My most recent meeting with Dr. Yang Zhang took place on Wednesday, December 13 from 3:30 to about 4:05, so about 35 minutes. Having discussed methodology extensively (and having already settled on a time-series cross-sectional case study analysis based on my own reasoning, Dr. Zhang’s advice, and the work of Gerring) in previous meetings, we mainly focused on my preliminary findings and goals moving forward to SISU-306.(1) The most interesting finding that I encountered in some of my political research is that the People’s Daily, a state-run mainland Chinese newspaper, seemed to lend tentative support to anti-South Korean protests in Spring of 2017 and gave South Korea a significant amount of critical coverage.(2) However, as the diplomatic crisis was unfolding, the same newspaper gave the bilateral US-China relationship positive coverage during American state visits to East Asia, even though it was the American military that was installing the THAAD system in South Korea, initiating the crisis.(3)
I suggested that it was a manifestation of Chinese priorities: China focused diplomatic pressure on South Korea because it was not willing to sacrifice its relationship with America. Dr. Zhang then posited that it might have also been because the Trump administration was so young at that point and relatively isolated in terms of international relationships, creating an opening for cooperation that Xi Jinping perhaps found very valuable. His comment reminded me of Weiss’s study of the 1999 and 2001 anti-American demonstrations — the 1999 demonstrations took place in the final part of the Clinton administration (when it was clear the administration would change) and were given tacit support from the Chinese government, while the 2001 demonstrations took place in the first few months of the George W. Bush administration and were suppressed.(4) I mentioned this as a possible explanation for why the anti-South Korea protests conspicuously avoided anti-Americanism in the initial days of the Trump administration (and even more interestingly, all this anti-South Korean sentiment took place during the waning days of the Park Geun-hye administration). Dr. Zhang suggested that this was an explanation that would be worth studying moving forward, but that I should remember to look at the issue from multiple angles.
As far as laying the groundwork for my future research, Dr. Zhang suggested that I read and compile a large number of news stories from Chinese news sources about the event (focusing on three — the People’s Daily, the Global Times, and the South China Morning Post). These will probably serve as the beginning of my pool of evidence for the most important of my three cases: the 2017 anti-South Korea protests. He also suggested that I do more methodological reading and assigned a book by Mahoney and Rueschemeyer on comparative historical analysis.(5)
(1) Jonathan Gerring. “What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good For?” The American Political Science Review 98, no. 2 (May 2004): 341–54.
(2) “Lotte Outlets Closed for Violating Fire Codes.” People’s Daily, March 7, 2017. http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0307/c90000-9186594.html; “Part of THAAD Battery Arrives in S.Korea, Deployment Process Begins.” People’s Daily, March 7, 2017. http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0307/c90000-9186798.html.
(3) “Tillerson’s First China Visit to Build on Positive Momentum in China-U.S. Ties.” People’s Daily, March 16, 2017. http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0316/c90000-9191192.html.
(4) Jessica Chen Weiss. “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China.” International Organization 67, no. 1 (January 2013): 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818312000380.
(5) James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, 2003.