How is "China insult" deployed to mobilise political support among overseas Chinese community for the Chinese communist party?

Abstract

The 21st century sees a crucial evolution of authoritarian regimes across the world. Increasingly, authoritarian countries such as China, Russia and Syria extends internationally to woo their diasporic communities overseas for economic, political and diplomatic support. This emerging strategy of “the international aspect of authoritarian resilience” gains rising attention in the academia and beyond. This research dissects how the Chinese party-state mobilises political support and build political solidarity among Overseas Chinese Community through external propaganda, particularly the deployment of symbolic resources—“China Insult” (Ruhua). Why does an authoritarian state like that of China extend its control to the diaspora population through strategically designed and aptly executed external propaganda efforts? How does the state propaganda apparatus manipulate symbolic events to build up transnational solidarity with kinfolk beyond the national borders? And how does the party-state convert such mobilization for specific events into more regular pro-regime political, economic, and diplomatic influence overseas? By analysing journalist reports on the alleged “China Insult” incidents by the China News Service—the external propaganda mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party—between 2000 and 2017, this thesis seeks to unveil China’s transnational mobilisation of diaspora groups. It is revealed that the propaganda apparatus of the Chinese party-state built a unified interpretive framework around the symbolic resource “China Insult”. Such a unified interpretive framework creates a shared meaning system centred around nationalist sentiment and victimhood, which in turn gives rise to a shared identity among the Overseas Chinese. The external propaganda machine also encourages the Overseas Chinese to participate in shared actions against the identified “China Insult” incidents. Furthermore, the shared meaning, shared identity and shared actions, under the encouragement of the external propaganda machine, will eventually become the basis for the establishment of stable, exclusive and institutionalized pro-China diasporic network within the host-societies. With tactful deployment of external propaganda and symbolic resources, the Chinese party-state is able to cultivate an overseas political ally residing beyond its borders.