Government Concerns and Coverage ofU.S.-China Relations:

　　－A Content Analysis of The New York Times & People’s Daily 1987-1996

　　Xigen Li Manship School of Mass CommunicationLouisiana State University

　　Method

　　This study was conducted through a content analysis. A ten-year period (1987-1996) U.S.-China relations coverage by The New York Times and People’s Daily was selected for analysis. The coverage of U.S.-China relations is defined as hard news and feature stories reporting the current events, institutional and personal experience relating to U.S.-China relations, such as government actions, business activities, and personal adventures.

　　The study period was selected for the following reasons: U.S. and China went through both a relatively stable relationship and turbulent relationship in this period. On the U.S. side, 1) It covers three U.S. presidencies, and their concerns relating to U.S.-China relations varied; 2) Some major issues concerning U.S.-China relations arose during the period, such as Human Rights in China and annual renewal of the Most Favorite Nation status. On the Chinese side, 1) Transition of government leaders led to changes in China’s U.S. policy; 2) The major events such as Tiananmen Incident and Taiwanese President’s visit to U.S. drastically affected U.S.-China relations

　　The New York Times was chosen because of its extensive coverage of foreign policy news, and its prominence and influence on decision making (Modern Media Institute 1983). It is widely read by policy makers, journalists, and diplomatic community in and out of Washington (Cohn 1963). People’s Daily was chosen for its eminent status in China and its role as a spokesperson for China’s foreign policies (Wang 1986). Edelstein (1982) noted that there is a world system of elite communication as expressed by an “elite” or “prestige” press that speaks for these nations and to elites in other nations. The New York Times and People’s Daily are outstanding members of the world system of elite communication.

　　Presidential documents on U.S.-China relations during the ten-year period were used to measure U.S. government concerns on U.S.-China relations. The presidential documents included all the nonduplicate items listed in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States and the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. These two sources cover all contemporary documents released by the White House, including announcements, public speeches, agreements, news conferences, messages to the Congress, and other materials. The themes of the documents concerning U.S.-China relations were recorded as the basis for data analysis.

　　For Chinese government concerns on U.S.-China relations, Chinese government documents on U.S.-China relations during the ten-year period were used. The Chinese government documents selected include all the nonduplicate items listed in the Gazette of The State Council of The People’s Republic of China. This source covers all contemporary documents on domestic and international issues released by the State Council of China, including issues regarding U.S.-China relations. The themes of the documents concerning U.S.-China relations were recorded as the basis for data analysis.

　　To get a complete list of news stories on U.S.-China relations by The New York Times and People’s Daily during 1987 to 1996, the following sources were consulted: Lexis-Nexis database, The New York Times Index, People’s Daily Index and People’s Daily on microfilm.

　　Using “U.S. within 5 words China” and “U.S.-China” as the key words, a total of 302 stories was identified through Lexis-Nexis search. From The New York Times Index, 427 stories were identified with a clear theme of U.S.-China relations. Combining the two lists of stories, a total of 512 stories were compiled.

　　About 900 items were identified from People’s Daily under the category “China-United States” during the ten-year period. The search results from People’s Daily were double checked against People’s Daily on the microfilm to determine whether the news items matched the study purpose. A complete list of the coverage of U.S.-China relations by People’s Daily consists of 528 news stories.

　　Forty percent of the articles were selected for analysis manually from the sampling frame, using systematic stratified sampling procedures. When adjusted to include at least ten stories for each year, 225 stories were picked from The New York Times, and 230 stories were chosen from People’s Daily for content analysis.

　　Measurement of Government concern

　　 The coding of news content was conducted according to the prescribed procedures by Daniel Riffe et al (1998). The study unit is the news story, and the recording unit is the occurrence of the references to government concern, including words, phrases, and sentences which denote a country’s gain and loss in bilateral relations. Three bilingual Chinese coders participated in the coding. Scott's Pi was used to test the intercoder reliability for nominal variables; Pearson's correlation coefficient was selected for ratio variables. An intercoder reliability test result greater than .76 was deemed acceptable. For a 95 percent level of probability and an assumed 90 percent agreement between the coders, 90 stories were selected for intercoder reliability testing. Each coder in the two groups was assigned respectively a portion of The New York Times and People’s Daily items of the remaining news stories after satisfactory intercoder reliability was established.

　　FINDINGS

　　HG1. Relationship with Extramedia Variables

　　The New York Times

　　H1. The hypothesis that more U.S.-China trade issues in presidential papers, more emphasis on national trade interest in the coverage of U.S.-China relations in The New York Times was not supported. The correlation coefficient between the extramedia variable U.S. presidential concern on U.S.-China trade and emphasis on national trade interest was .05, which was not significant.

　　H2. The hypothesis that more non-trade political issues in presidential papers, more references to non-trade political issues in the coverage of U.S.-China relations in The New York Times was not supported. The correlation coefficient between the extramedia variable U.S. presidential concern on non-trade political issues and references to non-trade political issues was -.13, which was not insignificant.

　　Insert Table 1

　　People’s Daily

　　H1. The hypothesis that more U.S.-China trade issues in China's government document, more emphasis on national trade interest in the coverage of U.S.-China relations in People’s Daily was partly supported. The correlation coefficient between the extramedia variable China's government concern on U.S.-China trade and emphasis on national trade interest was .22. Controlling for the variable China’s government non-trade concern, the partial correlation was .22, which was statistically significant.

　　H2. The hypothesis that more non-trade political issues in China's government document, more reference to non-trade political issues in the coverage of U.S.-China relations in People’s Daily was partly supported. The correlation coefficient between the extramedia variable China's government concern on non-trade political issues and references to non-trade political issues was.19. Controlling for the variable China’s government concern on trade, the partial correlation was .23, which was statistically significant.

　　HG2. Relationship between Intramedia Variables

　　The New York Times

　　H3. The hypothesis that the more emphasis on national interest in the news coverage, the more reference to trade was supported. The correlation between emphasis on national interest and reference to trade was .40.

　　H4. The hypothesis that the more reference to trade, fewer references to non-trade political issues was not supported. The correlation between reference to trade and reference to non-trade political issues was .13, which was not significant.

　　Insert Table 2

　　People’s Daily

　　 H3. The hypothesis that the more emphasis on national interest in the news coverage, the more reference to trade was not supported. The correlation between emphasis on national interest and reference to trade was .02, which was not significant. However, relationship was found between emphasis on national interest and reference to non-trade political issues. The correlation between China national interest and reference to non-trade political issues was .25 with negative reference to non-trade political issues contributing more to the relationship.

　　H4. The hypothesis that the more reference to trade, fewer references to non-trade political issues was weakly supported. The correlation between reference to trade and reference to non-trade political issues was -.15, which was statistically significant.

　　 The data analysis also revealed some important distinctive characteristics of the two newspapers in their coverage of U.S.-China relations being affected by national interest.

　　Insert Table 3

　　The New York Times emphasized U.S. trade interest more than China trade interest. The mean of emphasis on U.S. trade interest was 6.0, while the mean of emphasis on China trade interest was 1.10. The t value of the comparison of the means was –2.58, which was statistically significant at the 99% level.

　　 People’s Daily emphasized China non-trade interest more than U.S. non-trade interest. The mean of reference to U.S. non-trade interest was 4.10, while the mean of reference to China non-trade interest was 16.10. The t value of the comparison of the means was 5.56, which was statistically significant at the 99% level.

　　 No difference was found in the emphasis on U.S. national interest and China national interest as a whole in The New York Times, while People’s Daily emphasized more China national interest than U.S. national interest as a whole. The mean of reference to U.S. national interest was 10.10, while the mean of reference to China national interest was 22.20. The t value of the comparison of the means was 4.55, which was statistically significant at the 99% level.

　　Discussion

　　 Overall, the extramedia variables, U.S. and China’s government concerns on trade and non-trade issues, are weak predictors of news content; however U.S. and China’s government concerns have their specific influence on news coverage under certain circumstances.

　　HG1. Relationship between Extramedia Variables and News Coverage

　　The New York Times.

　　 The rejection of H1 and H2 cast some doubt on the influence of presidential concerns on the emphasis on national interest in the news coverage. It also partly confirms the findings of Goodman (1996) and Li and St. Cyr (1998) on presidential agenda vs. The New York Times’ agenda. The presidential concerns of issues in U.S.-China relations may not be the focus of The New York Time in reporting events involving national interest.

　　People’s Daily

　　 The partial support of H1 (.22) and H2 (.19) is consistent with what is known as the organizational goal of People’s Daily. The results confirm the notion that People’s Daily coverage is consistent with government concern, and it follows what the government identified as important in U.S.-China relations concerning trade and non-trade political issues.

　　The findings of both The New York Times and People’s Daily confirm to some extent Shoemaker and Reese’s model of news content influenced by extramedia factors. The extramedia variables affect news content together with variables on all other levels. The relatively weak influence of extramedia variable on the news content that this study found may be explained by the limited space that the extramedia variable takes in the hierarchical circle.

　　HG2. Relationship between Intramedia Variables

　　It is found that for both The New York Times and People’s Daily emphasis on national interest is a weak indicator of reference to trade and non-trade political issues in the news coverage. The findings show that the issues relating to trade are to some degree entwined with non-trade political issues.

　　The New York Times

　　 The support of H3 provides evidence that emphasis on national interest in the news coverage is connected with trade related issues and confirms the notion that emphasis on national interest is associated with reference to trade (.40). The finding also indicates that the coverage of trade related issues was presented as the area involving more national interest than the coverage of non-trade political issues in The New York Times.

　　 The rejection of H4 implies that in the news coverage of The New York Times, the increase of reference to trade does not have the effect to suppress reference to non-trade political issues. The finding fails to support the notion that the national interest embedded in trade related issues will override the concern on non-trade political issues in the news coverage. In the news coverage of U.S.-China relations by The New York Times, trade related issues were often found linked to non-trade political issues.

　　People’s Daily

　　 The rejection of H3 fails to support the notion that emphasis national interest is associated with reference to trade (.02). Whenever People’s Daily considered that national interest was at stake, it did not refer more to trade issues. Instead, it did refer to non-trade political issues (.25). To People’s Daily, emphasis on national interest in the news coverage was implemented only when non-trade political issues were referred (.27), which indicates that relationship found between emphasis on national interest and reference to non-trade political issues exclude the effect from emphasis on national trade interest.

　　 The weak support of H4 provides some directional indication of the relationship between reference to trade and reference to non-trade political issues in the news coverage (-.15). However, with the weak correlation between reference to trade and non-trade political issues in People’s Daily, the findings provide little confidence to support the notion that the more concerns on trade related issues will restrain the concerns on non-trade political issues in the coverage of U.S.-China relations by People’s Daily.

　　 For The New York Times, Emphasis on national interest is associated only with reference to trade, while in People’s Daily, emphasis on national interest is associated only with reference to non-trade political issues. Although the associations went to different directions in the two newspapers, it does show that emphasis on national interest is connected with the reference to trade or non-trade political issues in the news coverage. The different focus of national interest in the two newspapers suggests that the effect of emphasis on national interest on news content depends on which area that the newspaper identifies to have the highest national interest at stake. For The New York Times, trade related issues implied more government concern, while for People’s Daily, non-trade political issues involved utmost government concern.

　　To assess the effect of government concern, a broader scope of government concern might be considered as extramedia variables in the future studies. Other research questions regarding the effect of government concern on coverage of international news may include: what are the common issues and aspects of the coverage of international news that are most likely to be identified by the media as the key components of government concern? If the real life indicators of government concern are found to have an effect on the news content, does such effect remain active across the time, or is it for a specific time frame? To what extent does a shift of government concern influence the emphasis on national interest in the news content?

　　Conclusion

　　Government concern is tested in this study as an independent variable to evaluate how newspaper content of international news is affected by extramedia and intramedia variables. As extramedia variables, the effect of government concern is found present, and its impact is not negligibly trivial. As intramedia variables, national interest, the indicators of government concern serve as the factor that affect other issues and aspects of the coverage of international news.

　　The findings of this study provide some support to the notion that newspapers speak for the nation. Overall, government concerns on trade and non-trade issues are weak predictors of news content. The distinction is clear in the relationship between emphasis on national interest and reference to trade and non-trade political issues in The New York Times and People’s Daily. For The New York Times, Emphasis national interest is associated only with reference to trade, while in People’s Daily, emphasis on national interest is associated only with reference to non-trade political issues. There is not much difference between The New York Times and People’s Daily that their coverage of U.S.-China relations was affected by national interest.

　　Variables Reference to Trade Reference to Non-Trade U.S. National Interest U.S. Interest Trade U.S. Interest Non-Trade

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