Category: Research

Bacon and Weber maintain that there must be a division between the sciences — what we can “know” as “facts” — and questions of morality — what we can only make opinions about. In this line of reasoning, Weber argues that “the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform.”(1) Essentially, since there are things that we can know for certain (by using science) and things that we cannot (such as irreconcilable ideological or religious struggles), we need to ensure that people — whether it is “the prophet” or the demagogue” or the techno-fascists — do not claim scientific-level legitimacy for non-scientific ends.(2) Perhaps Bacon is not as convinced that science cannot get to those ideological or religious “gods” (as Weber calls them), but he insists that a division is necessary to keep the relentless march of scientific progress from trampling and coming into conflict with religious traditions.(3)

It is true and a valid point that following Weber’s model for the fact-value divide to its logical conclusion carries worrying ramifications. For instance, how can one engage in political arguments and support one’s values and opinions using facts if the fact-value distinction is really as salient as Weber makes out? However, the distinction may seem arbitrary in its placement, but it does, in fact, serve an organizational service. Preventing social scientists from engaging in philosophical speculation and philosophers from empirical research acts as a “division of mental labor” since people wishing to do social science research probably do not want to grapple at length with the philosophies that motivate them as researchers and the philosophical implications of their research. Or perhaps some would like to make a “philosophy section” of research papers, but it would probably ultimately distract from the purpose of the paper and force the researcher into an unfamiliar field. Thus the fact-value or empirical-normative divide lends purpose and focus to the social sciences by strapping on a kind of blinders to the philosophical world. If I were to break down the barrier between facts and values for my project, I would probably spend a large period of time analyzing my ideological motivations at the beginning and then analyzing the ideological ramifications at the end. More likely though, I would completely redesign my project in a way to straddle the now nonexistent divide. Perhaps I could find some way to empirically investigate how liberalism and democracy might be implemented in China.

(1) Sem. 5 reading, p. 8.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Francis Bacon. “The New Organon.” The New Organon: 1-238; Sem. 5 reading, p. 12.

Scholars have long disagreed as to why authoritarian states allow antiforeign protest when they have the ability to suppress them, with some calling them a threat to the regime (actually forcing leaders’ hands) and others calling them a way to bolster legitimacy. Weiss uses signal theory to propose an ambitious cost-benefit model of nationalist protest as a way for authoritarian states to signal resolve, but she does not analyze in depth the “benefit” side of her model (why and when autocrats want to signal resolve). This study builds on Weiss’s model to explore when authoritarian leaders signal resolve by allowing demonstrations and which foreign powers they choose to leverage. Specifically, it uses the different perspectives of Chinese news sources (The People’s Daily, The Global Times, and The South China Morning Post) and the analysis of scholars inside and outside of China to test for variables at different points in a sequential, structured case study analysis of three different widespread nationalist demonstrations (against the United States in 1999, Japan in 2005, and South Korea in 2014). I argue that Chinese leaders not only consider their immediate situation in their decision to allow protest but also their ability to influence the policy of the foreign power in the long-term, with older foreign administrations being less malleable, and so more attractive targets. Even marginally expanding knowledge the tools that China uses to shape foreign perceptions (such as allowing protests) can improve understanding of Chinese foreign policy.

Gorski is right in asserting that there are not just “value-laden facts” — which interpretive methodologies are predisposed to addressing — but also “fact-laden values” — which no contemporary methodology is designed to approach directly.(1) It is indeed somewhat contradictory that we are more comfortable (in the world of the social sciences) attempting to investigate spillover from our values to our facts that we are investigating that from our facts to our values, which might be even more constructive than the former interaction.(2) However, I think he exaggerates the divisions between the positive and normative worlds and discounts their utility. It might not be possible for a scholar confined to the methodologies of today’s social sciences to directly investigate our values in search of those coveted fact-laden values, but there is no convention that bars scholars from considering the implications of their research or resulting policy recommendations (in their conclusion, or even outside of their paper). If we did allow or encourage scholars to consider the philosophical elements of their research in a more rigorous way, readers would find it strange and probably superfluous and scholars would find it arduous. I do not think that these necessarily transition pains either — scholars always need to divide labor to cover the wide frontiers of human endeavor.

I am not sure that McBrayer proposes a complete model for his vision of the social sciences (probably because he was writing for a newspaper and under very different constraints from Gorski and Comte), but he would probably agree with Gorski’s proposition.(3) They both denounce the fact-value divide as arbitrary and consider the good that could come from the crossover from the fact side to that of values.(4) Comte, though, does not envision a neat reconciliation between the two, rather he think that his positive philosophy with its confidence in human rationalism (and its conviction that laws govern the natural and even the social worlds) can and should take over the entirety of study, overrunning theology and philosophy if they do not voluntarily accommodate it.(5) My research on nationalist protest in China is probably not geared towards directly investigating values or answering a normative question. Perhaps in my conclusion, I could consider policy recommendations for the United States to glean information from the signaling of the Chinese government. But (if we envision study as a progression from the specific focus of the hard sciences up to the social sciences, and then up to the broad focus of philosophical speculation) I do not think that I could progress any further up the ladder.

(1) Philip S. Gorski. “Beyond the Fact/Value Distinction: Ethical Naturalism in the Social Sciences,” October 16, 2013.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Justin P. McBrayer. “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts.” The New York Times, March 2, 2015. //opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/.

(4) Ibid.

(5) August Comte. Course of Positive Philosophy. Gertrud Lanzer. New York: Harper, 1830.

Johnson and Plato make very similar arguments — it seems to me that Johnson’s could even be an extension of the democratic flaws that Plato points out. Plato argues that the freedom of democracies means that leaders are unable to shape (or as later social scientists might suggest, socialize) the opinions of the people or control their actions.(1) He points out that this creates a society incoherent in both action and opinion, with the people refusing to hold any value as superior to any others.(2) Johnson echoes these negative ramifications, lamenting that we “live in a culture in which bad faith tolerance-for-others is ubiquitous and rewarded, while productive intellectual sparring is shunned.”(3) Thus, the two authors agree that the pluralism of democracies stifles discourse and the emergence of true consensus on values. Tocqueville, however, argues that the equality of democracies leads to each person putting immense faith in their own reason and abilities (since none of his countrymen are his superior) and in public opinion.(4) As a result, the opinions of the people will converge (not diverge as Plato suggests and Johnson seems to assume), yet the people themselves will be reluctant to engage in discourse since they are all equals.(5)

I think they are right to the extent that people in democracies do not often take up the normative questions of to what ends we should devote ourselves. This is restrictive of debate, but I think that our society does accept moral truths, even if people do not defend them as such and instead revert to “lazy relativism.” For example, the equality and liberty of liberal societies like America (even if some think that they ultimately stifle debate) are held as moral truths themselves — indeed, Western countries have seized many opportunities to export these values abroad. That said, ending the embargo on normative claims might have some benefits — it could strengthen the sets of values that we currently hold (or, if we cannot defend our values, as Johnson says, “we ought to let them go”).(6)

Tocqueville, though, articulates the best argument in favor of the status quo: if every person took up philosophical speculation, we would never get anything done. Even if we had no walls between the social sciences and more philosophical practices, I would venture to say that social scientists might find it troublesome to always question the ends of their work — in other words, there are limits to the practicality of interdisciplinary interaction. There are some interesting examples of fields that straddle the divide (such as behavioral economics bridging the hard science-social science chasm with economics and psychology), revealing that our categorization is somewhat arbitrary. Nevertheless, the divides have their utility (in dividing labor) — they are arbitrary in their locations, not in their existence.

(1) Plato. Republic: 557a-558c, 560e-562a.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Leigh Johnson. “Lazy Relativism.” ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore, November 7, 2009. http://www.readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore.com/2009/11/lazy-relativism.html.

(4) Alexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America. Vol. 2. 2000: 409.

(5) Ibid: 409, 410.

(6) Johnson. “Lazy Relativism.”

As one would expect, my motivations (and I suspect many of my classmates may have the same experience) are superficially simple, but significantly more complex upon inspection. Moreover, the assumptions they make are as informative as they are themselves — it would seem that my motivations are as deeply rooted in my assumptions as my assumptions are in my motivations. And like an onion, my motivations have multiple layers that need to be peeled away to reveal deeper truths. A superficial motivation for my research is to increase understanding about China, but, one layer deeper, my goal is to increase understanding across the US-China relationship. Lastly, my ultimate motivation is to make the world more peaceful (since tending to what is shaping up to be the most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century is a worthy cause to that end).

My largest introspective revelations, though, came in my assumptions. First, my motivation to increase US-China understanding assumes that China is not a revisionist power because if my ultimate goal is peace, that goal will be severely hampered in the long run if China ends up going to the extreme of attempting to overturn the world order (also making the assumption that overturning the international order of the status quo will increase the risk of war). But more deeply, my motivation to make the world more peaceful assumes that peace is good and a worthy cause, which (along with the assumption that the status quo is preferable) makes the typical liberal assumptions that war is harmful and preventable through cooperation and interdependence.

These motivations and their respective assumptions have manifested themselves in my methodology in my choice of small-n case study analysis and in the disproportionate attention that I plan on (and am) paying to the case of the anti-South Korea protests. Since the process-tracing aspect of case study research allows us to uncover causal mechanisms and complex or multifaceted relationships between variables, it is especially useful for my goal of “gaining an understanding” of China. Also, the anti-South Korea case (because it is the most different and the most recent) is the most important to that goal of understanding, which explains my plan for an asymmetrical case study focusing on that case as that seems to be the way to gain the most useful information from a single case. Finally, because my goal is to generate information that is useful to foreign policy calculation, generalizability is certainly an asset and neopositivist research consequently more attractive as a methodological asset.

https://youtu.be/IxWcRrW7I6c

Also find it here: https://youtu.be/IxWcRrW7I6c

    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.

I am studying nationalist protest in China because I want to find out how recent cases of nationalist and antiforeign protest in China have affected China’s foreign policy outcomes in order to help my reader understand recent trends in China’s foreign policy.

In her article, “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China,” Jessica Chen Weiss argues that the decision to allow or suppress nationalist protest is a form of costly signaling because the protests are more likely to pose a risk to stability — or even to the existence of the regime — if the government allows them but does not stand up to whichever country is being cast as the foreign aggressor.(1) While she does take aim at the gap in scholarship on the subject of Chinese nationalism in international relations, Weiss does not analyze any cases since Xi has come to power.(2)

While Weiss views antiforeign sentiment as a relatively constant force that needs only to be given a “green light” from the government to boil over onto the streets, in his article called “An Angle on Nationalism in China Today: Attitudes Among Beijing Students after Belgrade 1999,” Dingxin Zhao disagrees.(3) He uses the attitudes towards America of Chinese students after the diplomatic crisis (in which American planes bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade) to argue that antiforeign attitudes among Chinese are surface-level, temporal, and not part of some deeply-rooted ideology.(4) Zhao’s assessment seems to at least partially negate that of Weiss. That an authoritarian regime should allow expressions of popular dissent at all is somewhat counterintuitive — and could be a puzzle itself. Moreover, it seems unlikely that protests could act as a credible signal if — as Zhao argues — protests are not representative of deeply held beliefs and so do not pose a large threat to regime stability.(5)

In an news article titled “Chinese Protest Against South Korea’s Lotte,” the Straits Times accounts how, in the wake of Lotte Group, a South Korean company, allowing the construction of an American missile-defense system (which is designed to defend against North Korea, but could also interrupt China’s deterrence) protesters gathered for a protest and called for a boycott of Lotte’s establishments.(6) This is an outlier from the cases discussed by Weiss because these protests — allowed by the Chinese government — were targeted South Korea (a country that has not historically been the subject of excessive Chinese public ire) and took place under a new regime — that of Xi Jinping.(7)

In an account of the same incident in an article called “China is Whipping up Public Anger Against South Korea,” The Economist takes a stance relatively consistent with that of Weiss — arguing that the protests served the political purpose of signaling resolve to South Korea’s next president, but does not place this argument in much wider context in terms of the policy of Xi Jinping.(8) Thus, scholars have done significant research into the rise of Chinese nationalism and even the effects on international relations of its previous cases, but little exploration of recent cases and trends.(9) However, while new sources have done significant coverage of recent cases, there has been a lack in the study of its wider implications and trends.(10)

Does Wiess’s explanation of historical Chinese protests hold true for the South Korean case; or has the signal lost credibility with its repeated use in a kind of the-boy-who-cried-wolf effect? South Korea is a new target and China is under new leadership, suggesting that this case — among others — requires further analysis of the above questions and of the decision making process of a new administration. It could lend credibility to Weiss’s assessment of the Chinese government’s motivations, or it could render some aspects of her theory products of context.

In terms of practical significance, a study of recent trends and continuities in Chinese nationalist as it pertains to international relations is important because nationalist protest has historically been a tool of China, yet the scholarship on the issue has so far failed to analyze recent cases.(11) Xi Jinping may or may not be more willing to use nationalism that his predecessors, which could have significant implications for Weiss’s theory and for current understandings of China’s nationalism — and is exactly why the scholarship on the issue requires an update in that regard. The relationship between China and America is the most important in the world and is increasingly so, making it very important that the two be able to correctly calibrate their respective foreign policies — something that this study should assist by shedding light on recent cases and trends.

This paper’s proposed research questions are the following:

-Under what conditions do Chinese nationalist protests lead to favorable foreign policy outcomes for China?

-Why did the Chinese government decide to allow protests against South Korea and Lotte Group in 2017?

 

1. Jessica Chen Weiss. “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China.” International Organization 67, no. 1 (January 2013): 2-5. doi:10.1017/S0020818312000380.
2. Ibid., 16.
3. Dingxin Zhao. “An Angle on Nationalism in China Today: Attitudes Among Beijing Students after Belgrade 1999.” The China Quarterly 172 (December 2002): 885–905. doi:10.1017/S0009443902000542.
4. Ibid., 902-905.
5. Ibid.
6. “Chinese Protest against South Korea’s Lotte.” Text. The Straits Times, March 5, 2017. http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/chinese-protest-against-south-koreas-lotte.
7. Weiss, “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China,” 15-25.
8. “China Is Whipping up Public Anger Against South Korea.” Text. 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.
9. Weiss, “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China,” 15-25.
10. “Chinese Protest against South Korea’s Lotte.”; “China Is Whipping up Public Anger Against South Korea.”
11. Weiss, “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China,” 15-25.

Summary of “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China” by Jessica Chen Weiss

In her article called “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China,” Jessica Chen Weiss asks how leaders of authoritarian states effectively and credibly signal their intentions to foreign observers. Essentially, she argues that the government’s decision to allow antiforiegn protests in China is a costly signal of resolve because the protests could turn against the regime — imposing costs in the form of instability or even revolution — if the government doesn’t stand up to the target of the protests. Conversely, signal theory can also explain the decision not to allow protests (if the government spends the resources to quash the demonstrations before they begin, it demonstrates a desire for cooperation. To analyze this phenomenon, Weiss settles on a detailed case study analysis of antiforiegn protests in China, explaining that the opacity of authoritarian regimes makes in-depth analysis especially necessary to discern decision making processes. It also allows her to ascertain the interpretations of foreign observers in contrasting cases. For her data, she utilizes primary and secondary sources, including Chinese government deliberations, news articles from China and America, and memoirs, as well as personally conducted interviews. Weiss concludes that the decision to allow or suppress nationalist protest was a significant factor in foreign observers’ interpretations of events in the anti-American protests of 1999 and 2001 and that authoritarian governments have much to gain (regarding signaling) from effective management. She also notes that there are other ways to signal resolve, such as allowing hawkish politicians to win legislative elections. (1)

(1) Weiss, Jessica Chen. “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China.” International Organization 67, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 1-35. Accessed September 23, 2017. doi:10.1017/s0020818312000380