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With the future of liberal internationalism in question, how will China's growing power and influence reshape world politics? We argue that views of the Liberal International Order (LIO) as integrative and resilient have been too optimistic for two reasons. First, China's ability to profit from within the system has shaken the domestic consensus in the United States on preserving the existing LIO. Second, features of Chinese Communist Party rule chafe against many of the fundamental principles of the LIO, but could coexist with a return to Westphalian principles and markets that are embedded in domestic systems of control. How, then, do authoritarian states like China pick and choose how to engage with key institutions and norms within the LIO? We propose a framework that highlights two domestic variables—centrality and heterogeneity—and their implications for China's international behavior. We illustrate the framework with examples from China's approach to climate change, trade and exchange rates, Internet governance, territorial sovereignty, arms control, and humanitarian intervention. Finally, we conclude by considering what alternative versions of international order might emerge as China's influence grows.

Economic statistics inform citizens of general conditions, while central leaders use them to evaluate local officials. Are economic data systematically manipulated? After establishing discrepancies in economic data series cross-nationally, this article examines Chinese sub-national growth data. It leverages variation in the likelihood of manipulation over two dimensions, arguing that politically sensitive data are more likely to be manipulated at politically sensitive times. Gross domestic product (GDP) releases generate headlines, while highly correlated electricity production and consumption data are relatively unnoticed. In Chinese provinces, the difference between GDP and electricity growth increases in years with leadership turnover, which is consistent with juking the stats for political reasons. The analysis points to the political role of information and the limits of non-electoral accountability mechanisms in authoritarian regimes.

Governments rely more and more on experts to manage the increasingly complex problems posed by a growing, diversifying, globalizing world. Surplus technocracy, however, usually comes with deficits of democracy. While especially true in liberal regimes, authoritarian states often face parallel dynamics. Recent trends illustrate how technocratic encroachment on civil society’s prerogatives can provoke populist backlash. Such cycles can build toward crises by eroding the legitimacy citizens invest in regimes. Surprisingly, by throwing both the need for and limits of expertise into sharp relief, the politics of COVID-19 create a novel opportunity to disrupt these trends. We assess how this opportunity may be unfolding in two crucial cases, the United States and China, and, more briefly, South Korea. We conclude by sketching some theoretical considerations to guide a geographically expanded and temporally extended research agenda on this important opportunity to slow or reverse a trend plaguing modern governance.

Why do some Chinese cities take part in waves of nationalist protest but not others? Nationalist protest remains an important but understudied topic within the study of contentious politics in China, particularly at the subnational level. Relative to other protests, nationalist mobilization is more clustered in time and geographically widespread, uniting citizens in different cities against a common target. Although the literature has debated the degree of state-led and grassroots influence on Chinese nationalism, we argue that it is important to consider both the propensity of citizens to mobilize and local government fears of instability. Analysing an original dataset of 377 anti-Japanese protests across 208 of 287 Chinese prefectural cities, we find that both state-led patriotism and the availability of collective action resources were positively associated with nationalist protest, particularly “biographically available” populations of students and migrants. In addition, the government's role was not monolithically facilitative. Fears of social unrest shaped the local political opportunity structure, with anti-Japanese protests less likely in cities with larger populations of unemployed college graduates and ethnic minorities and more likely in cities with established leaders. 为何有的城市加入到民族主义抗议浪潮之中而有的城市却没有? 民族主义抗议, 特别是在地方层面上, 始终是一个在中国抗争性政治学领域重要却仍待探索的课题。与其他抗议相比, 民族主义的动员在时间上比较集中而在地域分布上也比较广泛, 将不同城市的公民朝着一个共同的目标联系起来。尽管现有文献已经对国家引导与民间力量对中国民族主义的影响程度进行过争论, 我们认为将公民的动员倾向与当地政府对不稳定的恐惧两者同时纳入考虑范围是很重要的。通过分析一组包含中国 287 个地级市中发生在 208 个市内的 377 次反日抗议的原创性数据, 我们发现国家引导下的爱国主义与集体行动资源的可利用性两者都与民族主义抗议呈正性关联, 特别是对于学生和流动人口等拥有比较充裕的时间的人群。此外, 政府的角色也不是一味的促进。对社会不安的忧虑塑造了当地的政治机会架构, 使得反日抗议在有很多未就业大学毕业生和少数民族人口的地方发生的可能性较小, 而在有地位巩固的领导者的城市发生的可能性较大。

Cities bring together masses of people, allow them to communicate and hide, and transform private grievances into political causes, often erupting in urban protests that can destroy regimes. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shaped urbanization via migration restrictions and redistributive policy since 1949 in ways that help account for the regime’s endurance, China’s surprising comparative lack of slums, and its curious moves away from urban bias over the past decade. Cities and Stability details the threats that cities pose for authoritarian regimes, regime responses to those threats, and how those responses can backfire by exacerbating the growth of slums and cities. Both cross-national analyses of nondemocratic regime survival and in-depth investigation of China’s management of urbanization detail this urban threat. In response, many regimes, including the CCP, favor cities in their policy-making. Cities and Stability shows this urban bias to be a Faustian bargain, stabilizing large cities today but encouraging their growth and concentration over time. The Chinese regime created a household registration (hukou) system to limit urban migration while attempting to industrialize, allowing urbanites to be favored but keeping farmers in the countryside. As these barriers eroded with economic reforms, the regime began to replace repression-based restrictions with economic incentives to avoid slums by improving economic opportunities in the countryside. Yet during the global Great Recession of 2008‒9, the political value of the hukou system emerged as migrant workers, by the tens of millions, left coastal cities and dispersed across China’s interior villages, counties, and cities.

For the past few years, China’s urbanization policy has focused on expanding welfare and affordable housing for rural migrants so as to encourage them to put down roots in the city. The international literature disagrees on the relationship between homeownership and welfare—whether the former is a substitute for or a consequence of the latter. Using multilevel logistic regression on a 2015 nationally representative survey, this paper explores the determinants of housing ownership among China’s rural migrant households in their city of residence, focusing particularly on access to urban social insurance. The results show that institutional ties to the city such as enrollment in local pensions and health insurance are associated with higher likelihood of homeownership. This paper argues that policy interventions should target the social security system, as rural migrants are likely unwilling or unable to invest in urban housing due to the increased risk and precarity they typically experience. The findings also suggest that to make urbanization more sustainable, the government should aim at making cities more family-friendly, expanding alternatives to employment-based social insurance schemes, and targeting efforts on interior cities in migrant-sourcing provinces that pose fewer barriers to permanent settlement.

We explore whether international disputes harm commerce by galvanizing consumer boycotts of foreign products. Boycotts increase the social penalty of owning goods associated with a foreign adversary, offsetting individual incentives to free ride or discount the utility of participation. By harming international commerce, boycotts can help reveal information about resolve and avoid more costly forms of conflict. Using administrative data on the universe of new passenger vehicle registration records in China from 2009 to 2015, we demonstrate that consumer boycotts that arose amid tensions between China and Japan over a territorial dispute in 2012 had significant and persistent effects on vehicle sales, especially in cities that witnessed anti-Japanese street demonstrations. The market share of Japanese brands dropped substantially during and after the boycott with long lasting effects. Our analysis provides concrete evidence of the short- and long-term impacts of international tensions on economic activities.

What are the consequences of nationalist unrest? This paper utilizes two original datasets, which cover 377 city-level anti-Japanese protests during the 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu Island crisis and the careers of municipal leaders, to analyse the downstream effects of nationalist unrest at the subnational level. We find both political and economic consequences of China's 2012 protest demonstrations against Japan. Specifically, top Party leaders in cities that saw relatively spontaneous, early protests were less likely to be promoted to higher office, a finding that is consistent with the widely held but rarely tested expectation that social instability is punished in the Chinese Communist Party's cadre evaluation system. We also see a negative effect of nationalist protest on foreign direct investment (FDI) growth at the city level. However, the lower promotion rates associated with relatively spontaneous protests appear to arise through political rather than economic channels. By taking into account data on social unrest in addition to economic performance, these results add to existing evidence that systematic evaluation of leaders’ performance plays a major role in the Chinese political system. These findings also illuminate the dilemma that local leaders face in managing popular nationalism amid shifting national priorities. 爱国主义抗议有哪些后果? 通过分析包含 377 次反日示威和市级领导简历的两组原创数据库, 此论文探讨反日示威在次国家层面的后续效应。我们发现 2012 年的反日示威确实导致了政治和经济两方面的后果。具体而言, 在那些有比较自发的、发生时间较早的抗议游行的城市, 市级领导晋升的可能性相对更低。这一观察符合一种广泛存在、但很少证实的猜测, 即维稳方面的政绩已成为中国共产党干部考核制度的重要内容。作者也发现, 爱国主义抗议对地方吸引外商直接投资 (FDI) 有负面影响。但是, 自发的爱国主义示威似乎是通过政治的、而非经济的渠道对市级领导的晋升产生负面影响。通过将社会动乱数据与经济绩效数据相结合, 此研究进一步证实了部绩效系统考核制度在中国政治体系中的主要作用。此研究也有助于理解地方领导在面临国家利益优先次序变动的情况下如何管控爱国主义浪潮的政治困境。

The final section of the book returns to the cross-national level of analysis account for variation in urban bias across nondemocracies. The book’s overall argument claims that urban bias has short-term benefits but also long-term costs. At a moment of crisis when short-term incentives dominated more distant concerns, the Chinese regime did open the floodgates to urban loans in support of urban employment. Do other regimes retreat to urban bias in tough times? The chapter presents cross-national statistical evidence that exploit external events that affect regimes’ revenues and political stability to examine changes in redistributive policy. Negative economic and political shocks lead to redistributive policies that are more urban-biased, akin to political triage as governments attempt to maintain a baseline of support. For importers, global oil price increases represent a drain on resources; similarly, civil wars erupting in neighboring countries can affect political stability at home and shorten time horizons.

The first chapter introduces three puzzles—the longevity of the CCP, China’s comparative lack of slums, and China’s recent fiscal shift away from urban bias—linked by geography. People’s locations and proximity to each other matter politically. China’s relative lack of slums arises from policies that prevent people from moving to them. Taxing agriculture and spending the proceeds in cities encourages urban concentration. The political importance of the location of citizens within a territory is less appreciated. Without other sizable cities to offset its weight, the street politics of a single large city can come to dominate a country’s politics in ways that yield short-lived regimes. A large population can mobilize at a moment’s notice. These mobilizations create the opportunity for political crises to bring down a regime with little warning. Governments shape cities, and the shape of cities can transform the politics of urban and regime instability.