NEW ORLEANS — The Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) held its annual conference from January 10-13, 2024 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Georgia State University student, PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication, and TCV Presidential Fellow, Alex Keyu Chen presented research including “De-westernizing Democracy: How China Rebranded and Promoted Itself as ‘Democracy’?” in the panel of “Great power competition and third parties,” “Digital Diplomacy in Comparison: How do China and the U.S. Diplomats Engage the Digital Audience of Each Other?” In the panel of “ Domestic publics and transnational governance” and “China’s Public Diplomacy: Evolution of Topics and Sentiments towards the U.S. in Remarks of Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson” in the panel of “International Organizations, Foreign Policy, and IR Theory”
Presentation 1: “De-westernizing Democracy: How China Rebranded and Promoted Itself as ‘Democracy’?” in the panel of “Great power competition and third parties”
Abstract:
The current scholarship on nation branding focuses on the state’s behavior of positive messaging to construct and promote a competitive national image to the international community, while the obstructive approach to delegitimizing the rival states to showcase the institutional superiority of self is virtually neglected. This study scrutinized the Chinese government’s White Paper on Chinese democracy, the diplomatic Twitter account, and state-owned media articles during the U.S.-organized “Summit for Democracy”, revealing that the Chinese regime adopted both promotive and obstructive approaches to rebranding itself as a “democracy”. This study identified rhetorical strategies of the Chinese propaganda apparatus in rebranding “democracy”, and uncovered how the Party-State attempted to de-westernize “democracy” in the context of heightened ideological competition between China and the U.S./West.
Presentation 2: “Digital Diplomacy in Comparison: How do China and the U.S. Diplomats Engage the Digital Audience of Each Other?” In the panel of “ Domestic publics and transnational governance”
Abstract:
The Western media and academia created the term “wolf warrior” diplomacy to describe Chinese diplomatic assertiveness. The current literature pays more attention to China’s digital diplomacy on a stand-alone basis rather than a comparative basis and focuses more on strategies rather than sentiments. Therefore, this study presents preliminary research to systematically compare the digital diplomacy sentiment of Chinese ambassadors in the U.S. and American ambassadors in China. This study reveals a balanced approach in terms of how both countries deploy positive and negative tweets toward each other. The study contributes to the literature on China’s digital diplomacy by analyzing China’s digital diplomacy compared to its U.S. counterparts. In addition, this study helps shift the focus from diplomatic narrative strategies to foreign policy narrative sentiments. For China-U.S. relations, this study suggests that China’s offensive talks involving other diplomats on other diplomatic occasions do not constitute the generalized shift of China’s foreign policy narrative. Instead, the foreign policy narrative sentiment is more topic-based and issue driven.
Presentation 3: “China’s Public Diplomacy: Evolution of Topics and Sentiments towards the U.S. in Remarks of Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson” in the panel of “International Organizations, Foreign Policy, and IR Theory”
Abstract:
This study attempts to explore China’s foreign policy narrative in traditional diplomatic venues, helping to reshift the research on China’s public diplomacy from digital context to offline context. Employing computer-assisted sentiment analysis and topic modeling, this study examined the dataset of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Ministry Press Conference. This study compared China’s foreign policy narrative sentiment towards the United States (6,843 question-answer dyads) and China’s overall foreign policy narrative sentiment towards the international community (28,447 question-answer dyads) in the past two decades, ascertained which spokesman had the most positive or negative sentiments, and the evolving prominence of ideology-related topics in the bilateral relations. The findings have implications for the current China-U.S. relations and China’s public diplomacy.
The Southern Political Science Association, founded in 1929, is one of the oldest and largest political science organizations in the United States. Its purpose is to research projects in theoretical and practical political issues and encourage communication among scholars in academic and practical government and politics.