Jessica Chen Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations

Excerpt

Many scholars and strategists worry that nationalism increasingly drives China’s foreign policy in a more assertive direction. However, this is still debated in the literature examining the relationship between popular sentiments and Chinese foreign policy, and in particular, the pattern of anti-foreign protests is under-studied. Although there have been many anti-foreign protests in China, why does the Chinese government respond to these protests differently, allowing some protests while repressing others? Authoritarian leaders always face a dilemma: preventing citizens from protesting and paying the cost of repression, or allowing protests and accepting an increased risk of domestic and international instability. Bringing foreign policy goals into the domestic context, Jessica Chen Weiss argues that anti-foreign protests are tolerated to signal resolve or repressed to signal reassurance. Weiss tests her argument through case studies of China’s management of anti-foreign protests. Weiss’s Powerful Patriots is the first systematic study of anti-foreign protests in contemporary China, and is an exemplary work combining excellent scholarship on China with innovative theorizing in international relations. …