Emotions that foster conflict can spread on social media and create pressure for China’s leaders to escalate during an international crisis. Specifically, posts about national humiliation inspire followers to advocate using military force, maintaining China’s territorial disputes, and raising barriers to international trade.

Scholars and policymakers alike often appeal to nationalism and national identity to explain a range of important events, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to China’s ambitions to unify with Taiwan. However, nationalist claims to people and territory often simmer for long periods before suddenly erupting. For example, Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russians and Ukrainians are one people draws on ideas that predate the Soviet Union to the time of the Russian Empire. Similarly, the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between China and Japan has existed in its current form since at least the 1970s, but exploded into China’s largest modern anti-Japan protest in 2012. What explains these dramatic and sudden transformations? 

Catching Fire 

The phrase “catching fire” ( 火了), which is Chinese internet slang for “going viral” seems to accurately convey this phenomenon in which national identities that were held relatively passively suddenly ignite into passionate political action. In a recent article, I examine this process using a dataset of over 1.6 billion Chinese social media posts on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform. I find that emotional changes, which spread from person to person in a process of emotional contagion, are a key factor in igniting political action. Emotions can spread as individuals look to others within their group for cues on how to react and share norms about how to respond to events. When emotions spread, so do their effects on decision making and policy preferences. Emotionally aroused individuals do not make decisions the same way as those who are calm, and certain emotions such as humiliation can increase hostility. As evidence, I show that users’ posts about national humiliation led their followers to post more about national humiliation as well, supporting hostile foreign policy positions such as using military force, maintaining China’s territorial disputes, and raising trade barriers. 

Drawing on work from psychology, I argue that a shared identity provides the key link allowing emotions to spread among individuals. This is because when people experience an emotion that has implications for their group, for example their nation, they can experience emotions on behalf of this group. For instance, an insult to a national symbol, such as someone trampling on a national flag, might anger those who identify with the nation it represents. In the same way, international events, such as the Japanese government purchasing the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands from their private owners can cause Chinese nationalists to experience strong indignation that ignites collective political action, such as the large-scale protests involving thousands in at least 68 cities in China in September 2012. Further, once an event ignites the passions of some citizens, emotional contagion leads others to respond as well.  

My article builds on previous work examining narratives of national humiliation and their possible link to conflict. For decades, the Chinese government has told a narrative of China’s “century of national humiliation” that involves exploitation by imperial powers, starting with the First Opium War in 1839 and ending when the Chinese Communist Party took control of mainland China in 1949. A similar narrative about the humiliation of the collapse of the Soviet Union circulates in Russia. Scholars have suggested that these narratives in China and Russia may be associated with their governments’ willingness to escalate international disputes. My own work has linked humiliation to conflict, showing that experiencing humiliation decreases sensitivity to the cost of conflict. 

Implications for Conflict 

Emotional contagion is significant for foreign policy because leaders, who themselves identify with the nation, are not immune to it. Even cool-headed leaders can experience political pressure to respond to popular passions, especially if these passions lead to pressure campaigns and protests. Leaders themselves are embedded in the same propaganda environment as citizens. As an example, Sulmaan Wasif Khan in his recent book describes a hawkish speech on Taiwan given by China’s then-premier, Zhu Rongji, in 2000. He argues that “childhood lessons” on nationalism led him to give a speech in which “there was no grand strategy […] just blind nationalism. Propaganda aimed at a child had clouded the judgement of one of China’s most intelligent statemen.” The damage this speech did to China’s foreign relations implies these passions were genuinely felt, rather than cheap talk. 

It is reasonably straightforward that, in a democracy, nationalist citizens can punish leaders at the ballot box who betray their cause. However, nationalists can also pressure leaders to adopt aggressive foreign policies even in authoritarian countries, like China and Russia. While leaders know the probability of an angry public removing them from office is low, they also know the consequences of such a removal are likely death or imprisonment, giving them a strong incentive not a run afoul of popular passions. 

My findings on emotional contagion should serve as a caution to governments, including the Chinese government, that tell narratives of national humiliation to attract citizen support. Once the narrative is in circulation, emotions can spread directly from citizen to citizen. The peer-to-peer nature of emotional contagion means that this process cannot be fully controlled by any government. Such governments face the possibility that citizens’ reactions to a major international crisis will feed on each other and spiral out of control. In that case, leaders may be forced to choose between escalating a conflict they would otherwise like to avoid or risking nationalists rallying to remove them from office. 

Dr Michael Masterson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Missouri State University. His current book project Inventing National Humiliation: Why Political Parties Tell Narratives of National Humiliation and When Citizens Embrace Them examines when leaders use national humiliation narratives and the effects of these narratives on foreign policy. See his website to learn more about his work.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.