Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Imagining China: Exploring The Discursive Limitations On Foreign Policy, Emma K. Bailey

Senior Projects Spring 2021

This project explores how the U.S. discursive framework on China results in consistently limited foreign policy approaches, because it engages with a construction of China that exists only in imagination. I trace this modern political discourse from its reestablishment of Sino-American relations under Nixon. Then move on to the Obama administration, which represents an important juncture in China’s rise to global superpower. I then conclude with the short tracing of this discourse and related foreign policy in the Trump and Biden administrations.