Pro-liberalism vs. Nationalism: how critical opinion leaders challenge the persuasive effect of propaganda in China

Abstract

In Chinese cyberspace, mass media and opinion leaders struggle over socio-political discourses. While the former propagates positive views on national policies, the latter often expresses dissenting opinions that challenge authoritarian rule. In the context of China–US competition, do citizens still perceive non-state sources as more credible? Taking the Belt and Road Initiative as the issue, this experimental study investigates how Chinese netizens process conflicting information from a government-owned news agency and two opinion leaders with varying levels of source credibility. Our findings reveal that high-credibility propagandistic news is effective, whereas low-credibility propaganda is not. Furthermore, an opinion leader perceived as independent surpasses government propaganda in influence, regardless of information credibility. However, when an opinion leader is perceived as backed by a rival nation, the former’s influence is counterproductive unless their message credibility exceeds that of propaganda. This study sheds light on the prevalence of nationalistic sentiment in China, which has raised concerns about the manipulation of Chinese netizens by hostile forces.

Keywords:

• Political persuasion
• public opinion
• propaganda
• nationalism
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets generated or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work received no financial support.

Notes on contributors

Yating Pan

Yating Pan is a Research Fellow specializing in political communications at Tsinghua University’s School of Public Policy & Management in China. She has authored a book and several studies on government public relations. She aims to broaden the current understanding of government reputation, and her recent focus lies in examining the interactive relationship between government actions and online public opinion.

Zhan Shu

Zhan Shu is a PhD candidate at the School of International Communications at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on social media and public opinion. With years of experience in Chinese government propaganda, she brings practical insights to her academic pursuits. She is committed to further exploring political communication within the Chinese government context.