Domestic Sources of China’s Overseas Policies

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

China’s rise challenges the liberal international order, exercising its increasing global influence through a multifaceted approach that encompasses economic, technological, and diplomatic strategies. At the same time, China’s mechanisms of control are evolving to harness institutional and technological tools in new and potent ways. This panel explores how China’s influence toolbox encompasses the use of government control over media and companies, political coercion, and transnational repression of dissent, but results in increasing tensions with democratic states.

In this panel, Stephanie Char identifies how China, among other countries, responds to verbal criticism from abroad with threats and diplomatic and economic sanctions. Patrick Chester, Harris Doshay, and Yanchuan Liu examine how media coverage in China changed based on the efficacy of its pandemic crisis response using a combination of structural topic models and word embeddings to measure topical shifts and propaganda strategies, respectively. Tenzin Dorjee uses document analysis and elite interviews to examine key mechanisms used by the Chinese government to silence its overseas dissident populations. Geoffrey Hoffman uses a text as data approach on a large corpus of financial disclosures from listed Chinese internet firms, comparing private- and state-owned enterprises, to show that internal Party organization intensity is rising and increases firms’ international engagement. Finally, looking at how outside countries view relations with China, Young Yang and Rachel Yu apply text as data methods to understand what motivates U.S. elites in their approach towards U.S.-China relations.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Individual Presentations

• Countercriticism Coercion: China in Comparative Perspective - Stephanie Char, Columbia University

• Authoritarian Media, Propaganda, and Crisis - Patrick Chester, University of California, San Diego; Yan Liu, University of California, San Diego; Harris Doshay, Princeton University

• Transnational Repression: How Beijing Targets Diaspora Activism in the West - Tenzin Dorjee, Columbia University

• The Increasing Influence of Party Organizations in Chinese Internet Firms - Geoffrey Joseph Hoffman, University of California, San Diego

• Congressional Polarization and U.S.-China Relations - Rachel Q Yu, University of California, San Diego; Yang Yang, UC San Diego

Chair

• Victor C. Shih UCSD

Discussants

• Tyler C. Jost Brown University

• Ling Chen Johns Hopkins University