Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
New Delhi, and
Xiandai guoji guanxi
(Contemporary International Relations)
published by the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations
(CICIR) in Beijing. These two journals are comparable not only in terms of their
frequency of publication but also in terms of their authoritativeness and their
relatively hawkish perspective. IDSA has close links to the Indian defense
establishment and shares the threat-oriented view of that establishment, but is
independent enough to allow it to speak frankly. CICIR is associated with
China's Ministry of State Security, 'China's KGB', an agency deeply
apprehensive about foreign threats.
The two quarterlies surveyed are
Indian Defence Review,
published by an
independent but very well-connected publishing house in New Delhi, Lancers,
and
Guoji wenti yanjiu
(Journal of International Studies) published by the China
Institute of International Studies (CIIS) which is under the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in Beijing.
Indian Defence Review
prides itself on being a sober,
pragmatic, mainstream journal.
Guoji wenti yanjiu
tends to reflect the relatively
moderate perspective of China's foreign ministry. Thus we have a sample of two
relatively hawkish and two relatively moderate authoritative journals for each
country.
A sample of four elite foreign policy journals is not large, but it is, I believe,
representative of a relatively small set of such journals in the two countries. A
doubling or a tripling of the number of élite journals surveyed would not, I
believe, substantially alter the results.
Figure 1
presents in tabular form the number of other-related articles in
Strategic Analysis, Indian Defence Review, Guoji wenti yanjiu,
and
Xiandai
guoji guanxi
over a period of four years based on a review of their tables of
contents. All other-related articles, as indicated by listed titles which used the
words China, Chinese, India, Indian, Sino, or Indo were counted, whether or not
they were security-related. Thus, economic analyses or biographies of national
leaders were counted. Articles with general titles which might well have touched
on the other country (for example, 'India's Security Environment in the 21st
Century', or 'South Asia's Post Cold War Security Situation'), but which did not
specifically mention the other country in the title, were not counted.
This particular counting rule eliminated the need to review the actual text of
articles and to establish rules for coding the texts of those articles. It also
provided strictly comparable data for comparison. It also probably had the effect,
however, of
understating
the degree of perceptual asymmetry. Since for reasons
having to do with the mobilization role of China's public media (a matter
discussed below), Chinese authors of broad surveys were probably less willing to
specify India as a threat to China, analysis of ambiguously named articles would
very probably have strengthened the tendency toward Indian concern and
apparent Chinese non-concern.
