Championing Democracy in an Authoritarian Society

• In Event: Information Flows and Authoritarian Control in the Digital Era

Abstract

Can public diplomacy effectively promote democracy in an authoritarian society? Currently there is a lack of empirical evidence answering the question, while theoretical discussions suggest the effect can go various ways. I conducted two survey experiments, respectively in late 2018 and January 2021, to investigate the effects of the US Embassy in China's postings on Chinese social media promoting American democracy. In both years' experiments, the U.S. Embassy's public diplomacy messages generally did not change their views of the US or democracy; and they had little effects on Chinese internet users' views on China even though the messages were implicitly critical of China. Perhaps surprisingly, the same messages did not fare worse in 2021 than in 2018, as the deterioration of Sino-U.S. relationship and the U.S.'s international image would suggest. Furthermore, there were largely no differences in effects between public policy messages bearing the name of the Embassy and those attributed to an anonymous source. These null results suggest that politically critical citizens with liberal and democratic demands have yet to arrive in China at scale, which is why the Chinese public is largely not influenced by political information about foreign countries. For these reasons, promoting democracy in the world's largest authoritarian power through public diplomacy has limited effects, at least in the short run.

Author

• Haifeng Huang, University of California, Merced