Adversaries: Sino-US relations trend analysis 1999-2001

Abstract

This thesis presents a quantitative analysis of Sino-US diplomatic trends during the period from January 1st, 1999, to December 31st, 2001. Through web scraping of the People's Daily database, approximately 2,800 relevant articles were collected and processed through R. The semantic analysis was based on a simple point system using the NTUSD dictionary to calculate the tonal value of articles. The analysis is broken down into quarterly periods, beginning with Q1 1999, which exhibited no significant variation in sentiment until a significant negative data point was recorded in March attributed to an article on the human rights record of the US. Overall, the trend of Sino-US relations as reflected by this analysis in large part follows existing literature, but the positive general tones and the speed at which negative events are removed from coverage are significant.