What role do nationalism and popular protest play in China's foreign relations?

Chinese authorities permitted anti-American demonstrations in 1999 but repressed them in 2001 during two crises in U.S.-China relations. Anti-Japanese protests were tolerated in 1985, 2005, and 2012 but banned in 1990 and 1996. Protests over Taiwan, the issue of greatest concern to Chinese nationalists, have never been allowed.

To explain this variation, Powerful Patriots identifies the diplomatic as well as domestic factors that drive protest management in authoritarian states. Because nationalist protests are costly to repress and may turn against the government, allowing protests demonstrates resolve and makes compromise more costly in diplomatic relations. Repressing protests, by contrast, sends a credible signal of reassurance, facilitating diplomatic flexibility. Powerful Patriots traces China's management of dozens of nationalist protests and their consequences between 1985 and 2012.

The author offers a new theory that contributes to our understanding of the domestic politics of authoritarian diplomacy, challenging conventional arguments about authoritarian invulnerability to mass audience. She also features rich case studies from more than a year of field research and over 150 personal interviews with nationalist activists, protesters, officials, and scholars in China, Japan, and the United States.

This is the first systematic assessment of nationalist, anti-foreign protest in post-Mao China and its diplomatic consequences, tracing the government’s role and foreign reactions to protests that were allowed as well as repressed.

Jessica Chen Weiss is an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and an International Faculty Fellow at the Einaudi Center for International Studies. Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2008. Before joining the Yale faculty, she founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Her work has appeared in International Organization, China Quarterly, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Learn more at http://www.jessicachenweiss.com