Young Researcher Workshop: Making Foreign Policy Local: How China Uses Local Newspapers to Promote the Belt and Road Initiative

Making Foreign Policy Local: How China Uses Local Newspapers to Promote the Belt and Road Initiative

Speaker: Victoria Liu, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, Stanford University

An influential body of scholarship argues that authoritarian regimes use nationalist propaganda to mobilize domestic support for foreign policies during international crises. This study, in contrast, examines how autocrats cultivate support for foreign policies during normal times. Using 10 years of social media data from provincial newspapers about China’s flagship foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative, I argue that authoritarian governments engage in localized routine propaganda: delegating propaganda task to local agents, who produce a consistent stream of propaganda content from local rather than national perspectives. Rather than stoking nationalism, I demonstrate that much of the propaganda activity occurs in absence of crises in a decentralized and localized manner, trading central control and unity for local initiative and creativity.

About the Workshops

The SCCEI Young Researcher Workshops are a bi-weekly series of presentations from scholars around campus who are working on issues related to China’s economy and institutions. The aim of the series is to bring together young scholars by providing a platform to present new research, get feedback, exchange ideas, and make connections. Each session features a single presenter who may present a new research plan, share results from preliminary data analyses, or do a trial run of a job talk or conference presentation. The Workshop Series is an opportunity to give and receive feedback on existing research, get to know other researchers around campus who are working on or in China, and be a testing ground for new ideas, data, and presentations.

Workshops are held every other Thursday from 1 - 2 pm. Afternoon refreshments will be provided! 

Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present.