SCCEI Launches "Big Data China" in Collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Panel Discussants

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Highlights from the panel’s distinguished discussants can be found below.

Bruce Dickson, Georgetown University

“[Pan and Xu’s research is] revealing something that we didn’t know before…ideology in China, or the variety of shared values in the country, is multidimensional and not two-dimensional [right and left] as in the United States…it turns out there’s five or six different dimensions that are only moderately correlated with one another. So, for that reason, even though people with liberal values may have critical attitudes toward the regime, they’re not necessarily opposed to it because they have values in other dimensions that lead them to support the status quo.

Carla Freeman, United States Institute of Peace

“[Pan and Xu] are definitely pushing against what seems to be a growing tendency in Washington of viewing China and viewing Chinese citizens as a monolith, with all of its citizens kind of reading out of a nationalist Xi Jinping ideological playbook. They’re telling us that Chinese citizens have diverse perspectives on politics, economics, and [that] they may be more or less nationalistic. It’s a very complicated picture.

[The data] suggest that [China’s] people are not going to be happy with an economy where redistributionist policies are seen as impeding individual opportunities, or benefitting some groups over others, or policies even in which strategic state-owned enterprises are seen to squeeze out economic opportunity. And, you know, you’ve already seen reports about the debate in China over how you’re going to actually narrow the income gap without stifling entrepreneurial activity. So redistributionist policies are hardly ever easy. And it looks like it’s going to be a real challenge for the Chinese leadership, these survey data suggest, despite the ideological campaign that is – that’s framing it.

Suisheng Zhao, University of Denver

“I don’t think [China’s leader Xi Jinping] will listen [to this research]. No one dares talk to him about that. I don’t think this type of research, or these types of findings, will have a significant impact upon China’s policy direction, at least under Xi Jinping.”

Jessica Chen Weiss, Cornell University

“Not all 1.4 billion Chinese citizens think alike, nor are they unthinking automatons brainwashed by the CCP. They are willing to voice opinions. They’re very savvy about finding space, even though it’s shrinking, for independent thinking. And even though they may be silent in the public square, they’re still willing in these kinds of surveys, face to face or online, to express some opinions where we can discern differences from the party line… [observers] really ought to keep in mind that citizens in the PRC are not either purely victims or pawns.

“Helping policymakers recognize, again, the diversity of opinion inside China is really crucial to resisting this kind of growing fatalism around China’s trajectory under Xi Jinping and illuminating the humanity inside China at a time when there are these ever-growing barriers to people-to-people as well as commercial exchange.”

“I do worry a little bit about the tagline [of this event], “A Liberal Silent Majority,” because there are some who might exaggerate the implications. Because I think nothing in what [Pan and Xu] found suggests that the PRC is on the verge of collapse or a groundswell of opposition that could jeopardize Xi Jinping’s continued rule.

“I think a really important takeaway from [Pan and Xu’s] research is that PRC citizens, while patriotic, are not spoiling for war. But at the same time, I think nationalism provides the backdrop for understanding the PRC’s sensitivity to public versus private pressure. And we know from theirs as well as others’ research that U.S. efforts to criticize domestic abuses inside the PRC can backfire, especially if tinged with racism, rallying support behind the CCP, and reducing support for liberalism.

“While attitudes [found in Pan in Xu’s research] might be relatively stable in peacetime, and that Beijing might expect domestic criticism for launching an unprovoked war, I think that’s different from the kind of support the government might expect in a crisis. And I think it’s, in fact, in a crisis that we might expect the government to be most sensitive to public opinion, as well as to proactively seek to manage it.”

“Taking that to a hypothetical militarized crisis, for example, in the Taiwan Strait, I think we need to be careful not to read too much into the—kind of the stable baseline opposition or lack of support for war, because in a moment like what would happen and how—with propaganda and the messages that citizens received about what outsiders were doing to potentially provoke a conflict, how would that shape public support, is really a big and open question.

“If what the United States or others want to ultimately see from the PRC is movement toward more liberal economic and political policies, then more confrontational or competitive actions, as they’re often termed, on national security grounds may actually be putting those other objectives further beyond reach.”