Polarised Security: How do Chinese Netizens Respond to the Securitisation of Terrorism?

ABSTRACT

The heightened securitisation of Islamic terrorism has received significant attention in Western countries, but little is known about the extent to which netizens in centralised political systems such as China have responded to this threat. This article seeks to address this gap by examining the localisation of the globalised fear of terrorism in China. It analyses online posts about international terrorism that appeared on Sina Weibo in China between 2011 and 2016, and shows how the opinions about terrorism expressed in the Chinese digital media sphere are strongly polarised. We argue that in China’s online sphere the localisation of the “war on terror” frame generates two key polarised public responses – “negotiated acceptance” and “negative re-utilisation” – and that this polarisation of opinions about terrorism stems, in part, from China’s stability-oriented approach to managing terrorism. These findings point to both an acceptance of and a resistance to the securitisation of terrorism and the globalised fear that it (re)produces. Moreover, the findings offer insights into the extent to which local security concerns and beliefs in the Chinese political system can create a divergence between the local perspectives on terrorism and the Western experiences and practices of security labelling.

对伊斯兰恐怖主义不断加深的安全化处理已引起西方学界的广泛关注, 但对于集权政治体系中的网民如何看待恐怖主义威胁还知之甚少. 本文旨在通过研究全球化恐慌在中国数字媒体中的本地化来回应这一问题. 通过收集和分析 2011年至 2016年间在中国新浪微博上发布的有关国际恐怖主义的在线帖子, 本文发现, 网络公共舆论在全球恐怖主义的问题上存在极化现象. 本文认为, 在中国网络中, “反恐战争” 叙事架构的本地化过程促生了两极化的公众反应 (“协商式接受” 和 “否定性再利用”). 中国以稳定为导向的反恐怖主义治理方法是催生这种两极化现象的关键因素之一. 这些发现揭示了中国网民如何接纳与抵抗全球恐怖主义的安全化话语及其所制造的全球化恐慌. 本文有助于理解中国政治体制对于自身安全之考量与相关安全观念是如何促使本土关于恐怖主义的公共舆论与西方经验相分离.

KEYWORDS:

• Securitisation
• fear
• digital communication
• terrorism
• China

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for helpful comments by David Hundt and two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. The tragic violence of 9/11 resulted in the radicalising of public opinion in the US with respect to support for or toleration of the enaction of state terror against Afghanistan and Iraq.

2. Most studies on online opinion polarisation have focussed on “partisanship” in electoral democracy (Müller et al., 2017). The findings of this research provide a potentially alternative conceptualisation of the online opinion polarisation in a semi-authoritarian context.

3. The term “Western” as used in this article refers to the Western Hemisphere countries leading the global War on Terror, including inter alia the US, the UK and France. While some political actors in these countries have explicitly avoided securitising Islam (Eroukhmanoff, 2018), scholars of Critical Terrorism Studies have provided ample evidence that “terrorism” has been used by Western powers to control the Global South.

4. Sina Weibo was launched in August 2009, but a preliminary review found that the average number of posts on the topic of international terrorism was less than five per day between August 2009 and late 2010. We deemed this to be insufficient for coding and analysis, and so we selected the period from 2011 to 2016 to be representative of the general trends in the Chinese online sphere regarding the issue of global terrorism.

5. This article does not suggest that the “discourse of globalised fear of terrorism” is a distinctively Western phenomenon, but rather that it is a global phenomenon that was set in motion by the events of 9/11 in the US, giving rise to a globally widespread anxiety and obsession with security (Abu-Orf, 2012, p. 166; Pain, 2009). Although “terrorism” is an imported concept in China used to reframe disputes with the Uyghurs as a dimension of the global war against terrorism (Cunningham, 2012, p. 12), there are many overlaps between Western and Chinese public opinion regarding terrorism. Western political leaders have stated that they were not targeting Islam, but political speeches in Western contexts have adopted an “indirect securitisation” approach that is characterised by a covert security grammar, where the state avoids labelling Islam/Muslims as a threat for fear of being accused of racism or of discriminating against a minority group (Eroukhmanoff, 2018, pp. 6–7).

6. These findings indicate the empirical complexity of the actual processes of securitisation in non-Western contexts, where neither a form of rejection or acceptance can on its own represent the local response to the securitisation frame of terrorism.

7. Strange stories from a Chinese studio (liaozhaizhiyi, 聊斋志异) is a collection of Classical Chinese “marvel tales” by Pu Songling.

8. The Monkey King (houwang, 猴王), also known as Sun Wukong (孙悟空), is a fictional figure who features in a body of legends. Most notable, perhaps, is the 16^th-century Chinese classical novel Journey to the West (Xiyouji, 西游记). Monkey Brother (houge, 猴哥) is a nickname for the Monkey King, and “golden-gaze fiery-eyes” (huoyanjinjing, 火眼金睛) refers to the vision of Sun Wukong that penetrates with insight and recognises disguised evil.

9. “American dogs” (meigo, 美狗) is an abusive term referring to the pro-US and pro-West group of netizens in China, and “American cents” (meifen, 美分) is another name for “American dogs” in Chinese digital communication.

10. In authoritarian contexts, governments often shut down the internet and social media during periods of political upheaval, such as in Ethiopia (Gumede, 2016), Sudan (Spencer, 2016) and many Arab nations (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011). However, this approach sometimes backfires: an indignant public that cannot find an outlet for its sentiments may take to the streets, leading to insurgent political actions such as demonstrations, protests and riots (e.g. the Arab Spring). The Chinese government takes a more tactful approach to governing online space, which reflects a China-specific strategy in the localisation process.

Additional information

Funding

Our research has been funded by the Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (“The Construction, Mechanisms and Effects of the Multifaceted Educational Spaces in Social Transformation: The Case of Guangzhou”).