China’s rise is one of the defining episodes in twenty-first-century world politics. Scholars and pundits are fascinated by China’s foreign policy behavior because what China does will shape the future of international politics. This is more important now than ever, as the escalating trade war between the United States and China might drag the whole world into a new Cold War. In order to explain and predict China’s behavior, we need to know what Chinese leaders think about international relations (IR), because behavior is principally a function of perception.1 Since it is difficult to gauge the mindsets of political leaders due to the political hierarchy and the complex nature of the decision-making process in state systems, scholars instead choose to examine public opinion to make sense of what leaders should think and perceive when facing constraints from society.
As this approach targets the public, it sometimes cannot explain the reality gap between public opinion and policy outcomes. For example, despite public fury over US behavior in the EP-3 mid-air collision incident on 1 April 2001, which saw the loss of a Chinese fighter jet and pilot, the Chinese government adopted an accommodative policy, releasing the US crew after the US ambassador to Beijing—instead of US officials from Washington DC—wrote a vaguely worded “sorry” letter several days after the incident.2 This reality gap between public opinion and policy outcomes is not limited to authoritarian regimes such as China. In February 2003, Great Britain witnessed a very large public demonstration in opposition to the looming invasion of Iraq. But the expression of anti-war public opinion did not stop the Blair government from sending troops to Iraq.3
In this book, we intend to make sense of Chinese leaders’ perceptions and attitudes about Chinese foreign policy through the eyes of China’s international relations (IR) scholars. In doing so, we depart from most existing studies that survey the general public. Drawing on a unique, four-year opinion survey of Chinese IR scholars conducted at the annual conference of the Chinese Community of Political Science and International Studies (CCPSIS) in Beijing from 2014 to 2017, we empirically examine Chinese IR scholars’ perceptions of and views on key issues related to China’s international relations and how they change over time. In addition to this unique opinion survey method, we also rely on a traditional textual analysis approach to examine mainstream Chinese IR scholars’ perceptions in China’s top five IR journals. Through comparing and contrasting our opinion surveys and textual analyses of published journal articles, we can more confidently and precisely measure how Chinese IR scholars view the world and China’s position in it.
It should be emphasized that we do not claim Chinese IR scholars’ views necessarily represent or influence the perceptions of Chinese leaders or the Chinese government. Nor are we trying to demonstrate how Chinese IR scholars can influence Chinese leaders’ decisions in foreign policy. Instead, we focus on examining what Chinese IR scholars think and perceive in the domain of China’s foreign policy and international relations. Nevertheless, this should be important in and of itself. As Daniel Lynch points out, “studying these [Chinese scholars’] images can be useful in trying to assess what trajectory [Chinese foreign policy ] is likely to become, precisely because the elites are operating inside parameters imposed by the (still) awesomely powerful Party-state.”4 By revealing not merely the “public opinions” but the “policy opinions” of Chinese IR scholars regarding key issues related to Chinese foreign policy , we hope to provide some approximation of Chinese leaders’ mindsets on international relations and therefore set a foundation for future research on the impacts of Chinese IR scholars on foreign policy.
There are three sections in this introductory chapter. First, we discuss the existing research on China’s public opinion and foreign policy and suggest that the general, public-targeted survey research faces three analytical weaknesses. Second, we introduce our unique “opinion survey and textual analysis” approach, which integrates survey research techniques and traditional textual analyses of Chinese IR scholars’ writings. Third, we introduce the structure of the book and lay out the major findings.
Public Opinion Research on Chinese Foreign Policy5
In the study of Chinese foreign policy, the role of public opinion has long been neglected.6 This is somewhat understandable, as China is a one-party state and the foreign-policy decision-making process remains relatively confidential and inaccessible to the general public and the outside world. However, with widespread Internet use and commercialized media, the Chinese government faces increasing public scrutiny of its foreign-policy decisions. The growing importance of public opinion in Chinese foreign policy making requires scholars from China and abroad to more systematically study the Chinese public’s opinions on foreign policy issues.
Following Gabriel Almond’s 1950 classic work, The American People and Foreign Policy, we differentiate three strata of the Chinese populace.7 Previous studies show that there are normally three types of publics in society: policy elites, sub-elites, and the masses. Policy elites include leaders and key decision makers in government. The masses refer to the (uninformed) general public. The sub-elite group comprises the informed public, including scholars, analysts, and members of the media who work on international affairs; it is located in between the policy elite and the general public. As mentioned earlier, due to the difficulties of accessing the mindsets of policy makers, most existing research focuses on examining opinion at the general public level and can be grouped into four types.
First, there exists some indigenous polling/survey research conducted by major Chinese newspapers. In 1993, the China Youth Daily, the Communist Youth League of China’s official newspaper, established a Public Survey Center. Over the years, this center has conducted several public polls on the atti...