Protectionism, Nationalism, and Perceived U.S. Influence: Evidence from China

• In Event: Authoritarianism Support and Democratic Citizenship in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper examines China’s citizens’ assessment of US influence on China and argues that how nationalistic and protectionist they are significantly affect their perceptions about American influence on their home country. Using nationally-representative data from the Asia Barometer Survey (5th Wave), we show that nationalism and protectionism shape how Chinese citizens perceive US influence in a negative light. We make two theoretical claims. First, nationalism gives rise to a stark differentiation between in-group and outgroup and a sense of in-group superiority, which leads to negative assessment of foreign influence. Second, protectionism breeds perceived incompatibility of mutual interests, which renders positive assessment of foreign influence unlikely. We then categorize Chinese citizens into four types based on these two theoretical factors: nationalistic protectionist, nationalistic non-protectionist, non-nationalistic protectionist, and non-nationalistic non-protectionist. We demonstrate that nationalistic protectionists are most likely to view US influence negatively and non-nationalistic non-protectionist are less likely to see US influence as negative. The other two types sit in the middle of the two extremes in terms of the predicted probability of perceiving American influence as negative. These findings shed light on how individual-level factors might influence citizens’ assessment of foreign influence in the context of Sino-American relations.

Authors

• Ronan Tse-min Fu, Academia Sinica

• Wei-hao Huang, National sun-yat sen university