Russia-China Mutual Perceptions
August 22, 2022


Geographic distribution


China, Russia

Asia: Pakistan, Vietnam

Eurasia: Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine

Europe: Hungary, Italy, Serbia

Middle East: Egypt, Turkey

Africa: Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa

Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela

Frequency Distributions / Graphs

Articles About Russian and Chinese Activities in Each Country

CHN RUS Total
CHN 0 126752 126752
RUS 119631 0 119631
PAK 93016 20070 113086
VNM 50586 13914 64500
KGZ 8089 12522 20611
UKR 6010 267583 273593
HUN 4417 6401 10818
ITA 19225 13997 33222
SRB 5444 11447 16891
EGY 12646 37792 50438
TUR 13369 165461 178830
ETH 5061 740 5801
KEN 11488 691 12179
ZAF 4539 1290 5829
BOL 951 1306 2257
BRA 15554 3875 19429
VEN 6860 19142 26002
Total 376886 702983 1079869


Total N for this analysis = 1.08 million.
376,886 news articles about Chinese activities.
702,983 news articles about Russian activities.
Nearly twice as many articles about Russian activities compared to Chinese activities in our data.


Articles About Russian and Chinese Activities in Each Geographic region

CHN RUS Total
China 0 126752 126752
Russia 119631 0 119631
Asia 143602 33984 177586
Eurasia 14099 280105 294204
Europe 29086 31845 60931
Middle East 26015 203253 229268
Africa 21088 2721 23809
Latin America 23365 24323 47688
Total 376886 702983 1079869


Frequency of Articles by News Sources


Chinese Activities by News Sources

Chinese Media Domestic Media Russian Media Western Media Total
RUS 30000 0 10572 79059 119631
PAK 14820 49134 827 28235 93016
VNM 12801 13086 350 24349 50586
KGZ 3605 2354 183 1947 8089
UKR 2000 970 120 2920 6010
HUN 2387 472 13 1545 4417
ITA 8187 1153 196 9689 19225
SRB 2899 1156 42 1347 5444
EGY 7840 1657 54 3095 12646
TUR 4542 557 314 7956 13369
ETH 2998 462 4 1597 5061
KEN 5894 3610 24 1960 11488
ZAF 1786 1909 15 829 4539
BOL 387 0 11 553 951
BRA 5395 252 102 9805 15554
VEN 1544 258 353 4705 6860
Total 107085 77030 13180 179591 376886



Russian Activities by News Sources

Chinese Media Domestic Media Russian Media Western Media Total
CHN 26804 0 13052 86896 126752
PAK 1795 8728 3845 5702 20070
VNM 802 7269 881 4962 13914
KGZ 866 4308 1340 6008 12522
UKR 5343 49750 31047 181443 267583
HUN 163 670 711 4857 6401
ITA 567 1045 2297 10088 13997
SRB 109 2321 1068 7949 11447
EGY 1322 4520 2810 29140 37792
TUR 8490 7523 19033 130415 165461
ETH 113 80 69 478 740
KEN 5 287 47 352 691
ZAF 77 684 115 414 1290
BOL 47 5 184 1070 1306
BRA 744 200 414 2517 3875
VEN 1126 276 2605 15135 19142
Total 48373 87666 79518 487426 702983


Most Positive and Negative Outlets


V-Dem: Aggregrate (version 1)

V-Dem: Aggregrate (version 2)

Same as above, but x and y-axes are flipped:


FDI: Inward Flows

Data taken from World Bank.

Note: Most recent year for this data is 2019 (For 2020, I imputed my own values based on the 10-year trend).

Example data source (for Pakistan):

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.KLT.DINV.WD.GD.ZS?locations=PK


NOTE - The Eurasia/Europe figure above is noticeably different compared to everywhere else. It has a different y-axis and wilder fluctuations between the years.



Results: Media perception of Chinese and Russian activities in 15 countries


CONTROL VARIABLES:

  • V-dem: Liberal Democracy & Electoral Democracy
  • V-dem: Freedom of Expression
  • Foreign Direct Investment, as % of GDP

The plots below visualize the OLS regression results from all individual dyads.



Changes from previous results


  • Results are ROBUST to the following control variables:

  • V-dem Democracy and Freedom of Press Indices

  • FDI data

  • Patterns:

  • Chinese media consistently positive

  • Russian media has a LOT of variation

  • Western media consistently negative, but MORE negative about Russian activities compared to Chinese activities

  • Interesting changes in results after we include the control variables. For eg, coefficient for Vietnam and KGZ goes down substantially in Russian plot


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