New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. x, 341 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$31.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-938755-7.
In this deeply researched volume, author Jessica Chen Weiss examines Beijing’s management of nationalist, anti-foreign protests. If the elite of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are dependent on popular nationalism to back their foreign policy aims, does this inhibit rational diplomacy? Under what circumstances do the authorities allow or even encourage citizens to take to the streets to organize demonstrations? When do they shut down protests and bring activists in to “drink tea,” a thinly veiled warning that failure to improve their behavior will result in more strenuous penalties. Chen Weiss presents seven case studies. Two involve the United States: the apparently accidental bombing of the PRC embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and the collision of an American reconnaissance plane with a Chinese air force fighter plane in 2001. Five concern Japan: the demonstrations of 1985, protests in the 1990s, 2005, 2010, and 2012. She argues convincingly that without visible evidence of popular anger, Chinese leaders, being unelected, have greater difficulty convincing foreign observers that public opinion credibly constrains their diplomatic options. Anti-foreign, nationalist protests enable authoritarian leaders to raise the specter of a popular backlash if they make concessions, while discernible efforts to repress nationalist sentiment allow the authorities to play “good cop” relative to extremist voices from the streets.
Still, any actions to diminish the intensity of the demonstrators have serious disadvantages both internationally and internally. Target countries perceive a weakening of central government resolve on the foreign policy issues that brought the protestors to the streets and may be less inclined to meet Beijing’s demands. Domestically, suppressed activists become disillusioned with their government, accusing it of unpatriotic behaviour and even implying that corrupt high-level officials stand to enhance their incomes by collusion with foreign entities. Party and government leaders are acutely aware that the demonstrations they encourage, either tacitly or actively, may be used to bring down the regime. Hence they are sensitive to indications that activists’ demands are straying off message, seguing into slogans urging an end to such practices as illegal confiscation of land, inflation, corruption, and suppression of freedom of expression.
Chen Weiss presents examples of where the Chinese government has succeeded in extracting concessions on the basis of popular pressure. Premier Zhu Rongji, negotiating the PRC’s accession to the World Trade Organization, was able to extract a reduction of ownership in telecommunications and insurance from 51 to 50 percent, persuading US representative Charlene Barshevsky that he would lose his job otherwise. In 2005, Japanese officials attributed their country’s failure to obtain permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council to popular protests in China.
Though not remarked on by the author, the ability of Chinese officials to convince Western negotiators that their jobs are at stake if they cannot get concessions is ongoing. An example that long predates the founding of the PRC occurred during talks between Qing representative Qiying (Ch’i Ying) and British envoy Sir Henry Pottinger over what eventually become the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing. In addition to Barshevsky’s concern for Zhu, in 1985, Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, believing that his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine would undermine the position of Chinese leader Hu Yaobang, pledged he would not revisit the shrine, which Chinese activists consider symbolic of Japan’s lack of remorse for the country’s aggression during World War II.
Two years later, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, pressing Japan for a concession on the ownership of a disputed dormitory as well as additional aid, told Japanese officials “it will be impossible to explain [these actions] to the people. It will be impossible to control them. I want you to understand this position which [party and government] are in” (102). A Japanese analyst commented that whenever political disagreements arose, Tokyo attached the highest priority to avoiding serious confrontation and made the concessions necessary to defuse the crisis.
Despite the author’s efforts, it is difficult to thread a path through the murky waters of less than transparent high-level diplomacy, and some oddities appear. This reviewer was puzzled by the statement that, after the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989, Japan rewarded China for Chinese restraint. Perhaps it should have been the other way around. The Japanese government, though publicly opposed to sanctions against China, acquiesced to American pressure, and ended them as soon as possible. Japanese business people were the first to return to China after June 4, some even arriving before their government had deemed their presence safe. Tokyo was roundly criticized by democracy activists, some of whom threatened violence against Japanese citizens for supporting the Beijing leadership.
There is an occasional tendency to accept soothing diplomatic rhetoric as reality. The Japanese ambassador’s statement in the mid-1990s that Sino-Japanese relations were the best in the new decade belied serious underlying tensions. While the Japanese government and business community were eager to soothe relations, public opinion was horrified by the murder of unarmed civilians, and views of the PRC took a sharply negative turn. Chen Weiss describes the Japanese government’s reaction to the National People’s Congress passing, in 1992, a law unilaterally declaring sovereignty as mild. Yet it was only publicly so; the declaration threatened to scuttle a long-planned visit by the imperial couple to China, which officials on each side had, for their own reasons, desired. The law also provides needed context to Japan’s efforts to resist China’s efforts to take control of the disputed islands, which Tokyo had incorporated in 1895, and energized nationalist sentiments in Japan. While there is much evidence of Japanese concern for the position of Chinese administrators, there is no indication of Chinese leadership concern for their Japanese counterparts and relatively little examination of the influence of Japanese domestic politics on its government’s decision-making.
Allegations that the Japanese foreign ministry was far too accommodative to China came to a head in 2002, when Chinese police entered the Japanese consulate-general in Shenyang to extricate a North Korean family who had sought refuge there. The incident, unmentioned in this volume, discredited the so-called China School in the Japanese foreign ministry, thereby narrowing the bargaining space for the solution of disputes.
Withal, Chen Weiss sustains her argument well. A prudent Chinese leadership should, she counsels, balance the long-term risks of stoking Chinese nationalism against the short-term gains of diplomatic pressure. This is a book well worth reading.
June Teufel Dreyer
University of Miami, Florida, USA
pp. 403-405