King-Kok Cheung
Professor of English and Asian American Studies at UCLA and Director of the University of California Study Center in Beijing.
U.S./China Media
and Communications
Program at UCLA
Our mission is to create, promote, and disseminate a more balanced understanding of the interrelationship of the countries, peoples, and cultures of the United States and China through the tools of mass communication and public education.
Four strategic areas make up the U.S.-China Media and Communications Program, housed at the UCLA Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The U.S.-China Media Brief is a unique online media tool developed by UCLA's Asian American Studies Center for all those who are interested in obtaining a clearer and more balanced understanding of U.S.-China relations today.
U.S.-China relations are almost as old as the U.S. itself, at least since 1784 when bilateral trade was first established between the two countries.
Media and the Internet are incredibly powerful tools, not just to communicate but to shape public opinion and influence behavior across nations. Little wonder then that in China the media has become highly contested terrain, with major sectors controlled by the state and other sectors providing more opportunities for freedom of expression. In this section we explore both traditional media, including newspapers, television and radio stations—all government-owned and controlled. We also look at the cutting-edge of new media and the Internet that often helps to define the battle between free expression and censorship within China. In 2008, China surpassed the United States as the biggest Internet market in the world with 253 million users and growing.
One of the more contentious political and philosophical issues between China and many Western countries including the United States is that of human rights. More specifically, the issue is how to define human rights — in China and more broadly within an Asian historical and political context. According to Amartya Sen, in "Human Rights and Asian Values," The New Republic: "In 1776, just when the Declaration of Independence was being adopted in this country, Thomas Paine complained, in Common Sense, that Asia had 'long expelled' freedom. In this lament, Paine saw Asia in company with much of the world (America, he hoped, would be different): 'Freedom hath been hunted around the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her as a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart.'”
The concerns about whether the rise of China represents an opportunity for or a threat to the United States are played out most vividly on the economic front. Though an economic relationship has existed between the two countries since 1784 when bilateral trade was first established, it is only in the last 30 years, when China’s economy, growing at a scope and speed that is unprecedented in history, has impacted the global economy that the economic relationship between China and the U.S. has become a front and center issue in both countries.