Harnessing the Masses: International Conflict and Chinese Public Opinion

My dissertation project (``Harnessing the Masses: International Conflict and Chinese Public Opinion ) examines the interaction between Chinese foreign policy and public opinion. It comprises three empirical papers. I generalize theories of international relations and political economy developed under democratic settings and explore the role of domestic audiences in Chinese foreign policymaking. My main findings are two-fold. On the one hand, the state holds considerable political resources and plays an influential role in setting the political agenda. It has the power to mobilize popular nationalism in support of hawkish policies under favorable circumstances (e.g., territorial disputes). On the other hand, blind patriotism or passive loyalty to the authoritarian regime does not fully explain the micro-level dynamics of public opinion. Chinese citizens are sophisticated and deliberate when processing information about international conflict, which generates bottom-up pressure and constrains the authoritarian state. My dissertation challenges the conventional wisdom that the domestic audience is solely driven by state-led nationalism and that the authoritarian government can garner public support at zero cost. In the first paper (``External Coercion and Public Support ), I explore the dynamics of public support in the US--China trade war using two waves of online surveys and large-scale social media data. In the survey experiments, I randomly assign respondents to different hypothetical bargaining outcomes based on the real-world interaction between China and the US. I uncover two main causal mechanisms that explain the variations in public approval of the government: the state’s reputation for resolve and the economic consequences. The relative explanatory power of the two mechanisms is contingent on individual preferences and situational changes. Additional topic analysis on a large corpus of social media data collected during the US--China trade war reaffirms the importance of the two mechanisms and discloses the temporal variation in popular topics, especially citizens’ increasing economic considerations. I also discover considerable differences between social media content and official messages, indicating the state’s imperfect control over the public discourse. In the second paper (``Does Nationalism Rally Political Support for Authoritarian States? ), I evaluate the logic of diversionary conflict under the Chinese context. I examine the change of general political attitudes based on two major conflicts: the 2012 Diaoyu Islands dispute and the 2018–19 US--China trade war. With survey data collected before and after the outbreak of the two conflicts, I test whether international conflict can boost domestic support for the authoritarian government. I separate the concept of nationalism into two dimensions: anti-foreign sentiment (negative) and in-group solidarity (positive). I show that while anti-foreign sentiment was moderately strengthened by international conflict, in-group solidarity remained largely stable, and the level of general political support was unchanged. I conclude that the domestic benefits of international conflict should not be exaggerated: The temporary spike in anti-foreign sentiment does not necessarily dampen citizens’ sensitivity to domestic problems or make citizens less critical of their government. In the third paper (``Weaponizing the Masses: Popular Nationalism and Chinese Economic Statecraft ), I explore the state’s influence on public opinion and its relationship with economic statecraft. Specifically, I estimate the effect of interstate conflict on economic exchanges mediated by state mobilization of popular nationalism. I argue that state-sponsored nationalism disrupts international economic exchanges and conveys a costly signal of resolve to the targeted state. One mechanism I highlight is that popular nationalism powerfully politicizes economic issues and pressures economic agents to follow the red flag. For the empirical analysis, I first examine two sets of cases from 2008 to 2019, including major conflicts between China and Japan, South Korea and the US respectively, and two most similar events between China and France and the UK that are expected to have the so-called ``Dalai Lama Effect. I show that the economic impact of political conflict is not homogeneous, and that stronger nationalist activism (as indicated by large-scale protests and consumer boycotts) is associated with a sharper decline in Chinese imports from other countries. To make a stronger causal claim, I examine regional variations in popular nationalism in the 2012 Diaoyu Islands dispute and discover a negative effect of nationalism on imports and direct investments from Japan using the diff-in-diff (DID) design. Taken together, my dissertation unveils a sophisticated picture of Chinese nationalism. On the one hand, the disruptive effect of popular nationalism on economic exchanges makes it a coercive tool for state leaders to impose sanctions on foreign actors. On the other hand, the state’s influence over public opinion should not be exaggerated as citizens still make sophisticated calculations of the conflict and their support for the government is not unconditional. Under certain circumstances, public support for hawkish policies may dwindle and state leaders are incentivized to back down

Hawkish Partisans:How Political Parties Shape Nationalist Conflicts in China and Japan

It is well known that regime types affect international conflicts. This article explores political parties as a mechanism through which they do so. Political parties operate in fundamentally different ways in democracies vs. non-democracies, which has consequences for foreign policy. Core supporters of a party in a democracy, if they are hawkish, may be more successful at demanding hawkish behavior from their party representatives than would be their counterparts in an autocracy. The study draws on evidence from paired experiments in democratic Japan and non-democratic China to show that supporters of the ruling party in Japan punish their leaders for discouraging nationalist protests, while ruling party insiders in China are less likely to do so. Under some circumstances, then, non-democratic regimes may be better able to rein in peace-threatening displays of nationalism

The changes of T lymphocytes and cytokines in ICR mice fed with Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles

The aim of this article is to study the changes inhibited T lymphocytes and cytokines related to the cellular immunity in ICR (imprinting control region) mice fed with Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (Fe3O4-MNPs). The Fe3O4-MNPs were synthesized, and their characteristics such as particle size, zeta potential, and X-ray diffraction patterns were measured and determined. All ICR mice were sacrificed after being exposed to 0, 300, 600, and 1200 mg/kg of Fe3O4-MNPs by single gastric administration for 14 days. Splenocytes proliferation was indicated with stimulate index by MTT assay; release of cytokines in the serum of ICR mice was detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and the phenotypic analyses of T-lymphocyte subsets were performed using flow cytometry. Our results indicated that there were no significant differences in splenocyte proliferation and release of cytokines between exposed and control groups. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in the proportions of T-lymphocyte subsets in the low-dose Fe3O4-MNPs group when compared to the control group, but the proportions of CD3+CD4+ and CD3+CD8+ T-lymphocyte subsets both in the medium- and high-dose Fe3O4-MNPs groups were higher than those in the control group. It is concluded that a high dose of Fe3O4-MNPs, to some extent, could influence in vivo immune function of normal ICR mice

Switching costs in stochastic environments drive the emergence of matching behaviour in animal decision-making through the promotion of reward learning strategies

A principle of choice in animal decision-making named probability matching (PM) has long been detected in animals, and can arise from different decision-making strategies. Little is known about how environmental stochasticity may influence the switching time of these different decision-making strategies. Here we address this problem using a combination of behavioral and theoretical approaches, and show, that although a simple Win-Stay-Loss-Shift (WSLS) strategy can generate PM in binary-choice tasks theoretically, budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) actually apply a range of sub-tactics more often when they are expected to make more accurate decisions. Surprisingly, budgerigars did not get more rewards than would be predicted when adopting a WSLS strategy, and their decisions also exhibited PM. Instead, budgerigars followed a learning strategy based on reward history, which potentially benefits individuals indirectly from paying lower switching costs. Furthermore, our data suggest that more stochastic environments may promote reward learning through significantly less switching. We suggest that switching costs driven by the stochasticity of an environmental niche can potentially represent an important selection pressure associated with decision-making that may play a key role in driving the evolution of complex cognition in animals

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

The Relationship between Betatrophin Levels in Blood and T2DM: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background. In order to clarify previous ambiguous research conclusions, a meta-analysis was made to investigate the relationship between betatrophin levels in blood and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods. We have searched all the English and Chinese references regarding the relationship between betatrophin and diabetes in database both manually and online. Strict criteria have been established to include and exclude articles, with Mean and Standard Deviation as statistics to evaluate strength of association. We have chosen either fixed- or random effect model according to heterogeneity inspection results and used Begg’s test and Egger’s test to analyze publication bias. Results. A total of 11 studies were included in this meta-analysis. Meta-analysis indicated a significant association between betatrophin and T2DM (Mean: 329.46; 95% confidence interval: 182.51 to 476.42, P<0.0001). However, in the subgroup analysis, there was no significant statistic between betatrophin concentration and T2DM within Caucasian population (Mean: 98.40; 95% confidence interval: −1585.08 to 1781.88, P=0.91). Conclusions. Such relationship may suggest preference for association between betatrophin and T2DM in different population