Authoritarian Propaganda Campaigns on Foreign Affairs

Singapore Management University
Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
Research Collection School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences
5-2023
Authoritarian propaganda campaigns on foreign affairs: four birds

with one stone
Andrew CHUBB
Frances Yaping WANG

Singapore Management University, [email protected]
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Part of the Political Science Commons
Citation
CHUBB, Andrew, & WANG, Frances Yaping.(2023). Authoritarian propaganda campaigns on foreign
affairs: four birds with one stone. International Studies Quarterly, .
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3683
This Journal Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Social Sciences at Institutional
Knowledge at Singapore Management University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Collection School
of Social Sciences by an authorized administrator of Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University.
For more information, please email [email protected].
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Authoritarian Propaganda Campaigns on Foreign Affairs: Four Birds With One Stone?
Andrew Chubb, Lancaster University

[email protected]
Frances Yaping Wang, Singapore Management University

[email protected]
Abstract
Why do authoritarian states sometimes play up dangerous international crises and embarrassing
diplomatic incidents in domestic propaganda? Is it to mobilize, threaten, divert or pacify? Recent
studies in comparative politics have focused on regime legitimacy and stability as key drivers of
authoritarian propaganda practices, overlooking other possible motivations such as mobilization
of the regime’s domestic allies or strategic signaling aimed at foreign audiences. Foreign policy
analysts, meanwhile, have emphasized international dimensions of the propaganda behavior of
China — the contemporary world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated authoritarian
state — but have often mistakenly framed complementary theories as competing alternative
explanations. Paying attention to the multiple domestic and international audiences for
authoritarian propaganda, this article demonstrates the logical and empirical compatibility of four
supposedly competing explanations for propaganda campaigns on foreign policy issues:
mobilization, signaling, diversion, and pacification. After elaborating the theoretical and
observable implications of these four explanations, the article illustrates their simultaneous
operation within the single case of China’s high-intensity propaganda campaign over the 2016
South China Sea arbitration.
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4261021

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Introduction
Why do authoritarian states sometimes play up dangerous international crises and embarrassing
diplomatic events in domestic propaganda? Recent studies in comparative politics have focused
on regime legitimacy and stability as key drivers of authoritarian propaganda practices, but have
mostly overlooked other possible motivations such as mobilization of regime allies or strategic
signaling aimed at foreign audiences. Specialists in Chinese foreign policy, meanwhile, have
explored the international strategic motivations for the propaganda behavior of the contemporary
world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated authoritarian state, but have often
mistakenly framed complementary theories as competing alternative explanations. This article
argues that once the multiple domestic and international audiences for authoritarian propaganda
are brought into view, many supposedly competing explanations turn out to be logically
compatible, and in many cases mutually reinforcing. We identify four sets of explanations –
mobilization, signaling, diversion, and pacification – first showing how they fit together logically,
before illustrating their simultaneous operation in the PRC’s otherwise puzzling high-intensity
propaganda campaign in 2016 over the Philippines vs. China arbitration on the South China Sea.
The increasing complexity of authoritarian polities, particularly in the Internet era, has
brought a corresponding increase in both the difficulty of the task of interpreting the outputs of
their propaganda systems, and its importance. Alexander George’s classic reconstruction of
American analysts’ inferences from Nazi German propaganda in World War II found an
impressive accuracy rate of more than 80 percent, using assumptions of strict top-down elite
political control of both policymaking and propaganda strategy. Sustained campaigns of
propaganda on particular themes were viewed – largely accurately – as either preparatory to major
German actions, anticipatory of actions by Germany’s adversaries, or indicative of situational
changes affecting the Nazi regime. Overwhelmingly, George found the emphasis of this wartime
information management was on managing the morale of the German people while maintaining
the credibility of the state’s propaganda (George 1959). But would contemporary authoritarian
states like China necessarily operate on a similar logic? What other potential purposes could lie
behind foreign affairs propaganda campaigns?
In the Internet era, the authoritarian propagandist’s tasks have grown significantly more
subtle and demanding as a result of various crosscutting influences. On the one hand, citizens

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under all regime types now have new means for accessing and sharing information and expressing
political opinions, creating new challenges to information control. On the other hand, authoritarian
states can also leverage online discourse and sentiment analysis to better understand, respond to,
and where possible capitalize on, trends in public opinion. States like the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) have also adapted traditional propaganda channels to ensure the state’s voice is heard
above the cacophony of online chatter. At the same time, as globalization has accelerated social
change and expanded international interactions, domestic audiences have become increasingly
differentiated, and foreign audiences increasingly numerous. While Nazi Germany’s
propagandists were fully aware that content directed at the German masses would be overheard by
enemy analysts, today’s information czars face much broader, more diverse and more capable
audiences at home and abroad.
Research on authoritarian politics has detailed the increasing sophistication of states’

techniques for shaping, monitoring and instrumentalizing public sentiments both online and
offline, but also makes clear that the degree of control is far from complete (Geddes and Zaller
1989; Morozov 2011; MacKinnon 2013; Roberts 2018; Truex 2017). Propaganda therefore
remains a means by which authoritarian leaders and leaderships address horizontal (elite) or
vertical (popular) challenges to regime authority (Schedler 2013; Carter and Carter 2021). In the
case of China, scholars have tracked the evolution of the country’s sprawling propaganda and
media system since the era of reform, the growth of market forces through partial
commercialization of the media sector, and the adoption of techniques from public relations and
marketing, finding these developments to have been conducive to the state’s resilience (Y. Zhao
1998; Brady 2008; Stockmann 2013). However, as this article shows, the goals of authoritarian
propaganda can extend well beyond regime resilience. In the case of foreign policy disputes, four
very different motivations – mobilization of regime allies, strategic signaling, diversion and
pacification – not only coexist, but can often interact and reinforce each other to produce major
surges in propaganda on important international issues.
At a time of heightened geopolitical tension centered on China, and diminished

opportunities for formal and informal exchanges with PRC interlocutors, the interpretation of
Beijing’s propaganda outputs is a task of increasing importance to both the international relations
field and governments around the world. But the salient features of the PRC’s Marxist-Leninist

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party-state relevant to the analysis here – tight control of mass media and institutionalized
manipulation of public discussion – are also present in a much broader sweep of the world’s states.
Currently, 139 countries/territories have unfree or partially free media, where “established systems
circumscribe news and information for mass audiences and shape the dominant political narrative”
(Walker and Orttung 2014, 71). States may have various degrees of technological proficiency in
propaganda and censorship, and their individual priorities and methods may differ, but China is
far from an anomaly in attempting to use its media controls to advance the state’s foreign and
domestic policy goals in the Internet era. At least some of the processes examined here have been
observed in propaganda campaigns in the most-similar context of Vietnam (Bui 2016; Wang and
Womack 2019), further afield in 1930s Imperial Japan (Young 1999), and more recently in
contemporary Russia’s campaign to paint Ukraine as a “neo-Nazi” state (Fedor 2015). We
therefore expect our findings to replicate in other authoritarian contexts with extensive,
institutionalized media control, though further cross-national research will be required to test this
conjecture.
The article begins by reviewing the literature on China’s authoritarian propaganda and
foreign policy, highlighting the need for greater attention to the multiple audiences that today’s
authoritarian states address in their propaganda. Next, we group available theoretical explanations
for foreign policy propaganda campaigns into four types, and demonstrate their logical
compatibility once multiple audiences are brought into view. To illustrate this claim empirically,
we examine the puzzlingly high-intensity propaganda campaign China launched over the South
China Sea arbitration case brought by the Philippines in 2013, which drew massive public attention
to a legal case Beijing was certain to lose. Our case study shows the campaign simultaneously
served to mobilize regime allies to drown out dissent and persuade the general public to oppose
the ruling, in turn amplifying strategic signals to international audiences, rallying domestic support
in the face of concerns overs economic and social troubles, and pacifying nationalist demands for
a tough-looking response. A conclusion recaps the paper’s findings, considers how common the
pattern of compound motivations identified in the case study might be, and suggests possible paths
for future research.
Multiple Audiences and “Alternative Explanations”

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Recent debates in comparative politics focusing on China’s propaganda practices have centered
on the extent to which PRC propaganda is aimed at persuasion or coercion of Chinese citizens.
One side argues propaganda contributes to China’s regime stability by building the state’s
legitimacy via selective manipulation of the information supply balanced against a desire to
maintain maximum credibility (Brady 2008; Jones-Rooy 2012). Consistent with George’s (1959)
study of Nazi wartime propaganda, Jones-Rooy (2012) finds PRC propaganda seeks to minimize
lying or absurdity wherever possible, and so avoids sensitive political subjects that would require
heavy distortion except when public attention to the issue is so high that coverage becomes a
necessity. But other scholars argue contemporary PRC propaganda is geared towards coercion
rather than persuasion. By this logic, the more preposterous the state’s propaganda, the stronger
the signal of the state’s coercive capacity (Huang 2014). Similarly, Carter and Carter (2018) argue
the PRC’s flagship broadsheet, the People’s Daily “seeks not to persuade readers, but to dominate
them.” Both sides of the debate thus focus on legitimacy and the neutralization of threats to the
regime as key concerns of propaganda, overlooking other possible functions of propaganda. As
we will show below, PRC propaganda also targets other important audiences including loyal party
supporters, nationalist sub-sections of public opinion, as well as friendly, neutral and hostile
international audiences.
China’s propagandists today pay great attention to the problem of multiple audiences (Pu
2019; Berzina-Cerenkova 2022). General Secretary Xi Jinping told a meeting of party propaganda
officials in 2016 that propaganda outlets need to adapt to “the trends of audience segmentation and
differentiation,” a concern his predecessor Hu Jintao shared. 1 It is evident in practice in the
ongoing institutional division between domestic- and foreign-directed propaganda, with greatly
increased resources directed towards the latter in recent decades. Centrally-controlled propaganda
outlets now range from the People’s Daily and its social media channels — which are oriented
toward a much broader readership than the mainly cadre-oriented broadsheet — to the jingoistic
mass-circulation foreign affairs tabloid Global Times, more than a dozen special-interest channels
operated by China Central Television (CCTV), and a proliferation of youth-oriented online media
services. Through this array of outlets, CCP propaganda can target multiple audiences, even within
1
Author translation. Article C1, Xinhua, 19 Feb 2016; Article C2, Hu Jintao, June 20, 2008. Full bibliographic
details of official materials used in this article are available in the Appendix.

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a single campaign. As our case study will show, the same propaganda campaign can
simultaneously attack foreign narratives, mobilize supporters to overwhelm oppositional voices,
draw attention away from domestic problems, and satiate nationalist demands for a tough posture.
Abroad, meanwhile, the same campaign can amplify threats or warnings to hostile target
audiences, appeal for support from international allies, and seek to persuade neutral observers of
the moral legitimacy of the state’s position.
The comparative politics literature on China’s propaganda has remained largely

disconnected from a related line of research on the role of domestic public opinion in China’s
foreign policy. Works in this literature broadly affirm that, under limited circumstances, domestic
public opinion has the potential to constrain policy, thus demanding attention from propaganda
authorities. Some argue commercialized media and online connectivity, combined with powerful
nationalist sentiments rooted in historical memory and sustained ideological education, mean that
the public’s responses to foreign policy events can be beyond the ability of the party to control (He
2007; Shirk 2007; Gries, Steiger, and Wang 2015; Burcu 2021). Others have emphasized how
particular elite political players, or sub-state vested interests, have used propaganda to enlist public
opinion in internal struggles or policy lobbying campaigns (Fewsmith and Rosen 2001; Reilly
2012; Chubb 2021). A third line of investigation has examined how the PRC’s state-led, but not
fully controlled, domestic public opinion can become a resource for its diplomacy as bargaining
leverage or in amplifying the state’s voice to international audiences (Weiss 2013; 2014; Chubb
2017). But works in this literature have largely been concerned with testing their hypotheses in
specific empirical cases of interest, with bottom-up popular influence, sub-state politics, strategic
signaling and diversionary tactics typically framed as competing alternative explanations. In fact,
as this article shows, such motivations for authoritarian propaganda campaigns are logically
compatible, and can even be mutually reinforcing.
Following Wang (2021), we define foreign policy propaganda campaigns as government-

orchestrated, concerted efforts to attract public attention towards, and shape citizens’ views of, a
foreign policy dispute by the use of mass media. As noted above, the PRC central propaganda
authorities control numerous outlets that can draw the attention of diverse audiences towards given
topics when required. An absence of routine censorship on controversial topics, too, can also draw
public attention towards an issue (Cairns and Carlson 2016). To address the observational

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challenges this diverse toolkit poses to the identification of propaganda intentions, we focus on
two key central state propaganda outlets, which can be expected to lead any major propaganda
campaign. The first, the People’s Daily, is the official voice of the CCP Central Committee, and
its front-page items and editorial commentaries, which strongly influence the agenda and tone
throughout the PRC’s propaganda ecosystem. People’s Daily content is syndicated across all kinds
of mass media in China, and the weighty implications of its official status makes its commentaries
on foreign policy inherently newsworthy. Of particular interest are People’s Daily’s foreign affairs
commentaries, which are usually penned by the pseudonymous “Zhong Sheng,” representing the
paper’s international commentary team (Tsai and Kao 2013). Second, we pay special attention to
the daily 7pm broadcasts of CCTV’s Network News. This program’s unique combination of
extremely tight political control and a mass audience that ranges between 50 and 100 million
makes it a reliable indicator of the state’s preferred agenda and framings of issues for the general
public (Chang and Ren 2015). In the sections that follow, we elaborate four theoretical
explanations for propaganda campaigns on foreign affairs, assess their logical compatibility, and
test them empirically via a detailed case study.
Theoretical Explanations for Propaganda Campaigns
Existing international relations scholarship broadly offers four kinds of explanations for
authoritarian propaganda campaigns on foreign policy issues: mobilization, signaling, diversion
and pacification. Two concern the state’s international goals, and two concern domestic goals.
Mobilization explanations hold that propaganda seeks to increase or maintain citizens’ willingness
to sacrifice for the state’s foreign policy goals. Signaling explanations take the communication of
strategic messages to foreign audiences as the state’s motivation. Diversionary explanations view
propaganda campaigns as efforts to divert attention from internal problems and rally domestic
regime support, and relate closely to the comparativist arguments focusing on legitimacy or
coercion as the underlying goals of propaganda. Pacification explanations, meanwhile, take
foreign policy propaganda campaigns to be aimed at satiating public demands for a hardline
foreign policy posture. These various rationales could also motivate propaganda efforts of
democratic states, particularly during wartime, but the following analysis of how they interact in

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a peacetime campaign is limited to authoritarian regimes, such as the PRC, that possess strong and
institutionalized media and Internet control mechanisms.
1. Mobilization
Sociologists consider cohesion a key condition for prevalence or survival in inter-group conflict
(Collins 2012). Consistent with this general insight, leaders may launch propaganda campaigns to
raise awareness, intensify popular emotions, and harden the resolve and persuade public opinion
to sacrifice for the state’s foreign policy goals at hand. In his classic work on propaganda analysis,
George noted that such campaigns may take the form of either “preparatory propaganda” seeking
to ready the population for an action the state is planning, or “anticipatory propaganda” designed
to pre-empt expected adverse developments that could affect popular morale or motivation
(George 1959, chapters 11 and 12). Such processes harness the power of emotions to directly or
indirectly influence opinions. Anger in particular has been found to elicit confrontational policy
preferences (Lerner et al. 2003; Nabi 2003), and can thus be expected to be a central feature of
mobilizing propaganda campaigns.
Despite being largely absent from rationalist international relations theories, the
significance of morale and popular mobilization has been commonsense in statecraft and
diplomacy in the era of nation-states. Carl von Clausewitz characterized “willpower” as a crucial
factor inseparable from warfighting capabilities, and observers of the “total war” of World War I
expanded this idea to include the populations upon which a total war effort depends (Clausewitz
1976; Churchill 1941). As Jervis (1970, 38) has noted, “efforts by decision-makers to mobilize
their own people to more fully support and even make personal sacrifices for the sake of foreign
policies” bear directly on the state’s capabilities. For example, Harry Truman and Mao Zedong
both resisted US-China rapprochement and instead continued their ideological crusades to garner
support for their respective grand strategies (Christensen 1996). If mobilization is an important
motivation, available propaganda instructions or strategic analyses should show a concern for
maintaining or elevating the public’s support for the state’s foreign policy positions.
The mobilizational incentive for a propaganda campaign is strongest where leaders believe
major sacrifices from the population may be necessary to realize important goals or, in extreme

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cases, ensure the state’s survival. An ideal-typical example is World War I and II belligerents’
exhortations to their citizens to work harder, volunteer their time, enlist in the military in order to
help the state prevail in an existential conflict. However, authoritarian leaders with
institutionalized media controls also apply this logic in less extreme circumstances. One is limited
war, as seen in the PRC’s propaganda campaign in the lead-up to the Sino-Vietnamese border war
of 1979 (Godwin and Miller 2013; Garver 2015; Wang 2018). Another is when leaders believe the
risk of major war is significantly elevated, and seek to ready the public for that possibility, as
Beijing did in the wake of the Sino-Indian border clashes of 1959 (Wang 2018, 85-88).
Alternatively, the state could launch a preemptive campaign out of fear that exogenous
developments or enemy psychological warfare that could place popular support for important
foreign policies in jeopardy (George 1959, 216–17). But as detailed below, there are many other
potential benefits leaders might expect to gain from propaganda campaigns on international issues.
2. Signaling
A second group of international motivations for foreign policy propaganda campaigns is strategic
communication. The field’s most prominent and controversial explanation for state publicity
during an international crisis holds that leaders seek bargaining leverage by increasing the
domestic “audience costs” they would face for backing down. According to audience costs theory,
a leader who makes a public threat will face significantly greater disapproval if they back down, a
process Fearon (1994; 1997) dubbed “hands-tying.” To the extent that authoritarian propaganda
campaigns place the regime’s domestic or international reputation on the line, they may constitute
this kind of “costly signal.” If such an intention is present, we should, at a minimum, observe the
state taking steps to ensure the campaign is “overheard” by foreign audiences, and drawing foreign
attention to the public sentiments thereby generated.
Early audience costs models suggested public threats from authoritarian regimes are more
likely to be bluffs — and to be seen as such — because the costs of backing down should be
minimal for a state with significant control over public opinion (Fearon 1994). However, this
intuition has been challenged empirically by Weeks’ (2008) analysis of militarized interstate
disputes, which found most kinds of authoritarian regimes to be equally capable of generating

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audience costs through public threats as democracies. More recently, Weiss (2013; 2014) has
argued authoritarian regimes can credibly signal resolve by tolerating real-world street protests,
whose potential to “snowball” and turn against the state if it were to back down in an international
dispute constitute a “commitment mechanism.” Tracing this logic back a step further, an
authoritarian state’s foreign policy propaganda campaign could arguably also be regarded as a
“costly signal” if it significantly increases the chances of such anti-foreign protests occurring.
However, the process described by audience costs theory is not the only way propaganda
campaigns can serve an authoritarian regime’s international communication goals. Instead of
establishing credibility through costly signaling, propaganda campaigns may instead seek to draw
out expressions of support from citizens to amplify the state’s strategic messaging, or suppress
dissenting voices. The foriegn policy goal could be coercive, as in generating psychological
pressure on a foreign target via the performance of official anger (Hall 2015). Alternatively, state-
led nationalist outbursts could add vividness and color to the state’s threat signals, making them
more likely to be noticed by the target (Chubb 2017). 2 Alternatively, outpourings of popular
agreement with the state’s position in a dispute could help boost its appeals to international
audiences for support or acceptance of its position (Ciorciari and Weiss 2016, 550n14). Thus, even
if propaganda campaigns, and the state-led popular outbursts they inspire, are viewed as “cheap
talk” rather than “costly signals,” they can still draw attention from international audiences,
helping satisfy a precondition for successful transmission of strategic messages.
3. Diversion
Publicizing an international dispute or diplomatic crisis may serve a domestic diversionary purpose
(Levy 1989, 259). Such diversionary explanations dovetail with the comparativist arguments noted
above, which take domestic legitimacy or coercion to be the key underlying of purpose of
propaganda. According to the diversionary logic, regimes direct public attention away from
domestic problems by staging an external spectacle event – escalating international tensions or
even engaging in war – and by “scapegoating” adversary states as the source of the regime’s own
2
Signal transmission is a major problem in international strategic communication. Snyder and Diesing’s classic
study of international crisis signaling found only around 40 percent of messages reached the receiver side.

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domestic failures. Historians have identified several examples of diversionary warfare, including
France during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Crimean War, Russia during the Russo-
Japanese War of 1904–05, Germany during World War I, and Argentina during the 1982
Falklands/Malvinas War (Levy and Vakili 2014). Triggering a conflict may not be necessary to
achieve distraction and rallying effects; indeed, reference to diversionary use of external conflicts
has been commonplace in studies on China’s foreign policy propaganda (Gries 2004; Brady 2009,
448), even as the PRC has avoided armed conflict since 1979.
The strong sense of domestic vulnerability that underpins leaders’ diversionary motivations
does not necessarily result from any acute crisis; a chronically high level of regime insecurity or
an accumulation of negative domestic political developments could equally lead decisionmakers
to engage in diversionary propaganda. In the absence of democratic electoral processes,
authoritarian regimes must deal with the problem of systemic legitimation (Levy and Vakili 2014,
122–23). Many also face ethnic strife, civil wars, poverty, and inequality. And even in the absence
of negative internal developments, authoritarian governments can gain auxiliary benefits from
diversionary acts, such as weakening domestic opposition. The regime-strengthening function of
foreign policy propaganda is theoretically grounded in sociology, anthropology, and psychology’s
in-group/out-group or conflict-cohesion hypothesis that conflict with an outgroup increases
internal cohesion, producing the “rally-around-the-flag phenomenon” (Coser 1998). Like in a
mobilization campaign, the state’s propaganda will likely deploy framings that fan emotions of
indignation and anger (Nabi 2003), but the sine qua non for a diversionary campaign is that
coverage of the contemporaneous domestic problems ought also to be greatly downplayed, or most
likely avoided, within the state’s public discourse.
4. Pacification
Counterintuitively, authoritarian propaganda campaigns on foreign affairs controversies can be

aimed at pacifying domestic nationalist sentiments. This group of explanations postulates that
when elites believe overheated nationalist emotions among sections of the public could threaten
social stability and regime security, or constrain the pursuit of national interests in foreign policy,
they may opt to pacify nationalist sentiments via hardline posturing (Wang 2021). There is some

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evidence that such tactics are effective. In a survey experiment fielded in China in 2016,
“blustering” – that is, issuing tough-sounding but vague threats – increased PRC citizens’ approval
of the government’s response to hypothetical US military deployments in the East China Sea, even
when not followed through with any military countermeasures (Weiss and Dafoe 2019). If
pacification is an important motivation, we should find evidence of concern among state officials
about overheated public emotions.
Scholars have elaborated authoritarian techniques of pacification through an array of soft

manipulations. Propaganda echoing public sentiments and speaking on behalf of the people helps
build social trust, promote social cohesion, and calm an angered populace (Wang 2021). Posturing,
or maintaining the appearance of a firm stance helps neutralize nationalist criticism and promotes
societal stability (Wang and Womack 2019). Positive framing emphasizes the positive sides of a
conflict, uses positive language, elicits positive emotions, promotes a pro-government, anti-
violence central theme, and fosters pro-government public responses. It offsets the negative
framings utilized in echoing and posturing, and counteracts commercial and social media’s
inherent tendency to find fault during a crisis (Wang 2018). The state can also delegitimize
undesired emotions or activism among the most agitated sections of the population on a range of
economic, national interest and moral grounds (Quek and Johnston 2018). In a pacification
campaign, state media can try to control undesired negative emotions by overshadowing them with
positive emotions, and delegitimizing them on the basis of civility, patriotism, or utility. Pacifying
campaigns can be expected to exhibit one or more of these observable techniques.
An obvious danger of pacification propaganda is that echoing and posturing in response to

hardline sentiments may further inflame nationalist audiences, or send an unintended escalatory
signal to the adversary. Pacification campaigns are thus a delicate art that requires balance and
control. To mitigate the domestic risks, states must employ tough rhetoric sparingly, in conjunction
with censorship, and moderated by positive framing. For the same reason, rhetoric echoing
hardline nationalist sentiments is typically calibrated to a notch lower in intensity than the
prevailing public sentiment. To preempt unintended external escalation, states may also
communicate with an opponent country via private credible channels.

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Observable implications
Mobilization Media content deploys inflammatory and emotive language, with themes of victimization, accusatio
of aggression and injustice.
Instructions from central propaganda authorities convey intent to mobilize, or available strateg
estimates stress importance of public support on issue at hand.
Signaling State makes special efforts to ensure the propaganda campaign reaches foreign audiences, such as
producing foreign-language translations of propaganda content.
Diplomatic messaging draws foreign interlocutors’ attention to domestic nationalist sentiments.
Diversion Evidence of domestic legitimacy concerns or crises preceding campaign.
State media downplay or avoid mention of domestic concerns while emphasizing foreign poli
controversy.
Pacification Evidence of concerns of overheated public opinion threatening social stability, regime security,
foreign policy flexibility preceding campaign.
State media adopt soft manipulation techniques such as astroturfing, echoing, posturing, positi
framing or venting.
Table 1: Observable implications of four groups of explanations for foreign policy propaganda
campaigns:
Table 1 summarizes the key observable implications of each of these four groups of
explanations. Each is a critical “hoop test” that falsifies the explanation in question if the
observation is not present. However, a passed test will not constitute strong verification. In the

14
absence of access to party-state materials such as records of high-level decisionmaking processes,

or speech evidence from those directly involved, confirmatory evidence will come primarily from
composite consideration of a series of “straws-in-the-wind” from available information. Notably,
none of the critical observations listed in Table 1 would necessarily contradict any of the other
three explanations. The key reason for this, we argue, is the compatibility of these supposedly
competing explanations, both in theory as detailed in the following section, and in practise as we
show in the case study.
Logical Compatibility
As reviewed above, the international relations field provides an array of explanations for foreign
policy propaganda campaigns. But rather than examining how such explanations may fit together,
China-focused foreign policy analyses have typically positioned them as “alternative
explanations” or competing hypotheses. Weiss’s (2013, 25–30) study of Chinese nationalist
protests, for example, presents “domestic benefits” (including diversion), and “unhelpful
constraints” (which covers the pacification explanation), as alternatives to a rationalist signaling
model. Examining the relationship between Beijing’s maritime policy and public opinion, Chubb
(2017) similarly takes diversionary motivations as an alternative explanation against a signaling
hypothesis. Wang and Womack’s (2019) study of Chinese and Vietnamese media strategies in a
2014 bilateral crisis lists signaling as an alternative explanation to pacification, and Wang (2018;
2021) regards mobilization, signaling and diversionary models as alternatives to pacification. As
we demonstrate below, once the multiple domestic and foreign audiences for authoritarian
propaganda campaigns are brought into view, none of the four groups of explanations above is
necessarily incompatible with any of the others.
The mobilization and signaling motivations are not merely compatible but mutually
reinforcing. A state seeking to mobilize or consolidate domestic support for its position in a dispute
may well wish to exert pressure on its adversary too, either by visibly altering the costs of backing
down or by drawing on the vox populi to amplify its coercive messaging or burnish the moral
justification for its position. Just as sunk-cost signals such as military deployments tend to increase
the odds of winning a fight (Slantchev 2005), a propaganda campaign that increases the costs of

15
backing down will likely also mobilize the populace on the subject at hand, bolstering the state's
capabilities in the event that conflict occurs. 3 Thus, a state propaganda campaign motivated by
strategic signaling incentives could easily also be motivated by the benefits of mobilization, and
vice versa.
Both the mobilization and signaling models of propaganda campaigns, meanwhile, are also
fully compatible with a diversionary explanation. For an authoritarian state facing acute or chronic
domestic insecurity and serious foreign policy challenges, rallying citizens around the flag could
simultaneously divert attention away from social issues, bolster popular and elite cohesion in the
event of conflict, and project or amplify a signal of resolve to the outside world. In short, a
diversionary motivation could easily coexist with mobilization and signaling objectives, especially
for domestically insecure authoritarian states.
On the surface, the pacification model appears the most likely to logically cut against the
other three explanations. Mobilization propaganda rouses public opinion and prepares citizens for
confrontation, while pacification eases popular demands for confrontation and paves the way for
a more restrained foreign policy. Audience cost signals deliberately “tie” the state’s hands while
pacification seek to free them. However, even this apparent tension is resolved once we consider
the multiple audiences modern authoritarian propaganda addresses. Emotive propaganda that helps
pacify nationalistic citizens’ desires to see the state strike a tough stance could simultaneously help
steel the broader citizenry’s support for state’s claims in the event of conflict, while channeling
mass attention away from domestic issues, and amplifying the state’s deterrent messages to
international audiences. As illustrated in the following case study, a single hard “stone” of foreign
policy propaganda can potentially strike all four of the “birds” at which authoritarian propaganda
campaigns commonly take aim.
The South China Sea Arbitration, 2013-2016
On January 22, 2013, the Philippines requested arbitration proceedings under the dispute
resolution provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), alleging an array
3
In Quek’s (2021) typology of costly signaling mechanisms, they constitute “recoverable cost” signals.

16
of PRC breaches of the Convention in pursuit of disputed claims in the South China Sea. 4 After
four weeks of awkward silence, on February 19, 2013, Beijing rejected Manila’s request, and
stated its position on the case as: (1) no acceptance, (2) no participation, (3) no recognition, (4) no
implementation (Kardon 2018). In the disputed waters, the PRC dialed up its coercive pressure on
the Philippines, sending law enforcement ships to maintain a constant presence at Second Thomas
Shoal, where a small company of Philippine marines occupied the crumbling hulk of a WWII-era
transport ship, and chasing away Filipino fishers who attempted to fish at Scarborough Shoal. Most
consequentially, in late 2013, Beijing launched a massive project of infilling the six atolls it was
occupying, turning its previously precarious presence there into expansive artificial islands.
Despite China’s refusal to participate, the case went ahead under the provisions of
UNCLOS Annex VII. A tribunal of five arbitrators was constituted in The Hague on June 21, 2013,
with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) serving as registry. China forewent its right to
appoint one of the arbitrators, leaving the President of the International Tribunal on the Law of the
Sea to appoint four of the five arbitrators, with the fifth chosen by the Philippines. Manila’s formal
written case – known as a “Memorial” – was presented to the PCA on March 30, 2014. Manila’s
submissions challenged China’s claimed “historic rights” and maritime rights over Scarborough
Shoal and its other Spratlys outposts, and condemned China’s harassment of Philippine fishermen
and large land-building operations. The PRC stuck to its official position of non-participation and
thus did not attend hearings or formally submit materials. However, it did issue a lengthy position
paper in December 2014, just ahead of the deadline for submission of materials, which elaborated
Beijing’s positions on why the tribunal should not accept jurisdiction over the case.
On October 29, 2015, the Tribunal ruled that it had been properly constituted under the
UNCLOS, and that the case would therefore continue to the merits stage. With a vast body of
evidence already tabled in the Philippines’ Memorial, the tribunal’s acceptance of jurisdiction
made an adverse result for the PRC highly likely. The final award, published on June 12, 2016,
unsurprisingly found in favor of the Philippines on 14 out of the 15 substantive matters. The
Tribunal found that China’s nine-dash line claim and related “historic rights” had no legal basis;
that none of the land features in the Spratlys or Scarborough Shoal were entitled to maritime rights
4
Article P2, Republic of the Philippines, 22 January 2013.

17
beyond a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea; that China had violated the sovereign rights of the
Philippines in interfering with fishing and in risking collisions on the sea; the Chinese activities in
the disputed area, particularly its fishing and land reclamation activities, had caused irreparable
environmental damage; and that its artificial islands contravened the international legal dispute
resolution proceedings. 5
The case was, in short, a legal and diplomatic disaster for Beijing – a result largely in line
with both Chinese and international expectations. It had been clear from the October 2015 Award
on Jurisdiction onwards that the final Award would run largely against the PRC. In such
circumstances it was hardly surprising that PRC propaganda organs would attack and seek to
delegitimize the legal process. But why launch a full-scale campaign to channel public attention
towards the case, rather than simply condemning and then ignoring it, in line with the stated
diplomatic policy? Why did Beijing draw massive additional domestic attention towards a case it
evidently expected to lose? The answer, as indicated in the following case study, lies in the various
audiences that contemporary authoritarian propaganda must address, and the multiple, mutually-
reinforcing motivations this generates for propaganda campaigns on controversial foreign affairs
issues.
China’s arbitration propaganda campaign
As the arbitration progressed from jurisdiction to merits in late 2015, the PRC propaganda organs
switched into full-scale campaign mode, reaching a deafening crescendo with the release of the
ruling. The PRC’s response had begun quietly enough, when in early 2013 the Foreign Ministry
spokesperson merely expressed the PRC’s position and stated that it “disapproved” of the
Philippines’ use of such legal methods. In the Ministry’s February 19 press conference, the
spokesperson announced matter-of-factly that the PRC had rejected the Philippines’ request for
arbitration, on grounds that it “contravened” existing agreements such as the Declaration on the
Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). The spokesperson’s statement was not
mentioned in the People’s Daily and CCTV’s 7pm Network News bulletins. State propaganda
5
Article C3, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, December 7 2014. On the production of this position paper, see Kardon
2018, 18–27.

18
authorities continued to refrain from emphasizing the issue throughout the remainder of the year,
perhaps in the hope that, in combination with the on-water pressure on the Philippines’ outpost at
Second Thomas Shoal, Manila could be persuaded not to go ahead with the case.
When the Philippines submitted its memorial on March 30, 2014, thereby confirming that
the case would proceed, the CCP propaganda organs sprang into action in coordination with the
Foreign Ministry. On March 31, the flagship CCTV nightly television propaganda bulletin
announced that the Philippines had submitted its Memorial, before cutting to a clip of Foreign
Ministry spokesman Hong Lei stating:
“The true nature of the Philippines’ pushing of international arbitration is to cover up its
attempts at illegal occupation of Chinese territory and its intention to provoke trouble in
the SCS. It is an abuse of international legal means for political provocation.” 6
The TV anchor then announced that a full-page commentary would appear in the People’s Daily
the following day, headlined “Scheming to Abuse International Legal Process Will Never Succeed:
On the Philippines’ Vain South China Sea Case.” 7 The use of words such as “cover
up” (掩盖), “abuse” (滥用), “provocation” (挑衅), and “vain case” (妄诉)
indicated a decision had been made that both the MFA and the
propaganda organs should deploy strong vituperative language and
invoke the emotive content of sovereignty violation in their
treatment of the issue.
This initial outburst in early 2014 set the tone and much of the substance of the campaign.
After the arbitral tribunal accepted jurisdiction over the case on October 29, 2015, China protested
the decision vehemently, calling it “null and void.” The start of the merits hearings in The Hague
five weeks later triggered a major intensification in the volume of the PRC’s propaganda. The
main enforcer of the official invective was “Zhong Sheng,” a collective pseudonym of the People’s
Daily’s international commentary team. From December 14 to December 17, the pseudonymous
6
Author translation. Article C4, CCTV, March 31, 2013.
7
Author translation, Article C5, People’s Daily, April 1 2014.

19
commentator launched a series of ferocious broadsides against the Philippines, the United States,
and the Arbitrators.
As the ruling approached in mid-2016, the propaganda campaign escalated further. On May
6, Director-General of the MoFA Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs Ouyang Yujing gave
a rare and lengthy interview to Chinese and foreign media, explaining China’s position in detail.
Six days later, Director-General of the MoFA Department of Treaty and Law Xu Hong also gave
a briefing and fielded questions posed by journalists. 8 These detailed official statements launched
the last and most intense phase of the campaign. At the same time, Beijing also started rallying
international support. On May 20, the Foreign Ministry claimed that more than 40 countries
supported China’s position; on June 14, spokesperson Lu Kang cited “nearly 60 countries” as
having publicly endorsed China’s stance. That number rose to 70 when State Councilor Yang
Jiechi gave an interview with state media on July 15. 9
The campaign rose to a crescendo in June and July of 2016. Over that period of 61 days,
the People’s Daily published a total of 206 related articles, nine on the front page. These included
a further eight-part series of “Zhong Sheng” commentaries by the People’s Daily editorial staff.
The Xinhua news agency also published a ten-part editorial series, one article a day for ten days
leading up to the release of the ruling. The full propaganda effort is summarized in Figure 1, which
shows the number of days per month of heavy emphasis in China’s central propaganda organs, as
indicated by a People’s Daily commentary or front page, or coverage on CCTV’s 7pm news.
8
Article C6, MFA, 6 May 2016; Article C7, MFA, 12 May 2016.
9
Article C8, Yang Jiechi, 15 July 2016; Article M2, Reuters, 20 May 2016; according to the CSIS arbitration
support tracker, there were 31 countries who supported China’s position prior to the ruling. See:
https://amti.csis.org/arbitration-support-tracker

20
Figure 1: Number of Days Per Month With Prominent State Media Coverage on the SCS arbitration
Figure 1 (alternative): Days of Prominent State Media Coverage on the SCS arbitration
Internal notes distributed to major state media outlets indicated that the party-state’s top
leadership deliberated on the campaign. In a July 11 internal memo, editors were urged to
“continue to follow the Party Central Committee’s directives” and “fight well this public opinion
battle.” Another July 13 message directed “the editing departments and pertinent branches to
adhere to the leadership’s direction and the already planned reporting plan.” The note also

21
outlined the reporting strategies that editors should employ. 10 Additionally, an author discussion
with a government official reveals that the media trends we observed above were indeed
“authorized.” 11 What, then, explains the party-state’s decision to draw massive public attention
towards a highly adverse and embarrassing international development?
Explaining the campaign
Our analysis of the propaganda campaign suggests the answer to this puzzle lies in Beijing’s
propaganda goals with regard to multiple domestic and international audiences. Beijing’s
vituperative, moralistic rhetoric sought first of all to delegitimize the tribunal in order to prevent
weakening of popular social support for the state’s positions in the South China Sea. The same
stirring rhetoric, in turn, also mobilized regime allies to drown out dissent, and patriotic citizens
to speak out to amplify the state’s strategic messages seeking to pressure the arbitral panel, bolster
the international moral legitimacy of Beijing’s intransigent stance, and perhaps even deter potential
U.S. intervention to enforce the ruling. Domestically, meanwhile, the propaganda helped to divert
attention away from growing economic and political uncertainties, and satiated popular nationalist
demands for a tough-looking response and kept nationalist sentiment under control. In sum, as
shown below, the sequence and content of China’s arbitration propaganda campaign offers
evidence consistent with mobilization, signaling, diversion and pacification, and all four
explanations pass the critical tests laid out in Table 1.
Mobilization
The content of the campaign suggests two mobilizing goals directed towards different audiences.
One, aimed at the general public, was anticipatory, forestalling the potential erosion of Chinese
citizens’ support for the PRC’s claims in the South China Sea – and perhaps the legitimacy of the
party-state itself. The other was preparatory, inspiring the party-state’s most fervent nationalist
10
These notes were quoted in several author interviews with Chinese journalists and editors working in official
media outlets, Beijing, China, May 2017.
11
Author interview, May 26, 2017, Beijing, China.

22
supporters to attack and drown out dissenting opinions in the domestic information environment,
and inspiring patriotic Chinese citizens, especially those overseas, to speak out against the ruling
through online platforms visible to the outside world.
The effort to forestall the negative effects of an adverse tribunal ruling on Chinese citizens’
support for the South China Sea claim reflected a belief among party-state thinkers that popular
support constitutes an essential basis for the conduct of conflict, including maritime disputes (Liu
and Zhao 2013; Zhang 2012; Chen 2012). In this context, the Philippines’ case was regarded as an
attack on this basic social element of its national power in an area of important strategic interest
(Zhang and Tian 2018; H. Liu 2016). The party-state’s fear that Chinese audiences might accept
the arbitration as legitimate was by no means unwarranted. A survey in five major Chinese cities
conducted in April 2013 found a solid majority of Chinese citizens approved of the idea of
arbitration as a means of handling the South China Sea dispute (Chubb 2014). The result was likely
premised on an assumption that China would win any such case, underscoring the threat that losing
an international arbitration posed to the party-state’s domestic image. The timing of the first major
escalation of the campaign, closely following the December 2015 merits hearings which revealed
the strength of the Philippine case, is also consistent with preemption of an expected adverse result
as a key motivation for the campaign.
One central feature of the propaganda campaign was heavy deployment of moral-
evaluative language in the propaganda rhetoric. Such incendiary vituperation and fulmination has
been a staple of the CCP’s mobilizing propaganda regarding its ideological enemies since well
before the founding of the PRC (Barmé 2012). The People’s Daily’s “Zhong Sheng” column
described the case as an “out-and-out political provocation under the cloak of law,” and another
People’s Daily commentary lambasted the arbitrators for their “inability to distinguish right from
wrong” and “distorted interpretation” of the law. Other pieces smeared the judges as puppets of
Japanese militarism due to the Japanese nationality of the President of the ITLOS who had
appointed the majority them (due to the PRC’s non-participation in the process), and offered

23
explanations for the Philippines’ pursuit of the case ranging from corrupt Filipino elites to covert
American conspiracies. 12
Another key technique was the recasting of the case’s complex legal content — PRC
activities, maritime entitlements, and the status of specific maritime territorial features under the
UNCLOS’s regime of islands — as a simple question of sovereignty. This offered multiple
advantages for preemptively persuading the general public to reject the proceedings, as well as for
inspiring nationalist-leaning citizens to raise their voices to the outside world on the state’s behalf.
On one hand it invoked patriotic emotions associated with national territory and historical loss. On
the other hand it recast the focus of the proceedings in terms of territorial sovereignty over islands
in the South China Sea rather than maritime entitlements – a question on which the PRC’s legal
position is much more defensible, and which the tribunal would not in fact be considering. Land
territory — as opposed to the maritime entitlements that were actually under consideration in the
case — thus became an explicit visual theme in the propaganda organs’ social media campaigns
(Figure 2).
12
This claim was repeated by State Councillor Yang Jiechi in his July 2016 interview (Article C8). The People’s
Daily official weibo also posted a speech by Zhao Qizheng, former spokesman of the CPPCC, claiming the
arbitrators had been paid. Article C9, Zhao Qizheng, 18 July 2016.

24
Figure 2: State propaganda organs’ arbitration social media campaigns
One audience that the propaganda campaign mobilized with particular success was China’s
online coterie of nationalist keyboard warriors. Pro-state online commentators, including a
variegated assortment of ideological “Mao fans,” nationalistic “voluntary 50-centers,” aspiring
party members and youth organizers, among others. These groups, already disposed to strongly
support the state in foreign policy conflicts, enthusiastically embraced the propaganda organs’
territorial sovereignty social media campaigns, effectively drowning out or chasing away
dissenting views (Ma 2016). Pre-emptive mobilization of more organized party allies was also
evident, with a steady stream of statements from professional and societal “united front”
associations condemning the arbitration in the weeks and months leading up to the ruling.
The PRC propaganda organs not only stirred the emotions of the
general public to reject the ruling, they also called on Chinese
citizens, especially young people and those located overseas, to raise
their patriotic voices towards the outside world in rejection of the
case. This intention is best illustrated by the mixed-language slogan
of one of the party-state’s key social media campaigns: “南海仲裁
[South China Sea arbitration]? Who cares!”. Initiated by the Communist

25
Youth League and spread by mainstream propaganda organs, the

campaign encouraged patriotic Chinese citizens, particularly young
people, to post and share social media videos of themselves expressing
disregard for the ruling on foreign platforms. The division of the
slogan between its Chinese- and English-language halves indicated
how the propaganda goals combined the inoculation of domestic
audiences against the ruling’s content with the mobilization of
patriotic citizens to target foreign audiences, as discussed in further
detail below.
Signaling
In its foreign-directed communications the PRC government repeatedly pointed to the views of
“the Chinese people” as both a practical explanation, and moral justification, for its non-acceptance
of the arbitration. Most straightforwardly, it projected an image of the Chinese government as
enjoying the strong support of its citizenry — a sixth of the world’s population — in rejecting the
ruling. The domestic mobilization openly sought to apply pressure to the arbitral tribunal itself,
and deter other South China Sea claimants such as Vietnam from following the Philippines in
resorting to UNCLOS dispute resolution. More speculatively, there is also some evidence to
suggest the campaign may also have sought to deter the United States from acting to enforce the
ruling.
As should be expected if the campaign had a significant strategic signaling motivation,

within the body of English-language foreign-directed propaganda the strong feelings of the
Chinese public were a key theme. As one example among many, the state media translation of the
second “Zhong Sheng” commentary in the December 2015 blitz declared,
“the determination of the Chinese people to safeguard its territorial integrity is as firm as a
rock. Only the Chinese people have the final say when it comes to China's territory. Any
attempt to negate China's sovereignty, rights and interests through a so-called ‘arbitration
award’ will be nothing but wishful thinking.”

26
PRC officials’ foreign-directed remarks also frequently referred to the responses of Chinese
citizens to the case, an indication that the theme was coordinated at a high level. 13
One international target for pressure via the propaganda campaign was the arbitrators
themselves. As noted above, the PRC’s propaganda outputs began harshly – and personally –
disparaging the arbitrators after the panel’s decision to accept jurisdiction in late 2015. In June
2016, six weeks before the announcement of the Award, a statement from the Chinese Society of
the Law of the Sea (CSLS) layered legal reasoning atop the ongoing vituperation. CSLS’s
statement argued it was the PRC’s rejection of the proceedings that was upholding the authority
of the law of the sea, and implicitly threatened that the PRC might withdraw from the regime
should the arbitrators find against it. The statement accused the panel of having “overstepped its
authority ... maliciously got around China’s optional exceptions declaration . . . willfully expanded
its scope of jurisdiction.” Most ominously, the CSLS statement said theo panel’s “reckless and
arbitrary” decision to hear the case had “eroded the integrity and authority of UNCLOS,” a line of
argument tailored to the particular audience of international maritime jurists for whom the law of
the sea represents a lifelong project. These themes appeared in front-page headlines domestically
and a large volume of English-language propaganda internationally.
Another target of the propaganda blitz – and the patriotic outpourings it inspired – was
other South China Sea claimant states who were contemplating similar legal challenges. While the
state discouraged and ultimately suppressed nationalist attempts to stage demonstrations, the
campaign did inspire patriotic retailers and consumers to take direct action. The withdrawal from
sale of Philippine mango products, and consumers’ destruction of American products, remained
trending topics on Chinese social media, telegraphing the potential for economic punishment via
consumer boycotts for countries who pursue legal redress against the PRC’s policies. Notable
among these targets was Vietnam, where officials had explicitly referred to the possibility of
bringing a legal case during a standoff over the PRC’s deployment of a large oil rig in disputed
waters in mid-2014. The logic of punishing one to warn others has been a prominent element of
13
Article C8; Article C10, Liu Xiaoming, 7 July 2016; in London in June, seasoned diplomat Fu Ying gave at least
two speeches emphasizing the Chinese public’s sentiments on the issue. One statement that successfully attracted
foreign media attention was that because of past humiliations, “the Chinese people and government are very
sensitive about territorial integrity and would never allow such recurrence even if it's just an inch of land. . . The
people won’t tolerate it if we lose territory yet again,” says Fu. “We’ve lost enough.” Article M5, Newsweek, 22
June 2016; Article C11, Fu Ying, 6 July 2016.

27
China’s coercive behavior in the South China Sea since the 1990s (K. Zhang 2019). The campaign
also served to underscore to friendly or neutral countries the strength of feeling among the Chinese
public, making them less inclined to speak in favour of the ruling, and even potentially more
inclined to speak on China’s behalf. Such foreign statements were, in turn, used by PRC
propagandists to further consolidate and mobilize opposition to the case within China.
PRC diplomats also explicitly drew attention to the sentiments of the Chinese public during
the campaign. In an interview published in English on the MFA website in the aftermath of the
award, the PRC’s topic diplomat State Councillor Yang Jiechi drew attention to online nationalist
keyboard warriors, among various other domestic audiences:
“. . . the central government has the strong support and endorsement from people of various
social sectors in China. They have expressed their unequivocal attitude of opposing the
illegal arbitration and safeguarding sovereign rights and interests by contributing articles
and articulating views through the press, TV and SMS as well as online platforms like
WeChat and Weibo.” 14
Yang’s comments illustrate the combination of coercive and moral-political signaling that the
propaganda campaign communicated to foreign audiences. On one hand Yang asserted that the
public’s response showed the fighting resolve of the Chinese population to defend the PRC’s
sovereign claims. On the other, Yang emphasized that the Chinese people’s support gave moral
gravitas to the PRC’s government’s position.
Rather than “hands-tying,” the strategic signaling aspects of the propaganda campaign
described above are best described as a low-cost combination of psychological pressure and moral
argumentation. But there is some limited evidence that the PRC may have feared the arbitration
could presage a US plan to enforce the ruling, for instance by blockading the PRC’s artificial island
outposts. If so, then the propaganda campaign could also be understood as a “costly signal.” In an
interview with US media in early June, Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin stated that “there is
no agency entitled to act as the international ‘police’.” In early July, former State Councillor Dai
Bingguo, renowned for his usually understated tone, told a Washington DC gathering that “The
14
Article C8.

28
Chinese people would not be intimidated by the U.S. actions, not even if the U.S. sends all its ten
aircraft carriers to the South China Sea.” The same day, the Global Times released a poll that it
said had found “96 percent of respondents have no fear of US pressure on the South China Sea
issue.” 15 If deterring US action was a concern, then the propaganda campaign could be regarded
as a “recoverable cost” signal (Quek 2021) that visibly raised the PRC’s domestic audience costs
of backing down, but also increased its readiness to fight, if the US had attempted to enforce the
ruling.
Diversion
A diversionary motive for the propaganda surrounding the arbitration also passes the basic tests of
plausibility (Table 1). Prior to the 2016 arbitration crisis, the Chinese economy faced formidable,
and at the time unprecedented, challenges. Turbulence in the stock market began in the summer of
2015 and persisted throughout 2016. Economic growth slowed to a 25-year low of 6.9 percent per
year in 2015. China had also accumulated significant debt in the short period following the US
Financial Crisis, with numerous large investments failing to perform. 16 As a result of the
restructuring of state-owned enterprises, the Minister of Human Resources and Social Security
indicated in February 2016 that the country intended to lay off 1.8 million workers. 17 During this
time period, worker protests increased significantly (Figure 3). Such economic problems may have
increased the appeal of a stirring patriotic propaganda campaign centered on a contentious, but
low-risk, foreign policy controversy capable of diverting attention and galvanizing national
sentiments.
15
Article C13, Dai Bingguo, 6 July 2016; Article C14, MFA, 3 June 2016; Article M4.
16
Article M6, CNBC, 31 March 2016.
17
Ibid.

29
Figure 3: Yearly Incidents of Worker Protests in China, 2011-2021 (China Labor Bulletin)
There were, at the same time, indications that Xi Jinping’s potential challengers may have
been emboldened at this time. Just prior to the March 2016 NPC meeting, “loyal party members”
published an open letter criticizing Xi Jinping's policies and demanding his resignation. 18 A series
of highly unusual People’s Daily interviews with an unidentified “Authoritative Person” on the
condition of the PRC economy, suspected to be Xi Jinping ally Liu He, also offered strong hints
that Xi was facing macroeconomic policy disagreements or even political machinations. 19 More
broadly, Xi Jinping’s insecurities were arguably manifested in the massive crackdown he launched
in mid-2015 against “rights defense” lawyers and other social activists.
Compared to the propaganda campaign for the arbitration, these economic and social issues
received scant attention in the mass media, as would be expected if diversion was among the
motivations of the state’s decisionmakers. People’s Daily was largely silent on the August 25 stock
market nosedive, with no mention on the day and only articles the following day about the Central
Bank’s measures and Premier Li’s reaffirmation of confidence in the economy. 20 According to
leaked propaganda directives, radio and television stations were instructed to “significantly reduce
18
Article M9, Wujie, 4 March 2016.
19
Article M10, Economist, 19 May 2016.
20
Article M11, New York Times, 25 August 2016.

30
their coverage of the stock market”; and newspapers and websites were instructed to delete articles
about the stock market’s drop. 21
Attacking the arbitration posed little risk of triggering a military escalation, but it had
plenty of symbolic significance, making it a potentially attractive area of international tension for
CCP propaganda decisionmakers to draw public attention towards. PRC analysts have argued that
the campaign was effective at enhancing in-group national feelings (Jiang and Luo 2016). To date,
no smoking-gun evidence, such as declassified materials, has emerged that would directly
demonstrate the presence of such diversionary motivations. Nonetheless, the case demonstrates
there is no empirical or logical contradiction between a possible diversionary motivation and any
of the previously stated theories for the arbitration propaganda campaign.
Pacification
When public sentiments become agitated enough to threaten social stability and limit foreign
policy flexibility, the state has incentives to pacify through propaganda. This was the case in the
arbitration campaign. The Baidu Search Index, which tracks daily search activity on China’s most
popular search engine, baidu.com, already had an average search index of 4,000 for the keyword
“South China Sea” in the year before the crisis, compared to an all-time average of 2,773,
indicating relatively high attention levels. Between July 1 and July 20, there were more than five
million relevant microblog posts (Jiang and Luo 2016). According to a government official,
Beijing was required to “put on a little act” because the arbitration had a “significant impact on
China’s national image.” 22 Security at the Philippine Embassy in Beijing was heightened, and
scattered protests in a variety of locations were evidently of concern to authorities. 23 According to
Zhao Jinsong, prior to the announcement of the award’s announcement, “many individuals
speculated about a possible war...if the verdict is unfavorable to China, street riots are nearly
guaranteed; they may even attack the Philippine and American embassies” (J. Zhao 2016).
21
Article M12, China Digital Times, 9 July 2016; Article M13, China Digital Times, 25 August 2015.
22
23
Article M14, New York Times, 19 July 2016.

31
To satiate demand for a tough response from nationalistic citizens, Beijing employed a
combination of echoing, posturing, positive framing, and delegitimizing negative emotions in its
propaganda campaign, particularly in its latter stages. The state echoed the hardline public
sentiment with strongly worded remarks and, according to an internal note distributed to all state
media outlets, demanded that these statements be prominently published and widely distributed.24
The harsh rhetoric included terms like “political farce,” “hypocrisy” and “shameless liar,” as well
as references to the ruling as “a piece of waste paper” and “brimming with lies,” and the arbitral
court as a “toy” and a “cancer cell of international law” comprised of “judicial hooligans.” There
were also claims that the US was, behind the scenes, “trampling on” international law and that the
Philippines was “politicizing” and “abusing” legal processes. This harsh tone stood to appeal to
public sentiment by reducing the psychological distance between the state and the populace, and
providing the populace with a sense of venting their frustrations. As one government official put
it, “at times, politically correct material [in the media] is simply insufficient to satisfy the public.
Only the language frequently found in Global Times enables the population to express its anger. It
helps individuals to vent their frustrations by resonating with their emotions.” 25
Secondly, Beijing’s abrasive rhetoric enabled it to posture as playing tough on the

international stage and thereby deflect nationalist domestic criticism. The state media also
“positive-framed” the dispute by defending China’s territorial claim, urging bilateral negotiations
over arbitration and, as noted above, compiling a long list of countries, international and domestic
organizations, and prominent individuals who support China’s position. The majority of article
headlines in state-controlled media were uplifting, including “Nothing can shake the power of
peace and justice,” “China is the true protector of peace and stability in the South China Sea,” and
“Adhere to win-win cooperation and promote mutual growth.” Particularly during the last phase
of the campaign, publications with a positive tone dominated the media – including commercial
and online platforms. In June 2016, positive articles outnumbered negative pieces by a margin of
25.5%, and this margin grew to 40% in July (“South China Sea Public Opinion Newsletter” 2016).
This observation is notable as an indicator of state intention, given the tendency of commercial
and online media to “attribute responsibility” in times of crisis.
24
25
Author interview, June 9, 2017, Beijing, China.

32
Finally, official media also attempted to deploy reason to quell negative emotions that
could undermine social and political stability. For instance, the media exerted considerable effort
in investigative reporting, relying on historical and legal evidence and citing reputable experts.
“We must help the public understand it [the arbitral ruling] objectively and intelligently,” claimed
one editor, “so that when it is released, they would know how to dispute it rationally, but not
recklessly.” In addition, the media defined “patriotism” as the ability to use “rationality” and
“jurisprudence” to safeguard national interests through “tolerance, inclusiveness, calm, and
confidence.” It derided “blind impulses and extreme behavior” that “endangers our society and
country.” In summary, the available evidence suggests that propaganda campaign not only served
to stir popular support for China’s claims, mobilize the pro-state vox populi to amplify the state’s
messages to foreign audiences, and quite possibly also divert attention from social and economic
issues – it also served to placate popular demands for the appearance of a resolute response.
Conclusion
Research and analysis of authoritarian propaganda is likely to grow in importance and complexity
in coming years. With an increasingly restrictive political environment in China, opportunities for
formal and informal exchanges with PRC interlocutors are diminishing, bringing a corresponding
increase in reliance on the interpretation of Beijing’s propaganda outputs among scholars of
international relations and government analysts at a time of increasingly fractious relations among
great powers.
The findings presented in this article carry at least three implications for future research
and analysis of authoritarian propaganda. One is methodological. Most fundamentally, our
evidence points to the need to examine interactions among different motivations for state behavior.
Just as a good chess move usually serves multiple purposes, propaganda analysts as social
scientists need to accept the high probability of overlap and interaction among ostensibly distinct
explanations. Put simply, the drive for a propaganda campaign may often exceed the sum of its
identifiable purposes.
A second implication is theoretical. Our retracing of the South China Sea arbitration
campaign suggests authoritarian propaganda campaigns may have “life cycles” in which, for

33
example, mobilization may predominate at the beginning, signaling and/or diversion in the interim,
and pacification towards the latter stages. Studies of public opinion’s role in democratic contexts
have usefully contrasted the short-term rallying effects of conflict as against longer-term casualty
aversion (Baum and Potter 2008). Future studies should similarly seek to theorize and test for
cyclical patterns in the purposes of authoritarian propaganda campaigns.
A third implication for future research is empirical. The basic argument advanced here, of
multiple interacting motives, may shed light on other puzzling recent PRC foreign policy
propaganda campaigns. These include the wave of anti-Korean propaganda over the deployment
of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea in 2017; over the
US-China trade war from 2018 onwards; and on the origins and handling of the COVID-19
pandemic from 2020. Explaining these apparently counterproductive state-led campaigns, which
have triggered outrage and intransigence in the target countries, remains a key piece the foreign
policies of the twenty-first century’s most powerful authoritarian state.
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Authoritarian Propaganda Campaigns on Foreign Affairs

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Authoritarian Propaganda Campaigns on Foreign Affairs

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Singapore Management University

Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University

Research Collection School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences

Authoritarian propaganda campaigns on foreign affairs: four birds

Frances Yaping WANG

Follow this and additional works at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research

Part of the Political Science Commons

Andrew Chubb, Lancaster University

Frances Yaping Wang, Singapore Management University

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Research on authoritarian politics has detailed the increasing sophistication of states’

At a time of heightened geopolitical tension centered on China, and diminished

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Multiple Audiences and “Alternative Explanations”

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The comparative politics literature on China’s propaganda has remained largely

Following Wang (2021), we define foreign policy propaganda campaigns as government-

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Theoretical Explanations for Propaganda Campaigns

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Counterintuitively, authoritarian propaganda campaigns on foreign affairs controversies can be

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Scholars have elaborated authoritarian techniques of pacification through an array of soft

An obvious danger of pacification propaganda is that echoing and posturing in response to

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Diplomatic messaging draws foreign interlocutors’ attention to domestic nationalist sentiments.

Diversion Evidence of domestic legitimacy concerns or crises preceding campaign.

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absence of access to party-state materials such as records of high-level decisionmaking processes,

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The South China Sea Arbitration, 2013-2016

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China’s arbitration propaganda campaign

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Explaining the campaign

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Figure 2: State propaganda organs’ arbitration social media campaigns

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Youth League and spread by mainstream propaganda organs, the

As should be expected if the campaign had a significant strategic signaling motivation,

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Secondly, Beijing’s abrasive rhetoric enabled it to posture as playing tough on the

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