“China threat” agenda in American media and public perception of China: A large-scale content analysis from 1999 to 2019

This study analyzed “China threat” coverage in US media and examined how such coverage affected public perception of China from 1999 to 2019. We retrieved 15 national polls on perceptions of “China threat” together with 30,795 China-related news articles published before each poll. Media discourse related to “China threat” was coded into ideological, military, and economic second-level agendas using computational methods. We first tracked how “China threat” waxed and waned in media discourse over this period. Second, we examined whether the salience of “China threat” in the media has agenda-setting effects on public opinion. We found the economic threat agenda is correlated with the American public perception of China's threat at a marginally significant level and is significantly correlated with the Democrats’ threat perception.