RAPID: American's Perceptions of China

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

In August, 2015, the Chinese RMB was devalued, which came as something of surprise to the international financial community and led to dramatic volatility in many markets, including the Chinese. Prior to this devaluation, an experiment was included on the 2014 CCES (Cooperative Congressional Election Survey) that had as its treatment two short vignettes in the guise of news stories (one positive, one negative) about how the Chinese government was managing its currency. Soon after the 2015, this same experiment was repeated using a similar sample. Given the rumored upcoming devaluation of the RMB and the focus of the presidential election on Chinese trade, the same experiment will be repeated as a module of the 2016 CCES. This study will allow the study of how framing of an issue, experimentally, affects how people understand and evaluate China in a variety of ways. It also allows us to examine different conditions under which people react and how these conditions impact their reactions. This includes the previous experiments prior to a devaluation and soon after a devaluation and now during a presidential election cycle. The intellectual merit of this project is two-fold. First, there is the original, direct idea, of having the opportunity to study how the framing of an issue, experimentally (and now, with full control condition), affects how people understand and evaluate China in a variety of ways. The second idea is to repeat a survey and an experiment about Chinese currency and its possible management before the respondents could realistically know that the Chinese might actually do so, but could only guess, and guess during a congressional election, with a variety of claims in the "air" about China. We then repeat it while there is news coverage available that is close to the experimental treatment, per se, and then repeat it again (it is assumed) once that coverage is well past, but when in the middle of presidential election campaign (and thus are likely to get mostly a presidential level set of messages about China from the two parties, rather than a more diffuse and not so nationally focused). Rarely, is there such an opportunity to have a before, during, after trial. Rarely do we also have the opportunity to address how framing might work, given different background information in the actual political environment. The broader impact of the study will be an extension of the understanding of how Americans view the "rising of China," as it becomes ever more newsworthy. And, in particular, the ability to see how malleable perceptions and evaluations are, as they are buffeted about by real events in China, by domestic politics, and by the framing of news coverage.