More test runs on Xinhua data ...

Over the weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I can create a new proposal, after my Spratly's idea fell apart.

This morning I conducted some more test runs on the Xinhua data from the 1980s and 1990s. It seems there are enough references to certain other terms for me to build a more solid analysis.

Interesting trends appear when I did a count of the frequency of references to "Taiwan" in Xinhua stories. In the early 1980s, there were only a few hundred refs per year, but this spiked in the late 1980s (corresponding with the re-opening of personal contacts between the two sides) and mid to late 1990s. By 1999, about 2000 stories per year mentioned Taiwan in the lead paragraph. This could warrant further study.

I also did some frequency counts on stories with "motherland" and "China". I had to include "China" because it turns out that there are a lot of stories about other countries that mention "motherland". There are a few hundred stories per year that mention both terms, spiking in 1989 (the year of the Tiananmen massacre) and the late 1990s (Hong Kong handover pre-1997) and something else in 1999, when more than 800 stories were published mentioning the two terms. Interesting ...