Congressional Polarization and U.S.-China Relations

• In Event: Domestic Sources of China’s Overseas Policies

Abstract

While some have touted U.S.-China relations as an area for potential bipartisanship and cooperation, lawmakers remain divided "at the water's edge". American attitudes towards China and foreign policy writ large seem to divide across partisan lines (Smeltz 2022). We focus on one arena for this division: public facing messaging. What drives polarization across elite messaging on U.S. foreign policy towards China? We argue that domestic political incentives are an important driver of legislative preferences towards foreign adversaries. We present a typology of how this strategy is driven by the legislator’s partisan and electoral incentives. On one hand, as a legislator’s re-election chances become more tenuous, she is more likely to rely on foreign policy appeals that exacerbate affective polarization to disparage the out-party and heighten preferences for the legislator’s in-party. On the other hand, as the legislator is more dis-aligned with the sitting president, she is more likely to rely on foreign policy appeals that signal ideological polarization and emphasizes divergent policy preferences from the administration. We use legislator communications through Twitter to measure partisanship and Presidential alignment in congressional rhetoric about U.S.-China relations from 2018-2023. This project aims to uncover the sources of convergence and divergence on U.S.-China relations among U.S. policymakers.

Authors

• Rachel Q Yu, University of California, San Diego

• Yang Yang, UC San Diego