Propaganda beyond state borders: the deployment of symbolic resources to mobilize political support among the Chinese diaspora

Abstract

Today, authoritarian states, such as that of China, strive to cultivate political allegiance among their diasporic subjects through state-run propaganda operations beyond national borders. Aiming to construct a stable, exclusive, and institutionalized diasporic network of influence within host societies, autocratic states use extraterritorial propaganda to amass integrative capacity by dispersing carefully tailored discourses, penalizing opposing voices, promoting a unified interpretive framework for conceptualizing socio-political reality, forming a standard meaning system for diasporic communities, coordinating collective action, and forging an integrated patriotic identity through the repetition of codified communication. The early 21st century has witnessed the rise of pro-regime solidarity among diasporic Chinese, a global force buttressing China’s communist regime. In this article, we argue that this unprecedented forging of solidarity is the product of China’s extra-territorial propaganda. The ruling party-state consistently uses concise, catchy, and carefully tailored symbolic resources, such as ‘China insult’ (ruhua) incidents, to extend its political influence beyond national borders. This poses novel challenges to the Westphalian sovereign state. The state’s tactic overseas propaganda operations have facilitated the emergence of an extraterritorial Chinese ‘symbolic state’ that relies on shared symbolism and identity, rather than territorially defined Weberian coercion, to project control over a transnational socio-political domain.