International Studies Quarterly (2019) 63, 963–973
Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International
Crises: Evidence from China
JESSICA CHEN WEISS
Cornell University
AND
ALLAN DAFOE
University of Oxford
How do government rhetoric and propaganda affect mass reactions in international crises? Using two scenario-based survey
experiments in China, one hypothetical and one that selectively reminds respondents of recent events, we assess how govern-
ment statements and propaganda impact Chinese citizens’ approval of their government’s performance in its territorial and
maritime disputes. We ﬁnd evidence that citizens disapprove more of inaction after explicit threats to use force, suggesting
that leaders can face public opinion costs akin to audience costs in an authoritarian setting. However, we also ﬁnd evidence
that citizens approve of bluster—vague and ultimately empty threats—suggesting that talking tough can provide beneﬁts, even
in the absence of tough action. In addition, narratives that invoke future success to justify present restraint increase approval,
along with frames that emphasize a shared history of injustice at the hands of foreign powers.
Introduction
Many authoritarian governments act as if the need to main-
tain public support constrains their foreign policy choices.
Leaders in the Middle East often claim that their hands are
tied in international negotiations by the threat of a popular
backlash.1Chinese ofﬁcials are fond of invoking the “feel-
ings of more than 1.3 billion Chinese people” in protest-
ing foreign actions and demands.2After a US Freedom of
Navigation patrol in the South China Sea, Chinese media
warned: “[i]f the US government hopes to persuade the Chi-
nese government to make concessions, it will ﬁrst have to
persuade the Chinese people.”3Yet, we have relatively little
Jessica Chen Weiss is an associate professor of government at Cornell Univer-
sity and the author of Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations
(Oxford University Press, 2014). Her research on the domestic politics of interna-
tional relations in the Asia-Paciﬁc has appeared International Organization ,China
Quarterly ,Journal of Conﬂict Resolution ,Security Studies, Foreign Affairs ,a n d Review of
International Political Economy . More details about her research can be found at
jessicachenweiss.com.
Allan Dafoe is an associate professor at the University of Oxford and the di-
rector of the Center for the Governance of AI, at University of Oxford’s Future
of Humanity Institute. His research focuses on characterizing and building the
ﬁeld of AI governance and on global cooperation around transformative AI. His
prior research examined the liberal peace, the role of reputation and honor as
motives for war, the role of technology in shaping history, and statistical meth-
ods for causal inference. More information is available at governance.ai and al-
landafoe.com.
Authors’ note : The authors contributed equally. Author order reﬂects a regular
rotation. Our preregistration, preanalysis plan and the most recent version of this
article can be found at http://www.allandafoe.com/china . For excellent research
assistance, we thank Qiuqing Tai, Ran Chen, and especially Ryan Powers and
Raluca Pahontu. For helpful input we thank Matthew Baum, Tom Christensen,
Charles Crabtree, Jeff Frieden, Ed Friedman, Josh Kertzer, David Lake, Anne Sar-
tori, Elizabeth Saunders, Jack Snyder, Dustin Tingley, Mike Tomz, Jessica Weeks,
and Nick Weller. For ﬁnancial support, we are grateful to Stein Tønnesson and
the East Asian Peace Program and Ian Shapiro and the MacMillan Center at Yale
University.
1Lynch (2003, 70) .
2“China urges Japan to properly handle sensitive issues in bilateral ties” (Xin-
hua, November 2, 2015).
3Shan Renping, “Pinglun: you ren xian Zhongfang ruanruo, kangyi baici bu
ru zou Lasen Hao yi ci,” Huanqiu Shibao, October 29, 2015.systematic evidence of how citizens in autocracies evaluate
their government’s performance in international disputes.4
Moreover, authoritarian governments devote signiﬁcant re-
sources to managing domestic opinion through propaganda
and rhetoric. When these efforts succeed, governments can
conduct foreign policy with greater latitude, unhindered by
public backlash. They may even beneﬁt by stoking popular
nationalism, rallying the public around the government.
To illuminate the domestic costs and opportunities that
authoritarian governments face in international disputes,
this article investigates three questions. First, do leaders who
fail to carry out explicit threats suffer greater public dis-
approval, akin to “audience costs” in democratic settings
(Fearon 1994a ;Tomz 2007 )? Second, do mass audiences ap-
prove of tough but vague statements—bluster—when unac-
companied by military action ( Oakes 2006 )? Third, can au-
thoritarian rhetoric and propaganda mitigate disapproval of
military inaction in international crises?
We focus on China for two reasons. Among possible great
power wars, tensions between China, its neighbors, and the
United States in the Asia-Paciﬁc loom large. China also rep-
resents a “most likely” case for an authoritarian leadership
to be sensitive to public opinion costs, if they exist, and to
be able to control them. As President Xi Jinping told the
Central Committee, “[w]inning or losing public support is
an issue that concerns the CPC’s survival or extinction.”5
We ﬁelded two complementary online survey experi-
ments in China, one involving an abstract hypothetical ter-
ritorial dispute and another involving real-world Chinese
threats against US military operations in East Asia. In both
designs, we assess how respondents reacted to threats that
were ultimately unfulﬁlled, as well as three different strate-
gies to frame the public presentation of crisis events: biding
time for future success, a nationalist frame of past humilia-
tion, and the costs of war.
4A recent exception is Quek and Johnston (2018) .
5“Study History, Be Close to the People,” China Daily, July 25, 2013.
Weiss, Jessica Chen, and Allan Dafoe. (2019) Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises: Evidence from China. International Studies Quarterly ,
doi: 10.1093/isq/sqz059
© The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissio ns, please e-mail:
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964 Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises
In both designs, we prioritized realism, using actual state-
ments and phrases by the Chinese government. This de-
cision emphasized external validity but limited our choice
of quotes, meaning that some treatments bundled multi-
ple concepts and were articulated by different speakers. We
privileged selecting real quotes from speakers who were
as senior in the Chinese government as possible, avoiding
sources or outlets that might have been perceived as par-
tisan or biased. Following ( Huang 2018 ), our primary pur-
pose was not to compare across treatments, but to demon-
strate the existence of effects and point the way for future
studies to parse more ﬁnely the underlying mechanisms.
We ﬁnd that authoritarian rhetoric and propaganda can
be effective in bolstering popular support and attenuating
disapproval of inaction. In both scenarios, we ﬁnd suggestive
evidence that biding time narratives had a positive effect on
public approval, as did a nationalist frame of remembered
injustice at the hands of foreign powers. We also ﬁnd that
empty threats can have positive or negative effects on public
approval—the vague, real-world threat had a positive effect,
but the explicit, hypothetical threat had a negative effect.
Overall, these results suggest that the public opinion costs
of inaction are relatively muted and malleable in China, un-
dermining claims that the government’s hands are tied by
the threat of public disapproval. Such claims are not entirely
bluffs, as the possibility of disapproval is real, but such as-
sertions elide the government’s ability to inﬂuence popular
perceptions. Tough but vague threats can also generate pop-
ular support, even if the government does not take action.
A fuller appreciation of authoritarian incentives in interna-
tional disputes should consider the positive effect of bluster
and rhetorical justiﬁcations for inaction alongside audience
costs and belligerence costs ( Kertzer and Brutger 2016 ).
Mass Audiences and Authoritarian Regimes
Public support—or the appearance of it—matters to many
autocracies. As Ithiel de Sola Pool writes, modern dicta-
torships are “highly conscious of public opinion and make
major efforts to affect it.”6Mao Zedong told his comrades,
“[w]hen you make revolution, you must ﬁrst manage public
opinion.”7Because autocracies often rely on nationalist
mythmaking,8success or failure in defending the national
honor in international crises could burnish the leadership’s
patriotic credentials or spark opposition. Shared outrage at
the regime’s foreign policy failures could galvanize street
protests or elite ﬁssures, creating intraparty upheaval or
inviting military ofﬁcers to step in to restore order. Fear-
ing a domestic backlash, authoritarian leaders may feel
compelled to take a tough international stance. Although
authoritarian leaders are rarely held accountable to public
opinion through free and fair elections, fears of popular
unrest and irregular ouster often weigh heavily on autocrats
seeking to maximize their tenure in ofﬁce. Considering the
harsh consequences that authoritarian elites face if pushed
out of ofﬁce, even a small increase in the probability of
ouster could alter authoritarian incentives in international
crises.9
A history of nationalist uprisings make Chinese citizens
and leaders especially aware of the linkage between inter-
national disputes and domestic unrest. The weakness of the
People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) predecessor in defend-
6De Sola Pool (1973 , 463).
7Quoted in Michel Oksenberg, “The Political Leader,” in Wilson (1977 , 179).
8Snyder (1991) .
9Debs and Goemans (2010) ;Goemans (2000) .ing Chinese sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference in
1919 galvanized protests and a general strike, forcing the
government to sack three ofﬁcials and reject the Treaty
of Versailles, which awarded territories in China to Japan.
These precedents have made Chinese ofﬁcials particularly
sensitive to the appearance of hewing to public opinion.
As the People’s Daily chief editor wrote, “[h]istory and re-
ality have shown us that public opinion and regime safety
are inseparable.”10One Chinese scholar even claimed, “the
Chinese government probably knows the public’s opinion
better and reacts to it more directly than even the US gov-
ernment.”11
Multiple government agencies monitor public sentiment
on foreign affairs, providing the leadership with daily briefs
of online commentary. With almost 650 million “netizens” in
China, the government employs more than two million an-
alysts to monitor internet sentiment and win the “guerrilla
battle” in the “mass microphone era,” according to the head
of the People’s Daily Public Opinion Monitoring Unit.12
The chief editor of the People’s Daily called the internet the
“biggest variable” (zui da bianliang) in managing public opin-
ion.13
The Chinese government uses propaganda, surveillance,
and censorship to monitor and manage popular senti-
ment.14Yet, the efﬁcacy of these tools in shaping public
opinion remains unclear, particularly in international crises.
Citizens may discount government statements as biased pro-
paganda.15As Pool notes, “the public learns to read between
the lines. It becomes accustomed to interpreting clues to the
truth that are buried in the unreliable information available
to them.”16But propaganda may also encourage citizens to
echo the “party line” and act as if they support the gov-
ernment even when they have access to unbiased informa-
tion about international events ( Little 2017 ). The balance
between mass incredulity and deference will affect whether
authoritarian regimes are able to use propaganda to shape
public reactions to crisis events. Even if citizens shield their
private preferences, the extent of stated popular support
for the government represents an important bulwark against
collective action and elite machinations.
Managing Public Reactions
Our study looks at how governments use rhetoric and pro-
paganda in international crises to shape public reactions,
particularly when the government does not take tough mil-
itary action. Much government rhetoric and propaganda in
international crises appears to serve functions not captured
by audience cost theory, which holds that leaders pay do-
mestic costs for failing to fulﬁll public threats. These threats
may be explicit (such as an ultimatum) or implicit (such as
troop mobilization). Domestic publics are said to disapprove
because empty threats betray the nation’s honor, harm the
nation’s credibility, or reveal the leader’s incompetence.17
10“Ba wo hao zheng zhi jia ban bao de shi dai yao qiu,” Renmin Ribao, March
21, 2016.
11As quoted in Reilly (2013 , 35).
12“Wangluo yuqing fenxishi cheng guanfang renke zhiye congyezhe da 200
wan,” Xinjing Bao, October 10, 2013, cited in “If You Like Killing Time on Social
Networks, China Has a Job for You,” PRI, July 31, 2014.
13“Bawo hao zheng zhi jia ban bao de shidai yaoqiu,” Renmin Ribao, March
21, 2016.
14See, e.g., King et al. (2013) ;Pan and Chen (2018) ;Huang (2015b) ;Brady
(2009) .
15Slantchev (2006) .
16De Sola Pool (1973 , 463).
17Fearon (1994a) ;Smith (1998) ;Schultz (2012) ;Sartori (2002) ;Levy et al.
(2015 );Guisinger and Smith (2002) ;Debs and Weiss (2016) .Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

JESSICA CHEN WEISS AND ALLAN DAFOE 965
Despite experimental evidence of audience costs,18their
role in historical crises has been questioned.19Several schol-
ars have argued that explicit statements of commitment
are relatively rare. Snyder and Borghard note: “leaders see
unambiguously committing threats . . .as imprudent. They
almost always seek to retain signiﬁcant ﬂexibility, rather
than lock in” ( Snyder and Borghard 2011 , 437). Downes and
Sechser (2012 , 461) similarly acknowledge that threats of
force are more often implied than explicit. Even Schelling
(1966 , 67) wrote that “most commitments are ultimately
ambiguous in detail. Sometimes they are purposely so.”
In addition to evaluating whether unfulﬁlled threats gen-
erate public opinion costs, we investigate four other rhetori-
cal and propaganda strategies that the Chinese government
has used to bolster popular support while keeping interna-
tional tensions short of conﬂict.
First, we evaluate rhetoric that justiﬁes inaction as part of
a resolute, but subtle, long-term biding time strategy of build-
ing one’s strength in the present to achieve future victory or
vengeance. By recasting inaction as consistent with honor-
able behavior, such biding time narratives may bolster pop-
ular support for inaction. This strategy frames escalation as
foolhardy and inaction as shrewd rather than humiliating.
As the head of the (disarmed) German army reportedly said
during the interwar years, “[f]irst we’ll get strong, then we’ll
take back what we lost.”20Biding time messages invoke the
beneﬁts of restraint by making implicit or vague references
to the future, without speciﬁc commitment to take action.
However, the impact of biding time justiﬁcations on public
opinion has not been systematically examined.
Chinese ofﬁcials have frequently emphasized strategic for-
bearance, with the “lie low and bide time” principle ( tao
guang yang hui ) characterizing China’s grand strategy for
nearly three decades.21While this maxim implies the future
assertion of Chinese power, it does not necessarily mean that
China plans to challenge US primacy.22If such narratives
are effective at bolstering public support for international
restraint, then recent Chinese “assertiveness”23in its territo-
rial and maritime disputes is less likely to reﬂect domestic
pressure than deliberate strategy.
In designing the biding time frame, we used statements by
political commissar of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
General Logistics Department General Liu Yuan, whose
views President Xi Jinping has afﬁrmed on several occasions
(Mulvenon and Ragland 2012 ). In excerpts published by the
popular newspaper Global Times , Liu emphasized that China
should not be baited into war in the East China Sea, calling
it a “trap” set by other powers to derail China’s rise.24
HB(Biding Time): Statements that justify inaction by invoking
future success will increase public approval.
Second, we evaluate nationalist propaganda about histor-
ical humiliations by external adversaries. Governments seek-
ing to bolster their domestic legitimacy often invoke na-
tionalist references to a shared history of national struggle
18Tomz (2007 , 823); Trager and Vavreck (2011) ;Levendusky and Horowitz
(2012) ;Chaudoin (2014) ;Davies and Johns (2013) ;Kertzer and Brutger (2016) ;
for nonexperimental studies of audience costs in authoritarian regimes, Weeks
(2008) examines the role of elites, while Weiss (2013) analyzes the role of street
protests.
19Snyder and Borghard (2011) ;Trachtenberg (2012) ;Slantchev (2012) .
20As quoted in Legro (2007 , 519).
21Chen and Wang (2011) .
22Swaine (2010 , 7).
23Johnston (2013) .
24“Liu Yuan: Quebao zhanlve jiyu qi, zhanzheng shi zuihou xuanxiang.”
Huanqiu Shibao, February 4, 2013.against foreign mistreatment and trauma.25This frame, in-
voked in China as the “Century of National Humiliation,”26
puts current military inferiority in the context of the na-
tion’s longer-term trajectory of rising to surpass foreign en-
emies and seeks to rally or mobilize the public toward that
end.
Such nationalist narratives could have diverse effects. Re-
minding respondents of shared national trauma or injustice
at the hands of foreign powers may encourage solidarity with
the government in the face of adversity, generating a rally
effect. International relations scholars have typically exam-
ined whether democratic publics “rally-round-the-ﬂag” after
the use of force or other dramatic events.27Because author-
itarian leaders routinely employ nationalist appeals without
always using force, it is important to investigate the effect
of nationalist propaganda on public approval, particularly
when the government does not take action.
Invoking past losses may also alter how respondents eval-
uate the status quo, reminding them of how far the nation
has come in defending its interests. Like biding time, mes-
sages about nationalist history tie the current dispute to a
long-term struggle, giving a more honorable interpretation
to temporary inaction.
On the other hand, reminders of past losses could also
generate an endowment effect, making citizens more will-
ing to risk war. A humiliation prime could also heighten
the salience of concerns for national honor, magnifying the
costs of inaction. The net effect of these diverse mechanisms
on public approval is unclear.
HN(Nationalist History): Statements that invoke a shared his-
tory of national injustice at the hands of foreign powers will increase
(decrease) public approval.
Third, we evaluate government rhetoric that emphasizes
the economic, material, and human costs of war that the
public might bear.28Chinese ofﬁcials have sometimes in-
voked the costs of war to dampen the public’s appetite for
confrontation. As tensions between Japan and China esca-
lated, General Liu Yuan warned that war would be “very
cruel and costly.”29In a similar hypothetical scenario be-
tween China and Japan, Quek and Johnston (2018) ﬁnd an
increase in approval of backing down among respondents
who read that the leader said that war with Japan would de-
rail China’s economic development.
HC(Cost of War): Statements that justify inaction by invoking
the costs of war will increase public approval.
Another common but underexamined species of rhetoric
in international relations theory is bluster, which we deﬁne
as aggressive, vague rhetoric that is not followed by tough
action, per the Oxford English Dictionary—“boisterous in-
ﬂated talk, violent or angry self-assertion, noisy and empty
menace, swaggering.” From the perspective of audience cost
theory, bluster is puzzling since it implies a threat that is un-
accompanied by military action. In China, for instance, the
government publicly announced an Air Defense Identiﬁca-
tion Zone (ADIZ) proscribing US behavior but then failed
to take tough measures to enforce that proscription. Other
examples of bluster include statements by President Trump
that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the
25Snyder (1991) ;Mansﬁeld and Snyder (2007) ;Bunce and Wolchik (2010) .
26Gries (2004) ;He (2009) ;Zhao (2004) ;Wang (2014) .
27See, e.g., Mueller (1973) ;Lai and Reiter (2005) .
28On the cost- and casualty-sensitivity of democratic citizens’ support for war,
see, for example, Berinsky (2007) ;Gelpi et al. (2009) ;Gartner (2008) .
29“She ping: he ping jin 30 nian hou, wo men yinggai ru he kan da zhang,”
Huanqiu Shibao, January 15, 2013.Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

966 Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises
United States. They will be met with ﬁre and fury like the
world has never seen.” ( White House 2017 ) In the days after
the president issued this threat, North Korea announced a
plan “to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases
on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the United
States,”30ﬁred a missile over Japan, and conducted its most
powerful nuclear test to date; none of these precipitated US
military action as Trump had promised. Fearon also raised
the possibility of bluster in his discussion of audience costs:
“Political audiences need not and do not always [disapprove
of empty threats]. For example, leaders of small states may
be rewarded for escalating crises with big states and then
backing down . . . Standing up to a ‘bully’ may be praised
even if one ultimately retreats” ( Fearon 1994a , 580).
What is the logic of bluster? Why would domestic audi-
ences approve of empty threats? We offer three possible ex-
planations for future research to explore and disentangle.
First, some audiences may interpret tough talk as strength
and value the appearance of strength more than consistency
or action. This can be thought of as a belligerence bene-
ﬁt, the inverse of Kertzer and Brutger’s belligerence costs. A
leader who makes loud, conﬁdent demands may appear to
be advancing the national interest, absent persuasive claims
to the contrary. In low-information environments, individu-
als may reﬂexively trust their leader and discount critics who
criticize the lack of follow-through as biased.
Second, citizens may recognize that using military force is
not feasible but judge it prudent to lodge a symbolic protest.
Publicly registering a state’s opposition to a foreign action
could have material consequences under customary interna-
tional law, where silence may be legally interpreted as con-
sent. Verbal protests could also communicate to potential
allies one’s displeasure with the transgression and transgres-
sor, as well as mitigate loss in the “contest of expectations”
with the adversary,31communicating that some arrange-
ment will be challenged when one has the power to do so.
Third, bluster may be understood as a threat about which
there is subjective uncertainty about what kinds of behavior
constitute noncompliance as well as the appropriate time-
line and nature of restitution. A vague threat may commu-
nicate that some behavior or arrangement is unacceptable
on a latent, not objectively measurable, dimension. The la-
tent dimension may represent disrespect, hostility, or chal-
lenge to core national interests. Domestic audiences may
understand vague tough talk as communicating that per-
sistence in a disrespectful arrangement will lead to an ap-
propriately forceful response, but individuals may disagree
about the details. This mechanism is consistent with Trager
and Vavreck’s (2011 , 536) ﬁnding that the vague statement
“the US will not tolerate the invasion” generated less audi-
ence costs than the precise threat “the US military will pre-
vent the invasion.” We could even see an increase in ap-
proval in the midst of a vague threat that will eventually
be unfulﬁlled, if the increased approval of the leader issu-
ing the threat outweighs the reduction in approval for those
who deem the vague threat to be unfulﬁlled.32
HB(Bluster): Tough but vague threats to use force may increase
public approval, even when the threats are unfulﬁlled or unaccom-
panied by military action .
30“N.K. threatens to ﬁre four missiles toward Guam,” Yonhap News Agency,
August 10, 2017.
31Dafoe et al. (2014) .
32Schultz also notes that blufﬁng may be an optimal strategy, making it un-
clear why audiences would rationally punish a leader for backing down ( Schultz
1999 , 237).While the beneﬁts of bluster often run counter to audi-
ence costs, one logic may dominate the other under some
conditions. For instance, if a threat is unfulﬁlled, public
opinion costs are more likely to arise when the threat is spe-
ciﬁc than when the threat is vague.
HA(Audience Costs): Explicit threats to use force should increase
domestic disapproval when unfulﬁlled or unaccompanied by mili-
tary action.
To evaluate whether bluster can generate public approval
while speciﬁc threats generate audience costs, we designed
two treatments that varied the speciﬁcity of the threatened
consequences. We also looked at the effect of mobiliza-
tion, an act that is often regarded as making an implicit
threat and expression of resolve ( Tomz 2007 ;Slantchev
2005 ;Fearon 1994b ).33
Research Design
To evaluate these hypotheses, we ﬁelded two complemen-
tary survey experiments in China between October 2015
and March 2016, n 1=2992 and n 2=5445. We recruited
respondents to take our anonymous, US-based online sur-
vey through Qualtrics’ Chinese partners, two national mar-
ket research ﬁrms that regularly invite respondents to take
surveys on a voluntary basis in exchange for small cash pay-
ments (see Supplementary Files C.1). Respondents came
from provinces across China and different income, educa-
tional, and urban/rural backgrounds. The gender and age
distribution were particularly comparable to the general
population of internet users in China (see Supplementary
File C.2). Educational attainment in our sample somewhat
exceeded that of the general netizen population, as in other
recent online surveys.34
We manipulated key aspects of what respondents read
about the dispute before asking their opinion of the gov-
ernment’s foreign policy performance.35The ﬁrst experi-
ment employed a prevalent design, which we refer to as the
hypothetical design. Hypothetical scenarios provide greater
freedom to design vignettes to match the theoretical frame-
work. By avoiding contextual idiosyncrasies, abstract hypo-
thetical scenarios may yield more generalizable inferences.
However, respondents may react differently to hypothetical
than to actual crises. As hypothetical scenarios become more
abstract and devoid of contextual information, the connec-
tion between survey responses and real-world reactions to
particular crises becomes more tenuous, weakening exter-
nal validity. Conversely, respondents may think of real-world
examples in answering questions about abstract scenarios,
introducing a form of bias akin to confounding biases in
observational studies ( Dafoe et al. 2018 ). For example, Chi-
nese respondents who read that an unnamed “neighboring
country” is a powerful democracy and a US ally are more
likely to think of Japan, plausibly inﬂuencing their responses
in unintended ways. Indeed, our respondents were more
likely to report that they were thinking of Japan if the sce-
nario mentioned that the adversary had strong military ca-
pabilities, was a US ally, or was a democracy.
To complement the hypothetical design, we also used
aselective-history survey experiment. In this design, we pro-
vided respondents with information about real events, here
33While in principle a mobilization could be understood as a more explicit
threat than a verbal threat, in practice we expect most mobilizations without ver-
bal threats are more implicit.
34Huang (2015a) .
35We assigned manipulations according to a set of conditional probability
rules detailed in Supplementary Files D and E.Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

JESSICA CHEN WEISS AND ALLAN DAFOE 967
a recent crisis in the East China Sea, before asking respon-
dents for their opinions. Other examples of selective-history
designs are Tingley (2017) , which reminded some American
respondents about China’s ADIZ, and Huang (2018) , which
looked at the effect of real-world Chinese propaganda mes-
sages. Other hypothetical designs also use contexts where
real-world disputes are speciﬁed, but where the treatments
involve actions or events that have not (yet) occurred, such
asQuek and Johnston (2018) andMattes and Weeks (2019) .
Evaluating the selective presentation of information
about previous crises is especially relevant in authoritarian
states, where the government has substantial inﬂuence over
the media. In China, state-run media often remind the pub-
lic about aspects of previous crises, such as the death of pi-
lot Wang Wei during the 2001 EP-3 collision.36In such de-
signs, estimated effects may be attenuated relative to their
real-world counterparts because surveys are a less realistic,
potent, and saturated source of information than what gov-
ernments can convey through sustained television and ra-
dio broadcasts. If our manipulations affect opinion, then so
should stronger manipulations in the real world.
Selective-history designs can also help estimate the im-
pact of events in a crisis. Selective-history designs are plausi-
bly more externally valid than hypothetical designs because
they involve actual (and hence more realistic) events, im-
plicitly involving all the contextual information that was rel-
evant to the respondent during the actual crisis.
However, selective-history designs also have disadvan-
tages. First, they are limited to events and statements that
have transpired, making it difﬁcult to evaluate the effect of
behavior that has yet to occur, such as explicit, unfulﬁlled
threats to use force or mobilization of troops for a China-
US conﬂict. Second, the magnitude of effects may be atten-
uated if respondents’ knowledge of events crowds out the
survey’s representation of them.
While this makes it harder to detect effects (reducing sta-
tistical power), the survey effects we ﬁnd are likely to be
underestimates of real-world effects. The magnitude of ef-
fects could also be greater than in a real crisis, for two rea-
sons: ﬁrst, in a real crisis the government may prevent cer-
tain information from being presented, such as news that
the Chinese government did not take action to stop the
United States from continuing to ﬂy through China’s newly
declared ADIZ; and, second, respondents may feel more
strongly about events when reminded of them than when
they ﬁrst occurred, if effects increase with exposure.37
Ultimately, both hypothetical and selective-history designs
have strengths and limitations. By combining the two, re-
searchers can evaluate the observable implications of theo-
ries from multiple angles.
Hypothetical Design
Our hypothetical design follows the spirit of Tomz’s (2007)
canonical audience cost study, but we modify the vignette so
that it describes an abstract territorial dispute that China has
faced and will continue to face. We do so for two reasons.
First, this is one of the contexts in which Chinese leaders
have invoked the pressure of public opinion, so if Chinese
audience costs exist, they should be present in this domain.
Second, China’s relatively limited global military reach and
reluctance to intervene with military force make the conven-
36See, for example, China Central Television 2018.
37A key assumption is that reminding or informing a subject about past events
generates effects in the same direction (positive or negative) as the actual crisis
events.tional audience cost scenario (an optional foreign policy cri-
sis in which the government decides whether to intervene in
a conﬂict between two other states) less plausible.
Because the crisis we consider is more likely to impact
core Chinese interests (including sovereignty over claimed
land and water) than a scenario in which the United States
or United Kingdom intervenes in a dispute between third
parties, our baseline “stay-out” comparison is more likely to
engage national honor. Thus, respondents may disapprove
of inaction even in the no-threat, no-action (control) con-
dition, making it more difﬁcult to observe differences with
the explicit threat, no-action (audience-cost) condition. The
choice to adopt a more likely, realistic crisis for a Chinese
context makes this a relatively hard test of whether unful-
ﬁlled threats generate public opinion costs.
Respondents read the following vignette. Five contextual
variables, assigned in a factorial way, gave details to prevent
the scenario from being too abstract and were manipulated
to ensure that any causal effects we estimate are averages
across this covariate space.38These covariates were regime
type, alliance with the United States, military power, and the
material value of the territory. Respondents who received
thenationalist history treatment were told that the disputed
territory was part of the land lost during the “Century of Na-
tional Humiliation” from the Opium Wars to the founding
of the PRC in 1949.
There exists a territorial dispute between China and a
neighboring country. The neighboring country is led
bya nondemocratic government (ora democratic govern-
ment), which is(oris not ) an ally of the United States.
The neighboring country has a strong military, so in the
event of war it would ( ora weak military, so in the event
of war it would not ) take a major effort for China to
secure control of the territory. Experts believe that al-
lowing the neighboring country to control the terri-
tory would hurt or (would not affect ) the safety and econ-
omy of China. ( The disputed territory was part of the land
China lost during the Century of National Humiliation ( or
no mention ).
Respondents then read none, some, or all of the following
(assigned in an independent factorial manner, except only
one of the two rhetorical cues, biding time orcost of war ,w a s
given):39
Explicit threat: the Chinese government states that the
neighboring country must recognize Chinese sovereignty
or China will use force to take the territory.
Mobilization: China mobilizes military forces to prepare to
take the territory by force.
Biding time: Chinese ofﬁcials explain that ﬁghting a war
over the territory would be a grave mistake. According to
a senior Chinese military ofﬁcial, “China’s neighbors will
use all means to check China’s development, but we abso-
lutely must not take their bait.”
Cost of war: Chinese ofﬁcials explain that ﬁghting a war
over the territory would be too costly. According to a se-
nior Chinese military ofﬁcial, “[s]ince we have enjoyed
peace for quite a long time, many young people do not
know what a war is like, it is actually very cruel and costly.
If there is any alternative way to solve the problem, there
is no need to resort to the means of extreme violence for
a solution.”
38In addition, if other theories predict heterogeneous effects across some of
these covariates, our survey design will allow researchers to investigate these.
39Two other independently assigned conditions, noted in the supplementary
ﬁles, are not relevant here and are analyzed in other work.Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

968 Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises
The scenario ended for all respondents with the follow-
ing:
[i]n the end, China does not take military action, and
the neighboring country consolidates control over the
territory.
Selective-History Design
The second survey presented respondents with a selective
portrayal of recent events in China’s surrounding waters, fo-
cusing on China’s threat to use “defensive emergency mea-
sures” by Chinese armed forces if foreign aircraft fail to
comply with China’s Air Defense Identiﬁcation Zone. We
chose this statement because it is one of the most prominent
threats to use force that the Chinese government has made
in recent territorial and maritime disputes. Indeed, US ofﬁ-
cials have made a point of warning China against declaring
a similar ADIZ in the South China Sea, implying that such
statements matter ( US Department of State 2013 ). Still, the
imprecise nature of the threatened consequences make it
unlikely that we would observe audience costs arising due to
inconsistency. Because the threat of “defensive emergency
measures” is a relatively mild version of bluster, effects are
likely to be underestimates of what tougher (but still vague)
threats could generate, such as “ﬁre and fury.”
In the selective-history design, all respondents read the
same opening context:
China and the United States do not agree about the
appropriate rules for air transit in China’s surround-
ing waters. China’s position is that foreign aircraft
should identify themselves and follow instructions.
The United States has not agreed with this position.
The following treatments were randomly and indepen-
dently assigned, with a control group receiving none of the
treatments and reading only the common opening and clos-
ing context.40
Bluster (Vague Threat): On November 23, 2013, China an-
nounced an Air Defense Identiﬁcation Zone over the East
China Sea. China announced that if any foreign aircraft
fails to identify itself to Chinese authorities or refuses to
follow instructions, Chinese armed forces will take defen-
sive emergency measures.
Biding time: Chinese ofﬁcials have explained that ﬁghting
a war in China’s surrounding waters would be a grave mis-
take. According to General Liu Yuan, Political Commissar
of the PLA’s General Logistics Department, the United
States is “afraid of us catching up and will use all means to
check China’s development, but we absolutely must not
take their bait.”
Cost of war: Chinese ofﬁcials have explained that ﬁghting
a war in China’s surrounding waters would be too costly.
According to General Liu Yuan, political commissar of the
PLA’s General Logistics Department, “[s]ince we have en-
joyed peace for quite a long time, many young people do
not know what a war is like, it is actually very cruel and
costly. If there is any alternative way to solve the problem,
there is no need to resort to the means of extreme vio-
lence for a solution.”
Nationalist history: The present dispute between the
United States and China reﬂects a long history of China’s
confrontations with foreign powers. As General Secretary
Jiang Zemin wrote, “[i]n more than [one hundred] years
40In a separate paper we also analyze two other treatments related to provo-
cation. These can be seen in Supplementary File E.after the Opium War, Chinese people were subjected to
bullying and humiliation under foreign powers.” In 1949,
Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of
the new China, saying. “[t[he Chinese people have stood
up!”
The scenario then ended for all respondents with the fol-
lowing:
To this day, the United States continues to ﬂy mili-
tary planes through the area without identifying them-
selves or following instructions. China has not used
force to stop this.
Outcome Questions
Our key outcome of interest was whether respondents ap-
proved of the government’s foreign policy performance.41
Immediately after the scenario, we asked respondents to an-
swer the following question, worded more generally in the
hypothetical design.
(Hypothetical ) How do you feel about the government’s
performance in handling the situation?
(Selective-history ) Regarding the security situation in
China’s surrounding waters, what is your overall eval-
uation of the government’s performance?
Results
We analyze the data in two ways to assess whether these treat-
ments affected respondents’ approval of the government’s
performance, compared with respondents who did not re-
ceive the particular treatment. Per our preanalysis plan, the
primary speciﬁcation is a linear regression model that con-
trols only for conditions that we experimentally manipu-
lated.42
Second, we control for a select set of covariates, as do-
ing so may increase power. The covariate speciﬁcations pro-
vided similar but often more signiﬁcant results.
Government Rhetoric, Propaganda, and Mass Reactions
The data suggest an important role for government rhetoric
and propaganda in shaping public perceptions and per-
suading citizens to see government (in)action in a positive
light. Figure 1 suggests that the biding time andnationalist his-
torynarratives had positive effects, while the cost of war frame
did not seem to have an effect.43
Many respondents who received the biding time treat-
ment explained in their own words a willingness to defer sat-
isfaction to the future. As one respondent wrote, “[w]e are
still a developing country. Can’t be penny wise and pound
foolish and take the trap of some countries. Wait for the
right time to teach this guy who has no clue how high the sky
is or how thick the earth is ( wo men haishi yi ge fazhanzhong
guojia, bu neng yin xiao shi da, zhongle mouxie guojia de quan-
tao, dengdao shidang shiji zai jia yi jiaoxun zhege bu zhi tian gao
41For full details on the surveys, see Appendices D and E.
42These include the treatment conditions described here, the order of the
answer options (which we randomized to diagnose inattention), and whether a
set of prescenario questions were asked about respondents’ political views, the
importance of defending the national honor even if it jeopardizes the stability of
China’s international environment, and whether the Chinese government relies
on military strength too much or too little to achieve its foreign policy goals.
43The full table of results for the models on which these estimates are based
is in Supplementary File A.Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

JESSICA CHEN WEISS AND ALLAN DAFOE 969
Figure 1. Effects of government rhetoric and propaganda: estimated effect of rhetorical frames on public approval of the
government’s actions relative to the control group
Notes : The biding time ,nationalist history ,a n d cost of war treatments all increased approval, but the effects were only statisti-
cally signiﬁcant at conventional levels in the case of the biding time and nationalist history treatments in the selective-history
experiment. In no case was the estimated effect negative.
di hou wei hu zuo zhang de xiaozi ).” Another respondent ex-
plained, “[c]urrently, the most important thing for China is
development. Make future plans after development ( Zhong-
guo muqian zui zhuyao shi fazhan, fazhanhou da jin yi bu da-
suan).”
The nationalist history treatment, which invoked China’s
victimization by foreign powers, elicited a variety of expres-
sions of solidarity and support for the government, such as
“I am Chinese, I love my homeland ( Wo shi Zhongguoren, wo
re ai zuguo )” and “I love my homeland, Whatever it does is
right ( Wo ai wo de zuguo, zuguo zuo shenme dou shi dui de ).”
The selective-history design included a more extensive and
explicit description of past humiliations as well as a more
uplifting message about the successful establishment of the
Chinese nation, probably accounting for its stronger effect
than in the hypothetical design.
Although emphasizing the cost of war had a positive but
not statistically signiﬁcant effect on approval, a number ofrespondents gave qualitative responses consistent with its
logic. In explaining her approval, one respondent wrote,
“war brings too much loss to the masses ( zhanzheng dui
laobaixing dailai de sunshi taida ),” while another respondent
wrote that “[t]erritorial sovereignty must be defended, but
best not to use force, because war never brings beneﬁt to
the ordinary people of any country ( lingtu zhuquan shi xuyao
hanwei de, zuihao jinliang buyao dong wu, yinwei dong wu dui na
ge guojia youqi shi laobaixing meiyou haochu ).”
Audience Costs and Bluster
Next we consider the effect of government threats that were
ultimately unfulﬁlled. Consistent with audience costs, the
explicit threat treatment reduced approval of the govern-
ment’s performance. However, reminding respondents of
China’s ADIZ threat increased approval, consistent with the
idea that audiences may reward leaders for tough but vagueDownloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

970 Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises
Figure 2. Audience costs and bluster: estimated effect of the use of threats by the government on public approval of the
government’s actions relative to the control group
Notes : Explicit threats decreased public approval, while vague threats increased public approval, though not always at con-
ventional standards of signiﬁcance. These differences in approval across treatment and control groups suggest that public
opinion costs exist in China for explicit threats, but not for vague threats.
statements even absent military action. Mobilization had a
positive effect on approval, though not at conventional lev-
els of signiﬁcance.
The results are similar and a bit stronger when we control
for other covariates (see Figure 2 ). The conﬁdence intervals
depicted are 1.64 and 1.96 standard errors wide, denotedby the thick and thin lines; exclusion of 0 indicates a two-
sided rejection of the null hypothesis of no average effect at
p<0.1o r p<0.05, respectively.
It is also possible that respondents punished inconsis-
tency in the explicit threat condition but rewarded vague
bluster due to differences in the perceived ﬁnality of thescenario’s outcome. The selective-history design ended with“to this day, the United States continues to ﬂy military planes
through China’s surrounding waters” and that “China has
not used force to stop this,” whereas the hypothetical designconcluded with “in the end, China does not take military ac-
tion, and the neighboring country consolidates control over
the territory.” If more respondents in the selective-historydesign believed that the government might take future
action to rectify the situation, then this design choice may
have minimized the inconsistency costs of saying one thingand doing another. At the same time, audiences evaluating
their leader’s performance in many real-world crises may
anticipate the possibility of future action, particularly forprotracted disputes with periodic ﬂare-ups. Often a leader’sdecision to “stay out” of a conﬂict is later reversed, as Levy
et al. (2015 , 990) and Quek (2017) note.
By asking respondents to explain their answers, we gained
insight into the underlying mechanisms driving our re-
sults. We found evidence consistent with several theories
of why respondents would disapprove of failure to fulﬁllexplicit threats. Concerning honor, one respondent wrote,
“[s]trong start, weak ﬁnish, lost national honor ( hu tou shewei, sang shi guo jia rong yu ).” Concerning inconsistency, an-
other respondent wrote, “[a]ll words, no action ( guang shuo
bu zuo ).” Consistent with arguments that audiences disap-
prove of empty threats for revealing the leadership’s in-
competence ( Smith 1998 ), one respondent wrote, “[t]he
incompetent Chinese Communist Party ( wu neng de
Gongchandang ).” On credibility ( Guisinger and Smith 2002 ),
a number of respondents expressed concern about the rep-
utational consequences of empty threats: “After declaringthe use of force, in the end [they] backed down with no
result. If other neighbors learned, it will bring China more
troubles ( jiran yijing shengming yong wuli jiejue, dao zui hou wu
gong er fan, ruguo qita linguo dou jiejian, na jiang gei Zhongguodailai gengduo mafan )!” Another wrote the following: “[t]his
will fuel the neighboring country’s ambitions ( “zheyang hui
zhuzhang gaiguo de yexin ).”
As for the beneﬁts of bluster, many respondents were
satisﬁed with the government’s effort, understanding that
conﬂict at present would be unwise. As one respondentexplained, “[w]hile defending the nation’s sovereignty, we
must also take the overall situation into account, safeguard
the international environment for peaceful development,and handle issues ‘on just grounds, to our advantage, and
with restraint’ ( ji yao weihu guojia zhuquan, you yao daju wei
zhong, weihu heping fazhan de kongjian huanjing, suoyi guojiayou li you li you jie de chuli wenti ).”
Recognizing that China would have difﬁculty successfully
challenging the United States at present, many who were
reminded of the tough but vague ADIZ threat forgave thegovernment’s inaction by referencing the future, even with-
out receiving the biding time justiﬁcation. One respondent
wrote, “[k]eep a low proﬁle, bide time, no conﬁdence ofvictory right now ( tao guang yang hui, zanshi meiyou bisheng de
bawo).” Another respondent stated the following: “StabilityDownloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

JESSICA CHEN WEISS AND ALLAN DAFOE 971
and development is a prerequisite for China. It is best to
avoid wars. When China is developed, we will no longer fear
anyone ( Zhongguo yi wending fazhan wei qianti, neng bu da jiu
bu da, deng fazhan hao le, jiu shei dou bu pa ).” Another cau-
tioned that the “[United States] has hidden, ulterior motives
by doing this. We should not take the trap ( Meiguo zheyang
zuo shi juxin poce, bieyou yongxin, wo men bu yao shang ta de
dang).”
Interestingly, the bluster condition increased approval,
whereas vague threats in other (US) contexts have not.
This difference may also point to an important scope con-
dition: a population must be relatively hawkish for leaders
to gain approval through bluster, consistent with Kertzer
and Brutger (2016) , who ﬁnd that hawks and conservatives
that punish inconsistency while liberals and doves punish
leaders for making threats in the ﬁrst place.
The hawkishness of Chinese attitudes may help explain
the beneﬁts of bluster. At the start of the survey, we assessed
respondents’ general views. Two prescenario questions
evaluated how hawkish or concerned respondents were
about defending the national honor.44Far more respon-
dents were hawkish or neutral than dovish, and most felt
that it was important or very important to defend the na-
tional honor, even if it meant international conﬂict or insta-
bility (see supplementary ﬁles). This distribution of hawk-
ish beliefs does not appear to be distinctive to our online
sample. In a separate US-China survey, 10 percent of Amer-
ican respondents endorsed risking war to maintain their
country’s claims, compared with 40 percent of Chinese re-
spondents. As noted in the supplementary ﬁles, our respon-
dents’ beliefs about the desirability of using military means
to achieve China’s foreign policy goals were roughly compa-
rable to the face-to-face, GPS-assisted survey of urban resi-
dents conducted by the Research Center on Contemporary
China.45Domestic audiences are more likely to reward blus-
ter when attitudes are predominantly hawkish and national-
istic than when doves are better represented and the distri-
bution of preferences is more symmetrical or even bimodal.
Discussion and Conclusion
Our study provides evidence that at least one authoritarian
regime confronts domestic costs for inaction in a hypotheti-
cal crisis when public threats are explicit. In the real world,
and in our experiment, however, the Chinese government is
able to rally popular support by framing inaction as part of a
long-run, “biding time” strategy of overcoming past national
humiliation. In addition, the government appears to gain
domestic approval by engaging in bluster— making tough but
vague threats that increase popular support.
We also note some limitations and shortcomings of our
evidence. Overall, the estimated effects were relatively small
and not robustly signiﬁcant. A potential explanation is self-
censorship and inattentiveness, as detailed in Supplemen-
tary File A.5. Subsequent studies should evaluate the robust-
ness of our conclusions and probe additional implications,
theoretical extensions, and underlying mechanisms. Five av-
enues warrant further research:
First, scholars should invest more in understanding how
authoritarian rhetoric and propaganda can shape mass re-
actions in international crises. Most international crises in-
44The two questions were as following: “How important is it to defend the
national honor even if it jeopardizes the stability of China’s international environ-
ment?” and “In general, does China rely on military strength too much, too little,
or about the right amount to achieve its foreign policy goals?”
45One prescenario question was identical to Question B3 in the 2012 China-
US Security Perceptions Survey. See China-US Security Perceptions Survey 2012 .volve at least one authoritarian regime, but few studies have
systematically investigated the mass pressures that authori-
tarian leaders face and whether such leaders can effectively
use propaganda to shape popular sentiment. Our two survey
experiments in China provide suggestive evidence of author-
itarian audience costs and indicate that some government
explanations can be effective in justifying inaction. However,
researchers have also shown that democratic governments
are able to control the domestic costs of inaction or back-
ing down through elite cues,46while others have highlighted
the importance of social peers ( Kertzer and Zeitzoff 2017 ).
Further research may wish to explicitly compare the extent
to which democratic and authoritarian governments can
shape domestic reactions to crisis developments—as well as
how these mass incentives are communicated and under-
stood by foreign decision-makers.
If bluster accurately diagnosed as noncommiting “empty
menace” by foreign leaders, then it should have little effect
on crisis escalation. As a US ofﬁcial remarked, “[t]here’s
a certain amount of bluster that’s taken for granted when
you’re dealing with North Korea.”47On the other hand, if
the foreign government thinks the home government has
tied its hands or signaled resolve, then the foreign gov-
ernment may choose to back down, in which case we will
not observe whether the government’s statement was blus-
ter or not. However, the foreign government may also try to
test the home government’s resolve, as Narang and Panda
(2017) note: “in order to test whether Trump’s threat is real
or bluster, North Korea may try to push the line to see how
far it can go.” Finally, bluster may provoke foreign audiences
and incentivize the foreign leadership to mount a tough re-
sponse, a possibility we investigate in a separate paper.
Second, more work should study the effect of realistic
threats, which often fall short of explicit threats. We ﬁnd
evidence that Chinese audiences disapproved of an empty,
explicit threat in a hypothetical territorial dispute, but we
also ﬁnd evidence that Chinese audiences rewarded a real-
world threat that was vaguer and (as yet) unfulﬁlled. Further
comparisons within and between hypothetical and selective-
history designs are needed to strengthen this inference.
In the real world, threats tend to be subtle and ambigu-
ous, with complex effects: in part engaging audience costs,
but also in part expressing resolve and articulating a na-
tion’s claims. Disentangling these components more system-
atically is an important next step. We also recommend that
survey experimentalists more often employ realistic scenar-
ios, at least as a complement to hypothetical and abstract
scenarios.
Third, investigating how public preferences vary across
countries and how government leaders vary in their sensi-
tivity to public support are crucial tasks for future research.
Why do some audiences reward bluster while others disap-
prove of it? The beneﬁts of bluster or belligerence may have
been overlooked because existing research has focused on
developed, democratic societies in which audience prefer-
ences may be less hawkish and nationalistic. As reported
above, Chinese appear to be more hawkish than Americans.
Further, in countries like China where debates about the use
of force are enmeshed in nationalist narratives of resistance
and past trauma, even the symbolic defense of the nation’s
honor may be critical to sustaining popular support.
Which audience or constituency “matters” most to gov-
ernment leaders is also likely to vary across time and place,
46Trager and Vavreck (2011) ;Levendusky and Horowitz (2012) .
47Michelle Nichols and David Brunnstrom, "U.S. challenged by rising North
Korea tensions, Russia urges calm," Reuters, September 21, 2017.Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/63/4/963/5559531 by guest on 29 June 2023

972 Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises
depending on whose approval the government needs to
maintain most. The sensitivity of authoritarian leaders and
their ability to manage popular sentiment is likely to vary
across autocracies, just as democratic audience costs tend
to vary by electoral system, media environment, and citi-
zen access to information ( Potter and Baum 2014 ). If pub-
lic threats and expressions of resolve are to be accurately
interpreted, scholars (not to mention government decision-
makers) must better understand the context in which such
statements are made and evaluated.
Fourth, more attention should focus on the effective-
ness of different rhetorical strategies and media frames in
shaping foreign policy perceptions. One reason the biding
timeand nationalist history frames were effective, we suspect,
is that they framed inaction as consistent with broader
narratives of defending the national honor. The impact
of other face-saving statements or symbolic gestures is an
important question for future research. Beyond China,
some audiences may be less amenable to justiﬁcations
based on future success. The credibility of “biding time”
explanations is likely to be more effective in a rising power
like China than in relatively stationary or declining powers,
such as Russia or Japan. The persuasiveness of government
rhetoric and other elite cues may also differ by source
and domestic constituency, given that many ofﬁcials and
media outlets acquire “hawkish” or “dovish” reputations
even in the absence of party competition. Further research
should investigate whether citizens in autocracies, like in
democracies, respond more favorably to rhetorical cues
from sources they identify with politically.
Finally, our study sheds light on the prospects for con-
ﬂict and peace in East Asia. Our surveys suggest that the
Chinese government’s appeals to nationalism and strategic
patience have indeed been effective at bolstering popular
support. While this tactic may succeed in giving Chinese
leaders ﬂexibility in short-term crises, they also risk tying
their hands in the long run, as repeatedly invoking historical
grievances may harden the public’s desire for future vindica-
tion. If these nationalist commitments were one-sided, they
might provide sufﬁcient leverage to force an advantageous
bargain. But similar convictions and nationalist narratives
exist in varying degrees and permutations on all sides of the
East and South China Sea disputes. As such, the domestic
beneﬁts of nationalist appeals may tempt leaders to posture
in the short run, while making the long-term resolution to
these conﬂicts that much more challenging.
In addition, these disputes often ﬂare up over perceived
“provocations,” inadvertent developments or foreign actions
that arouse domestic concern for defending the national
honor. Is bluster still effective when domestic audiences feel
slighted by a foreign insult? In the face of perceived provoca-
tion, can rhetorical emphasis on past humiliation or future
success bolster support for inaction? We reserve for future
research these important questions.
Supplementary Information
Supplementary information is available at the International
Studies Quarterly data archive.
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