'State endorsers' : investigating nonstate actors in China's digital public diplomacy

Abstract

Public diplomacy is based on the Western framework in which actors are dichotomically divided into state and nonstate actors—a binary concept that originates in the idea of a democratic state. This study argues, however, that the Western concept of public diplomacy is insufficient for our understanding of authoritarian regimes. It applies postcolonial critique to scrutinize public diplomacy and highlights the need for non-Western terminology. It then develops state endorser as a novel concept to fill this theoretical gap in public diplomacy scholarship. The thesis argues that “state endorser” better captures the role of individual pro-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) foreigners in China’s digital public diplomacy. It aims to investigate these seemingly nonstate actors and answer the following questions: What is their background and how are they recruited? What is their rationale behind working for Chinese propaganda? How successful are they compared with China’s state diplomacy actors? A cross-platform data analysis on Twitter and YouTube (153,932 videos and 5.41 million comments) shows that Chinese officials proactively promote these state endorsers, thus creating the impression of diverse voices supporting China’s policies. It also shows that the state endorsers successfully extend China’s public diplomacy to engage new audiences— amounting to a 48% increase on YouTube and 29% on Twitter—making them fairly effective public diplomacy actors. It also indicates that among all Chinese government officials, Zhao Lijian was the early adopter of sharing individual foreigners’ YouTube videos on Twitter to address politically sensitive issues in mid-2019. Through 14 semi-structured interviews with state endorsers, the thesis reveals that most of them genuinely believe in the official Chinese narrative. The findings stand in contrast to Western stereotypes about individuals who are manipulated to promote pro-China narratives. The results suggest that most state endorsers truly subscribed to the official narratives of Chinese propaganda and strongly accepted the notion that the rest of the world misunderstands China. They did not mind serving as part of China’s external propaganda. The interviewees were well aware of the conflict in values and controversy in geopolitics but self-justified their moves for several reasons: China’s rise and prospects, “whataboutism,” and their unfavorable encounters with Western and other foreign media outlets. This study finds no evidence that this group of state endorsers were motivated by financial incentives, but rather they were motivated by intangible rewards such as recognition, influence, and respect. This thesis thus fills a conceptual gap in public diplomacy scholarship for studying non-Western and non-democratic regimes by developing state endorser as a novel concept. State endorsers appear as nonstate actors to the audience and serve the interests of the authoritarian state. They have five key characteristics: (1) they act as individuals; (2) they are non-Chinese; (3) their credibility depends on perceived expertise and authenticity; (4) they enjoy special status in the authoritarian regime and (5) they are amplified by officials. The thesis concludes by arguing that using the term “state endorser” provides better conceptual clarity and empirical operationalizability for understanding the role of pro-regime foreigners in China’s increasingly assertive digital diplomacy.