About 40 years since the opening-up of China, the Chinese economy has experienced a period of explosive growth. The growing influence of China has not gone unnoticed by the world, and many have already noted China's growing role in global affairs, with more and more global opinions shifting the focus and attention to China. For the domestic Chinese, there is always this impression present that the foreign media is always out to get China. They always have the impression that foreign media are keen to report about China's negative aspects, and sometimes even deliberately damage China's image in the news. But is this really the case? Let us discuss this view using the support of data.

Firstly, there is major differentiation present in the views of people globally. In a research conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018, 45% of interviewees have favorable views towards China while 43% have negative perceptions. Among 12 countries covered, many countries gave Chinese positive reviews. This perception is commonly voiced by nations in Africa, Middle East and Asia. In America, about 38% of people interviewed are positive towards China, representing a decrease from the 44% recorded in 2017. Close to half of the Americans who were interviewed had a hostile attitude towards China. However, after a prolonged trade war, the ratios have switched up pretty obviously. In 2019, 60% of Americans have a hostile attitude towards China, much higher than the 47% recorded earlier and setting the highest level recorded since the survey's inception in 2005. Not surprisingly, the record of Americans who had positive outlook towards China dropped to 26%. A similar trend is reflected in Gallup polls.

At the same time, 70% of interviewees in the world said that China has taken on a greater role than it did 10 years ago, leading greatly against Russia who is in the second place. Despite so many people agreeing that China has risen in its global importance over the past 10 years, they still feel that China should not be regarded as the world's de facto leader. 34% of people believe that China is the leading economic superpower in the world, but that the United States should still be granted the role as global leader. It is also notable that among the four out of five countries that inclined to choose the U.S. and not China are located in Asia Pacific. They include 81% of Filipinos, 73% of Koreans and 72% of Australians. There are many reasons for this outcome, and it involves state systems, history, culture and many other multifaceted reasons. However, the most important reason of all is perhaps geopolitical influence.

In terms of the attitude of the media against various nations, the GDELT - a big database project that tracks global media, found that Western media mostly only has praises to sing about China. The GDELT is the largest and most comprehensive database in the field of sociology. From 1979 to present, GDELT has tracked media updates in more than 100 languages. After tracking these updates, it will assign a "appraisal index" to the articles. A positive index means that the article or update being tracked is of a positive nature, and vice versa. The larger the index, the more positive the news. According to results tracked, the British media has an "appraisal index" of 1.335, ranked behind Singapore and Japan but no doubt very ahead in the global rankings. The U.S. has an index of 0.307 for China, and even though the number is not huge, it still represents a positive American media outlook on China. On the other side, countries with the lowest "appraisal index" for China are South Korea (-1.639), Japan (-1.554) and Vietnam (-1.420). This trend is also reflected similarly in the Pew Research Center survey.

In contrast, Chinese domestic media's "appraisal index" is only positive for six nations, which is China, Pakistan, Canada, Italy, Singapore and New Zealand, with other countries all having a negative result. Among the nations with a negative index, the US has an "appraisal index" of -2.091, with the UK at -0.859. China's "appraisal index" for Japan is -2.257, far lower than Japan's index for China. Judging from these results, it can be seen that the Chinese are eager to report on positive news from within the country, but only publishes criticism when it comes to Western powers. This signifies that the appraisal of China towards foreign countries are much lower than how foreign countries rate China.

Summing up the above information, it is clear that the view that foreign media are enthusiastic towards reporting negative news about China is biased. Be it a foreign individual or news media, their attitudes towards China are in reality neutral in nature, and perhaps even leaning towards the positive side. People abroad are giving due recognition to China's rising economy in recent years and believe in the growing importance of China in global affairs. Contrastingly, Chinese domestic media have obvious signs of prejudice against foreign bodies.

This prejudice mainly arises from the difference in positioning of the media domestically and abroad. The role of overseas media outlets is mainly to give rise to an independent voice, a voice which possesses oversight on governments as well. In fact, western media outlets are largely considered to be a fourth political power outside of administrative, legislative and judicial aspects. This fourth authority focus assumes that news media could help common folk understand governmental issues from varying and independent viewpoints, holding a check-and-balance type leverage against the government. However, the government's influence on media is relatively substantial in the domestic sphere. The media has overwhelmingly taken on a significant amount of propaganda and is a communication tool and channel for propaganda. Other than this, the era of the internet has also brought about major changes in the media industry and the broadcast of information, and this has brought about shifts to the development of the local media industry. However, China has caught up quickly on the development of the internet, and has certain control over it.

Looking from the above examples, if there is a prolonged biased and "pick-and-choose" journalism, its effect on the society would be obviously seen. Most of the time, informational limitations will steadily build into cognition-based limitations. Having only a single source of information might cause a mindset that struggles to implement critical thinking to be formed. If this mindset is formed, information that falls outside what is normally expected will be forced through a form of selective filter, and result in a solidification of existing stereotypes while ignoring a new perspective of looking at matters.

Final analysis conclusion:

Actually, the reporting about China sourced from the Western media that is not as biased and antagonistic as what is commonly believed from within China. In fact, the Chinese media's reporting of China and the world is not as fair and objective. If information limitation exists for a prolonged period of time, there could be misjudgment on what the real world is.