2008-E-3
News about China in the US Media since the Cold War’s End:
Analysis of Economic Structural Determinants
Troy Knudson
PhD Student, Waseda University Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies
Research Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Research Assistant, Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration1
Working Paper for the Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration2

The author would like to express his appreciation to the Global Institute for AsianRegional Integration, located at Waseda University’s Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies,and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for their generous funding during the
research and writing of this paper.
2 This is a much revised version of an earlier paper presented at the Joint Workshop andSymposium, held between Waseda University, Fudan University, and Korea University, heldat Waseda University, February 2008. The author would like to thank the scholars who gave
comments, advice, and direction during and after the presentation.
1

Introduction
Since being introduced into scholarly discourse in the late 1950s (Schramm 1959),
determinants of international news coverage in the United States (US) media have been
the focus of increasingly more in depth and extensive research inquiry. Research has
bridged the field of international communication with a wide range of other fields suchas international relations, political communication, political science, businessadministration, and marketing. In a sense, the basis and reason for such an extensive
inquiry is the assumption that news about foreign countries is one of the most pervasive
and influential factors that shape a country’s perception of the international world.
Thus, other fields that depend on this perception have reason to be interested in thecharacteristics of international news. As Galtung and Ruge (1965) argue, “the regularity,
ubiquity, and perseverance of news media…make them first rate competitors for thenumber one position as international image former.”This assumption has contributed to a vast literature on the agenda setting
capacity of international news, and is relevant for policymakers just as much as it is forthe news reading public (Kepplinger 2007). In this regard, agenda setting has often
been said to occur as a two step process of salience transfer (Ghanem 1997). In the firststep, an issue’s salience in the media is transferred to the public’s consciousness, where
it is usually measured by opinion polls; in the second, the salience is transferred toactions taken by the public regarding international affairs, where it is usually
measured by voter behavior. This process was initially considered to describe theprocess by which news salience set the agendas of policymakers. However, otherresearch has shown that media influence need not pass through the public in order toaffect policymakers’ behavior (Brewer and McCombs 1996). Despite their differences,
the objective of both approaches is the same: analyzing the influence of international
news on reader perception to find causal relationships between the presentation ofcountries in the news and other international phenomena, including US foreign andtrade policy (Ostgaard 1965).
In this regard, the present study asks a very broad initial question andprovides just a glimpse at what a sufficient answer will look like. A great deal of further
analysis will be required to properly address the scope of the question, which is: How
does US news about East Asia impact the way the US conducts its relations with theregion? The question is justified by the large amount of literature that has analyzed therelationship between politics and the press in the US in the context of international
affairs. However, even though previous findings justify the type of inquiry, thelegitimacy of the investigation itself must also be justified. Here, a broader
international framework drawing from regional integration in East Asia can provide a
relevant direction.
Regional integration in East Asia can be said to have a dual effect of altering
the way East Asian countries relate to each other, as well as the way they relate to1

countries outside the region and the way outside countries relate to the region as awhole (Kurlantzick 2007). In this sense, because of the role the US has played in
shaping and defining the region, Tanaka (2007) argues, “It is impossible to understandEast Asian developments without examining the role of the US.” But it is not clear what
the role of the US will be in the future. Nor is it clear how much freedom the US will
have in determining this role. What is clear, however, is that the way East Asian
integration is perceived by the US will affect the actions it is free to take. It is also clearthat international news will be responsible for creating a large part of this perception.
However, results that satisfy the scope of this inquiry must be arrived at from a
stepwise process of individual analyses. The present study represents the initial phaseof such a process and asks a more modest question that can be better addressed within
the confines of a single working paper. Several months of research into the way news
about East Asia is presented in the US media leads the author to believe that thefollowing question creates a relevant starting point. The question is: How did China
become the center of US news about East Asia after the Cold War?
Three relevant economic oriented frameworks drawn from the literature on thedeterminants of international news are considered as nonexclusive and interactive
approaches to answering the research question. The first framework highlights theincreasing emphasis placed on profit within the US news processing industry, known asmarket journalism, which affects the number of foreign correspondents sent abroad andtheir concentration in each country. This framework serves the purpose of describing
the current state of international news gathering in the US as a function of the Cold
War’s end. This study argues that since the end of the Cold War, the newsworthiness ofmost of East Asia can be defined in economic terms. Indeed, this argument had been
made with respect to US international reporting as a whole: “In broad terms, the [news]
shift is from military to economic affairs” (Seib 1997).
The remaining two frameworks make use of extra-media data to explain
China’s ascent in importance to the US media. The first highlights the relevance ofchanging position and role within the world economy in determining a country’s
newsworthiness to US news organizations. The second emphasizes the changing
economic relevance of a country to the US. Variations of these frameworks have been
approached qualitatively and quantitatively throughout the literature to validate
research hypotheses. However, by arguing that these approaches can be used to analyze
long term structural changes in news coverage about countries, the present study
considers them not only as frameworks, but as “structural determinants” ofinternational news, which can be defined as processes of change within news
organizations or the international system that have long term effects on the way
international news is processed and presented.
Regarding the type of media used in this study, some important distinctions
between the two main types of news media – print and television – need to be clarified.
Most initial research in this field made exclusive use of newspaper content, while
studies from the last two decades have increasingly incorporated content from2

newsmagazines and television news programs. Due to differences in how news ispresented in print and on television, some determinants of news presentation have beenfound to be more compatible with one type of medium over another (Peer and Chestnut
1995). For example, stories that can be better expressed through a series of sensational
visual images might be considered more compatible with television news, while detailed
analyses of complex events, which require more space from the medium and more timefrom the reader, might be considered more compatible with newspapers andnewsmagazines.
Furthermore, the two media types have been found to be more influential on
different types of news consumers. While television news has been found to have more
influence on the general public, whose political tools are largely limited to voting andprotesting, newspapers and newsmagazines have been found to have more influence on
elite decision makers, specifically those in high positions of political and economic power.
It is important to note, however, that while changes in international news processing
resulting from the structural frameworks emphasized here are consistent to both typesof media, this study considers the elite level implications to be of more relevance to theinitial question. For this reason, news data from two elite newspapers, widely acceptedby scholars to be a major source of information about international affairs for
Americans possessing the capacity to shape US international relations, are used: NewYork Times and Washington Post.

Economic Determinants of International News
Research on the determinants of international news coverage can be traced back almost
five decades. In one landmark study, Galtung and Ruge (1965) identified twelve
variables they considered relevant for international coverage in four Norwegian
newspapers during the 1960s. Their study dealt with the nature of events, as they
sought to discern events that became news from those that did not, in addition to thecharacteristics of countries that received coverage as opposed to countries that did not.
In subsequent literature, these two types of inquiries became the bases of two separate
research streams, leading to two separate types of determinants: event oriented andcontext oriented. Chang, Shoemaker, and Brendlinger (1987) first made this official
distinction, arguing that it was consistent with the implied reasoning of the field’s first
generation of scholars: “What seems obvious is that the theoretical thinking can begrouped into two categories – context oriented versus event oriented, with the former
being the dominant paradigm.”
In short, event oriented determinants focus on the nature of an international
news event being reported, regardless of where it happens. In contrast, context oriented
determinants place a priority on where events happen; the specific characteristics of acountry are seen as reasons some countries receive more coverage than others. In thissense, events are seen as occurring within the context of a country’s current situation;rather than the event, it is the context itself that is newsworthy.
3

The ephemeral nature of event based coverage seems to provide anotherimportant distinction between the two categories. It might be argued that countries
covered on the basis of context receive more consistent coverage regardless of eventsoccurring within their borders. For this reason, these countries ascend and descend inimportance within the US news over a longer and more gradual period of time thancountries that receive only event based coverage. This is likely true in general terms,
but the present study argues that event based and context based determinants become
inextricably intertwined when analyzing patterns of coverage about one country overtime. Just as a country’s context can be used to predict the amount of coverage it will
receive, context may also be able to predict the type of newsworthy events occurring
within its borders. Similarly, a country’s context may ultimately be quantifiable byassessing the progression of such newsworthy events.
Other scholars have offered similar categorizations under different headings,
but with the same problem of categorical interdependence. Wu (1998), in ameta-analysis of the field’s literature, distinguishes between the gatekeeper andlogistical perspectives in determining newsworthiness. Under this taxonomy, scholars
employing the gatekeeper (event oriented) perspective “directly addressed the various
issues generated by the NWICO [New World Information and Communication Order]
debates; therefore, those studies directly compared the determinants of coverage of/from
the West with that of/from the Third World countries.” Scholars employing the logistical(context oriented) perspective “investigated whether given factors would influence theacceptance rate of news transmitted from given countries without making distinctions
with regard to the political nature or development level of countries.” However, a look at
the way these two categories of scholars legitimize their research reveals that theirperspectives are interdependent and the implications of their findings are similar.
The NWICO, whose resolutions and recommendations were outlined in 1980 ina report by the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems,
made clear distinctions between the way Western and Third World countries arecovered in the world’s free presses. According to the gatekeeper perspective, this
distinction is manifest in the type of events receiving coverage. However, the logisticalperspective has also made legitimate use of NWICO resolutions, arguing that factors
creating the global context of international exchange determine disparities in the news.
The accumulation of a number of studies employing this logic, and the need for atheoretical framework to govern it, led to an alternate stream of research in the field,
which borrows elements from world system theory in order to explain a country’s
newsworthiness.

Country Position within the World System
The modern world system conceptualizes countries as components of a global structurethat encompasses the international patterns of economic, political, social, and cultural
exchanges. To distinguish it from previous world systems that existed in historicaltimes, today’s world system is commonly understood among scholars as the result of the4integration of local and national regions into “an aggressively expanding
European-centered ‘world’ economy” (Chase-Dunn and Grimes 1995). Based on theirstatus and role within this system of exchange, countries are empirically separated byscholars into three interactive categories – periphery, semi-periphery, and core. In
research on the determinants of international news, a country’s placement in a certain
category is typically used as a predictor for the amount of coverage it will receive in the
US news media. In some studies the category itself is the predictor, while in otherstudies the measurements that determine the category become predictors. In bothinstances, the world system as a determinant is logistical in the sense that Wu (1998)
uses the term, even when it is a type of news event that is being predicted.
This determinant implies the existence of a hierarchy among countries covered
and not covered in the news, which by itself is not a new development. As Chang (1998)
argues, “Although not necessarily couched in the world system perspective, the notion ofhierarchy among countries in international communication has long been recognized byscholars and researchers in political science, sociology, and mass communication.” In
one of the first insights into an international relations approach to the flow ofinternational news as well as other types of information, Hester (1973) proposes that acountry’s hierarchical position in the world (geographic size, population, level of
economic development, and number of years as a sovereign state) and level of economic
association with other countries (in international trade, foreign direct investment (FDI),
and amount of foreign aid given or received) determine its patterns of international
information exchange. While this finding does not suggest why news gatekeepers choose
one type of news over another, it does shed light on the factors that influence thecontents of the daily selection of news that gatekeepers have to choose from.
As mentioned above, much of the motivation for the initial researchemphasizing this systemic determinant was the international debate instigated by the
NWICO resolutions and the visible lack of balance in coverage given to countries
representing the periphery, semi-periphery, and core (Schiller 1978; Haque 1983;
Giffard 1984). As Chang (1998) continues, “This structural disparity of national status
is considered an important factor in shaping the content, direction, and volume of trafficof news, entertainment, and information from country to country, especially between
developed and developing nations. It is believed to be rooted in the larger inequity or
imbalance of distribution of financial resources and communication technologies in theworld that is generally configured by historical colonialism and contemporary economic
practices.” Chang and other scholars have empirically shown the existence of thisinequity and imbalance through correlations between the economic indicators proposed
above by Hester (1973) and the amount of coverage a country receives in the world’s freepresses (Kim and Barnett 1996; Chang, Lau, and Xiaoming 2000; Golan 2008).
However, while these studies reveal the modern world system as a systemic
determinant of international news, they too often treat the system as if it were stagnant
and unchangeable. Too few longitudinal studies that appreciate the possibility of ascent
within the system have been undertaken to fully understand the way international
5

news reacts when the system changes. This is not the case in other research fields thatvalue the world system as a relevant basis for theory, which may put to question thelongevity of the system as a theoretical framework for determining international news.
Indeed, since first being outlined by Wallerstein (1974), one of the most important
restructurings the framework’s parameters have undergone is the inclusion of thepotential for ascent. This re-conceptualization has also altered the way scholars ofinternational relations understand the process in which countries attain influence inworld affairs, which is one reason for believing that the way international
communication scholars understand the process by which countries receive coverage inthe US news media can also be altered.
As a point of departure, the present study aims to move beyond the common
interpretation of the world system as a stagnant determinant of international news,
and include the possibility of countries ascending and descending within the systemover time. In essence, this departure is an attempt to define the system instead as astructural determinant (defined above) of international news, with ascent in the systemultimately amounting to ascent in newsworthiness. Ascent is assumed to be acomponent of the nature of the modern world system, congruent with the need forcapitalism to accumulate economic surplus by producing and selling commodities.
Likewise, this accumulation is considered the force that increases international
exchange in the form of exports, which is one of the indicators commonly used todetermine a country’s position and role within the world system.
However, only a longitudinal study of both international news itself and its
determinants can reveal the factors influencing a country’s ascent into its daily thread.
Because “the economic ascent of China in the past two decades is the most dramaticchange in the capitalist world economy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries” (Ciccantell and Bunker 2004), and because China has simultaneously
usurped Japan as the most extensively covered East Asian country by the US news
media, this study considers China’s change in position and role within the world system
to be one relevant structural determinant. However, China’s ascent in the world systemdoes not alone explain its ascent in importance to US news organizations.

Country Relevance within the Dominant FrameOf the original twelve factors proposed by Galtung and Ruge (1965) as having influenceon the processing of international news, the variable that has arguably been mostutilized is country relevance. Originally, the relevance of international news was
metaphorically likened to the meaningfulness of a radio signal to potential listeners,“The more meaningful the signal, the more probable that it will be recorded as worth
listening to” Galtung and Ruge (1965). From the gatekeeper perspective, this variable
may be stated as the relevance of an event within a country to the interest of news
readers. However, before relevance can be identified and measured, it must first be
defined. Ultimately, a country’s relevance to the US depends on the nature of thatcountry’s relationship with the US. In keeping with the argument above regarding
6

China’s economic ascent, the present study views the relevance of China to the US
through the role the US plays in this ascent – namely, through China’s exports to the
US and US foreign direct investment (FDI) in China.
As Ciccantell and Bunker (2004) argue, “In any rising economy, strategies for
economic ascent must respond to and take advantage of…the nation’s position andlocation within that particular global economy.” Thus, questions regarding thecharacteristics of the system itself must also be addressed to understand the context ofChina’s ascent within it. In this regard, the East Asian trade-FDI nexus is relevant. As
argued by Urata (2007), this nexus “results in increasing intraregional economic
activities,” but cannot be properly conceptualized without acknowledging theimportance of non-regional economies such as the US. As part of the East Asian
trade-FDI nexus, the US economy plays a specific role not only as a source of FDI, but
as a final destination of products made in the region (Urata 2007). With these twoprocesses working together, it can be argued that the importing of American products
made in China has solidified China’s economic relevance to the US and facilitated
China’s ascent in importance to the US news media.
China’s ascent into a more favorable position in the world system is often seen
as a product of the country’s transition to a developmental state, which, as Ciccantell
and Bunker (2004) argue, resulted from a combination of factors, including “the endingof the Cold War, the collapse of the socialist development model, the search for lower
cost production sites by China’s neighbors as their costs of production increased, theincreasing investment of Chinese diaspora capitalists in China, and the transition fromrevolutionary leadership to younger, more innovative leadership in China.” Althougheach of these factors is important, regarding China’s ascent in important to news in theUS, one factor consistently appears within the literature on determinants (since the1990s). The ending of the Cold War is often considered by scholars in the field as astructural change so large that it necessitates the reevaluation of conclusions produced
from decades of research (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1991; Hoge 1993; and Wu 2000).
However, in order to understand the way the ending of the Cold War changed
international news in the US, the characteristics of news during the Cold War must firstbe established. Here, the concept of dominant news frames, defined in several studies as“persistent patterns of presentations through which journalists organize their stories”(Tuchman 1978; Gitlin 1980; and Wanta and Hu 1993), is relevant. For international
news in the US, the frame that sets the parameters of these patterns is consistently
equivalent to the dominant conflict influencing US foreign policy. As Hoge (1993) argues,“The press has traditionally covered international affairs from the perspective of
America’s perceived interests.” Specifically, as argued by Norris (1995), “For many
decades the Cold War frame provided a simple and clear way for American reporters to
select, structure, and prioritize complex news about international affairs.” This
structure was contingent upon the ideological differences between the US and theSoviet Union. However, as Seib (1997) argues, by the early 1990s, this framework “hadbecome obsolete.”7

In one sense, the ending of the Cold War can be interpreted as a liberator of USinternational news. As Seib (1997) argues, “America’s national interests [had] to be
redefined…and policymakers, their critics, and those who covered them enjoyed new
flexibility.” According to Gwertzman (1993), newspapers at the time had “anopportunity to examine the different aspects of a society more fully.” However, thisopportunity came with some inherent complexities that soured the liberationinterpretation. Another interpretation likens the Cold War to a compass, without whichinternational news in the US became lost Seib (1997). As Tefft (1993) argues, “Covering
the world’s last communist power in the midst of extraordinary global economic andsocial change has turned the foreign press in Beijing into journalistic schizophrenics.”
Furthermore, this lack of direction made international issues more difficult to cover for
American journalists: “The challenge is even greater now because the press, if it isreporting these stories responsibly, has got to dig deep enough to understand thenuances” (Matlock 1993).
Ultimately, the most common assessment of what these challenges produced
was the duality of a declining American interest in foreign affairs and an increasingemphasis on profit in news processing, a combination that contributed to decreases in
the amount of international news appearing in print and on television, and a fewer
number of foreign correspondents working abroad. As this duality, which is often placedin the context of a broader phenomenon known as market journalism, became more
entrenched throughout the 1990s, it impacted the way most countries were covered.
Specifically, because less space was allotted to international news, a country needed tobe particularly relevant to the US in order for news about it to be justified. Although
coverage about most East Asian countries decreased, this was not the case with China.
The present study considers the changing relevance of China’s economic relationshipwith the US as a second structural determinant that, when seen in the context of theframeless and profit oriented practice of processing international news instigated by theending of the Cold War, influenced China’s ascent in importance within the news.

Market Journalism and China’s Centrality
Shanor (2003) describes the recent emphasis placed on profit in the US news media as a
victory of news organization bookkeepers in an ongoing struggle with gatekeepers for
influence over operations: “The business side of both broadcast and print journalism has
always had a role in determining what stories are covered and to what extent. But inrecent years the managers have far eclipsed the editors in determining the content of
the news, with profit replacing professional judgments of what is important.” Thischange in priority and its outcomes have been attributed to a change in management
style, which has arguably altered the main purpose of international news processing. As
one newspaper publisher interviewed by Shanor (2003) laments, “The pursuit ofquarterly profits and the wish to satisfy shareholder interests and demands have
replaced the traditional management system. It used to be that being the best in8journalism was what mattered. That was when the leaders of the newspaper businesswere the publishers…Now newspapers are in the hands of the marketing people.”Throughout the 1990s, US news organizations took several courses of action tolimit international news in an effort to meet the aims of this new emphasis; theoverarching and most repercussive decision was the closing of foreign bureaus. Today,
most US newspapers that used to file some of their own foreign reporting (e.g. Boston

Globe, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, Detroit News, Philadelphia Inquirer,etc.) have closed all their foreign bureaus, leaving only four newspapers with thecapacity to send correspondents abroad – Los Angeles Times, New York Times, WallStreet Journal, and Washington Post. However, this rebalancing of priorities in news
processing still became evident at these organizations, as less important bureaus (if not
closed) were given fewer resources or were moved to other cities thought to be better
able to generate profitable news.
Today in East Asia, for example, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post
both have bureaus in Tokyo, which are also responsible for covering North and South
Korea. The Los Angeles Times has a bureau in Jakarta that is responsible for covering
Southeast Asia, but at the Washington Post, this region is also the responsibility of theTokyo bureau. However, the two newspapers each have two bureaus in China, one in
Shanghai that is responsible for economics news and one in Beijing. The New YorkTimes is similar with bureaus in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Beijing. However, rather than abureau in Southeast Asia, it has one in Hong Kong that also contributes to coverage ofChina. The Wall Street Journal publishes an Asian version called the Wall Street
Journal Asia, which itself has bureaus throughout East Asia: Bangkok, Beijing, Hanoi,
Hong Kong (main), Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei,
and Tokyo. However, this version is neither printed nor circulated within the US, so its
impact on US readers is limited to those articles that get picked up by the US version.
The closing of foreign bureaus and reduction of overseas personnel by US news
organizations has impacted the flow of international news into the US in at least two
ways. One is regarding the amount of stories being reported, which affects thecontextual continuity that helps explain the events that do receive coverage (Shanor
2003); another is regarding the ability of personnel to adequately research stories,
which affects the depth and extent to which countries can be covered. If China’s ascent
within the world system and increasing relevance to the US after the Cold War help
explain the reason China has ascended in importance to US news organizations in thelast two decades, then the recent emphasis on profit helps explain the reason other East
Asian countries did not follow suit, leaving coverage of China to dominate US coverageof the entire region. As the emphasis on profit becomes more entrenched over time, theeffects of these two phenomena on the coverage of all East Asian countries except China
become more noticeable.
One way these effects can be seen is in the utilization of foreign correspondents
and news agencies by the newspapers that still gather news through foreign bureaus. In
general, when a newspaper has a foreign bureau in a country, the longer analytical9

stories about the region for which it is responsible will be written by a foreign
correspondent. Shorter articles bought from news agencies, which have their own
correspondents in the same country or region, are typically used to provide daily
continuity for the more analytical stories or to break a story that needs immediate
coverage. However, as Shanor (2003) argues, “The correspondent can’t have a lofty
detachment from everyday events, or he or she won’t be able to understand the big
picture.” For this reason, correspondents also frequently write shorter articles when
they are not occupied by a more analytical story. Indeed, the ideal situation at a foreign
bureau is to have a number of correspondents, some who can write the more frequentand continuous articles while others research stories of more complexity. The reductionof personnel results in correspondents either writing fewer analytical stories or giving
news agencies a larger responsibility in providing continuity, both of which can be easily
measured by looking at the articles with datelines from that country.
These effects can also be observed in whether countries receive exclusive
coverage or if they mostly make appearances in coverage about other countries. As
mentioned above, some foreign bureaus in East Asia are responsible for covering a large
number of countries in the region. Especially regarding countries where foreign bureaus
used to exist, it seems logical that this situation would increase the number of stories
that include coverage about multiple countries. In this way, one characteristic of acountry’s declining coverage might be its placement in the context of coverage about amore relevant country. In a previous study, utilizing the analytical tool of network
analysis known as degree centrality, the author reveals that news about China
increasingly became the focal point of news in the New York Times about all Northeast
Asian countries between 2002 and 2006 (Knudson 2008). As Japan was the mostcentralized country from 2002 to 2003, the findings show that the reorganizing of news
gathering resources in the region has resulted in China usurping Japan as the region’s
most centralized country in the US news. To partially explain this focus on China, thepresent study models the significance of two independent variables – China’s position in
the world system and economic relevance to the US – as predictors of the importanceattributed to news about China since the end of the Cold War.

Coding Scheme, Variables, and Hypothesis
The Cold War was symbolically ended at the Malta Summit between US President
George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1989. Because thepresent study is interested in changes in the news about China since the end of the Cold
War, the beginning of 1991, which allows a full year to pass after the symbolic ending, isconsidered a reliable starting point for recording post Cold War coverage of China. The
recorded coverage proceeds in one year increments through 2006. The Lexis-Nexis
portal was used to obtain articles about China from the New York Times andWashington Post. In order to ensure that each article would be about China, the search
was limited to articles that included a Chinese city in the dateline. This means that10

each article retrieved was written in China, presumably by a foreign correspondentassigned to cover China.
The search was further limited to articles that included the word “China” atleast fifteen times. This procedure was taken for two reasons: first, it strengthened theassumption that the articles are about China; second it reduced the number of articles
to make the coding more manageable. However, in the midst of coding, it was noticed
that this delimiting did not apply exclusively to article content, but also included theautomatic geographic relevance function applied to any article search on Lexis-Nexis.
Thus, some articles likely did not mention China fifteen times, but rather mentioned
something related to China that prompted the automatic function to respond. However,this is not considered a limitation as more articles were likely retrieved, resulting in
more accurate data.
Each article retrieved was coded for its position in the newspaper and its
length. Regarding article position, a four point coding scheme was used. A code of four
was given to an article that appeared on the front page of the newspapers’ first section.
A code of three was given to an article that appeared on the front page of any subsection(for example, the business section or sports section). A code of two was given to anarticle that appeared on any other page in the newspapers’ first section. A code of one
was given to an article that appeared on any other page of any subsection within thenewspaper. This four point coding scheme for article location is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Location of Article Coding Scheme
Section

Page

Code

Not First

Not front

1

First

Not front

2

Not First

Front

3

First

Front

4

Regarding article length, a coding scheme sensitive to increments of 500 words
was used. Because the shortest articles were less than 500 words and the longest article
was 5,728 words, the range of the scale was twelve. This twelve point coding scheme forarticle length is shown on Table 2. The total number of articles, average yearly values
for article location and length are shown on Table 3.
Table 2: Length of Article Coding Scheme
Words

Code

Words

Code

Words

Code

1-499

1

2,000-2,499

54,000-4,4999

500-99922,500-2,999

6

4,500-4,999

10

1,000-1,499

33,000-3,499

7

5,000-5,499

11

1,500-1,999

4

3,500-3,999

8

5,500-5,999

12

11

Table 3: Number, Average Location, and Average Length of Articles
Year

ArticlesLocation

Length

1991

156

2.21

2.29

1992

197

2.16

2.30

1993

181

2.28

2.54

1994

196

2.24

2.41

1995

211

2.42

2.50

1996

246

2.26

2.47

1997

208

2.39

2.53

1998

341

2.31

2.40

1999

376

2.28

2.40

2000

362

2.33

2.47

2001

277

2.64

2.72

2002

188

2.56

2.86

2003

231

2.42

2.69

2004

200

2.58

2.90

2005

274

2.28

2.68

2006

212

2.44

2.70

Dependent VariableThis study combines the coding schemes employed to determine the location and lengthof articles to assess those articles’ importance within the news. In this regard, thesurface of newspaper pages is likened to a kind of real estate. Regarding article location,
articles that appear closer to the front of the newspaper are considered more valuable
than those that appear in the back pages. It should be commonsense that the mostimportant news articles of a certain day appear on the front page of the newspaper’s
first section. Other important articles appear on the front pages of subsections, which
are more content specific and aim to attract the interest of a specific kind of reader.
Similarly, regarding article length, articles that occupy more space are considered morevaluable. Article length may also signify the depth into which the article can cover an
event; in order to breach the boundary between factual news and analytical news, spaceis required.
Thirty-one combinations of values for location and length were found. The thirty-one
point coding scheme for article importance and the corresponding location and length
values are listed in Table 4. Rather than systematically applying more weight to either
location or length, each combination of values was carefully considered before
corresponding it with a value for importance. For instance, an article with a length
value of two that appeared in the back pages of the first section is given the importancevalue of five, while an article with a length value of three that appeared in the backpages of a subsection is given a higher importance value of six. Similarly, an article with12

a length value of two that appeared on the front page of a subsection is given theimportance value of seven. Other methods for applying the importance values could
have been used, but the author considers this method to represent a realistic attributionof article importance. The average yearly value for article importance is shown on Table
5.
Table 4: Importance of Article Coding Scheme
Location

LengthImportance

1

1

1

2

1

2

3

1

3

1

2

4

2

2

5

1

3

6

3

2

7

2

3

8

4

2

9

1

4

10

3

3

11

2

4

12

4

3

13

1

5

14

3

4

15

2

5

16

4

4

17

1

6

18

3

5

19

2

6

20

4

5

21

3

6

22

4

6

23

3

7

24

4

7

25

3

8

26

4

8

27

4

9

28

4

10

29

4

11

30

4

12

31

13

Table 5: Average Importance of Articles
Year

ImportanceYear

Importance1991

6.5962

1999

7.11441992

6.57872000

7.53591993

7.69062001

9.0433

1994

7.12242002

9.36701995

7.83892003

8.3593

1996

7.37802004

9.35001997

7.88942005

8.26641998

7.2023

2006

8.6604

Independent Variables
The present study attempts to model the significance of two independent variables –China’s position in the world system and economic relevance to the US – as predictors of
the above importance value attributed to news about China. Thus, it is hypothesizedthat these two independent variables can be modeled as significant predictors without
violating any of the model’s assumptions.
Regarding world system position, Gunaratne (2001) argues that unlike grossdomestic product (GDP), which is by itself commonly used to assess a country’s position,
the size of a country’s exports represents its “ability to expand into the global economy
on a competitive basis.” Gunaratne (2001) proposed that combining a country’s
percentage of the world’s total GDP with its percentage of the world’s total exports
provides a more realistic assessment of its world system position that take into accountits global export competitiveness. In Gunaratne’s (2001) study, a coefficient that gives aweight of fifty-five percent to percentage of world GDP and a weight of forty-five percent
to percentage of world exports is utilized.
The present study agrees with Gunaratne (2001) that percentage of world GDP
and percentage of world exports are both relevant for assessing a country’s position in
the world system; this may especially be true for China, which has become renowned for
its economic transformation through the manufacturing and exporting of products.
However, this study cannot justify applying more weight to either GDP or exports, thus
they are weighted evenly. The equation used for measuring China’s ascent in the world
system is as follows: [(%GNP x 50%) + (%Exports x 50%)]. China’s yearly percentage ofworld GDP and world exports, as well as the world system position (WS) coefficient are
shown in Table 6. Figures for GDP were obtained from the World Bank World
Development Indicators; figures for exports were obtained from the World Trade
Organization Statistics Database.

14

Table 6: China’s % of World GDP and World Exports, and WS CoefficientYear% of World GDP% of World Exports

WS Coefficient

1991

1.99%

1.97%

0.0198

1992

2.22%

2.20%

0.0221

1993

2.49%

2.41%

0.0245

1994

2.73%

2.87%

0.0280

1995

2.94%

2.93%

0.0293

1996

3.13%

2.88%

0.0301

1997

3.30%

3.36%

0.0333

1998

3.47%

3.38%

0.0343

1999

3.62%

3.48%

0.0355

2000

3.77%

3.90%

0.0384

2001

4.03%

4.32%

0.0418

2002

4.31%

5.00%

0.0466

2003

4.62%

5.64%

0.0513

2004

4.90%

6.28%

0.0559

2005

5.23%

7.02%

0.0613

2006

5.58%

7.74%

0.0666

Following Urata’s (2007) argument that the US is one of the most important
final destinations of products made in China, China’s percentage of total exports to the
US is used as one indicator of China’s relevance. Hester (1973) also considers this typeof relevance to be part of the construct of economic association between countries.
Furthermore, in a study of news coverage of thirty-eight countries, Wu (2000) foundinternational trade to be a leading predictor of the amount of coverage a country
receives. Relevance has been measured in similar ways by Shoemaker, Danielian, andBrendlinger (1991), Golan and Wanta (2003), Stone and Xiao (2007), and Golan (2008).
A second indicator of China’s economic relevance is the percentage of total US
FDI that goes to China. A method similar to the one used to obtain a coefficient for
China’s world system position is used to assess China’s increasing economic relevance tothe US. The two indicators are combined in following equation for obtaining an
economic relevance coefficient: [(%Imports x 50%) + (%FDI x 50%)]. China’s yearly
percentage of total exports to the US and FDI from the US, as well as the relevance (ER)coefficient are shown in Table 7. Figures for exports to the US were obtained from the
US Census Bureau foreign trade statistics records; figures for US FDI were obtained
from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development International Direct
Investment Statistics Yearbook.

15

Table 7: China’s % of US Imports and US FDI, and ER CoefficientYear% of US Imports% of US FDIER Coefficient

1991

3.11%

0.09%

0.0160

1992

3.92%

0.11%

0.0202

1993

4.42%

0.16%

0.0229

1994

4.84%

0.42%

0.0263

1995

5.11%

0.40%

0.0275

1996

5.39%

0.48%

0.0294

1997

6.00%

0.59%

0.0330

1998

6.47%

0.63%

0.0355

1999

6.64%

0.77%

0.0371

2000

6.90%

0.85%

0.0387

2001

7.47%

0.83%

0.0415

2002

8.95%

0.66%

0.0481

2003

10.06%

0.66%

0.05362004

11.12%

0.74%

0.05932005

12.19%

0.80%

0.06492006

13.06%

0.93%

0.0699Statistical Analysis
The Statistics Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 16.0 with the SPSS
Trends Version 16.0 add-on module was used to build a regression model to determine
the significance of the change of China’s world system position and economic relevanceto the US as predictors of the change in importance of news coverage about China in the
US news media. Because this analysis utilizes longitudinal data, it is most appropriate
to use an auto-regression integrated moving average (ARIMA) model that is capable ofdealing with autocorrelation, an unwanted but common characteristic of longitudinal
data. It is important to note that unlike previous versions of SPSS Trends, Version 16.0
has an Expert Modeler function that “automatically identifies and estimates thebest-fitting ARIMA model” according to characteristics of the dependent variable(s)(SPSS 2007).
After entering the variables into the modeler, no ARIMA model could be foundin which the independent variables were significant predictors. However, with a timeseries analysis, this is not necessarily an indication of a poor model if the variables havenot been transformed. The T4253H Smoothing function in the SPSS Base was used totransform the variables. This function tends to rid variables of irregular variation,
which facilitates the identification of trends within the series. However, by enhancing
the visibility of trends, the function also exacerbates the presence of autocorrelation
within the variables, which makes any ARIMA model based on the variables unreliable.
Thus, the Expert Modeler can be expected to find an ARIMA model that rectifies thisproblem by differencing the variables, which makes them stationary by centering their16

series on zero. The transformed series of the variables are shown in Table 8.
Table 8: Transformed Dependent and Independent Variables
Dependent Variable

Independent Variables

Year

Importance

WS Coefficient

ER Coefficient1991

6.5962
6.79397.1421
7.4675
7.5791
7.54337.45587.3881
7.46707.88348.47778.79748.80548.72078.66768.66040.01980.02220.02480.02720.02910.03080.03250.03410.03580.03840.04200.04640.0512
0.0561
0.06130.06660.01610.01980.02300.02560.02780.03010.03270.03510.03710.03930.04280.04780.0536
0.05930.06480.0700

1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006

After transforming the variables, they were reentered into the modeler. As
expected, an ARIMA (0 2 0) model was found to be the most appropriate model type,which means that a second order difference was taken on the dependent variable inorder to remove the unwanted autocorrelation. In addition, both independent variables
were found to be significant predictors with a third order difference. The WS Coefficientvariable was found to be highly significant at lags of zero and one, while the ER
Coefficient variable was found to be highly significant at a lag of zero, but with its effectdelayed by an interval of one. The stationary R squared for the model, which “provides
an estimate of the proportion of the total variation in the series that is explained by themodel” was also very high at 0.965 (SPSS 2007). The ARIMA model statistics andparameters are shown in Table 9.
Table 9: ARIMA (0 2 0) Model Statistics and Parameters (Transformed)
Variables

Difference

Constant

2

WS Coefficient3

ER Coefficient

Numerator

Delay

Significance
0.028

3

Lag 0

0.001

Lag 1

0.000

Lag 0

Stationary R²: 0.965

17

1

0.000

The results from the Expert Modeler not only show which model is mostappropriate for analyzing the relationships between the variables, but also answers
questions commonly related to time series analyses. For example, it might be argued
that economic data from one year prior, in addition to the same year, makes a more
relevant predictor of the importance of news about a given country than the data taken
separately. This logic implies that the effects of economic changes will linger for an
extra year rather than being completely superseded after one year. The Expert Modelercan show simultaneously the significance of an independent variable’s same andprevious year data so that they can be compared. In Table 9, this comparison is easy tomake by looking at the lag order found in the Numerator column. The numerator orderapplies when “previous values from the independent (predictor) series are used to
predict current values of the dependent series” (SPSS 2007). An order of zero meansthat only same year data was used in the prediction, while an order of one means thatdata from one year prior as well as the same year are used. For the variable WS
Coefficient, orders of zero and one are both significant predictors.
Similarly, it may be argued that a given year’s independent variable data isactually a better predictor of the next year’s dependent variable. In the present study,
this would imply that one year’s economic activity would require some time before its
effects can be observed in the news media. The Expert Modeler is also able to recognize
when this type of effect exists, as can be seen Table 9’s Delay column. Simply put,
“Delay causes the independent variable’s influence to be delayed by the number ofintervals specified” (SPSS 2007). A delay of one on the zero order lag of the variable ER
Coefficient means that a given year’s economic relevance indicator was a significant
predictor only of the next year’s importance of news. The predicted values of the model
are shown in Table 10, and can be compared to the values of the dependent variable in
Table 8 to assess the model’s predictive capacity.
Table 10: ARIMA (0 2 0) Predicted Importance Values
Year

ImportanceYear

Importance1995

7.56132001

8.43081996

7.5082

2002

8.81851997

7.53272003

8.81291998

7.37302004

8.7293

1999

7.43942005

8.71572000

7.88952006

8.6345

Discussion
The present study has attempted to model the significance of China’s ascent within theworld system and increasing economic relevance to the US as predictors of theimportance of news about China in the US media. Because a previous study by the18author has observed that China is the most continuously covered country in East Asia,
this study’s purpose was to investigate some possible reasons. Some scholars seem
content to believe that the phenomenon can be explained as a transferred focus of the
anticommunist news frame from the Soviet Union to China after the ending of the Cold
War. As Stone and Xiao (2007) argue, “China became the largest remaining communist
country, and US policy regarded it more as an enemy nation after the fall of the Soviet
Union,” which suggests that “the US media mirror their government’s policy toward
other nations.” However, researchers that have investigated post Cold War changes in
the way international news is processed argue that the anticommunist frame became
obsolete after the Cold War ended, which would leave no reason for the focus of theframe to be transferred to another country.
The present study incorporates this argument as one contributing factor to theincreasing emphasis on profit within US news organizations. Specifically, the lack of adominant frame for international news is argued to have created an opportunity fornews organizations to overhaul their international news gathering departments. The
newspapers that did not close all of their foreign bureaus redistributed their resourcesin favor of countries that were considered more newsworthy. In East Asia, several
foreign bureaus of elite newspapers were closed or downsized, leaving China with thelargest number of bureaus and foreign correspondents. For some different geographic
regions, some noneconomic factors may have influenced the outcome of thisredistribution, but in East Asia it can be argued that the factors were largely economic.
As Seib (1997) argues, “The [news] shift is from military to economic affairs…Now theeconomic aspect is more dominant because nations’ relative holdings of tanks andbombers and warheads are comparatively less important.”
To test the validity this argument, articles about China that appeared in two
elite newspapers from 1991 to 2006 were coded for length and location in thenewspapers in an attempt to quantify the importance of news about China. This value
can also be considered as representative of the interest of the media as well as the
public in news about China. As Shanor (2003) argues, “If a foreign story is headlined on
the front pages morning after morning…it can be said to have the public’s attention. If it
is a short, routine account buried down among…the classifieds…it doesn’t.”
After a review of the literature on the determinants of international news, it
was found that a country’s position in the world system and its economic relevance havebeen considered by several studies as important determinants of international news –for the US media in particular. However, as these determinants have not been found to
apply to all countries, this study tested their ability to predict the importance ofcoverage of China. Specifically, the ability of changes within these factors over timesince the end of the Cold War to predict the importance of post Cold War coverage ofChina was tested. China’s GNP and value of exports to the world were combined torepresent China’s yearly world system position, while the percentage of US imports
from China among all US imports and the percentage of US FDI in China among all US
FDI are combined to represent China’s annual economic relevance to the US.
19

The results of the time series analysis indicate that both variables are
significant, but only after first being transformed by the T4253H Smoothing function in
the SPSS Base. Specifically, a given year’s importance of news about China wassignificantly predicted by China’s world system position the same year as well as when
China’s position the previous year was also taken into account. This means that a given
year’s change or ascent was just as significant a predictor of the importance of thefollowing year’s news as it was for the same year’s news. The relevance of this finding
can be interpreted by a visual observance of a plot of the transformed data representing
China’s ascent in the world system. The sequence more acutely rises upward after 2000
and continues on a linear path through 2006. If the model provided in this study is
accepted, then it can be expected that the importance of news about China will continue
to rise in the near future.
Wu (2000), arguing that with this type of analysis data from the same year
“cannot…logically infer an explanation,” uses trade data from one year prior toillustrate its impact on news coverage. This logic is confirmed by the present study, as
China’s economic relevance to the US was only a significant predictor of the importanceof the following year’s news. Similar to China’s world system position, the relevance of
this finding can be seen in a sequence plot of the transformed data, which rises linearlyand even more acutely than China’s world system position from 2001 to 2006. Together,
the significance of both variables as predictors of the importance of news about China
can be interpreted as an indicator of China’s increasing importance to the US.
One of the tenets of this study is that the increase in relevance for China
cannot be obtained without a cost on the importance of other countries. Although it isbeyond the scope of this paper to verify (indeed, this is one of the main limitations yet tobe overcome by the study), one such cost may be on the level of importance given toother East Asian countries. If what is important in the US news media is any indicationof what is important to the US itself, then it might be concluded that the US is focusing
increasingly more on China and increasingly less on other East Asian countries. The
reason offered by the present study is related to China’s ascent in world system positionand economic relevance to the US. However, while these two indicators were shown tobe significant in their respective ways, it has not been the aim of this study to exclude
other possible factors. Indeed, another limitation of this study is that it does notconsider other types of determinants in order to strengthen its case. Nevertheless, thetwo determinants focused on by this study should obviously not be excluded from any
future explanatory framework that considers a broader range of factors.
As mentioned above, the ultimate purpose of this study is to relate thephenomenon under investigation to the role the US will have in the future of East Asian
integration. Here, at least two reasons for studying the characteristics of how the region
is presented in the US news are relevant. In one sense, international news in the US
may be considered as an overall picture of the way in which the US perceives the rest of
the world. In contrast to domestic affairs, much of what Americans know about othercountries comes from the news they watch or read. If conclusions from the literature on
20

agenda setting theory are accepted, then issue or country salience found in the news
gets transferred to both the general public and policymakers upon consumption. Thus,
gaining an understanding of how East Asia is presented in the news can provide insight
into how Americans perceive what or which countries are important in the region. This
perception may then be useful in explaining actions and behaviors of the US that affectthe region and its process of integration.
In another sense, agenda setting can be considered in more specific terms of
opinion construction and persuasion, as was explained above in the two step agenda
setting process. Even though the US is not an East Asian country, and even if it never
becomes an official member of the integration process, increasing patterns ofinternational exchange across the Pacific Ocean guarantee its connectedness to theregion. Because of this connectedness, there will likely be times when foreign policy ortrade policy decisions, regarding the either the region itself or some product made in theregion, will need to be made. During these times, it can be expected that a great deal of
the information upon which policymakers will base their opinions will come from thenews. Studies that address these types of relationships require an analysis thatconsiders the actual content of the news, which the present study does not do.
Nevertheless, it is hoped that the significant relationships shown in this study will
facilitate the finding of an appropriate direction for future studies to take.

21

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GIARI Working Paper Vol. 2008-E-3,
May 31, 2008
Published by Waseda University Global COE Program
Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration (GIARI),
Waseda University, Nishiwaseda Bldg. 5F#507 1-21-1
Nishi-waseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-0051 Japan
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