Public Opinion and China’s Strategic Communication:Responses to Coercion and Persuasion

How public respond to foreign state communications is an important yet relatively unexplored aspect of public diplomacy. In this article we exam- ine the effectiveness of foreign state influence strategies, examining how messaging affects public attitudes to a specific policy issue—in this case, whether China should be permitted to invest in nuclear power infrastruc- ture in the United Kingdom. Deriving a range of arguments from official Chinese news articles we use a survey experiment to test whether foreign public react differently to coercive and persuasive messages, whether per- ceptions of threat or economic dependence affect responses, and whether counter-coercion by close and powerful allies can moderate the effect of China’s messaging. Our findings show that perceptions of security threats are a significant impediment to strategic messaging, with even gentle per- suasion generating a backlash, shifting public views against the messaging state’s position.