One of the most difficult yet important tasks in political science is to link domestic politics to foreign policy in a meaningful way. As Robert Putnam wrote many years ago, nations are not very good at assessing the domestic political trends of other nations. As a result, the leaders of one nation are largely informed about conditions in another country by the leaders of those countries— hardly an unbiased source. This problem becomes all the more difficult with an authoritarian country. In Powerful Patriots, Jessica Chen Weiss probes one important aspect in the linkage between domestic politics and foreign policy in an authoritarian country by looking at nationalist protests in China and the way in which they have affected relations with other countries, particularly Japan and the United States.

In recent years, China has witnessed a number of nationalist outbursts. Most of them have been directed against Japan (in 1985, 2005, 2010, and 2012), but there was a major protest against the United States following the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and, too recently for this book, there were protests directed at South Korea. Scholars have looked at such protests along a spectrum ranging from the idea that they are simply manufactured by Beijing to make a point to foreign governments, to the notion that China is seething with populist nationalism that poses a threat to social stability and perhaps even regime survival. Chen Weiss tries to wend her away in between these poles, taking the view that such nationalist protests do indeed express populist outrage, but that Beijing faces choices about allowing the expression of these emotions or repressing potential outbursts.

According to the author, China is therefore engaged in a complex calculus. There are both domestic and diplomatic axes. On the domestic side, the Chinese government has to express sympathy with nationalism, at least some of the time, to maintain credibility as a protector of Chinese interests. At the same time, if left to develop on their own, nationalist protests could run out of control, spill over into areas of domestic concern, and threaten regime stability. On the diplomatic level, China needs to convince skeptical foreign nations that the force of nationalism is real and that, therefore, China cannot further compromise whatever negotiation is at hand. At the same time, the Chinese government must prevent protests from growing to the point that they threaten Chinese interests, say, by discouraging foreign investment. The more the government represses the expression of nationalism, the more it undermines its credibility with foreign governments, but not repressing the expression of nationalism potentially undermines political stability.

Chen Weiss tests her hypotheses through several well-documented case studies. These case studies, which reconstruct the protests and the diplomatic interactions that followed, are the strength of the book. Her research is careful and the explanations convincing. The difficulty, as always, is that it is far easier to reconstruct the thinking of the Japanese or American governments than it is the Chinese. There are, of course, always different groups in China, some desiring to push nationalist causes for their own reasons, others wishing to restrain them. And it is extremely difficult to know how the government’s handling of a protest affects different interests within the Chinese government.

The government’s decision to repress or allow nationalist protests depends on their perceived utility in pursuing a diplomatic outcome. Thus, with respect to the Sino-Japanese disputes in 2010 over the handling of a fishing captain, and in 2012, over the purchase of three of the Senkaku Islands from their private owner, Chen Weiss writes: “It was not until China perceived Japan as reneging on the tacit agreement to shelve the territorial dispute that it allowed anti-Japanese protests to take place” (p. 221). This phrasing suggests that there is a constant presence of anti-Japanese national feeling that can be turned on or off more or less at will. But if this is true, it to some extent undercuts the argument that repressing such protests threatens the government’s nationalist credibility; foreign governments, particularly Japan, should presumably understand that popular nationalism is always present.

Outsiders generally perceive nationalism in China as rising, but Chen Weiss’ argument cannot test this proposition. Her assumption appears to be that there is a more or less constant reservoir of nationalism to be exploited at will by the government. Yet it would seem likely that after a number of protests, nationalist leaders would gain greater skills and that protests would be legitimized, focusing the public’s attention on the issue and building a greater potential for larger and more violent protests.

It is not just repeated protests that exhibit this potential, however; it is the government’s own propaganda. Chinese television regularly shows movies about China’s “War of Resistance” against Japan, replaying Japanese atrocities and Chinese heroism (while omitting that most of that heroism was on the Nationalist side). And nationalistic papers like the Global Times keep fanning the flames of nationalism. So the underlying question is, why does the Chinese government find this nationalism useful? The usual answer is that as the appeal of Marxism-Leninism has waned, the government has leaned more heavily on nationalism. Such an explanation suggests it is not so much that there is a steady reserve of nationalism ready to be mobilized as it is that nationalism has to be cultivated and nurtured. Memories do not occur in a vacuum.

A related question would be the attitude of the leaders of China. It appears that the Chinese leadership, for institutional, legitimacy, or generational reasons, has become more nationalistic over the years. The obvious example of a leader with a friendlier attitude toward Japan was Hu Yaobang, who in 1983 famously invited 3,000 Japanese youth to visit China. After his ouster, attitudes seemed to harden. Jiang Zemin had to protect himself against rumors that his father collaborated with the Japanese, and Xi Jinping, reflecting either China’s greater capacity or his generation’s greater nationalism, or both, seems determined to adopt a more activist foreign policy.

In short, Chen Weiss has helped us open the black box that connects domestic politics with foreign policy. Her probing of nationalist protests is thorough and nuanced. One could probe more deeply the signals sent by the Chinese government to different audiences—government officials, youth, nationalists—through different media, how popular emotions are both stoked and controled. And, one could try to explore more deeply the attitudes and changing attitudes of Chinese elites, but doing so is difficult. Overall, Powerful Patriots makes an outstanding contribution to an understanding of the link between public attitudes and foreign policy. In doing so, however, it leaves us wanting more. As Chinese society develops and pluralizes, these questions will be of increasing importance.