Images Of The United States In The China Press(1927-1949)

In 1911,The China Press,an English daily newspaper,was founded in Shanghai.It is the first American-style newspaper in China,with Dalu Pao as its Chinese translation.In 1927,the United States took the lead in recognizing the legal status of the newly established Nanjing Nationalist Government,and returned tariff autonomy to China,thus opening a new stage in China-American Relations during the 1920 s to 1940 s.Since then,cultural exchanges between China and the United States kept deepening.As a full-English daily newspaper jointly operated by China and the United States,The China Press mainly covered news dispatches,economic reviews,cultural life,diplomacy,politics,advertisements,comics,and so on,among which the texts and pictures related to the United States were its essential components,which reflected the images of the United States that appeared in China during this crucial period.Based on the original edition of The China Press from 1927 to 1949,this thesis assembled textual and pictorial reports related to the United States,mainly analyzing specific images presented in the newspaper.Several characteristics and motives are also analyzed.Therefore,from the perspective of content,this thesis is mainly divided into three sections: an overview of the newspaper,images of the United States,and the characteristics of the image.As the basis of this study,chapter one is an overview of The China Press,which sorts out and analyzes the historical changes,membership flow,and content arrangement of The China Press.The specific representation of images of the United States is the core of this research,which is composed of chapters two to four.Centered on the topics of wealth,diplomacy,and life,this section conducts diachronic,synchronic and case analysis on the representative texts and pictures related to the United States to demonstrate the specific representation and construction process of its images.Such images are successively summarized as the rich United States represented by the actual character Ford,the heroic United States represented by the fictional character Uncle Sam,and the modern United States represented by the landscape metropolis.Finally,based on the former analysis,chapter five discusses characteristics and motives of images of the United States in The China Press.Because of its diversified operating groups and readership of The China Press,images of the United States in it were constructed on the basis of the “imagination” of Eastern cultural elites and the “memory”of Western journalists in China.They are both “hetero-images” and “auto-images” with the dual features of “exotic country” and “motherland”.Overall,images of the United States in The China Press were imaginations and memories of the United States constructed by several bilingual groups in Shanghai between the 1920 s and 1940 s.Under the topics of wealth,diplomacy and,life,The China Press shaped images of the United States symbolized by Ford,Uncle Sam and metropolis,which conveyed to China an Empire of the United States who boasted strong monetary assets,developed commodity economy,modern lifestyle,and concentrated on world peace and welfare of people.The “memory” and “imagination” of different cultural groups had been screened and filtered by foreign cultures,thus giving birth to the images of the United States in The China Press.Therefore,these images were characterized by the dual features of “motherland” and “exotic country”,and the symbiosis of “autoimages” and “hetero-images”.