Engineering the Continuation of a Nonjudgmental United States-China Relationship in the Tumultuous Post-Cold War World: An Overview of the 1990s Chinese Public Relations Campaign in the United States

Abstract

This case study of a major Chinese public relations campaign examines the geopolitical-ideopolitical context, identifies the key stakeholders, interprets their message and issue management strategies, and finally, illustrates how this effort contributed to the delinkage of U.S.-China trade from the human rights issue. Overall, the Chinese government has orchestrated both America China lobbying, which relied on grassroots mobilization, and a Chinese foreign propaganda operation to engineer the delinkage, and hence, the survival of a nonjudgmental U.S.-China diplomatic relationship in the post-Cold War era.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
• diplomacy
• international communication
• issue management
• lobbying
• “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) trade status
• “Permanent Normal Trade Relations” (PNTR)
• propaganda
• public diplomacy
• public relations
• trade
• United States
• wai xuan campaign

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this study was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas, August 2005.