Month: November 2017

RPP #9: Qualitative Data Sources for Interpretivist Research

jr0578a 1 Comment

    A divide certainly exists in the analysis of Chinese nationalist movements in Western media sources. One of the discourses that exists on this subject is composed of foreign observers that assume all nationalist protest in China to be manufactured by the government.(1) Gries briefly observes that this “idea that the Chinese people are largely impotent before the vast coercive apparatus of the Oriental state has a long history in the Western study of Chinese politics, and it continues to impede Western studies of state legitimation in China today.”(2) In analyzing the coverage of Chinese nationalist movements by Western news sources, the Economist is a good example (of one subset of Western sources) because it explicitly takes a Western liberal point of view.(3)

    An article by The Economist covering the nationalist protests against South Korea in 2017 makes this assumption that the Chinese government can finely manipulate public sentiments in its title, “China is whipping up public anger against South Korea.”(4) Throughout its coverage, the article referred to nationalism as a “weapon in China’s diplomatic armoury” and only briefly does it recognize the threat that nationalist sentiment can pose to regime stability.(5) The way meaning is constructed by this particular discourse is a puzzle because, as Weiss notes, China has a long history of instability and revolution created by antiforeign unrest.(6) This history would seem to indicate that nationalist protests should be understood in the context of being a constraint on government decision making, but that is not the belief that this particular discourse advances. In one sense though, the article from The Economist is unhelpful because the names of the authors of all articles from The Economist are concealed. This means that we cannot know with certainty the identity of the author, but we can still assess it as a Western news source with a liberal point of view.

 

(1) See for example “China Is Whipping up Public Anger Against South Korea.” The Economist, May 17, 2017. https://www.economist.com/news/china/21718876-it-wary-going-too-far-china-whipping-up-public-anger-against-south-korea.

(2) Peter Hays Gries. “Chinese Nationalism: Challenging the State?” Current History; Philadelphia 104, no. 683 (September 2005): 252.

(3) “China Is Whipping up Public Anger Against South Korea.”

(4) Ibid.

(5) Ibid.

(6) Weiss, Jessica Chen. Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014: 7-11.

Research Portfolio Post #8: Qualitative Data Sources

jr0578a 1 Comment

The dependent variable of my research project is the foreign policy outcomes of an international crisis — specifically, the presence of concessions in the recipient of the signal.  In this case, the signal is conveyed via the allowance of protest by the Chinese government (in the THAAD crisis of early 2017) the recipient is South Korea. This variable can be difficult to measure because both sides can have an incentive to distort reality by exaggerating concessions — the recipient may want to demonstrate compliance without making substantial concessions, and the conveyor may want to save face. Nevertheless, a signal of concession can be a concession itself and useful for analysis in its own right.

Essentially, for a valid operationalization of this variable, we should search for the presence of a response signal from the recipient government — specifically, the presence or absence of public speeches from leaders or heads of state that emphasize some new strategic restraint or retreat. In the case of South Korea, Paul McLeary notes in Foreign Policy that Moon Jae-in seems to have attempted to signal a desire for concession and cooperation.(1) Having publicly emphasized the importance of Sino-Korean relations multiple times, Moon publicly suspended the deployment of THAAD for review.(2) Thus, the article seems to indicate a strong presence of this aspect of the dependent variable.

Yet, in operationalizing the dependent variable, an analysis of rhetoric may be the most apparent facet, but it is not necessarily the most important. We also need to analyze the presence of actual strategic concessions (within which there are multiple factors to consider, including concrete retreats, shifting alliance dynamics, and changing overall strategic posture). Taylor notes that Moon did agree to suspend deployment, which could indicate a concrete strategic retreat; however, on further analysis, he notes that deployment was later quietly resumed.(3) This indicates, that South Korea’s overall strategic posture has probably not changed outside of that single temporal concession, but also that its alliance dynamic may have changed, demonstrating a more nuanced ability to balance US and Chinese interests.

(1) Paul McLeary. “In Nod to China, South Korea Halts Deployment of THAAD Missile Defense.” Foreign Policy, July 7, 2017. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/07/in-nod-to-china-south-korea-halts-deployment-of-thaad-missile-defense/.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Taylor, Adam. “South Korea and China Move to Normalize Relations after THAAD Dispute.” Washington Post, October 31, 2017, sec. Asia & Pacific. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/south-korea-and-china-move-to-normalize-relations-after-thaad-conflict/2017/10/31/60f2bad8-bde0-11e7-af84-d3e2ee4b2af1_story.html.