The Image of China in Russian Border Regions

The influence of public opinion in a country, be it the perceptions and misperceptions of the mass public or the beliefs of the political and academic elite about the elaboration of foreign policy, has been a legitimate and important object of the study of foreign relations since at least the time of Walter Lippman.1 Mutual perceptions play an especially important role in relations between neighbors with long and complicated histories of bilateral relations, and Russia and China surely belong to this category. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent political changes in Russia make an understanding of perceptions even more important because democratization has given the mass public and especially various elites an opportunity to express their views-including those on foreign policythrough such means as elections, lobbying, and the mass media. At the same time, the decentralization of the Russian government, which has led to an increase in the influence of regional authorities on foreign policy decisions (especially in border areas), has made it important to go outside Moscow and pay more attention to regional images of the outside world.