From Anti-Americanism to Sinophobia: Resistance to External Powers in the Developing World

China's aid and investment in the developing world over the last twenty years has reached into the trillions of dollars. This unprecedented increase in funds is having a transformative impact on local economies, societies, and politics, and has led Western countries to recently propose delivering trillions of dollars of their own, explicitly to counter China's efforts.

But to understand the impact of China's growing presence - and how Western states should invest these funds in response - we need to know what this presence means for local actors. And in recent years there has been a dramatic increase in local resistance in some developing countries, including terrorist attacks, mass protests, anti-China political and media campaigns, and increasingly negative public opinion.

This has led to the cancellation of projects, pushback against Chinese influence, and even shifts in political power. In other places, this kind of resistance is - so far - nowhere to be seen.

The resistance may substantially impact Western policies. In contrast to those policymakers who have framed China's efforts as highly effective, influential, and needing massive funds in response, the high-profile backlash in some countries has led many to argue that China's presence is counterproductive and that concern over its influence is overblown.

Yet we know very little about the extent, causes, and effects of this backlash - or, indeed, about local anger, protests, and violence towards the presence of external powers in general.

In this project I argue that we cannot understand China's rise, its impacts, or how Western powers should respond without understanding the resistance to that rise. I will lead a team of three researchers in combining cross-national quantitative analysis with in-depth case studies to examine the causes and impacts of anti-Chinese sentiment and activity in the developing world.

To understand the patterns and causes of anti-Chinese resistance we will develop an original cross-national database of all anti-Chinese and anti-American activities since 2007 and analyse it alongside adapted mass public opinion data on Sinophobia and anti-Americanism in 130 countries (and other crossnational datasets). We will use this to investigate the political and policy causes of anti-Chinese and anti-American resistance.

Is all anti-foreign sentiment and activity instrumentalised for political purposes? Or there something about China's presence that incites a different kind of resistance? If so, what kinds of projects and places, and what can this tell us about future reactions to China's presence?

To understand how resentment towards China's presence arises through society and the impacts of its expression, the postdoctoral assistant will carry out in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of cases of anti-Chinese resistance in Malaysia, Pakistan, and South Africa, comparing them to three similar cases where an anti-Chinese backlash has not yet materialised. They will combine interviews with computational analysis to investigate the rise of anti-Chinese activities and their impacts on development projects and local politics, while I will use official statements and interviews in Beijing to examine the response of Chinese policymakers.

These findings will have important implications for research on China's global influence, providing crucial theoretical and empirical evidence on what the dramatic arrival of a new external power means in practice for society and politics in developing countries. For policymakers, the findings will help identify the drivers of resistance to China's presence, and whether that resistance actually damages China's future development initiatives and influence.

The findings will be significant in guiding whether (and how) Western policymakers should invest funds to counter China's influence, or whether cooperation may sometimes be more effective in meeting the shared challenges of anti-foreign resistance.