Observers of China’s propaganda system cannot help but note the importance the leadership places on generating and maintaining consensus (gongshi) on key issues. It is this search for consensus between the state and the public, and what the authorities do when a foreign policy crisis illuminates a misalignment between the two, that motivates this impressive study by Frances Yaping Wang. The Art of State Persuasion: China’s Strategic Use of Media in Interstate Disputes investigates the puzzle of why authoritarian states choose to publicize international disputes that they previously ignored and, more intriguingly, why they sometimes choose to use the news media to voice an outspoken position on a dispute, and in the process draw additional attention to it, despite pursuing a relatively moderate foreign policy line. Wang’s argument focuses on two very different motivations driving publicity campaigns – mobilization and pacification – both designed to align public opinion with the state’s foreign policy position. She argues that the existence of a state-led media campaign in foreign policy crises points neither to any particular attitude on the part of the public nor to the position of the state, but rather their (mis)alignment in relation to one another. In other words, when both the public and the state prefer a moderate policy, and when both prefer a hardline policy, media campaigns are unnecessary. In contrast, the state embarks on a media campaign when it seeks to close the gap between its own position and that of the public, regardless of whether the public is more hawkish or more dovish than the state. Wang’s claim about pacification, which occurs when the state’s moderate position is confronted by a hawkish public, is particularly interesting because it is counterintuitive that the state would use seemingly aggressive rhetoric to draw attention to a dispute in order to calm the public.

After a very well-organized introduction that lays out the entire case, Wang proceeds in chapter one to build the theory of foreign policy (mis)alignment and explore the processes involved with using the media for mobilization and pacification. Chapter two provides a brief overview of the development of the CCP’s propaganda system from its earliest period until today, as well as the position of the news media in that system, before assessing China’s 21 territorial crises since 1949, with the aim of determining which ones led to a media campaign by the government. At the same time, Wang tests the plausibility of her central claim and demonstrates that misalignment is reliably associated with state media campaigns. Chapters three to five examine case studies of four disputes – three involving Vietnam and one the Philippines – investigating a typical mobilization campaign (the Sino-Vietnamese border war), a typical pacification campaign (the Sino-Philippines South China Sea arbitration), and two cases where media campaigns did not occur due to alignment on either a hawkish/hardline or dovish/moderate position (the 2011 cable-cutting incident and the 2014 oil rig crisis). This allows Wang to cover all four quadrants of her (mis)alignment framework. Chapter six uses textual analysis to delve into the subtle but important differences between the valence, topics and emotions of mobilization campaigns and those of pacification campaigns, before chapter seven considers the implications for other autocracies by reversing the lens to examine Vietnam’s experience of the oil-rig crisis.

Scholars of China’s media and foreign policy will be particularly interested in how Wang manages to identify the different emotional contours of the two types of campaigns, showing how the aggressive negative emotions of anger and hatred appear more often in mobilization campaigns, while the more passive negative emotions of fear or sadness are more likely to be found in pacification campaigns. Another fascinating observation appears in the pacification case of the South China Sea arbitration dispute, where Wang argues (p. 139) that the frequent quoting of foreign voices and foreign articles that support China’s position is an indication that the Chinese government is taking a less harsh line on the dispute, since – unlike bellicose statements direct from Chinese sources – the expression of foreign views is unlikely to be interpreted by the counter-party as signalling China’s desire for escalation.

A particular mention should be made of the breadth of methodological expertise on display in the book. Wang combines an impressive range of qualitative and quantitative methods in a meticulous investigation that never shies away from addressing possible objections. Even when the data is on less solid ground, such as when the book deals with the question of historical public opinion, everything is laid out clearly for the reader to follow, and the extent to which Wang grapples openly with the issue of rigour and tests alternative explanations such as diversionary strategies or audience costs is laudable. Anyone with an interest in combining qualitative and quantitative methods to study the intersection of Chinese media and foreign policy would benefit from reading this important work.