ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
But as NPR's John Ydstie reports, U.S. attitudes toward an emerging Asian competitor appear to have moderated.
JOHN YDSTIE: A generation ago, it was Japan's powerful economic rise that was troubling Americans. A movie based on Michael Crichton's novel "Rising Sun" captured the mood.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "RISING SUN")
SEAN CONNERY: (as Captain John Connor): You ever negotiated with the Japanese before?
WESLEY SNIPES: (as Lieutenant Webster Smith) Well, this is hardly a negotiation.
CONNERY: (as Captain John Connor) What is it, then?
SNIPES: It's a homicide.
YDSTIE: The movie was a murder mystery that stoked lots of fears about Japanese investment in U.S. industries. Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center says in the late 1980s and early '90s, Americans had a much darker view of Japan than the current view of China.
MICHAEL DIMOCK: Japan was more uniformly vilified, or at least a broader concern for Americans, in the late '80s and early '90s than China is today.
YDSTIE: In purely economic terms, almost 70 percent of Americans thought Japan was taking advantage of the U.S. through unfair trade 20 years ago. That compares to 55 percent who think that about China today. That's still a significant number, says Dimock, but he says the sentiment toward China is more nuanced.
DIMOCK: There is a sense that China's trade policies are unfair. But at the same time, a majority tells us that they want us to build a stronger relationship with China, that China seems essential to America's economic future.
YDSTIE: Nearly 60 percent of Americans hold that view. So why do Americans take a more relaxed view toward China's emergence as an economic power?
ELLIS KRAUSS: Two reasons: One is that Japan came first.
YDSTIE: That's Professor Ellis Krauss, who's an Asia specialist at the University of California, San Diego.
KRAUSS: Japan really was the first big competitor to the U.S. after World War II. And that really shocked, I think, many Americans. But I think the more fundamental reason is that Japan and China's pattern of economic development has been very different.
YDSTIE: Professor Krauss says Americans also felt threatened by Japanese purchases of iconic U.S. companies and real estate.
KRAUSS: You know, the buying of Rockefeller Center and Columbia Pictures, of course, were the most symbolic of those.
YDSTIE: Ellis Krauss says military issues will likely sour American views toward China, too, as that nation expands its Navy and adds muscle to its air power.
KRAUSS: Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that China is not democratic, and China is not a military ally of the U.S., both of which Japan was.
YDSTIE: John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.