Causes and Consequences of Aggressive Diplomacy on National Image

• In Event: Poster Session: Politics of Post-Communist Countries & Politics and History
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Politics of Post-Communist Countries

Abstract

This paper explores why China has adopted aggressive diplomacy (so-called Wolf-Warrior diplomacy) that goes against conventional diplomatic courtesy in recent years. We propose that aggressive diplomacy is a costly signal to demonstrate the credibility of the regime’s determination to maintain its core interests. When the regime perceives naming and shaming from the international community as a threat, it adopts aggressive diplomacy to show unyieldingness. As such, aggressive diplomacy comes with the price that it further worsens the national image of the target regime. We compiled a novel dataset of the press conference records of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (for aggressive diplomacy) and the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (for global media tone) from 2015-2022. Time-series analysis shows that a negative global media tone elicited aggressive diplomacy from Chinese diplomats, which, in turn, made the global media tone the following day more negative. However, when the global media tone was positive, the negative effects of aggressive diplomacy disappeared. We show that the naming and shaming in global media creates a vicious cycle between worsening national image and aggressive diplomacy.

Authors

• Shengyu He, Zhejiang University

• Li Shao, Zhejiang University