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

The paper examines how the U.S. Congress has shaped and signaled U.S. policy toward China during the period of strategic competition and decoupling spanning the Trump and Biden administrations. Against a backdrop of deteriorating U.S.-China relations, trade disputes, and ideological confrontation, the authors argue that congressional legislation provides a critical window into evolving U.S. intentions, identity construction, and policy practice toward China. By analyzing China-related bills, the study seeks to capture dynamic perceptions of China, the prevalence of competitive and restrictive policy instruments, and the ideological framing of China as a strategic competitor. The study articulates three research questions: (RQ1) What are the trends and characteristics of China-related bills in Congress after the U.S. decoupling from China? (RQ2) What are the similarities and differences in the themes of China-related bills introduced by Congress in different periods? (RQ3) How do the U.S. China-related bills shape the discourse–power–ideology triangle?

The literature on U.S. policy toward China comprises two main streams: (1) analyses rooted in international relations theories (great power relations, geopolitics, strategic competition, power transition), and (2) studies emphasizing U.S. domestic political institutions and presidential leadership, preferences, and strategies. Recent research has also applied content and discourse analysis to media, official statements, and presidential communications. However, congressional roles remain under-examined despite evidence that Congress shapes foreign policy via legislation, appropriations, sanctions, and intraparty factional dynamics. Prior work on China-related congressional activity has either tracked overall trends or focused on specific issues (Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea), using approaches ranging from balance-of-power perspectives to regression analyses of legislative behavior. Text mining has been used more frequently on media or executive discourse than on legislative texts. This study addresses gaps by applying text mining to congressional China-related bills to reveal how political texts encode power relations, identity constructions (self/other), and ideological positions that guide diplomatic practice.

Data were collected from Congress.gov, covering all legislative activities from the 115th to 117th Congress (Jan. 3, 2017–Jan. 3, 2023). Using the keywords “China” and “Chinese,” 2229 items were retrieved. Two categories were excluded: 477 amendments (modifications to existing laws) and 248 items not directly related to Chinese affairs (e.g., cultural matters of Chinese Americans), yielding 1504 China-related bills. Official summaries for all 1504 bills were extracted. Two corpora were built: (1) Trump-era corpus (115th–116th Congresses): 646 bills; (2) Biden-era corpus (117th Congress): 858 bills. Text mining was conducted in R using open-source packages. Analyses included: (a) frequency analysis of high-frequency terms; (b) semantic network construction, where keywords were extracted with TF-IDF and co-occurrence strengths computed using the Jaccard coefficient; (c) topic modeling via Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Preprocessing removed numbers, punctuation, and stop words; terms like “China” and “United States” and other high-frequency but uninformative words were excluded to avoid dominance effects. The optimal number of topics was determined as K=8 by combining LogLikelihood assessments (topicmodels package) with multiple diagnostic metrics (Griffiths2004, CaoJuan2009, Arun2010, Deveaud2014) and iterative model testing. Topics were visualized and interpreted with LDAvis, adjusting the relevance parameter (λ) to balance salient and exclusive terms, and topic labels were assigned by combining top terms with readings of the underlying bill texts.

- Legislative volume surged: China-related bills rose from 166 (115th) to 480 (116th) and 858 (117th), a more than fivefold increase from the 115th to the 117th Congress, indicating intensifying congressional activity associated with decoupling. - Partisan patterns: Republicans introduced far more China-related bills than Democrats—on average 2.4 times as many per Congress. - Policy areas: Nearly half of China-related bills fell under International Affairs (734). Foreign Trade and International Finance (112) and Armed Forces and National Security (111) were also prominent. Other areas (Energy, Commerce, Health, Government Operations and Politics, Finance/Financial Sector, Immigration, Economics, Public Finance, Science/Technology/Communications) each had 33–56 bills. - High-frequency terms: Shared terms across periods included security, Taiwan, Russia, and entity. Trump-era specific high-frequency terms included “Hong Kong” (184), “coronavirus” (176), and “sanction” (160). In the 117th Congress, “economy” (326), “defense” (292), and “CCP” (266) signaled intensified economic, defense, and ideological focus. - Semantic network clusters (six major clusters): (1) Russia cluster linked with adversary states (Cuba, North Korea) and military terms (nuclear, missile, defense); (2) Taiwan cluster linked to diplomacy, relationship, military; (3) Entity cluster tied to trade, Huawei, cyber, sanction, company, finance, indicating economic/tech measures; (4) Security cluster associated with Hong Kong, coronavirus, alliance, telecommunication; (5) Economy cluster linked to investment, energy, development, supply, independent, highlighting supply chains and economic security; (6) Prohibition cluster tied to human rights, property, transfer, impose, CCP, company, indicating multifaceted bans. - Four semantic content categories summarized: I) finance/economy/industrial (fund, investment, manufacture, export, DoD, adversary); II) Taiwan/Russia/security/CCP/Hong Kong/human rights/coronavirus/sanctions/economy; III) Iran/influence/trade/intelligence/alliance/cooperation/cyber; IV) entity/prohibition/technology/Huawei/executive/agency. - Topic modeling (K=8) for 115th–116th Congress highlighted: financial allocations against adversary influence; intelligence collection on hostile states; alliance cooperation on pandemic; trade war based on political values (entity, Taiwan/Tibet/Xinjiang); diplomatic sanctions on individuals; democratic internet and telecom security (Hong Kong, cyber); technology and military cooperation with value-sharing partners; bans on individuals/institutions based on values. - Topic modeling (K=8) for 117th Congress highlighted: multifront sanctions on the CCP; removing Hong Kong’s economic privileges/supporting democracy; national security deterrence via military/financial tools; sanctions for CCP affiliations tied to human rights (Uyghur); strengthened economic/military ties with Taiwan; economic sanctions and military competition with specific states; technology/financial blocks on specific countries; prohibitions on goods from Xinjiang. - Comparative thematic trends: Both periods emphasize national security, technology, intellectual property, and economic competition with frequent sanctions and visa restrictions. The 117th Congress showed heightened ideological framing (explicit targeting of the CCP) and increased emphasis on allied coordination (Japan, South Korea, NATO, EU, Indo-Pacific partners).

The findings indicate that congressional political texts both reflect and shape U.S. strategic behavior toward China, embedding value judgments and institutional orientations that guide foreign policy. Across administrations, Congress consistently framed China, along with Russia, North Korea, and Iran, as hostile states threatening U.S. national security and the liberal international order, reinforcing a conservative and competitive stance through restrictions in economic, technological, and military domains. Ideological issues (democracy, freedom, human rights) are strongly coupled with Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet, contributing to a persistent confrontational identity construction of the U.S. self versus a Chinese other. Under Biden, China-related legislation more explicitly foregrounds ideology—often naming the CCP—and systematizes allied cooperation, aligning policy measures with a democracy-versus-autocracy narrative. This marks a shift from earlier emphasis primarily on national security and intellectual property rationales to a broader ideological justification for decoupling. The evolving discourse-power-ideology triangle suggests that political texts codify power relations which then feed back into legislative outputs, perpetuating competitive dynamics in U.S.-China relations.

By text-mining China-related congressional bills from the 115th to 117th Congress, the study shows that Congress has systematically advanced decoupling across economic, technological, cultural, and academic spheres. Legislative activity accelerated markedly and did not abate under President Biden, while discursive framing shifted to more explicit anti-CCP and alliance-based, values-driven competition. The paper contributes by foregrounding congressional legislative texts as a key source for understanding U.S. diplomatic intentions, identity construction, and strategic choices toward China. Future research should extend beyond bills to incorporate committee reports, publications, and congressional records, and integrate legislator cooperation networks and voting behavior to deepen insight into congressional preferences and influence on U.S.-China policy trajectories.

The analysis is limited to bill summaries from Congress.gov and does not include other congressional materials such as Committee Reports, Committee Publications, and Congressional Records. It also does not model legislator networks or voting behavior, which could elucidate coalition dynamics and preference formation behind China-related legislation.