Audience Costs and China’s South China Sea Policy
| DOI | 10.1177/2347797020962635 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Research Article |
Audience Costs and
China’s South China
Sea Policy
Gregory J. Moore1 and Christopher B. Primiano2
Abstract
China’s island building in the South China Sea has received considerable attention
from scholars, the media and policy-related officials in recent years. In this article,
we conduct a survey to assess the opinions of Chinese university students as it
regards their views of any moves by the Chinese government to retreat from
its island building and the South China Sea claims due to international pressure.
Since China has laid claim to much of the South China Sea via its ‘nine-dash line’,
if it were to reverse course and retreat from its man-made islands or remove
military installations, how would that play out domestically? Would the Chinese
government incur audience costs for doing so? We hypothesise that it would.
More specifically, we find it likely that Chinese university students would seek to
hold their government accountable for claims to the South China Sea that it has
made recently, making it more difficult for the government to retreat from or
otherwise adopt a more flexible policy on the South China Sea if it chose to do
so. The findings are significant for the audience costs literature, Chinese foreign
policy, and South China Sea territoriality studies, in addition to having important
policy implications.
Keywords
Audience costs, China, foreign policy, public opinion, South China Sea
Introduction
China’s island building in the South China Sea (SCS) has become quite a hot topic
in recent years, one viewed with much concern by China’s neighbours and the
United States, given the implications of this for China’s ability to both projecting
1 Colorado Christian University, Lakewood, Colorado, USA.
2 KIMEP University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Corresponding author:
Gregory J. Moore, Colorado Christian University, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood, Colorado, 80226.
E-mail: gmoore@ccu.edu
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
7(3) 325 –348, 2020
The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/2347797020962635
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Research Article
326 Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 7(3)
force in and control the SCS. China’s island building certainly represents an
important test case for China’s intentions and the sincerity of its peaceful rise
rhetoric, one with important implications for academic studies of maritime
conflicts, Chinese foreign policy, the audience costs (AC) literature, and security
interests for all in the region. China’s SCS policies do in effect entail the acquisition
of territory that has not arguably belonged to China1 and, according to the results
of the 2016 Hague Tribunal ruling, do not accord with international law. Given the
myriad implications of the rise of China, the Chinese government’s handling of
this case is significant.
In this article, we present the findings from a survey of Chinese university
students, focusing on both China’s island building and the issue of AC in China.
Our main focus here is to examine the domestic political space that the Chinese
government has to manoeuvre as it regards its island building moves and SCS
claims. Given that the Chinese government has engaged in and apparently
completed its island building while simultaneously engaging in a public
information campaign meant to justify and reify its claims in the eyes of the
Chinese public, we hypothesise that it has essentially tied its hands and cannot
make any dramatic moves to reverse course, as that would be viewed domestically
as a failure to follow through on a significant international policy issue, and that
thus would, as a result, incur significant domestic political, or audience, costs.
The findings from this survey are relevant for both the Chinese and US
governments, as well as for policymakers in co-claimant countries such as
Vietnam and the Philippines. For the Chinese government, if the results show that
it would incur significant domestic political costs (i.e., AC) by retreating from its
extant island building and development and claims in the SCS, it is likely that the
governments of the United States, Vietnam and the Philippines may have less
leverage over the Chinese government on this issue than might be the case
otherwise, for AC could limit the policy flexibility of the Chinese leadership. In
other words, if the Chinese government were to give in to international opinion
and/or co-claimants by retreating from its island building or SCS claims, it would
incur significant AC. Our contribution here is thus not only to the AC and other
academic literatures, but also for we believe that the findings of this study have
important policy implications as well.
In this article, we conduct a survey to find out whether or not Chinese university
students would support pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
if it were to reverse its position on the SCS and its acquisition/creation of territories
therein. We hypothesise that the Chinese government is unlikely to retreat from its
island building fait accompli or its territorial claims in the SCS because, given the
ways in which it has framed this issue with its domestic audience, it seems likely
that backing down and reversing its stated policies would be a blow to the regime’s
credibility and would, from the perspective of university students at China’s top
universities, constitute an unacceptable loss of national face.
The article proceeds in four sections. First, we locate the study in an academic
and historical context. Second, we present our research design. Then we present
our survey findings. Last, we offer conclusions and discuss both the policy and
academic/theoretical implications of our findings.
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