Discussion of Results of the Survey
Background of Students Surveyed
We polled 164 Chinese students at the University of Shanghai for Science and
Technology (76 % females, 24 % males) and 201 U.S. students at Pace University
(54 % males, 44 % females, 2 % Unknown). While about half of Chinese students were
sophomores (48 %) and the other half were juniors (52 %), most of the U.S. respondents
were freshmen (73 %) and sophomores (16 %). Most of them have never visited
the other country (U.S. 89 % and China 83 %).
The major source of news information for both groups was the Internet—about 52 %
of Chinese students said they got most of their news information about the U.S. from
the Internet; likewise, about 49 % of the American students said that they got most of
their information about China from the Internet. The second major source of information
for both groups was television (13 % of Chinese students and 25 % of the U.S.
students chose TV as their major source of information). Since multiple answers were
possible, 13 % of U.S. students said that a combination of Internet and TV was their
source and 8 % of Chinese students answered similarly.
The surveys revealed that most of the respondents had not visited the other’s nation
first hand; therefore, the students primarily relied on the Internet and television as a
source of the information about the other country. This means that their views were
often shaped by news reports, which invariably have a national interest orientation for
each country. That is, they reflect the political views of the leaders of both nations and
are not necessarily objective in their points of view.
In order to assess the student’s familiarity with the U.S. or China, we first asked if
they had ever travelled to the U.S. (Chinese students) or China (U.S. students). We
discovered that for the most part neither had travelled to each other’s country (more
than 80 % in each case had not done so). But more students from China had been to the
U.S. (17 %) as opposed to those students from the U.S. that had visited China (only
11 %). In order to ascertain if students had some formal background in U.S.-China
relations, we asked if they had ever had a U.S.-China relations course. There was a
significant difference between the two groups. Over half (55 %) of the Chinese students
had taken such a course but only 5 % of the U.S. students had done so