Studying the narrative of US policy towards China: introducing China-related political texts in Congress

The US-China relationship has significantly deteriorated since the Trump administration, marked by trade disputes and ideological clashes. Washington views China's rise as a threat to its global dominance, leading to a more competitive and aggressive US foreign policy. China, in turn, rejects US pressure and accusations of undermining the international order. This escalating rivalry has created considerable uncertainty in international politics, prompting comparisons to the Peloponnesian War and the Thucydides Trap. Given Congress's key role in US foreign policy, this study examines China-related legislation as a window into US diplomatic intentions and strategic choices towards China. It argues that this approach is crucial for understanding the evolving perceptions of China within the US leadership and the power dynamics influencing US-China relations. The paper focuses on identifying trends and characteristics of China-related bills, comparing themes across different administrations, and analyzing the interplay between political texts, power relations, and ideology in shaping US congressional strategy towards China.

Existing literature on US foreign policy towards China predominantly focuses on two approaches. The first utilizes traditional international relations theories (great power relations, geopolitics, strategic games) to analyze US strategic choices. The second examines the role of the US political system, mainly focusing on the president's ideological preferences and strategic decisions. While content analysis and discourse analysis have been employed using media reports, official Chinese discourse, and presidential tweets, there is a relative dearth of studies examining congressional legislative texts as a key source of understanding US policy towards China. The current studies on China-related bills in the US Congress either track all such bills chronologically or focus on specific areas like Taiwan, Hong Kong, or the South China Sea dispute. Methodologically, these studies either rely on traditional international relations theory or use an interdisciplinary approach involving quantitative analysis like regression analysis or qualitative analysis of legislators' voting records. The study fills this gap by using text mining of congressional bills to analyze US policy towards China.

The study collected data from congress.gov, the official website of the US Congress, searching for bills containing "China" or "Chinese" from the 115th-117th Congresses (2017-2023). Initially, 2229 bills were identified. After excluding amendments (477 bills) and bills not directly related to Chinese affairs (248 bills), the final dataset comprised 1504 bills. These bills were divided into two corpora: one for the Trump administration (115th and 116th Congresses, 646 bills) and another for the Biden administration (117th Congress, 858 bills). Text mining was conducted separately on each corpus using R language packages. The analysis involved three dimensions: keyword analysis using TF-IDF algorithm, semantic network analysis based on the Jaccard coefficient, and topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). For LDA, the optimal number of topics was determined using log-likelihood calculations and multiple model comparison, finally settling on 8 topics. LDAvis was used to visualize the topic models, allowing for interpretation of the dominant themes within each corpus.

The study found a dramatic increase in China-related legislation during the period examined, with a significant jump in the 117th Congress. Republican lawmakers proposed considerably more bills than Democrats. International affairs constituted nearly half of the bills, followed by foreign trade, and national security. Keyword analysis revealed shared high-frequency words (security, Taiwan, Russia, entity) across both administrations, but also administration-specific words reflecting differing priorities. Semantic network analysis identified six clusters: Russia (military focus), Taiwan (economic and military ties), entity (economic and technological), security (national security concerns, including Hong Kong and coronavirus), economy (economic security), and prohibition (human rights and CCP related). Topic modeling further revealed differences between the Trump and Biden administrations. Under the Trump administration, themes focused on economy, technology, local Chinese affairs, resistance to foreign governments, political values and national security. Under Biden, while these themes persisted, there was a greater focus on ideological confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and a stronger emphasis on allied cooperation to counter the perceived Chinese threat.

The findings demonstrate the increasing prioritization of China-related issues in US Congress and its systematic implementation of a decoupling policy across multiple domains. The increase in China-related legislation, irrespective of party affiliation or presidential approach (Trump's "America First" vs. Biden's multilateralism), highlights the sustained strategic competition between the US and China. The shift towards a stronger emphasis on ideological competition and allied cooperation under the Biden administration reflects a change in diplomatic strategy, yet the fundamental competitive nature of US-China relations remains consistent. The analysis of political texts reveals that the US defines its identity in relation to China, using external threats to mitigate internal divisions and shaping its diplomatic approach based on a perceived dichotomy of values (liberal democratic capitalism versus illiberal authoritarianism).

This study contributes to the understanding of US policy toward China by analyzing congressional legislation as a key indicator of strategic intent. The findings highlight the significant increase in China-related bills, persistent negative perceptions of China, and the evolving emphasis on ideological competition and allied cooperation. Future research could expand the analysis to include other congressional materials (committee reports, publications, records) for a more comprehensive understanding. Investigating the dynamics of legislative cooperation networks could also shed light on the deeper political attitudes shaping congressional decisions on China-related issues.

This study focuses solely on congressional bills, potentially neglecting other congressional activities relevant to China policy. The analysis relies on textual data, potentially overlooking contextual factors or nuances. Further research employing diverse methodological approaches could provide a more holistic understanding of the complexities of US-China relations.