Prof. Potter examines the implications of the Charter 08 manifesto issued by leading Chinese intellectuals. The Communist Party is faced with a challenge that, in time, offers it a way around the governance roadblocks that threaten China’s further development.

This thesis explores three aspects of the relationship between U.S. news media and the Chinese pro-democracy movement in 1989. These three aspects are: How much attention did u.s. newspapers give to the Chinese pro-democracy movement in 1989? How did u.s. newspapers portray the power struggle in the Chinese government during the time when the Chinese pro-democracy movement took place? Has there been any change in the image of China during and after the Chinese pro-democracy movement in 1989? Research data are drawn from the following three U.S. newspapers: The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Content analysis is adopted as the research method in this study. This research method is carried out in three parts targeting the three research questions mentioned above. The first part shows the total front-page space and number of news stories in the three u.s. newspapers. The front-page space and number of news stories in each newspaper is utilized to measure the degree of attention that each newspaper gave to the Chinese pro-democracy movement in 1989. The second part illustrates the power struggle in the Chinese government. Top Chinese officials are presented as either losing or gaining power based on the treatment they received from the three u.s. newspapers. The third part demonstrates the change in the image of China during and after the Chinese pro-democracy movement in 1989. Both positive and negative changes in the image of China are determined by the use of ideological and non-ideological symbolic representations of China in news stories. Research findings on the first research question show that both front-page space and number of news stories related to events in China increased dramatically in all three u.s. newspapers. Research findings on the power struggle in the Chinese government showed that, in general, all three u.s. newspapers viewed the three top Chinese officials as losing power before military troops were used to control the situation in Beijing on June 4, 1989. Finally, research findings showed a negative change in the image of China during and the Chinese pro-democracy movement, especially after the Chinese government regained control of Tiananmen Square by using military force on June 4, 1989. Implications for future research in mass communication are discussed and, finally, the thesis concludes with suggestions for further research in mass media and communication.

This thesis examines the role of the Chinese news media in the 1989 pro-democracy movement. The three functions of this thesis are: 1) to provide evidence of changes in the pro-democracy movement; 2) to identify corresponding changes in the press coverage of the movement; 3) to examine what relationship exists between changes in the movement and changes in the press coverage of the movement.

The central argument of this thesis is that a series of China's state policies, before and during the reform era, were conducive to the rise of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement (CSM). The most important of these were (1) leftist policies during Mao's era which fostered the formation of pro-democratic yet impractical intellectuals and created a university ecology that was remarkably conducive to student movements, and (2) the state-led reform which over produced students on the one hand, and blocked upward mobility channels for intellectuals and students on the other hand. These and other conducive factors to the rise of the 1989 CSM were not simply state mistakes. To a large extent, they were characteristic of the regime. / The thesis does not reject non-state centered factors such as anomic feelings toward uncertainties brought by the reform, the conflict between reformers and hardliners within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the rise of civil society during the eighties, the impact of Western ideologies following the open door policy or the intrinsic character of Chinese culture, that have all been hitherto proposed to explain the rise of the CSM. Rather, it incorporates these explanations under a state-centered paradigm in light of a general model (the DSSI model) that I am proposing to explain the general causes, and to a lesser extent, the dynamics of large scale social movements.

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