How do Indo-Pacific experts assess the role of Chinese public opinion during a crisis? Does Chinese nationalist pressure boost Beijing’s resolve in the eyes of analysts, former officials, and policy advisers around the region? What effect does Chinese nationalist outrage have on these strategic elites’ views of different policy approaches? Do China specialists differ from generalists in their interpretations of Chinese public opinion’s significance? This report offers insight into these questions using data from a survey conducted with 799 international affairs experts in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States in late 2023 and early 2024. Comparing respondents’ views of a crisis before and after Beijing goes public — issuing a public threat statement, leading a wave of online outrage, and permitting street demonstrations — indicates a large majority of experts regard Chinese public opinion as a significant factor in hypothetical crisis situations involving their country. However, its effects on observers’ policy preferences generally run counter to Beijing’s interests.

1. Beijing’s mobilization of Chinese public opinion elevated experts’ perceptions of risk in the crisis scenario. Region-wide, Chinese public opinion consistently generated substantial upgrades in experts’ assessments of the likelihood that China would use military force, impose economic punishment, and not back down.
2. The main effect on experts’ policy preferences was provocation. Chinese publicity was more likely to push analysts toward approving a military response and standing firm in the face of economic punishment than promote caution and compromise. 
3. Initially, with the hypothetical crisis being handled behind closed doors, U.S. experts were the most confident that China would back down. But after Chinese public opinion was introduced into the scenario, U.S., U.K., and Australian analysts were more likely to upgrade their assessments of China’s resolve than their counterparts in the six Indo-Pacific countries.
4. Chinese-speaking experts expressed warmer feelings toward China but favored tougher and more uncompromising policy responses than non-Chinese-language speakers. Sinophone experts also appear less inclined than generalists to be provoked by China’s publicity and nationalist mobilizations.
5. The elites sampled in this survey took Chinese public opinion much more seriously as a signal of resolve than general citizens did in a previous study. However, the effects on policy preferences inside the target country were similar, with both citizens and elites increasing their approval of escalatory countermeasures and standing firm in the face of economic punishment.
6. The results underscore that China and its counterparts need to address these dynamics by defining principles regarding the release and presentation of information during active crisis situations.

Chinese nationalism and its role in the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to preoccupy analysts in government, policy research, and academia. At issue are basic questions about the nature of the PRC party-state’s power, its relationship with Chinese citizens, and the psychological processes by which observers perceive and interpret strategic signals concerning peace, war, and economic interests. Leaders dealing with Beijing inevitably base their policy decisions on implicit or explicit theories about the nature of China’s state-society relationship, ranging from a belief in the party-state’s totalitarian control over Chinese citizens to models of the PRC as a responsive authoritarian state attuned to domestic public opinion. Following on from an earlier CCA study of Chinese public opinion’s effects on foreign public opinion, this paper takes a step closer to the decision-making locus by focusing on perceptions within the expert communities that shape the interpretations of China available to decision-makers in real-world crises.

This report’s first section outlines the unconventional methodology of the study, which is centered on a simulative survey experiment that invited respondents to estimate China’s resolve in a crisis scenario and indicate their views of different policy approaches for handling it before and after Beijing mobilizes nationalist sentiments over the issue. The second section outlines the respondents’ answers under the initial condition of a secret crisis not yet revealed to the public in any country. The third section examines the effects of Beijing going public on experts’ resolve estimations and policy preferences. A fourth section then focuses on the similarities and differences in the responses from generalists and Chinese-speaking specialists among the expert sample. The report’s conclusion reflects on the implications of these results in light of the October 2023 study that was based on corresponding surveys conducted with general citizens.

The data presented here is taken from the Crisis and Nationalism Survey, part of a British Academy–funded project involving researchers in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The project seeks to understand the role of public opinion in crisis diplomacy, in this instance by measuring Chinese nationalism’s effects on strategic elites’ perceptions and policy preferences during a plausible crisis situation. The project employed a new method designed to more systematically sample experts in nine Indo-Pacific countries: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. First, lists were drawn up of the major organizational affiliations of experts in international affairs and China issues in that country. These mainly included policy research institutes, academic departments and centers, professional associations, key media outlets, government departments, and other entities of expertise such as consultancies.

To maximize the breadth of sampling, the survey invitation was circulated across major institutions of foreign policy and China expertise in each country by identifying and approaching key contact points and requesting assistance in passing the invitation to relevant colleagues. The project team also collected email addresses of experts working on relevant topics — regional and national security, diplomacy, and China — generating a second list based on individuals. In total, around 3,500 experts were sent invitation emails, producing 813 responses between September 21, 2023, and February 9, 2024. Of these, 14 were excluded due to signs of inattentiveness, such as rapid completion of the survey (less than three minutes) and straight-line response patterns, leaving a pool of 799 valid responses.

A majority of the sample had experience in policy research (58%) and academia (70%), while just over a quarter had worked in government (27%). A further one in five had served in the military (21%), one in six had worked in media (16%), and around one in ten had a background in business (11%) or civil society (11%). Respondents were thus drawn broadly from among the communities and networks that advise and shape policy, in many cases directly by serving in government, and by generating interpretations from which decision-makers can draw their understanding of international events.

The median respondent was 40–49 years of age, with 30% falling in this age range. A further 22% were 50–59, and 15% were 60 and over. Twenty-one percent were aged 39 and under, including 9% who were 29 or less. Demographically, the sample skewed based on gender, with 70% males, a bias that mirrors the well-known gender imbalance in foreign policy and national security communities around the world.

The expert pool included a mix of China specialists and international affairs generalists. Two-thirds (67%) had been to China, while around one-third (32%) had at some point lived there for a period longer than three months. Of the respondents, 273 reported that they had Chinese-language ability (36%), a figure that rises to 323 (40%) if the 50 Taiwanese respondents — all of whom completed the survey in Chinese — are included. Many respondents also reported frequently interacting with mainland Chinese people (43%).

The group brought skeptical but pragmatic pre-existing views toward the PRC. On the common 100-point thermometer measuring sentiments, feelings toward China averaged 32º. This compared unfavorably to Taiwan (72º), the United States (70º), Japan (62º), and ASEAN (62º). Yet, when asked to what degree they believed it important to prioritize being “tough and uncompromising” or “flexible and pragmatic” in China policy, 57% leaned toward the latter, with only 29% indicating toughness was more important than flexibility when dealing with China (Figure 1). 

The experiment began by describing a crisis at sea¹ between China and the respondent’s country (see Appendix) that was being diplomatically handled behind closed doors without the public on either side being aware of its occurrence. China was making private threats to use military force and economic punishment if the target country did not agree to its demand to arrest the target country’s personnel following the accident — a demand designed to be politically unacceptable to the target. Respondents were then asked to indicate, on a scale of 0%–100%, the likelihood that, if their country resisted Beijing’s demand, China would:

This provided baseline measurements of China’s perceived resolve. Respondents then indicated their approval or disapproval of three policy options for handling such a crisis, measured on a seven-point scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7):

Chinese public opinion was then introduced into the scenario. Respondents were told the Chinese government had revealed the ongoing standoff to the public, along with one of three additional pieces of news: (1) a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) statement announcing the occurrence of the incident and publicly reiterating the threats that China had previously issued in private; (2) an MFA statement plus a wave of online warmongering; or (3) an MFA statement plus mass anti-foreign street protests in China. They were then asked to re-evaluate and, if necessary, update their earlier answers given when the crisis was being handled in secret.

Respondents’ earlier answers were carried forward as the default value on the 0%–100% slide, making it particularly convenient to give the same answer if desired. Nonetheless, more than 60% of respondents changed their assessment of the PRC’s resolve after Chinese public opinion was introduced into the situation, and more than 35% adjusted their answers regarding the three policy options.

Initially, with the crisis being handled behind closed doors, respondents rated the likelihood of China using force at around 43% on average. Unsurprisingly, given China’s track record of employing informal sanctions against several regional targets over the past decade, serious economic punishment was rated as a much higher probability, at around 57%. The United States (U.S.), United Kingdom (U.K.), and Indian experts were notably more sanguine about the likelihood of China imposing serious economic punishment. This likely reflects the United States’ economic size and the United Kingdom’s and India’s relatively less China-centric trade profiles, which may lead some to doubt that Beijing could impose serious economic punishment.

American experts were also more confident that China would back down, rating this a 64% probability on average. This trend extended across the three AUKUS countries (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), where experts considered an eventual PRC backdown more likely than not. By contrast, respondents from China’s six neighbors assessed Beijing as more likely to use force (48%) than back down (42%). In short, in the initial scenario with no involvement of public opinion, experts in the three AUKUS countries took China’s resolve much less seriously than their counterparts in China’s neighboring countries.

All three policy approaches for handling the crisis received majority approval, though avoiding confrontation and seeking compromise was the least popular. Respondents most firmly supported the idea of standing firm despite the economic costs, with 77% agreeing and only 16% disagreeing, producing an average of 5.3 on the 7-point scale. Both escalatory and conciliatory approaches received approval from more than half of respondents, with 65% approving sending military reinforcements and 56% avoiding confrontation and seeking a compromise. Only around 10% of respondents region-wide chose the neutral option of “neither agree nor disagree,” suggesting that the options presented were understandable and feasible for most of the experts surveyed.

Unlike the resolve estimations discussed above, the result was not strongly influenced by differences between China’s Indo-Pacific neighbors and the extra-regional AUKUS trio. While U.S. respondents were more inclined toward sending military reinforcements and less toward compromise than most in the region, Australian and British experts were much less inclined toward the military option than most of China’s neighbors. Indian respondents overwhelmingly expressed support for sending reinforcements, with 94% agreeing with such an approach in their land-based scenario.

Respondents then reappraised the situation after China went public, bringing domestic audiences into the scenario. The effects on observers’ analysis of the situation — elevating experts’ perceptions of risk in the situation — were substantial and consistent around the region (Figure 2). The principal effect on respondents’ policy preferences, meanwhile, was provocation, boosting approval for a military response and standing firm despite the economic costs.

Region-wide, respondents’ estimates of China’s likelihood of using military force jumped 6.8 points on the 100-point scale, from a baseline of 43% when the crisis was behind closed doors to 50% once the Chinese public was involved. Experts’ estimates of China’s likelihood of deploying severe economic punishment increased from 57% to 67%, while the estimated likelihood of China backing down decreased from 50% to 42%. Thus, in general, compared to the baseline estimations of a crisis being handled behind closed doors, China “going public” generated 15%–20% increases in foreign experts’ estimations of China’s resolve.

Observers in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom were the most likely to update their risk assessments after China went public, with 65%–70% changing their estimation of China’s resolve. Southeast Asian experts — in the Philippines and Vietnam — were the least likely, with more than half making no change to their estimation of China’s probability of using force or economic punishment. Across China’s six Indo-Pacific neighbors, 40%–45% of the surveyed experts were unpersuaded that Chinese public opinion had changed the situation.

The three different forms of Chinese public involvement in a crisis produced consistent, but not equal, effects. Online nationalist outrage and anti-foreign street protests generated around 20% larger effects on respondents’ estimations of China’s resolve, compared to MFA threat statements alone. This suggests that Chinese domestic public expressions of nationalist outrage — both online and offline — can generate effects on foreign perceptions of China’s resolve in crisis diplomacy.

Policy effects

As indicated above, Chinese public opinion’s introduction into the situation boosted experts’ estimations of PRC resolve consistently across the six countries neighboring China as well as the three extra-regional Indo-Pacific players. There was, however, no correspondingly consistent pattern in its effects on analysts’ preferences for how to handle the crisis. The turquoise bars in Figure 3, which show increases in approval for the military option among experts in most countries, indicate that provocation was the main effect.

In total, more than 60% of the observers surveyed made no change to their approval of the three policy approaches — military reinforcement, avoiding confrontation, and standing firm despite economic costs — after China went public. But the other 40% did alter their views, generally in ways that would be detrimental to Beijing. Interestingly, the stronger inclination of Western-based observers to update their risk assessments was reversed when it came to policy options, with observers in the six Indo-Pacific neighbors around 15%–20% more likely to update their views of the appropriateness of avoiding confrontation and of standing firm despite the economic costs.

On average, the introduction of Chinese public opinion into the scenario prompted Indo-Pacific experts’ policy preferences to harden. Approval of sending military reinforcements and standing firm despite economic costs increased significantly across the region as a whole. As the turquoise and green bars in Figure 3 indicate, the direction of change was consistent across countries, with South Korea the only partial exception. The apparently provocative effects of PRC publicity and Chinese nationalism were particularly strong in India and the AUKUS countries. There was, however, no consistent change in respondents’ approval of avoiding confrontation and seeking compromise, as shown by the yellow bars above and below the x-axis.

The single most striking policy effect of China going public on experts’ preferences was in India, where an additional approach — calling for external military support — was offered. Defense cooperation with the United States remains a topic of controversy in Indian political circles, even as frictions have increased in multiple sectors on the Sino-Indian border. In the initial scenario of an unpublicized crisis, more Indian respondents disapproved of this option than approved. But after China went public, approval for calling in “emergency military support from other countries (e.g., the United States)” jumped 21% to a clear majority of 57% in favor (Figure 4). This suggests PRC publicity during Sino-Indian crises at Doklam in 2017 and Galwan in 2020 probably helped break down many Indian elites’ resistance to U.S.-India defense cooperation, over and above the effects of the events on the ground.

The role of specialists in China policy has been hotly debated in the past, notably in the United States during the McCarthy era, when many were denounced as Communist sympathizers who had “lost China.” More recently, Hal Brands has argued that China specialists failed to warn of Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions throughout the era of U.S.-China “engagement,” while characterizing them as “critical assets.” in the new Sino-American geostrategic competition. How, then, do Chinese-speaking experts’ responses to the crisis scenario compare with their generalist counterparts?

Across the region, around 36% of the sample said they possessed Chinese-language ability.² The proportion in each country varied, from 14% in the Philippines to roughly half in Japan and the United States. Overall, Chinese-speaking respondents expressed more positive feelings toward China but also tougher policy preferences. On the “thermometer” of sentiment toward the country, Chinese-speaking specialists gave, on average, 35.2º, compared to 30.9º from non-Chinese-language speakers. However, only 52% approved of prioritizing flexibility over toughness, compared to 59% of non-Chinese-language speakers (Figure 5). 

In the crisis scenario, before Beijing went public, Chinese-speaking experts gave lower estimations of China’s military resolve, rating its likelihood of using force at 40%, compared to 44% for other experts (Figure 6). Regarding how to respond, Sinophone experts were slightly less favorable to compromise, giving an average score of 4.2 on the 7-point scale, compared to 4.4 for non-Chinese-speaking respondents. China specialists were also marginally more inclined to approve of sending military reinforcements — but only until China went public.

After China went public, bringing nationalist public opinion into the scenario, there was little difference in the specialist and generalist assessments of China’s resolve. Both raised their estimations of China’s resolve to use military force by around 6.5 points and economic punishment by 9–10 points, while decreasing their estimations of China’s likelihood of backing down by 7.5–9 points. However, in terms of crisis responses, the PRC’s publicity tactics appeared more provocative to generalists, who significantly increased their approval of sending military reinforcements (Figure 7). The average change in Chinese-speaking experts’ views of the military option, in contrast, was negligible. 

It may seem counterintuitive that China specialists would have relatively China-skeptic policy preferences, despite their warmer feelings toward China. Yet, these results suggest it is possible to be both China-friendly and tough on China at the same time — and it actually appears to be common. Among the survey’s expert respondents, neither linguistic familiarity nor warm feelings toward China correlated with a desire to see softer policies.

However, experts linguistically familiar with China were less likely to alter their policy preferences as a result of China’s state-led nationalist public opinion. Specialists did not discount the significance of Chinese nationalist outbursts; they were as likely as generalists to change their assessments of China’s resolve in the scenario. But they do appear to view such tactics as less provocative, or at least less necessitating a military response.

Indo-Pacific experts’ responses to Chinese public opinion were notably more consistent than the general citizens surveyed in the October 2023 study. Whereas citizens in some countries actually downgraded their estimations of China’s resolve after Beijing went public in the crisis, experts around the region overwhelmingly increased their estimations. Further, while the previous study found public opinion in China did amplify Beijing’s threats of economic punishment among citizens, the size of the effect was small. By contrast, among experts, China going public boosted perceptions of China’s resolve to use both military force and economic punishment by 15%–20%. In short, Indo-Pacific experts appear to attach much more significance to Chinese public opinion than general citizens do.

The effects of Chinese publicity on citizens’ and elites’ preferences for handling the crisis were much more similar, with significant increases in approval of military escalation and standing firm despite the potential financial costs of doing so. Based on these results, foreign decision-makers in a highly publicized crisis with China will not only face increased escalatory incentives from their own public, as CCA’s October 2023 study found, they may also receive more hawkish policy advice from analytic communities. Further research is needed to confirm and investigate the reasons behind these effects, but the pattern carries a clear implication for China: upping the ante in the public opinion domain is likely to be counterproductive.

Lower economic growth coupled with Beijing’s increasing alienation from the West will test the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party’s power is rooted in economic performance or nationalist claims to legitimacy. The results presented here, and in CCA’s previous report in the series, suggest that diversionary foreign policy adventurism by Beijing would be counterproductive. Going public in a crisis may rally the Chinese people around the flag and telegraph credible signals of economic punishment, but it would significantly elevate military threat perceptions, steeling the resolve of foreign citizens and elites alike to stand firm or even to escalate. Beijing and its counterparts need to address these dynamics by defining principles regarding the release and presentation of information during active crisis situations.

Acknowledgments: The author thanks the CCA team, particularly Jing Qian, Ian Lane Smith, Clara Lambert, Jennifer Choo, and the anonymous reviewers for their support and helpful feedback. British Academy funding made the project possible through a postdoctoral fellowship grant (PF\180083), and the Institute for Future Strategy at Seoul National University generously provided research funding and administrative support. Special thanks are due to the international colleagues on the Domestic Public Opinion and International Crisis Escalation project: Tomoko Ako, Bui Hai Dang, Ronan Tse-min Fu, Robin Garcia, Jabin Jacob, Jiyoung Ko, Anand Krishnan, Injoo Sohn, Atsushi Tago, Luc Minh Tuan, and Pham Thi Yen, and all of the expert participants in the survey exercise. The author bears sole responsibility for all errors and shortcomings. 

Full survey wording:

SCREEN 1:

Respondents were then asked for their “Risk Forecast” regarding how likely it was, on a 0–100 probability scale from impossible (0) to certain (100), that, if the country refused China's demand to arrest the captain, China would:

Respondents then indicated their approval or disapproval of three policy options for handling such a crisis, measured on a 7-point scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7):

SCREEN 2:

After receiving the new information, respondents were asked to update their answers to the earlier questions about the likelihood that China would use force, impose economic punishment, or eventually back down from its demands. 

Finally, respondents were asked again for their degree of agreement with escalatory, conflict-avoidant, and intransigent policy responses:

1. The Indian scenario was an exception, beginning instead with an accidental clash between patrol units along the disputed land border with China.
2. The fifty Taiwanese respondents, all of whom had Chinese-language ability (having completed the survey in Chinese), are excluded from this analysis, as there is no comparison group for those cases.
3. The Indian scenario replaced the accidental collision between government ships with “An accidental clash has occurred on the [India]-China border between border patrol units” and stated that “A Chinese army unit is at the scene demanding to arrest the [Indian] commander.”