By Zhenyu Zhang

Social movements are not widely accepted in authoritarian states like China. Following social unrest in the 1980s, the Chinese government in Beijing spent billions of dollars “buying stability” to tighten its social control.[1] After further unrest in the 1990s, Beijing initiated a patriotic education program aimed at cultivating a generation less influenced by Western ideas and less prone to expressing dissenting opinions of Beijing. A generation of “Little Pink” (小粉红), or “angry young nationalists,” emerged on the internet over the last ten to fifteen years, though whether young people in China are truly becoming more nationalist is debatable.[2]

At the same time, however, turmoil is rising in Hong Kong, a special administrative region (SAR) of China. Anti-mainland China and anti-Chinese sentiments became increasingly explicit in the 2010s, culminating in two large-scale protests: the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the Anti-Extradition Law Movement in 2019. The state-led, top-down nationalism from Beijing is ineffective in stimulating patriotism toward mainland China among Hong Kong citizens, especially younger generations. Instead, a peripheral nationalism, wherein Hongkongers are growing increasingly patriotic toward Hong Kong, is growing, with this sentiment materializing in social movements. 

Beijing reported on these two social movements very differently. To understand the rationale behind Beijing’s different reactions toward these movements, I use a “diversionary nationalism” framework, wherein the government uses nationalism as a tool to divert the public’s attention away from crises, such as economic inequality.[3] In 2014, Beijing aimed to censor information about the protests and downplay their importance. In 2019, however, the government seemed to react more aggressively, as demonstrated by its willingness to highlight the protests on social media. After briefly outlining Beijing’s policy toward Hong Kong, then discussing the two social movements in Hong Kong, I will show how Beijing through its differing reactions applied diversionary nationalism, shifting from silently restricting information, to openly diverting support from the protests and promoting nationalism and patriotism in place of open defiance.

The 2014 and 2019 Social Movements in Hong Kong

After the handover of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China in 1997, Beijing implemented a nonintervention policy. Beijing governs the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) through a “one country, two systems” design, which defines how China’s socialist system will not be implemented in Hong Kong. This governance system maintains that the HKSAR will retain its way of life and capitalist system for fifty years, meaning that its status would exist until at least 2047. This high degree of autonomy does not include defense and most foreign affairs issues but instead applies to sectors such as finance, trade, and tourism.[4]

After July 1, 2003, however, Beijing’s policy changed dramatically into the “New Hong Kong Policy” (新对港政策), mainly due to a large demonstration held in Hong Kong on July 1, 2003 and the failure of the pro-Beijing camp in the later local election.[5] Approximately 500,000 Hong Kong citizens participated in the 2003 protest, the main objective of which was to oppose Basic Law Article 23, which states that Hongkongers may be punished if they are accused of endangering national security.[6] Beijing suspended the introduction of Article 23 after the protest, but directly passed the provision in May 2020.[7]

A short honeymoon between Hong Kong and mainland China lasted from after the protest in 2003 until 2008 when Beijing held the Olympics. Afterwards, however, unpleasant attitudes toward mainland China surged again and led to the large Occupy Central Movement in 2014. This movement’s core issue was universal suffrage for the 2017 election of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. The Standing Committee of the National Congress (NPCSC) announced its decision on how to implement electoral reform in Hong Kong on August 31, 2014 and only provided semi-universal suffrage.[8] This move defied previous statements from 2007, when the NPCSC had announced that Hong Kong could have universal suffrage in the election. In the 2014 announcement, Beijing said that only two or three candidates with majority support from a special election committee—which was seen as being stacked with pro-Beijing loyalists—would be eligible for election, although every eligible Hong Kong citizen could vote freely for these two or three candidates. The dissatisfaction with these nomination procedures led to the Occupy Central movement. Its slogan, “I want real universal suffrage,” rang from September 26 to December 15, 2014, when police cleared all the protesters at Causeway Bay.[9]

In 2019, the Hong Kong public’s opposition also focused on the HKSAR government and its leader, Carrie Lam.[10] Following a dispute over the extradition of a murderer, the HKSAR government proposed an amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance. Supervised by the Chief Executive, it would create a mechanism for a case-by-case transfer of fugitives. The design proposed by the Hong Kong government, however, also included mainland China and Macau, which provoked concern in Hong Kong that the “one country, two systems” principle would be eroded.[11] The unresolved dissatisfaction with the government and the longstanding conflicts between mainland China and Hong Kong further contributed to this enduring social movement. Protesters asked for “five demands, not one less” to be met during the movement. In addition to withdrawal of the extradition law, they demanded universal suffrage, which was the main objective of the 2014 Umbrella Movement.[12] The other three demands were to retract the classification of protests as “riots,” establish an independent commission to investigate the police, and release arrested protestors.[13] In 2020, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hong Kong’s society was still in an unstable situation. The National Security Law and the subsequent international conflicts between China and other Western countries over the issue cast a shadow on the future of Hong Kong–Mainland China relations. Under the National Security Law, it is unlikely that Hong Kong will still be able to benefit from its relatively free environment for speech and expression, not to mention protests or social movements.

Beijing’s Different Reactions: Friction and Framing

Beijing used different tactics to manage these two political movements. In 2014, its core task was preventing further discussion of the issue. Professor Margaret Roberts at the University of California San Diego suggested calling this the “friction” strategy, which prevents the public from obtaining relevant information too easily.[14] This can be contrasted with the “framing” tactic that Beijing used in 2019, which encouraged the public to attribute the causes of the protests to other factors.[15] At the early stages of the 2014 movement, Beijing blocked any news related to the protests and allowed publication of only a few government announcements about the Occupy Central Movement. Moreover, the 2014 movement is what led Beijing to block Instagram, amidst sharing of photos and videos including police firing tear gas at demonstrators.[9] 

On the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo—considered China’s Twitter—on the first day of the Occupy Central Movement, 152 posts were deleted for every 10,000 messages, which was five times the amount of deleted posts from the previous week, suggesting intentional censorship.[16] The Chinese nationalist official newspaper, The Global Times, published “a commentary which suggested China’s paramilitary People’s Armed Police was capable of restoring order in Hong Kong;” interestingly, however, the commentary “disappeared from its website on Monday.”[17] Clearly, leaders in Beijing were unwilling to acknowledge the severity of the demonstrations. Accordingly, relevant news could only be published afterward, and as a result, the issue in 2014 did not register many strong opinions on Weibo or WeChat, another popular Chinese social media platform.

In 2019, although Beijing again remained silent after initial protests broke out, it eventually showed its strong opposition to the protest after the HKSAR government announced that it would suspend the Anti-Extradition Bill in June. News related to this issue was frequently repeated in the Chinese media. In fact, in my experience in mainland China, I observed social media posts focused on Hong Kong with claims that demonstrations were violent, that protesters were trying to separate Hong Kong from the country, and that mainlanders were frequently being attacked. These news reports aroused many anti-Hong Kong sentiments among internet users in China.

Moreover, social media in China overemphasized foreign intervention.[18] This approach contained two core ideas. First, the protesters were financed and trained by Western organizers. Second, the United States had no right to comment on the Hong Kong issue, as this was entirely China’s domestic issue. The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was not acceptable, and the Chinese people were angry about this. It is still unclear whether agencies such as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were involved and whether the contradictory ideas of the United States and China regarding the priority of human rights and national sovereignty led to the conflicts. 

Methodology 

My research focuses on a different question: what benefits does Beijing gain from repeatedly emphasizing “foreign intervention” rather than focusing on other important issues, such as the failure of its Hong Kong policies in the last few years? For the first half of my research, I employed a widely used unsupervised topic modeling tool, the simple Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model, in a machine learning system to categorize the editorial topics from the government-run publication, People’s Daily. For the second half of my research, I conducted a small-scale survey of 160 citizens of mainland China (located both in China and in the United States) to explore if a “rally around the flag” reaction emerged in the country as a result. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, I used WeChat groups—the Chinese counterpart of WhatsApp—to disseminate the survey questionnaires (see Appendix for sample survey questions). The participants were sourced from two WeChat groups that actively discuss Chinese political news. One was called “Discussion about news” and the other was called “Cornell Chinese students help each other during the pandemic.” The majority of respondents (86.25 percent) were below the age of 30. For those willing to discuss the results of the survey further, several in-person interviews were conducted at Cornell University, drawing from the WeChat group for Chinese international students. Given the sensitive nature of the subject, these interviews were conducted on an anonymous basis. 

Nationalist Sentiments in People’s Daily Editorials

People’s Daily showed an increase in emphasizing “foreign intervention” within narratives of the 2019 protests as compared to the 2014 protests. Of editorials in People’s Daily, which reflect the ideas of top leaders in Beijing, only five directly discuss the issue in 2014, while thirty-four did so in 2019. Using a dataset of all editorials published in People’s Daily mentioning “Hong Kong,” only one topic related to the rule of law in Hong Kong in 2014 emerged (see Figure 1),[19] but three topics (foreign intervention, violence, and Sino-U.S. relations) were identified in 2019 (see Figure 2).[20]

The topics from 2019 reflect the nationalist sentiments in Beijing’s censored news report. The emphasis on violence, especially violence toward mainlanders and Mandarin speakers, sparked anger in mainland China. Furthermore, the emphasis on foreign intervention linked the violence toward mainland China to the influence and guidance from countries like the United States and United Kingdom. This logic risks xenophobia toward Westerners, and, in response, arouses nationalist sentiments in mainland China regarding the social movements in Hong Kong.

Diversionary Nationalism in China

Providing a comprehensive explanation for these different reactions is difficult given the many different hypotheses: the changing domestic situation in China; different government officials dealing with the issues; the development of social media; more hostile Sino-U.S. relations; or whether the unrest in Hong Kong is beyond acceptance for Beijing. Here, however, I focus on the benefits gained by Beijing through these different reactions. I believe that, in 2019, Beijing sought to redirect attention to hostile Western influence to distract public attention away from other issues, such as an economic downturn. In doing so, Beijing could gain greater support through the “rally around the flag” effect and consequently could take more aggressive foreign policy stances. This strategy is called diversionary nationalism.[21]

This idea of diversionary nationalism was borrowed and refined from the well-known “diversionary war theory,” which is one of the two main perspectives used for understanding Chinese foreign policy suggested by Professor Andrew Nathan.[22] Diversionary war theory suggests that authoritarian leaders use foreign military conflicts to distract public attention away from domestic issues.[23] The traditional argument for going to war is not cost-efficient, especially after the emergence of nuclear weapons. Therefore, statesmen may find that arousing nationalism is an uncostly method that could achieve similar results. In this way, the government can benefit from citizens paying less attention to other sensitive domestic issues and can even further arouse support for the government and its leader.[24]

It is reasonable to speculate that Beijing employed diversionary behavior in 2019 to distract from possible instability in three important pillars of Beijing’s legitimacy: a growing economy, social stability, and nationalism. Partially due to the trade conflicts with the United States, China’s economic growth dropped to the lowest level since 1992, and its Gross Domestic Product’s growth in 2019 was only 6.11 percent, compared with 7.43 percent in 2014.[25] Meanwhile, Beijing also initiated a “crackdown on gang crime” movement in China that started in early 2018. This was a part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) effort to strengthen its legitimacy.[26] However, this campaign against gang crime also put pressure on the local government to maintain social stability. Furthermore, 2019 was the thirtieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, which is a highly sensitive issue in mainland China. It would be dangerous for Beijing if this infamous incident resonated with the social movements in Hong Kong or stimulated dissatisfaction or protests in mainland China. Therefore, to avoid potential unrest due to other issues and divert public attention away from them, stimulating nationalism is a wise and easy way for Beijing to manipulate public opinion. 

If the diversionary nationalism tactic really works, then we may expect a “rally around the flag” sentiment to emerge. Based on social identity theory, international conflicts lead to a strong feeling of in-group and out-group contrasts, where people are more in favor of in-group members.[27] This support of in-group members leads to support for the political leader of this group. For instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support rose dramatically after Russia’s seizure of Crimea, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt gained a 12 percent increase in approval after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and U.S. President George W. Bush gained a 39 percent increase after the 9/11 attacks.[28] Moreover, conflicts are great opportunities for leaders to prove their leadership power and competence. When leaders display unjustified behavior or fail, it is common for those leaders to revitalize public support through promoting international conflicts.[29]

The survey results from my 160-person sample indicate that there is a strong nationalist sentiment among young Chinese citizens and that the overemphasis on foreign intervention and violence, which presumably leads to nationalist emotions, does arouse greater support for Beijing and its leaders.

Support for Beijing, which reflects the “rally around the flag effect,” also rose after the protests. In total, 87 of the 156 respondents (55.77 percent) claimed rising confidence in the CCP.[30] Only 9.62 percent of respondents had less confidence. Notably, 34.62 percent of the respondents felt no different before and after this movement. In terms of support for leaders, four of the respondents did not answer this question due to the potential risks: some of them said, “I have to say yes, right?” This may have resulted in biased answers for these two questions. In total 47.37 percent of the respondents agreed that they have more confidence in their leaders, whereas 13.81 percent disagreed. This is slightly less supportive than the support for the party.

Nationalism and other domestic factors, such as power struggles and interest groups, are regarded as influential in Chinese foreign policy.[31] As the history of Chinese nationalism suggests, there is a growing, proactive, bottom-up nationalism that requires Beijing to act more aggressively in developing foreign policy. China, self-portrayed as a revitalized superpower after the national humiliation of the last few centuries, is expected to take a strong position internationally. Therefore, some researchers might suggest that Beijing’s assertiveness in foreign affairs is driven by domestic nationalist sentiments. That said, the current research suggests that public opinion, in fact, is not taking a dominant position in Beijing’s foreign policy. As Jessica Chen Weiss suggests, “the government has shown its ability and willingness to bear or minimize public opinion costs.”[32] In sum, as Andrew Nathan justly summarized, “Nationalism is a tool, rather than a driver, of Chinese foreign policy.”[33] Although we need more research to decide whether diversionary nationalism in China influences Beijing’s foreign policy, this research still suggests that nationalism has been considered with varying importance in Beijing’s domestic policy considerations.  

About the Author

Zhenyu Zhang is a part-time research assistant at the Department of Government, Cornell University. He holds a master’s degree from the Cornell Institute of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Macau. He has also worked for the Johnson School of Management, the UC Berkeley APEC Center, and the Cornell Institute for China Economic Research. 

Endnotes

1. Ching Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang, “The Power of Instability: Unraveling the Microfoundations of Bargained Authoritarianism in China,” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 6, 2013, pp. 1475–1508, https://doi.org/10.1086/670802. 

2. Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is Chinese Nationalism Rising? Evidence from Beijing,” International Security 41, no. 3, 2017, pp. 7–43.

3. Frederick Solt, “Diversionary Nationalism: Economic Inequality and the Formation of National Pride,” The Journal of Politics 73, no. 3, 2011, pp. 821–30.

4. Brian C. H. Fong, “One Country, Two Nationalisms: Center-Periphery Relations Between Mainland China and Hong Kong, 1997–2016,” Modern China 43, no. 5, 2017, 523–556.

5. Jie Cheng, “The Story of a New Policy,” Hong Kong Basic Law, 2009, http://www.hkbasiclaw.com/Hong%20Kong%20Journal/Cheng%20Jie%20article.htm.

6. Chris Buckley, “China Readies Strict Security Law for Hong Kong,” The New York Times, June 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/world/asia/hong-kong-china-national-security.html.

7. “Hong Kong Security Law: What Is It and Is It Worrying?,” BBC News, June 30, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838.

8. Stevens Andrew, “Beijing Says No to Open Elections in Hong Kong,” CNN, September 4, 2014, https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/31/world/asia/hong-kong-elections/index.html; Jermain T. M. Lam, "Political Decay in Hong Kong After the Occupy Central Movement," Asian Affairs: An American Review 42, no. 2, 2015, pp. 99–121.

9. Paul S. N. Lee, Clement Y. K. So, and Louis Leung, "Social Media and Umbrella Movement: Insurgent Public Sphere in Formation," Chinese Journal of Communication 8, no. 4, 2015, pp. 356–375.

10. Tiffany May and Andrew Jacobs, “Carrie Lam Comes Face to Face With Angry Hong Kong Residents at Town Hall,” The New York Times, September 26, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/world/asia/carrie-lam-hong-kong-protests.html.

11. Agnes S. Ku, "New Forms of Youth Activism–Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in the Local-National-Global Nexus," Space and Polity 24, no. 1, 2020, pp. 111–117.

12. Tsui-kai Wong, “Hong Kong Protests: What Are the ‘Five Demands’? What Do Protesters Want?” South China Morning Post, August 20, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/news/hong-kong/article/3065950/hong-kong-protests-what-are-five-demands-what-do.

13. Wong, “Hong Kong Protests: What Are the ‘Five Demands’? What Do Protesters Want?”

14. Margaret E. Roberts, Censored: Distraction and Diversion inside China’s Great Firewall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

15. Ethan C. Busby, Joshua R. Gubler, and Kirk A. Hawkins, "Framing and Blame Attribution in Populist Rhetoric," The Journal of Politics 81, no. 2, 2019, pp. 616–630.

16. Margaret E. Roberts, Censored: Distraction and Diversion inside China’s Great Firewall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

17. “Instagram Blocked in China Amid #OccupyCentral Movement,” NBC News, September 28, 2014, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/hong-kong-protests/instagram-blocked-china-amid-occupycentral-movement-n213556.

18. Boehler Patrick, “Record Censorship of China’s Social Media as References to Hong Kong Protests Blocked,” South China Morning Post, September 29, 2014, https://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1603869/record-censorship-chinas-social-media-references-hong-kong.

19. The tokens and the percentages reported in the tables measure the proportion of words that were relevant to this topic among the whole dataset that contains all the relevant reporting.

20. LDA topic modeling and its derivatives are widely used in the social sciences. Please refer to Derek Greene and James P. Cross, "Exploring the Political Agenda of the European Parliament Using a Dynamic Topic Modeling Approach," Political Analysis 25, no. 1, 2017, pp. 77–94; Olessia Koltsova and Sergei Koltcov, “Mapping the Public Agenda with Topic Modeling: The Case of the Russian Livejournal,” Policy & Internet 5, no, 2, 2013, pp. 207–227; Debabrata Sarddar et al., “Topic Modeling as a Tool to Gauge Political Sentiments from Twitter Feeds,” International Journal of Natural Computing Research (IJNCR) 9, no. 2, 2020, pp. 14–35.

21. Frederick Solt, “Diversionary Nationalism: Economic Inequality and the Formation of National Pride,” The Journal of Politics 73, no. 3, 2011, pp. 821–30.

22. “GDP Growth (Annual %) - China | Data,” The World Bank, accessed January 26, 2021, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=CN.

23. Rui Guo, “Taking on the Mob: 79,000 Snared in Crackdown on Organised Crime,” South China Morning Post, April 14, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3006016/chinas-war-organised-crime-corrupt-officials-sees-79000-people.

24. Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1964).

25. Tobias Theiler, “The Microfoundations of Diversionary Conflict,” Security Studies 27, no. 2, 2018, pp. 318–43, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2017.1386941.

26. Terrence L. Chapman and Dan Reiter, “The United Nations Security Council and the Rally ’Round the Flag Effect,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48, no. 6, December 2004, pp. 886–909, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002704269353.

27. “The U.S. Trade War Slowed China’s 2019 Economic Growth to Its Weakest Pace in Nearly 30 Years,” Fortune, January 17, 2020, https://fortune.com/2020/01/17/china-gdp-growth-2019-weakest-30-years-trade-war/.

28. Diana Richards et al., “Good Times, Bad Times, and the Diversionary Use of Force: A Tale of Some Not-So-Free Agents,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 37, no. 3, 1993, pp. 504–35.

29. Kenneth Newton, “Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy,” International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale de Science Politique 22, no. 2, 2001, p. 201.

30. Four respondents refused to answer several questions since they believe it might be risky.

31. Cameron Thies, “Role Theory and Foreign Policy,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, 2010.

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

33. Andrew J. Nathan, “Domestic Factors in the Making of Chinese Foreign Policy,” China Report 52, no. 3, 2016, pp. 179–91.

Appendix 

Survey Questions

A: 在发生香港的事件之后，我对中国共产党更加充满信心; 在發生香港的事件之後，我對中國共產黨更加充滿信心; After the movement in Hong Kong, I have more confidence in the Chinese Communist Party.

B. 在发生香港的事件之后，我对中国共产党的领导人更加充满信心; 在發生香港的事件之後，我對中國共產黨的領導人更加充滿信心; After the movement in Hong Kong, I have more confidence in the leader of Chinese Communist Party.