The United States Information Hegemony And Its Impacts On China

400 years ago, Bacon once wrote, "information is power". As the information revolution, information power and information security have become a major concern to all countries in the world today. Instead of balancing power of countries, information revolution accelerated the allocation of power. The stronger countries became much stronger than before. Information revolution originated in the United States. The United States uses its advantages in the field of information, constructing and maintaining its information hegemony throughout the world.In this thesis, documentary research method, historical method and interdisciplinary method are employed to study the causes and performance of the United States information hegemony, the effects of information hegemony to China, and ways to maintain our country’s information security. Informatics related theory and hegemony theory in international relations theory are used to make a more detailed study. This research improves the explanatory power of the existing theory about the performance of American hegemony in information age through multidisciplinary analysis. And meanwhile this thesis brings up more active and concrete measures to maintain the information security in China.The formation of American hegemony comes from many factors, such as the advanced information technology, the support of national policy and the widespread use of English. The United States information hegemony is reflected in many aspects of international communication, such as grabbing the core intelligence of other countries’interests and manipulating and manufacturing global public opinion. This thesis will focus on the causes and forms of America’s information hegemony and its implementation approaches. The causes of the America’s information hegemony are analyzed from the aspects of content, technology and policy. The information hegemony forms are shown from the dimensions of the information technology, information control and information content. And the implementation approaches are illustrated through America’s "global communication office" and "prism" program.The influence of USA information hegemony on China is mainly analyzed from four areas—politics, economic, military and culture. The USA takes advantages of its information hegemony to carry out activities such as information monitoring plan and ideological subversion in political area of China. In the military field, the information war greatly threatens the military security of our country. In the economic area, the domestic economy is involved in economic globalization which is characterized by information. And information has become an important factor of economic development. In the cultural field, the USA uses its advantages of information technology, information channel and information production to penetrate domestic cultural products. At the trend of the global culture homogeneity, Chinese traditional culture is faced with great crisis of the loss and people’s values are impacted greatly.In the new situation of information age, we must grasp the initiative in the field of information as early as possible in the face of the USA information hegemony. In the first place, we must safeguard China’s information sovereignty resolutely to ensure information security of our country. Secondly, we must fulfill our responsibility and combat against the information hegemony. We also must maintain the legitimate demands of the "poor information", establish an equal, fair and mutual-benefit "new information order", optimize the environment of international information and strengthen cooperation in the field of information in the international information activities. Thirdly, with the development of the information technology, we should take corresponding measures in information law, information technology and social management in order to keep the development of domestic information sound and strong. Fourthly, it is necessary to draw up a more specific countermeasures to combat against the influence of the United States information hegemony on all fields in our country, such as raising the transparency of social management information, promoting the informatization construction of the army and establishing a national unified information database of financial capital, etc.The information revolution not only improves the productivity, promotes the progress of human society, but also has a more profound political meaning. The society in the future will be established by information, and the key of international competition in the future will also be information.