China’s Foreign Policies and Attitudes toward Chinese Diaspora: A Direct Link?

Abstract

Do China’s foreign policies and actions as a state directly influence public opinion toward Chinese diaspora? Notwithstanding the multitude of studies and commentaries on the rise of China and its consequences on the regional and global orders, evidence, and insights on the topic have been lacking. We answer this question through two original, nationally representative survey experiments in Indonesia and by leveraging both contemporary dynamics related to China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia and historical discrimination against ethnic Chinese minorities in the country. We examine whether information about a positive (negative) international issue related to China as a state leads to more positive (negative) attitudes toward Chinese Indonesians. Our findings, consistently replicated in the two surveys, show that information about positive or negative international issues concerning China has only little impacts on attitudes toward ethnic Chinese. To the extent that these issues matter, they mostly affect perceptions toward China itself, not toward ethnic Chinese.