The Construction Of China’s Image Through Threat Discourse By American Presidents In Post-Cold War Era

After the Cold War,the United States became the only superpower in the world.In the post-Cold War era,the Asia-Pacific region occupied an important position in the U.S.diplomatic strategy.As a rising power in Asia,China has been increasingly regarded as a threat by the U.S.Presidents.In order to further explore the U.S.foreign policy toward China,this thesis dug out American presidential threat discourse strategies and studied the construction of China’s image in the their discourse.In order to analyze the role of American presidential threat discourse in the construction of China’s image,this thesis selected four Presidents from Clinton to Trump as research objective.The research aimed at specifying their threat discourse strategies and the image of China constructed by them.Firstly the social context at home and abroad was interpreted during each President’s tenure,and main topics related to Sino-US relations were selected to be discussed.Secondly,this thesis established 4 small corpora with 12,384 words(Clinton),8,929 words(Bush),10,925 words(Obama),and 11,265 words(Trump)respectively.Thirdly,under the framework of proximization theory,the STA model and LancsBox v 4.5 were used to define keywords in three dimensions and to count the word frequency.Final results were presented in tables.Fourthly combined with the discourse context,the statistical results were further analyzed qualitatively.It is found that Clinton identified China as the “Other” who is weak and voiceless and emphasized the challenge to American values.Bush viewed China as a “strategic competitor” that cannot be ignored,which was consistent with his tough policy against China.Obama defined China as a “free rider” and a “bully”.He tried to implement “Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy” through stressing China’s threat to the stability of Asia-Pacific region on the South China Sea dispute.Trump has labeled China as a “currency manipulator” in the name of maintaining fair trade between China and the United States.In fact,his purpose was to cover up the U.S.protectionism.The image of China constructed in American presidential discourse reflected American Presidents’ changing discursive strategies to the growth of China.The nature of American presidential threat discourses reflects American Presidents’ same attitude that they regard China as a threat.