The Heritage Foundation And The Bush Administration's China Policy

The paper"The Influence of Heritage Foundation on Bush Administration's Foreign Policy"breaks through in the traditional pattern of"Think Tank Analysis", and does not consider the whole think tank as a research object. It chooses Heritage Foundation, which is the most important think tank and has great influence on U.S. foreign policy, as the sole target. By analyzing and summarizing its development, operation and research programs on China, the paper gives a qualitative analysis on the effects of Heritage Foundation in the U.S. foreign policy-making process, concentrating on the Bush administration (2001 to 2005) for the sake of pertinence of the conclusion.The first chapter of the paper describes the development, operational mode and typical conservative character of Heritage Foundation, emphasizing on the differences of Heritage Foundation and other think tanks and outlining the tight relationship with GOP.The second chapter starts to discuss the China study of Heritage Foundation. Firstly, it reviews the history of the China study and introduces several significant experts on China study; then analyses the primary reasons of their attitudes toward China; lastly, illustrates the main viewpoints on China of the Heritage Foundation.The third chapter analyses influencing degree of the Heritage Foundation on Bush administration's foreign policy on China. It compares the similarities and differences between Bush's China policy and Heritage Foundation's focuses on China issues and finds out that the Heritage Foundation has a different influencing degree on different types of U.S. foreign policy.The fourth chapter uses two case studies, on which Heritage Foundation has great influences, to discuss how it participates in U.S. policy-making process and imposes on it.At last, it sums up the main viewpoints of the paper, and proposes some new methods on our diplomacy to U.S. in the future.This paper brings forth new ideas in three aspects:Firstly, it breaks through in the traditional pattern of"Think Tank Analysis", and does not consider the whole think tank as a research object while chooses Heritage Foundation as the sole target to research in detail.Secondly, the paper sums up and analyses the Heritage's China study for the first time by collecting the first-hand English materials of numerous publications and articles related to Heritage Foundation.Thirdly, trying to give a qualitative analysis on the effects of Heritage Foundation in the U.S. foreign policy-making process and finding out the emphasis and weakness of the influencing degree of the Heritage Foundation on U.S. China foreign policy.