding and being molded by the history and reality of Sino-US relation.