In an increasingly globalized world, connected through trade, education, and tourism, nation states have become more conscious about the importance of their images in the other parts of the world. Public diplomacy is a strategic approach to shaping national images among foreign publics. As a growing power in the global marketplace, China has used both information based advertising campaigns and the relationship based cultural programs to tell the China story.;Though there has been a long discourse in the West regarding China, most previous studies about the image of China have been limited to examining preexisting texts, such as newspaper coverage, historical documents, popular TV shows, and films. While the media textual analyses can best tell us how media are representing China, they cannot tell us how China is being consumed by the public.;This study used focus group interviews to investigate the national image of China as constructed by American college students. Analyzed using the Circuit of Culture model developed by du Gay, et al. (1997), any cultural meaning is a result of the interactive and synergistic relationship among five moments (regulation, production, representation, consumption, and identity) in a communicative process, three separate themes emerged from American college students' discussions about China: consumerism; perfectionism; and otherness.;The findings of the study suggested that despite a government effort to portray a rising power that is friendly and benevolent, the behavior of Chinese students in America has hijacked that positive image. The dissertation suggests new avenues for public diplomacy in China, including a significant change of focus to internal Chinese publics.
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