Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in China's Japan Policy

STRONG SOCIETY, SMART STATE

CONTEMPORARY ASIA IN THE WORLD

David C. Kang and Victor D. Cha, Editors

This series aims to address a gap in the public-policy and scholarly discussion of Asia. It seeks to promote books and studies that are on the cutting edge of their respective disciplines or in the promotion of multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary research but that are also accessible to a wider readership. The editors seek to showcase the best scholarly and public-policy arguments on Asia from any field, including politics, history, economics, and cultural studies.

Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia, Victor D. Cha, 2008

The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, Guobin Yang, 2009

China and India: Prospects for Peace, Jonathan Holslag, 2010

India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia, Šumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, 2010

Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China, Benjamin I. Page and Tao Xie, 2010

East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute, David C. Kang, 2010

Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics, Yuan-Kang Wang, 2011

JAMES REILLY

STRONG SOCIETY,

  SMART STATE

The Rise of Public Opinion in China’s Japan Policy

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press

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Copyright © 2012 Columbia University Press

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-52808-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reilly, James, 1972–

Strong society, smart state : the rise of public opinion in China’s Japan policy / James Reilly.

p. cm. — (Contemporary Asia in the world)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-15806-0 (cloth : acid-free paper paper) —

ISBN 978-0-231-52808-5 (electronic)

1. China—Foreign relations—Japan. 2. Japan—Foreign relations— China.

3. Japan—Foreign public opinion, Chinese. I. Title. II. Series.

DS740.5.J3R38 2012

327.51052—dc22

2010049310

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.

References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

For Wu Na

with all of my love

CONTENTS

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Public Opinion in Chinese Foreign Policy

2 Forgetting and Remembering the Past: China’s Relations with Japan, 1949–1999

3 The Origins of Public Mobilization

4 Responding to Public Opinion

5 A Potent Populism

6 The Rebirth of the Propaganda State

Conclusion

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography

Index

FIGURES

FIGURE 1.1 Stages in a Wave of Public Mobilization

FIGURE 3.1 Global Times Reporting on Japan

FIGURE 3.2 The Public’s Friendly Feeling Toward Japan

FIGURE 3.3 Ranking Japan’s Importance to China’s Economy

FIGURE 5.1 Variation in Chinese Experts’ Threat Perceptions of Japan

FIGURE 5.2 Percentage of Articles Urging Cooperation and Trust-building

TABLES

TABLE 2.1 China’s Partnerships, 1996–1999 78

TABLE 2.2 China–Japan Security Dialogues: 1998–2001 83

TABLE 2.3 Chinese Injuries Due to Exposed ACW, 1950–2003

TABLE 3.1 Party and Commercial Newspapers’ Coverage of Japan, 2001–2005

TABLE 3.2 Chinese Opinions of East Asian Countries and the United States, 2005

TABLE 3.3 What Is Your Main Channel for Learning About Japan?

TABLE 5.1 Origins and Outcomes of the New Thinking

TABLE 6.1 Party and Commercial Newspapers’ Coverage of Japan: 2004–2008

TABLE 6.2 shifts in Chinese Public Opinion Toward Japan

TABLE 6.3 Closeness to Japan Before and After the Abe Visit in October 2006

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Does public opinion influence Chinese foreign policy? Can the Chinese government shape public attitudes on foreign policy? I have spent the past decade struggling with these two questions. The book you are holding in your hands represents my answers. It is my great pleasure to acknowledge the generous support I have received during this journey.

My favorite saying attributed to Confucius is: Among three people walking; one of them could be my teacher (Sanrenxing; biyou woshi). In the course of writing this book, I have been enriched by many teachers. David Shambaugh has provided that rare mix of scholarly insight, practical guidance, and personal support that epitomizes the best in academic mentorship. Mike Mochizuki has equally been a wellspring of insight, inspiration, and support. He always asked the truly hard questions, and had the kindness to sift patiently through my loquacious responses to help me find a path forward. Bruce Dickson has been exceedingly generous with his time, mixing encouragement and critiques of numerous draft articles and chapters. For teaching me how to ask interesting and important questions, I am deeply grateful to David Bachman, Dorothy Borei, Martha Finnemore, Kenneth Pyle, Susan Whiting, Kozo Yamamura, and Daqing Yang.

This project would never have reached its fruition without the support of several close academic mentors. Ever since Bates Gill took me on as his research assistant at the Brookings Institution, his intellectual guidance, good humor, and steadfast friendship have been of utmost importance to me. Rana Mitter was an unflagging source of wisdom and encouragement throughout the daunting task of transforming a Ph.D. dissertation into a readable book. Rosemary Foot kindly took me under her wing at Oxford, generously sharing her time, insights, and hospitality. Shi Yinhong has been my close advisor over the past few years in China; he epitomizes for me what a true China scholar can and should be.

I have been sustained by the good cheer of friends and colleagues now spread across the globe, particularly the GW China cabal of Phillip Stalley, John Donaldson, Injoo Sohn, and Yisuo Zeng; and by members of the China’s War with Japan project at Oxford, including Matt Johnson, Aaron Moore, Federica Ferlanti, Annie Hongping Nie, and Akiko Frellesvig. A number of individuals have given generously of their time to comment on aspects of this project over the past few years, including: Allen Carlson, Joseph Fewsmith, Edward Friedman, Yinan He, Daniel Lynch, Caroline Rose, Stanley Rosen, Simon Shen, Danie Stockmann, Shogo Suzuki, Patricia Thorton, and Jessica Weiss. I benefited greatly from extensive discussions with many individuals in China; a partial list includes: Jin Canrong, Jin Xide, Huang Dahui, Fan Shiming, Li Yonggan, Wu Xinbo, Gui Yongtao, and Ni Jianping. My colleagues at the University of Sydney have kindly shared their insights and experience, particularly Ben Goldsmith, David Goodman, Graeme Gill, Lily Rahim, and Fred Teiwes. My heartfelt appreciation goes out to all.

I am especially fortunate to have been associated with a number of world-class institutions while writing this book. From 2001 through 2007, I served as the East Asia Representative of the American Friends Service Committee. AFSC, particularly my supervisor, Alice Andrews, was exceedingly supportive of my academic interests. The Political Science Department of George Washington University was equally understanding of my professional demands. In China, I was affiliated with the School of International Relations at Renmin University, a cordial and invigorating academic host. I am also grateful to the China’s War with Japan program at Oxford University, directed by Rana Mitter and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. A fellowship with the program enabled me thoroughly to revise the manuscript and prepare it for publication. The Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney has been a supportive home for the completion of this book and the launching of my next project.

Along the way, I have benefited from financial support from the Sigur Center of Asian Studies and the Political Science Department of GWU, the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Grant program, the University China Council of London, and the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Sydney. Jia Guan and Li Junyang, both promising scholars in their own right, provided superb research assistance. At Columbia University Press, Anne Routon’s deft editorial hand and loyal support have been critical. My deep gratitude goes out to the two anonymous reviewers for CUP for their painstaking comments on two iterations of the book manuscript. The final product is much improved thanks to their efforts. All remaining shortcomings and errors remain mine alone.

My family sustains me: my brother, Matt, keeps me up to date on the latest Philly sports; my mother and Elaine DeMasse have contributed their love and encouragement all along the way. The unstinting support behind the scenes by my mother-in-law, Liu Lanfang, has made all of this possible. My daughter, Reina, has grown up along with this book. Her laughter and good cheer remind me daily of what is truly important in life. Finally, and most importantly, this book is lovingly dedicated to my wife, Wu Na. With her, anything is possible.

INTRODUCTION

How authoritarian regimes have endured and even prospered well after the end of the Cold War is one of the most important questions in world politics today. Successful authoritarian states must be willing to respond to public pressure through policy adaptation while also retaining the capacity to shape public opinion. Authoritarian responsiveness and persuasiveness are attributes largely overlooked by scholars to date. This book reveals their central role in sustaining Communist Party rule in China and develops a method for examining similar dynamics in other authoritarian regimes.

By selective tolerance of popular protests and policy debates, Chinese leaders provide an outlet for the most mobilized, informed, and engaged segments of the population to express their opinions. At the same time, the state relies upon pervasive surveillance, coercion, and censorship to restrain activists from mobilizing to directly challenge Communist Party rule. The result is a kind of contained contention, in which popular protests continue to erupt and influence specific policy decisions but do not fundamentally undermine the party-state’s authority. By combining tolerance and responsiveness with persuasion and repression, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has developed a system of responsive authoritarianism based on accommodating popular pressures within its policy-making processes in ways that shore up regime stability. China’s leaders appear to have discovered a solution to the dilemma laid out by Samuel Huntington over four decades ago: how to accommodate rising popular demands for participation and representation within a nondemocratic political system.¹ Rather than being a harbinger of regime downfall, the rise of public opinion and its influence in Chinese foreign policy reveal a remarkable evolution in authoritarian responses to social turmoil.

This strategy of selective tolerance and responsiveness is not limited to China. As the third wave of democratization comes to an end, the question of how authoritarian regimes remain in power atop restive, well-informed publics is receiving renewed attention. The tolerance, responsiveness, and persuasiveness of the Communist Party in China in facing popular pressure is echoed by many stable, nondemocratic regimes in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, in trying to situate China’s response within a broader comparative context, we are ill served by existing concepts. The label authoritarian is a placeholder for a conceptual jumble of nondemocratic regimes that says much more about what they are not than what they are. Any concept that uncritically lumps together the diverse regimes in Singapore, Syria, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba, and Iran risks distorting more than it reveals. Given the importance of authoritarian countries to world politics, improving our understanding of the ways they sustain their rule is critical.

I develop this argument through the study of China’s recent relations with Japan. Beginning in 2001, China experienced a swell of negative public opinion, protests, and sensationalist media coverage of Japan—a wave of public mobilization—that impeded diplomatic negotiations, interrupted bilateral economic cooperation, spurred belligerent rhetoric, and forced Beijing to withdraw a major diplomatic initiative. By 2005, China’s Japan policy was in crisis. Sino-Japanese relations had sunk to their lowest point since diplomatic ties were restored in 1972, while the regime faced a domestic protest movement that threatened to spiral out of control. Chinese leaders responded by combining propaganda and diplomacy with censorship and repression. Over the next few years they successfully reined in anti-Japan activism, reshaped the domestic information environment, and improved public opinion toward Japan. By 2010, relations with Japan had returned to relative stability. China’s undulating relations with Japan raise three broad questions. Was the rise in public mobilization primarily the result of actions by the state, actions by society, or developments outside of China? Did public mobilization actually influence Chinese foreign policy, and if so, in what areas, through what mechanisms, and to what degree? Finally, what role did society and the state play in bringing the wave to an end?

Careful study reveals that the wave of public mobilization arose largely from factors outside of the Chinese party-state. Decades of state propaganda contributed to the broad base of popular distrust and animosity toward Japan, while official tolerance allowed protests to emerge. Yet the primary factors that instigated, drove forward, and broadened the wave of public mobilization came from beyond the state. This public pressure influenced China’s foreign policy decision making and discourse toward Japan. During the peak of public mobilization, Beijing’s rhetoric and negotiating stances, and the timing, direction, and extent of policy decisions all more closely reflected the public’s influence rather than reacting to Japanese policies. The wave of public mobilization also affected foreign policy discourse. High levels of public participation via the Internet, sensationalist coverage in popular media, and the participation of a group of populist journalists and activist-academics interjected nationalist, anti-Japanese sentiments into elite experts’ policy discourse, affecting the course and outcome of public debates and limiting the influence of moderate experts on policy makers. Yet once Chinese leaders made a concerted effort to bring the public mobilization to an end, they were effective in doing so. Faced with a deepening domestic and diplomatic crisis in spring 2005, top leaders orchestrated a remarkable reversal in their domestic propaganda toward Japan, augmented by censorship, repression, and diplomacy. The Party’s effort was largely effective in reshaping popular media content, discouraging anti-Japanese protests, and contributing to improvements in public attitudes toward Japan. Given the strength and persistence of anti-Japanese sentiments among the Chinese public, the Party’s success is particularly impressive.

Studying the role of public opinion in China’s relations with Japan yields two payoffs for international relations theory. First, it provides an easy test for a hard argument—in academic terms, a plausibility probe. A comparative perspective suggests that public opinion will not influence authoritarian states’ foreign policy. In democracies, politicians’ fears of being punished in future elections often lead them to avoid foreign policy choices that go against articulated or anticipated public opinion.² Richard Sobel, for instance, found that U.S. presidents since the Vietnam War have frequently felt constrained by public unwillingness to support broader objectives.³ An autonomous media sector, strong civil society, democratic norms, and decentralized state institutions all increase the likelihood that public opinion will influence democracies’ foreign policy.⁴ Authoritarian states, defined simply as nondemocratic political systems with some measure of social freedoms, lack all of these attributes. Studies on domestic audience costs similarly presume that authoritarian leaders are not constrained by domestic public opinion.⁵ The study of public opinion in democratic states’ foreign policy thus generates a clear, negative expectation: public opinion is unlikely to influence an authoritarian state’s foreign policy.

China’s relations with Japan also represent a hard test for an apparently easy argument. We would expect authoritarian leaders to effectively shape overt expressions of public opinion. They can censor news reports, fire journalists, close newspapers, imprison dissidents, break up demonstrations, and disband organizations. By controlling the flow of information to the public and deterring protest movements, strong authoritarian leaders should be able to effectively shape public opinion and political behavior. Yet to date, most scholarship on Chinese propaganda has focused on easy cases—instances where popular sentiments run in concert with official propaganda, such as China’s patriotic education campaign or promotion of the Beijing Olympics.⁶ Current scholarship thus risks replicating the determinist logic of an earlier generation of propaganda studies, which presumed that Soviet propaganda was successful because the Soviet regime was successful; it has survived.⁷ Assuming that propaganda only fails when the regime falls provides scant insight into when, how, and to what degree it enhances regime stability. Given the emphasis that authoritarian regimes around the world place upon propaganda, we need a better approach to assessing its effectiveness. The best test for an authoritarian regime’s propaganda capacity is a case in which the state sought to reverse previous propaganda messages or promote propaganda contrary to dominant public preferences, perhaps to justify either a domestic or a foreign policy reversal. Examining China’s efforts after spring 2005 to cool anti-Japanese emotions, rein in popular protests, and reshape popular media content thus provides a particularly rigorous test of the CCP’s propaganda capacity.

The findings from these two tests challenge a widespread presumption that the rise of popular nationalism in China signals the erosion of Communist Party authority. Recent scholarship on Chinese nationalism tends to depict the state as fragile, warning that popular nationalist sentiments are growing out of control and will increasingly force the Chinese government to adopt more aggressive foreign and military policies.⁸ Instead, I develop and test a cyclical model of state–society interactions, demonstrating that the Chinese government has developed a mechanism for tolerating and responding to sporadic instances of public emotion while maintaining its overall foreign policy trajectory. This approach allows us to account for the Party’s intermittent tolerance of popular protests and responsiveness to popular pressures, as well as its subsequent crackdowns and policy reversals. I further show that even in a particularly difficult case, namely China’s relations with Japan after 2005, the Chinese government retains the capacity to reverse course in foreign policy and foster public support for its new policy approach. Earlier claims of the demise of the propaganda state in China appear to be, at a minimum, premature.⁹

These findings also question long-standing assumptions about the influence of historically derived animosity on Chinese analysis and policy making toward Japan. In his seminal study, China Eyes Japan, Allen Whiting asked: Can the Chinese leadership overcome its negative image of Japan, derived from past conflict, in order to pursue a positive relationship based on its national interests? Or will Beijing’s perceptions and reactions remain conditioned by, if not captive to, the historical heritage of humiliation and hatred? To what extent do ‘profoundly misleading stereotypes’ continue to determine Chinese views of Japan?¹⁰ Quantitative and qualitative data, detailed in chapter 5, demonstrate that throughout the 2000s, a number of influential Chinese experts applied a set of relatively objective criteria to analyze Japan and recommend a strategic policy response. While the public’s attitudes toward Japan remain far more negative than toward other Asian neighbors or toward the United States, these experts demonstrated the capacity to recognize the dangers of an overly emotional approach and the courage to advocate policies of restraint and engagement. This finding challenges the long-standing presumption that Chinese policy making and analysis of Japan are irrevocably distorted by memories, emotions, and misperceptions, exacerbating what one observer dubs the perpetual conflict between China and Japan.¹¹ Although popular animosity toward Japan has at points constrained Chinese policy makers, their success in stabilizing bilateral relations and moderating public attitudes suggests that prospects for stable China–Japan relations are far brighter than most analysts have assumed.

In aggregate, these findings help explain the endurance of Communist Party rule in China. As Elizabeth Perry reminds us, the post–Mao era has now lasted longer than the Maoist era itself. Whether or not current political conditions persist for many more years, their distinguishing features are surely as worthy of careful attention and analysis as a previous generation of China scholars once showered upon the Maoist political system, she writes. This requires a sober assessment of the techniques of rule perfected by the Chinese Communist state, with particular attention to the regime’s capacity to curb and channel potentially threatening social forces.¹² This book is dedicated to precisely this task: unearthing the techniques of rule employed by the Communist Party to remain in power amid the dramatic rise of social activism, rapid information flows, and economic dynamism in China.

The remainder of this introductory chapter locates this book within two broad debates in scholarship on Chinese politics: about the likelihood that public pressure will lead to a more aggressive foreign policy and about prospects for a democratic transition in China. I then suggest that the case of China is part of a broader phenomenon of responsive authoritarianism, pointing out parallels with authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. The final two sections address issues of methodology and sources and provide a road map for the remainder of the book.

WILL CHINA BECOME MORE AGGRESSIVE ABROAD?

Jack Snyder argues that reforming authoritarian states such as China are likely to adopt an aggressive foreign policy. As in new democracies, authoritarian leaders faced with legitimacy crises and growing demands for political participation tend to resort to promoting nationalist myths, a strategy that risks trapping them into an aggressive stance abroad. War can result, Snyder warns, from nationalist prestige strategies that hard-pressed leaders use to stay astride their unmanageable political coalitions.¹³ The archetypical case is the Falklands War, in which the Argentinean military regime, its popularity waning, bowed to nationalist pressures by seizing the Falkland Islands. Stephen Van Evera agrees that the most dangerous regimes are those that depend on some measure of popular consent, but are narrowly governed by unrepresentative elites.¹⁴ A number of scholars see similar dynamics at work in China. In 2004, Peter Hays Gries asserted that Party legitimacy now depends upon accommodating popular nationalist demands and therefore the Foreign Ministry must take popular opinion into account as it negotiates foreign policy.¹⁵ The next year, Gries claimed that Chinese animosity toward Japan is unquestionably out of control … the political leadership is increasingly held hostage to nationalist opinion in the making of China’s Japan policy.¹⁶ Susan Shirk similarly describes China as a fragile superpower. She warns, The CCP’s ability to control the information that reaches the public is declining at the same time that the country’s military capacities are improving. These two pressures combine dangerously to intensify the pressure to use force to defend China’s honor.¹⁷

Snyder’s argument and efforts to apply it to the case of China rely upon the assumption that a reforming authoritarian regime is likely to lose control over its foreign policy. The image is of a fragile state, bowing to public demands for a more aggressive foreign policy in order to redirect attention away from its own domestic shortcomings. Belligerent rhetoric, brinksmanship negotiating strategies, and military adventurism are likely to result. A similar claim inheres in the description of popular nationalism in China as a double-edged sword—a tool that may enhance popular support for the Party but at the cost of undermining domestic stability and forcing the regime into a self-destructive foreign policy. Such expectations have been particularly influential in studies of China’s Japan policy. A number of experts have warned that distrust and misperceptions of Japan among Chinese policy makers and advisors, augmented by popular animosity toward Japan, exacerbate the likelihood that China will act aggressively.¹⁸ Edward Friedman puts it starkly: If China doesn’t democratize, Beijing’s hostility toward Tokyo could facilitate a war in the 21st Century.¹⁹

This study questions these presumptions. China’s Japan policy is a most-likely case for Snyder’s argument—if popular pressure was ever going to force Chinese leaders to adopt a more belligerent foreign policy, we would expect it to occur toward Japan, given the high level of popular animosity, geographical proximity, prevalence of territorial and economic disputes, contentious past, nationalist pressures, and competition over strategic resources. As this book will show, while popular pressure did constrain China’s diplomacy, obstruct economic cooperation, and spur hostile rhetoric, these effects were relatively short-lived. Following each instance, Chinese leaders moved quickly to mitigate the damage to bilateral relations, offering reassurances to their Japanese counterparts and working to stabilize bilateral ties. Certainly, strategic competition and ideological differences place a ceiling on the potential for bilateral cooperation. Yet in reviewing China’s recent Japan policy, what is most striking is that despite all the popular upheaval and security tensions, the overall bilateral relationship remains relatively stable.²⁰ The likelihood of China going to war with Japan is no greater in 2011 that it was in 2000. The case of Japan is mirrored, to some degree, across the range of China’s major power relations.

Beijing’s nuanced response to nationalist protests first emerged in response to the violence against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia in the summer of 1998. During the riots, many local Chinese businesses were looted and ethnic Chinese women were sexually assaulted. In Jakarta alone, human rights groups cited more than one hundred cases of rape and sexual assault. The Chinese government restricted domestic reporting on the riots. When Beijing University students learned of the anti-Chinese violence via foreign media and the Internet, they immediately made plans to protest. Despite university and security officials’ warnings, students persisted in holding an illegal demonstration at Beijing University on August 17 and then marched, several hundred strong, to the Indonesian embassy. The protesters were quickly disbanded by police, and students were later forced to make self-criticisms and issued black marks on their permanent records (dang’an).²¹ In retrospect, this incident marked the onset of the CCP’s more sophisticated response to nationalist protests. A year later, when NATO planes accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chinese authorities initially tolerated demonstrations in Beijing, Chongqing, and elsewhere for several days before beginning to slowly withdraw support (a case discussed in detail in the concluding chapter). By the time of the 2008 protests against European criticism of China’s Tibet policy in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, state–society interactions in response to incendiary incidents abroad had fallen into a predictable pattern: a quick rise of popular anger and activism tolerated by Chinese leaders, echoed by belligerent official rhetoric and symbolic diplomatic moves; then an equally rapid shift to clamp down on protests while Chinese diplomats worked to patch up damaged bilateral relations. The case of relations with Japan thus fits squarely within this broad pattern in Chinese foreign policy.

Instead of acceding to popular nationalist pressures for a more aggressive foreign policy, Chinese policy makers have developed an effective strategy for responding to sporadic outbursts of popular anger on foreign policy. By making partial policy shifts or rhetorical gestures in the directions demanded by the public, Chinese leaders enable the release of public anger and demonstrate a modicum of responsiveness to public opinion. Such shifts are generally part of a broader strategy of readjusting their overall foreign policy toward an approach that cools public anger, redirects the public’s attention, and mitigates any diplomatic fallout resulting from following too closely the dictates of an emotional public. By combining a diplomatic strategy designed to reshape the external environment with its considerable propaganda power to refocus attention, limit the flow of information, and project selective images to large segments of the public, the Party manages to end public mobilization without irreparable harm to foreign relations and without leaving behind a mass of dissatisfied, frustrated citizens. Simply put, the rise of popular nationalism in reform-era China has not correlated with a rise in military aggression. China is unquestionably seeking to assert its interests in the world commensurate with its rapidly growing economic, military, and political clout, but the pattern of behavior hardly reflects a foolhardy, overly aggressive foreign policy.

Stepping back from the case of China reveals the payoffs of distinguishing among different types of nondemocratic regimes. Authoritarian governments are often assumed to be more likely to be aggressive abroad due to their radical ideology, an absence of internal constraints on leaders’ power, tenuous domestic legitimacy, and a willingness to use coercion both at home and abroad. Recent work by Lai and Slater suggests instead that regime legitimacy and stability are critical for understanding states’ incentives to initiate militarized disputes. Military regimes, they argue, are systematically more vulnerable to collapse than party-based regimes and are therefore more belligerent internationally to compensate for this lack of domestic institutional capacity, picking foreign fights more frequently than their more stable and legitimate party-based counterparts.²² One reason that party-based regimes are able to avoid falling into foreign aggression is their ability to tolerate and respond to public anger in selective fashion. It is the combination of tolerance and responsiveness, together with repression and persuasion, that enables Chinese leaders to avoid slipping into the trap of a self-destructive foreign policy. The repeated eruption and temporary influence of popular protests in China in response to perceived slights to national pride signal not the emergence of an uncontrollable populace, but rather the outward manifestation of policy makers’ strategic and nuanced response to social pressures. The implications are equally significant for domestic politics in China.

WILL CHINA DEMOCRATIZE?

Among the many paths to a democratic transition, perhaps the most poignant is when the public rises up against repressive authorities. Stories of people power in the Philippines, mass demonstrations in Eastern Europe, a lone demonstrator in Beijing facing down a tank—the power of these enduring images reflects deeply embedded Liberal notions about the fundamental vulnerabilities of authoritarian rule. Theories of democratization continue to make assumptions about how rising wealth generates popular expectations of a better future and gives birth to new social groups who demand commensurate political power. New communication technologies, emergence of autonomous social groups, and expanded international engagement add to the pressures for political change. Authoritarian leaders appear to have only two choices in response: repression or concession. Violent suppression tends to spur even greater radicalism, consolidate opposition to the regime, and undermine its claims to legitimacy. Even minor concessions can trigger the de Tocqueville effect, in which partial reforms reveal the regime’s vulnerability while failing to ameliorate the underlying causes of dissatisfaction. The end, it appears, is inevitable. The only question is when, not if, authoritarian regime collapse will come.

Signs of these trends abound in China. Widespread protests reveal rising dissatisfaction with the costs of China’s uneven economic development, widening economic inequity, and rampant official corruption.²³ Control over the furor seething in Chinese society appears unsustainable. On June 28, 2008, for instance, some 30,000 people took to the streets of Weng’an, a rural town in remote Guizhou province, to protest what they believed was a cover-up by local authorities of the alleged rape and murder of a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Li Shufei. The protesters torched upward of 20 cars and set fire to both the local police station and the Communist Party headquarters.²⁴ Several months later, a round of taxi strikes quickly spread to cities across China in one of the longest sustained chain reactions of labor unrest in the history of the People’s Republic.²⁵ Such protests enjoy broad public support. A study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) found that half of all respondents to a national survey, when asked about their attitudes toward local petitions and protests, answered that they would either participate (21 percent) or express their sympathies (33 percent).²⁶ An associational revolution has also emerged in China—a rapid spike in the number and diversity of nongovernmental organizations, most of which remain unregistered with the state.²⁷ The rise of an urban middle class, spread of a lively online culture, and growth in religious and millenarian groups further signal societal angst and empowerment.

To many observers, the CCP’s days appear numbered. Minxin Pei has been one of the most influential proponents of the argument that the Party is decaying from within. Moving away from his earlier writings on China’s soft authoritarianism, Pei argues that in many crucial respects, China’s hybrid neo-authoritarian order eerily exhibits the pathologies of both the political stagnation of Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union and the crony capitalism of Suharto’s Indonesia.²⁸ Drawing on recent studies of democratic transitions, Richard Baum raises similar concerns. China’s unreconstructed Leninists, he warns, may already be living on borrowed time.²⁹ An Chen argues that intensifying class conflict threatens the CCP’s hold on power. As poverty and income inequality continue to worsen, making the government a target of seething popular indignation, a revolutionary situation is looming.³⁰ Others see a more gradual process of evolution. Guobin Yang suggests that the spread of citizen activism online signals the emergence of at least an unofficial democracy in China.³¹ Cheng Li points to the emergence of inner-Party democracy and even describes factional divisions among top leaders as a kind of bipartisanship.³² Henry Rowen predicts that, barring a major economic collapse, the spread of capitalism and the middle class will inexorably bring about democratization in China—by 2025.³³

While Liberal-minded observers scour China for signs of regime vulnerability and inklings of democracy, Chinese leaders have been busy retooling their governing strategies and institutions. David Shambaugh’s recent study of the Party concludes that

the CCP has atrophied over time and its Leninist instruments of control are not as sharp as in the past, but its tools of rule are far from blunt—and they are being restrengthened. The party remains a nationwide organization of considerable authority and power. It is the only political game in town. … Just as in its experience with economic reform, the CCP is most likely to pursue political reform incrementally: experimenting with new methods here and there, expanding them gradually horizontally and vertically within the country, embracing those that work while rejecting those that do not. In this cautious and incremental process, a new kind of party-state is being born: China’s eclectic state. ³⁴

Many of these strategies center on inclusion. The CCP seeks, in Tony Saich’s words, to accommodate the increasingly wide range of articulate audiences to thwart or limit the possibility of an alternative political-ideological definition.³⁵ Bruce Dickson’s depiction of Red Capitalists captures the Party’s embrace of entrepreneurs in a marriage of wealth and power, helping forestall potential pressures for political reform arising from China’s burgeoning middle class.³⁶ Perhaps most remarkable is the regime’s success in convincing a wide range of social actors to play within the Party’s rules of the game. Even NGOs, long viewed as a Trojan horse of democratization by students of civil society, have been co-opted into the system through a kind of embedded activism.³⁷ Andrew Mertha argues that the influence of political entrepreneurs in China’s hydro-politics reflects a process of political pluralization, a kind of fragmented authoritarianism 2.0.³⁸ China’s eclectic governing strategy also relies heavily upon rendering the Party more responsive to popular demands. As Joseph Fewsmith explains, the CCP has been working to establish a more institutionalized, more formalized, and more procedure-based system. Fewsmith views efforts to make government more responsive to demands of local society without threatening the ruling status of the CCP as part of its transformation from a revolutionary party to a ruling party.³⁹ The populist turn of the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao administration is a telling example. Wang Shaoguang argues that without the public’s questioning of the ‘reform,’ without animated debate over public policies among new and traditional media, and without the strong public call for reorienting China’s reform, such a great transformation in policy orientation would be unimaginable.⁴⁰ Dali Yang similarly describes the Hu–Wen approach as a kind of populist authoritarianism … though not fully coherent as a new form of social contract, the different strands of the recent policies suggest the weaving of some sort of safety net to cushion the blows associated with the uncertainties of global markets.⁴¹

This book illuminates a third aspect of CCP governance strategies—China’s responsive authoritarianism. The Party’s deliberate response to the rise of public opinion in foreign policy parallels what Elizabeth Perry describes as China’s revolutionary authoritarianism. Perry argues that a succession of post-Mao leaders have managed to fashion a surprisingly durable brand of ‘revolutionary authoritarianism’ capable of withstanding challenges, including grievous and growing social and spatial inequalities, which would surely have undone less hardy regimes. She adds that although protest in Communist China has been more frequent and widespread than in other authoritarian settings, ultimately it has proven less politically destabilizing. Precisely because protest in the PRC is both routine and officially circumscribed, once the top leadership decides upon a course of repression most of the populace is quick to fall into step.⁴² Although Perry is certainly correct in her subsequent assertion that China is sui generis in many ways, a quick glance around the world suggests that a number of nondemocratic regimes respond to public pressures in similar fashion.

RESPONSIVE AUTHORITARIANISM

In the Middle East, a rise in Internet blogging, social protest, and influential new media sources reveal the emergence of a more assertive new Arab public.⁴³ To some scholars, these trends represent blossoming political liberalization:

Across the Arab world, political activists are challenging the status quo. Egyptians are demanding an end to the state of emergency that has been in place almost continuously since the 1950s; Syrians have petitioned their government for political freedoms; Jordanians are seizing new economic opportunities; women in the traditionally conservative Gulf states are seeking wider political and economic participation; even Saudi Arabia is experimenting with elections at the municipal level. In two extraordinary moments in January 2005, the Palestinian and Iraqi people freely