China and Global Public Opinion

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

China’s growing overseas economic engagement has been a major development in the field of international relations for over two decades. As a result of growing Chinese state and non-state trade, investment, development, and people flows, both policymakers and international relations scholars are now intensely interested in whether and how these economic engagements are affecting global attitudes toward China and the Chinese government. To what extent can the Chinese government gain soft power and favorable public recognition through global economic engagements? Which types of engagements, and in which contexts, are more and less useful for China’s pursuit of a favorable international image and reputation? This session examines these important questions using innovative theoretical ideas and hypotheses, combined with novel empirical approaches featuring observational data collection, elite interviews, and original survey experiments both online and in the field. It will provide new, rich evidence on global public opinion toward engagement with China across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The first paper, by Pedro Abelin and Margaret Pearson, examines how overseas audiences assess the economic and political contours of economic engagement with China. The authors employ elite interviews and a novel survey to study Brazilian attitudes toward economic engagement with China. Focusing on agribusiness sector ties between Brazil and China, an important dimension of bilateral relations, it finds that pragmatism dominates ideology among right-wing agribusiness elites in Brazil. Siyao Li, Rachel Hulvey, and Jeremy Springman’s paper then examines overseas attitudes toward Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in dozens of African countries using multiple new datasets and an innovative online survey experiment. They develop a theory of how soft power can be fostered through the actions of private actors and how exposure to non-state economic activities can affect China’s diplomacy efforts.

Lucie Lu’s paper turns to African local attitudes toward Chinese- and World Bank-financed international development projects by making use of multiple large, new datasets. Using a novel empirical strategy, she finds that Chinese aid has garnered appreciation among the locals in recipient countries, particularly when they co-exist with traditional World Bank aid projects and in areas where Chinese aid demonstrates a specialization. Despite significant popular backlash to Chinese aid and development projects in recent years, her study finds overall positive public opinion effects. The paper by Austin Strange, Xiaonan Wang, and Yuan Wang studies national-level attitudes toward China’s overseas aid and debt projects. The authors test whether different types of public diplomacy messages from donors and lenders can help repair earlier reputational liabilities. Using two large household-level survey experiments in Indonesia and Kenya, they assess whether Chinese public diplomacy around two major railway projects can help address the popular “debt trap” critique that often surrounds Chinese global infrastructure. Finally, James Sundquist’s paper offers a global study of how different newspapers in 40 countries around the world have reported on the rise of China. The paper differentiates between two reporting approaches, namely whether relations with China are discussed primarily based on bilateral versus transnational interactions. Sundquist finds that non-democracies have a hub-and-spoke relationship with China, in which narratives are driven by bilateral interactions. By contrast, narratives in democracies are more highly correlated with one another, reflecting a global conversation about China’s rise.

Sub Unit

• Division 17: International Collaboration

Individual Presentations

• Economic Benefactor or Risky Dependence? China-Brazilian Agribusiness Ties - Pedro Abelin, University of Maryland; Margaret M. Pearson, University of Maryland

• The Impact of China’s Digital Silk Road in an Era of Great Power Competition - Siyao Li, University of Pittsburgh; Rachel A Hulvey, University of Pennsylvania; Jeremy Springman, University of Pennsylvania

• Up-and-Coming Chinese Aid: Local Affinity in the Shadow of Western Donor - Lucie Lu, Princeton University

• Damage Control: Chinese Infrastructure Public Diplomacy in Indonesia and Kenya - Austin Strange, University of Hong Kong; Xiaonan Wang, Baruch College, CUNY; Yuan Wang

• Global and Local Determinants in Narratives of China's Rise - James Sundquist, Yale University

Chair

• Margaret M. Pearson University of Maryland

Discussants

• Siyao Li University of Pittsburgh

• Daniel Mattingly Yale University