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Chinese Press Perceptions of Threat: The U.S. and India, 1962

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2019

Kuang-sheng Liao  and
Allen S. Whiting
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Extract

Area studies have been under attack for many years as lacking the rigorous methods of disciplined inquiry such as are possessed by economics and political science. However, in the last decade, social scientists have attempted to bridge this academic gap. In the study of Chinese foreign policy, for instance, Charles A. McClelland employed several statistical methods for examining Chinese behaviour in international crises. Similarly, Paul Smoker undertook a serial correlation analysis to examine both the freedom of decision and interaction and reaction of the Indian and Chinese Governments.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 53 , March 1973 , pp. 80 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1973

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References

1. Charles A. McClelland et al. “The Communist Chinese performance in crisis and non-crisis: Quantitative studies on Taiwan Straits confrontation, 1950-1964,” paper presented in China Lake, Los Angeles, California, 1965.

2. Paul Smoker, “ A time series analysis of Sino-Indian relations,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution (June 1969), pp. 172-88.

3. See, for instance, P. J. Stone, D. C. Dunphy et al. (eds.), The General Inquirer: A Computer Approach to Content Analysis in Behavioral Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1966).

4. B. Berelson, Content Analysis in Communication Research (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952); other definitions can be found in R. C. North et al., Content Analysis: A Handbook with Application for the Study of International Crisis (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1963) and in Ole R. Holsti, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Addison-Wesley, 1969).

5. Ole R. Holsti, Richard A. Brody, and Robert C. North, “ Measuring affect and action in international reaction models: empirical material from the 1962 Cuban crisis,” China Lake, California, Contract N60530-8929.

6. Ole R. Holsti, “The external conflict and internal consensus: the Sino- Soviet case,” in P. J. Stone et al. (eds.), The General Inquirer, pp. 343-58.

7. Shinkichi Eto, “ Peking's attitude toward Japan and South-East Asia,” Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan, Vol. IV, No. 3 (December 1966), pp. 35-42.

8. Here content analysis becomes a supplementary method to test the findings from interviews. For further discussion of the errors of respondents see C. Selltiz et al., Research Methods in Social Relations (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959), p. 97.

9. Interpretable comparison is discussed in Eugene J. Webb et al., Unobtrusive Measures: Nonreactive Research in the Social Sciences (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1966), pp. 5-10.

10. Allen S. Whiting and Kuang-sheng Liao, “The process of escalation of Sino-Indian border conflict, from April 11 to October 20, 1962” (1970); Whiting and Liao, “ A quantitative evaluation of Chinese reactions during the 1962 Sino- Indian border conflict” (1970); Whiting and Liao, “The reactions of mass media to Sino-Indian border conflict” (1971); Whiting and Liao, “Interactional model of the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict: a path analysis” (1971). These works are in the process of being published in book form.

11. The best summary of these developments is Harold Hinton, Communist China in Asia QHoughton Mifflin, 1966), pp. 270-3, 296-301, and 324-5.

12. Red Guard materials depict 1962 as a year of serious struggle against the “ collusion “ of “ Soviet revisionism, Indian reactionaires, and the U.S.-Chiang gang.” See Chin Chun-hsin and Shih Pin-hung, “ Eliminate the poisonous weed of ‘ the cultivation'” (no date) in Ting Wang's Collection of Materials of the Cultural Revolution Vol. 1 (Ming pao, Hong Kong), p. 425, and also “ Ten serious crimes of Teng Hsiao-p'ing “ 25 August 1967), ibid. p. 487.

13. Neville Maxwell, India's China War (Pantheon, 1970), offers a full account of Indian policy based on a reconsideration of his reporting at the time as The Times correspondent in New Delhi and subsequent access to officials and records.

14. Regarding the reliability of the Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily) during this period, see Frederick T. C. Yu, Mass Persuasion in Communist China (New York: Praeger, 1964), pp. 110-19. As to the nature of the Chinese press and its major functions see Teng T'o, “ Socialist revolution on the journalistic front,” Hsueh-hsi (Study) No. 8 (1958), pp. 2-8.

15. Content analysis in this study is based on the concept of the nation as actor in international politics, although alternative models may focus on the systemic level or on decision-makers. Thus North and Holsti's study on the Cuban crisis and the First World War applies content analysis to decisionmakers, while Eto's work and Alexander George's Propaganda Analysis (Evanston, 111.: Row, Paterson, 1959) are based on the nation-state as actor.

16. A similar survey was undertaken concerning news about the Soviet Union but the null findings precluded quantitative analysis of the perceived threat to Sinkiang. Apparently Sino-Soviet relations were at too sensitive a stage or differences in Peking were too acute to permit any reflection in the press of existing tensions in Sinkiang.

17. This kind of scaling has been widely used in behavioural research for the measurement of weight and intensity, see Sanford Lubovitz, “The assignment of numbers to rank order categories,” American Sociological Review (June 1970), pp. 515-23.

18. We are indebted to the assistance provided by the U.S. State Department which helped to contact Mr Chao Fu and Mr Miao Chen-pai.

19. This study uses weighting averages for the comparison between ordinal sum (median X frequency) scales. Weighting average = total frequency.

20. See, for instance, Richard Solomon, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (University of California Press, 1971), ch. XIX.

21. An interesting and authoritative eye-witness account of Chinese behaviour at the 1962 Laotian conference may be found in Arthur Lall, How Communist China Negotiates (Columbia University Press), 1968.

22. Chinese sources show 1962 grain production as 174 million metric tons, considerably above the previous two years; U.S. estimates posit an even greater possible increase. Alva Lewis Erisman, “China: agricultural development, 1949— 71, in People's Republic of China: An Economic Assessment (Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 18 May 1972), p. 121. The first good harvest estimate is usually made in August.

23. Details on the C.I.A. use of Civil Air Transport, nominally a Chinese Nationalist airline but actually a C.I.A. proprietary, may be found in The Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1971), p. 137, with expanded analysis and documentation in the testimony of Allen S. Whiting in Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Priorities and Economics in Government (Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 92nd Congress, 1st session Part 2, 9-11 August 1971), p. 448 et seq.