A very good resarch. I think of additional two reasons:

First, the Western media used the Beijing Olympic to promote the self interest, not that of China (Did the contents of their coverage about China change significantly during Olympic?)

Second, the new media does not provide people with the new ability to understand China through Chinese language media, therefore they are still confined to understanding it from a previous narrow perspective.

Dear Dr. Sun,
Thank you for taking the time to comment. To your first point, the coverage tone and contents did not seem to change significantly. A couple of events received extra attention: the death of the coach's father and the young Chinese gymnasts. I think some of the political angst and traction by that point was siphoned off by the concurrent Georgia-Soviet confrontation.

I think you're right--language is a significant barrier in bringing the American and Chinese cultures closer together. Social media has some implicit trust and persuasion mechanisms that mass-media does not, so I think some opportunities lie there. I also think an answer lies in investing in each other's "stories." Let the culture be incidental to the human emotion and shared experience--in contrast to competition against one another. For example, why not connect a season of "The Apprentice" with "Win in China" and have the teams be made up of people from both countries (and translators if necessary)?

Interestingly, I spent the evening visiting with a group of young media professionals during the Olympics, talking about U.S. impressions and China's image. In contrast to much U.S. reporting of the Opening Ceremonies as being "over the top," these young people felt that the Opening Ceremonies were a disappointment; they felt that China had held back and that the spectacle did not show the world what China can really do.