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Conceptualizing China as an Unconventional Great Power

Most studies on China’s presence in Southeast Asia tend to focus on China’s power dynamics and how it wields it to gain influence within the region. The emphasis is on intention and causation: how China willingly uses its power to coerce, coopt, or persuade Southeast Asian states to behave in particular ways. This characterization, Han argues, ignores the contemporary Chinese state as fragmented, decentralized, and internationalized. Han goes beyond this conventional approach to explore the variety of actors and the intended versus unintended outcomes associated with China’s presence in Southeast Asia. It is necessary to understand such nuance and complexity, he claims, if we are to make sense of China’s relations with Southeast Asian states.

China’s presence in Southeast Asia is by no means monolithic, notes Han. Rather, it takes numerous everyday forms and involves not only state actors, such as diplomatic missions and state-owned enterprises, but also non-state actors that may or may not be closely associated with the Chinese state. These include civil society organizations, private businesses, and ordinary Chinese citizens who reside in Southeast Asia for work, study, or retirement, in addition to Chinese tourists. The actions of these multiple stakeholders can have intended and unintended consequences, Han argues. In particular, the effects of non-state Chinese actors’ daily encounters with local communities in Southeast Asia deserve attention, he says.

Shadow Economy and Offshore Gambling in Eastern Myanmar

Consider, for instance, the case of the “new city” of Shwe Kokko in Myanmar’s Southeastern Kayin State (known as 'Karen State' among the ethnic-Karen population living there), on the border with Thailand. The emerging “Chinatown” project in Shwe Kokko began attracting international attention as capital investment flowed into the former farmland on the banks of the Moei River and residential complexes, hotels, shops, Chinese restaurants, and glitzy casinos sprang up. Allegations of Chinese mafia involvement have plagued the massive city project, and media outlets and Western observers attributed culpability to the Chinese government, portraying the project as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

However, Han points out that empirical details show that the new city project was led by a company headed by a fugitive Chinese businessman fleeing the Chinese government’s crackdown on illegal offshore gambling. Therefore, Shwe Kokko is not quite a case of Chinese Belt and Road Initiative expansionism using complex networks of PRC citizens and ethnic Chinese in a neighboring country to fuel dangerous activities colluding with Chinese officials and government agencies. Instead, it demonstrates how shadow economies like the online gambling industry are responding to regulatory attempts by the Chinese state. According to Han, to make sense of the Shwe Kokko story, one must understand who the non-state actors are and how they interact with local communities in Southeast Asian borderlands.

Market Demand and Agricultural Transformation in Northern Myanmar

Now turn to Northern Myanmar, where Han conducted fieldwork in 2019. Over the past decade, he explains, Northern Myanmar has undergone accelerated deforestation due to rising agricultural production in response to increasing demand for grains such as maize and their elevated global commodity market prices. In Myanmar’s Shan State, which borders China, the expansion of maize cultivation is closely related to a surge in Chinese demand for animal feed resulting from the rising domestic consumption of meat. However, a Chinese state ban on maize import from Myanmar had created rampant smuggling coupled with irregular enforcement of border inspections and schisms between the commodity production cycle and financing for local farmers.

One may draw a correlation between the rising demand for meat consumption in China that seemingly created a ripple effect in Myanmar, leading to the expansion of maize cultivation, deforestation, and economic precarity for local farmers. But then again, is this a case of Chinese influence operations? There is no evidence pointing to such deliberate attempts by the Chinese state to influence its neighboring country, although the resulting economic and environmental consequences are related to conditions in China.

Thus, Han argues, understanding an increasingly globalized China and its variegated impacts around the world requires conceptual flexibility. In particular, when referring to China's presence and influence in Southeast Asia, one must not assume a monolith with hegemonic designs for its neighboring states but rather differentiate between multiple types of actors with long histories and multifaceted consequences, both intended and unintended.

This essay originally appeared in Korean on May 20 in Sindonga (New East Asia), Korea’s oldest monthly magazine (established 1931), as the second in a monthly column, "Shin’s Reflections on Korea." Translated by Raymond Ha. A PDF version of this essay is also available to download.

To successfully chart a safe course for South Korea in its foreign relations, the Yoon Suk-Yeol government must be highly attuned to the twists and turns of today’s geopolitical undercurrents. A new international order defined by an ideological struggle between democracy and authoritarianism will leave no room for strategic ambiguity, Seoul’s hitherto strategy for balancing its relationships with the U.S. and China. Slogans such as “the United States for security and China for the economy” will be rendered obsolete. Policy visions of South Korea as a mediator for North Korea or Seoul being in the “driver’s seat” on the peninsula could become a fantasy. It is vital to consider South Korea’s economic interests with China and account for the unique characteristics of inter-Korean relations. However, South Korea should pursue a foreign policy rooted in international norms and based on values such as human rights, democracy, and sovereignty.

Russia’s War Crimes

As a responsible member of the international community, South Korea cannot remain a bystander to Russia’s imperialistic behavior. Through its own painful history, Korea knows what it means for the right to self-determination—recognized by the international community—to be trampled upon by a great power. In particular, South Korea must raise its voice in unequivocally condemning the widespread war crimes that are being committed in Ukraine.

War crimes refer to criminal acts that take place during armed conflict. This includes deliberate attacks against civilians or civilian structures such as homes and hospitals, rape and enforced prostitution, and the use of poisonous weapons, all of which constitute serious violations of human dignity. The horrific atrocities committed by the Russian military across Ukraine since its invasion on February 24 are profoundly disturbing. It has committed mass murder against civilians in Bucha, Borodyanka, Motyzhyn, and other locations; it has shelled humanitarian corridors intended to provide safe passage for refugees; and it has launched airstrikes against maternity hospitals and schools, taking the lives of Ukrainian children. The world has been taken aback by the unthinkable brutality of Russia’s military forces.

On April 7, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “more and more credible reports of rape, killings, torture are emerging” every day.[2] He implied that the true scale of Russia’s atrocities may be much larger than currently understood.

This is certainly not the first time that the world has seen war crimes. After World War II, there were war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Syria, and Myanmar. However, the brutality inflicted by Russian forces in Ukraine is incomparable in its severity and intensity. Unlike war crimes committed during a civil war, Russia has committed crimes against the citizens of another sovereign state. In an April interview with The Times, former White House advisor Fiona Hill noted that Putin “has switched from trying to capture the country to ‘annihilation.’”[3] President Biden has also labeled the Russian military’s actions as “genocide.”

It is not yet possible to determine whether Russia truly has genocidal aims against the Ukrainian people, but there are growing calls in the international community to bring Putin to justice for war crimes. The most direct way to achieve this would be for him to stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). In March, the ICC announced that it had begun its investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the Russian military. However, Russia formally withdrew from the ICC in 2016. The ICC does not have the authority to act on its own, and it requires the cooperation of relevant states to arrest suspected war criminals. It seems highly unlikely that Putin will ever face trial at The Hague. Because the ICC does not hold trials in absentia, a trial cannot proceed unless Putin is arrested within Russian territory. After the wars in the former Yugoslavia, former President Slobodan Milošević stood trial before an international criminal tribunal on charges of genocide and war crimes. Unlike in the case of Milošević, prosecuting Putin does not appear to be a feasible option at this time. Even so, South Korea must actively join the international community in sanctioning Russia for its actions in Ukraine.

The Threat of Sharp Power

It is especially troubling to note that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is taking place in the midst of a worldwide democratic recession. According to Freedom House’s latest annual report, for the past 16 years, more countries experienced a decline in freedom than countries that saw a growth in freedom.[4] The Third Wave of democratization, which began in the 1970s, has now given way to the “Third Reversal.”

There has been an authoritarian shift during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which governments claimed a public health rationale to infringe upon individual freedoms or delay elections. In Hungary, one of the most prominent examples of democratic decline in recent years, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán achieved a landslide victory in the April 3 parliamentary elections to secure a fifth term in office.

In particular, there are growing concerns about the consequences of “sharp power,” which China and Russia have deployed across the world. Unlike traditional “hard power” (military and economic) or “soft power” (cultural), sharp power refers to the use of covert means to exercise influence. Dark money, economic leverage, and intelligence operatives are used to coerce a target state into complying with particular demands. Authoritarian regimes have engaged in information and ideological warfare as part of this effort.

Larry Diamond, a professor at Stanford University and a renowned scholar of democracy, warns in his book Ill Winds that the future of democracy will be bleak if liberal democracies, including the United States, do not defend against China and Russia’s sharp power. In 2016, the Russian government interfered in the U.S. presidential election in a blatant display of its sharp power. If fascism from Germany on the right and Bolshevism from the Soviet Union on the left threatened to destroy the international order in the 20th century, it is now China and Russia’s sharp power that poses the most serious danger to democracies across the world. It is in this context that Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

The End of Globalization

Russia’s invasion may have sounded the death knell for globalization. Joining a growing chorus of observers, David Brooks declared in his New York Times column on April 8 that “globalization is over.”[5] After the end of the Cold War, it seemed that the United States would usher in a new era of globalization, with the whole world coming together as one. During the presidency of Kim Young-Sam (1993–98), South Korea also joined this rising tide by pursuing a policy of globalization. A seemingly unstoppable wave of neoliberal globalization swept across the entire world in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While the September 11 attacks were truly devastating and were later followed by the Iraq War, these events did not fundamentally alter the international order.

Today, we face a much greater challenge. Democracy is in retreat across the world, and barriers to trade are on the rise. Anti-immigration sentiments are widespread across the West, including in the United States. Brexit and the rise of Trumpism embody these global trends. Moreover, the pandemic has disrupted global supply chains. Cross-border exchanges are being slowed by rising trade barriers, and many countries are suffering from high inflation as prices skyrocket. The South Korean economy, which relies heavily on international trade, is being pummeled by these economic shocks. If countries take steps to reduce their dependence on other countries, then globalization gradually unravels.

Populist leaders have seized this moment, marching under the banner of chauvinistic nationalism. Twenty-first-century populist leaders are defined by two traits: anti-elitism and anti-pluralism. By challenging the West and opposing a pluralistic world, China and Russia have emerged as “populist” powers on a global scale. Just as the Korean War marked the beginning of the Cold War in earnest, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may prove to be the first test of resolve for democracies in their struggle against authoritarianism.

The powerful sanctions enacted by the United States and the European Union against Russia underscore this sense of urgency. With the UN Security Council in paralysis, Washington coordinated with Brussels to impose a series of sanctions against Moscow. Only two days into the invasion, Russia’s Central Bank was removed from SWIFT. These “shock and awe” sanctions, which President Biden called the most powerful and wide-ranging sanctions ever imposed in history, were rolled out with the speed and precision of a sophisticated military operation. The ruble tanked as over $1 trillion of Russian assets were frozen. The 11th-largest economy in the world was pushed to the edge of a sovereign default. More than 300 global companies, including Apple, Google, ExxonMobil, and Mcdonald's, have shuttered their operations in Russia. During a recent conversation, a senior Google executive told me in no uncertain terms that “it will be difficult to return to Russia, even after the end of the war.”

The international community’s support, as well as the devastating sanctions imposed against Russia, have shored up Ukrainian morale as its people rally around President Zelensky. International public opinion is firmly behind Kyiv as more and more people around the world seek to help Ukrainians in their struggle against the Russian dictator.

The Rebirth of Sinocentrism?

The crisis in Ukraine has had a decisive impact on U.S. foreign policy. The Biden administration’s flagship Indo-Pacific Strategy is centered on working with its partners in the Quad—Japan, Australia, and India—to check the rise of China. Until early this year, the prevailing concern in the United States had been the possibility that China would launch an invasion of Taiwan. Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, in the face of heavy criticism from home and abroad, was motivated by a need to focus on the Indo-Pacific Strategy. While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has vigorously revived the transatlantic relationship, the United States now has to contend with both Russia and China at once. India’s reluctance to fully participate in sanctions against Russia, despite its key role in the Quad, is also cause for concern in Washington.

While Putin envisions the re-establishment of the Soviet Empire, Xi dreams of a rebirth of Sinocentrism. Having forcibly imposed its will on Hong Kong, there are growing concerns that China could use military force to bring Taiwan under its thumb. Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative evidently seeks to go beyond economic cooperation and form a new China-led bloc built on economic assistance. In addition to bilateral trade disputes, decoupling between the United States and China in the high-technology sector is accelerating. The Biden administration is taking steps to bolster economic security, with the so-called Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) as its strategic centerpiece.[6]

While China is currently pursuing a relatively loose form of cooperation with Russia, Putin and Xi, both populist leaders on the global stage, could join forces in earnest to upend the international order. At the same time, Prime Minister Modi of India, another populist leader, is taking an ambiguous stance. He has kept his distance from Washington and Brussels in terms of imposing sanctions against Russia, and he has stepped in to expand India’s imports of cheaper Russian oil.[7]

Since Russia’s invasion, there has been a sense of crisis among European capitals about the dangers of excessive energy dependence on Moscow. There is also growing apprehension about a national security crisis emanating from China. Although Europe and China have clashed in recent years over the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and bans on Chinese technology, there was an underlying consensus about maintaining friendly economic relations. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has significantly altered Europe’s calculus, however. In Germany and elsewhere, there are deepening fears that maintaining close economic ties with China, which remains friendly toward Russia, could become a critical weakness for Europe. Michael McFaul, a colleague at Stanford and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has stressed that the outcome of the war will have lasting implications for the future of the liberal international order. In other words, a Russian victory will further entice China to invade Taiwan, with profound global consequences.

South Korea cannot afford to remain an idle spectator to the conflict in Ukraine. There could be serious repercussions for Seoul, much sooner than expected. At a moment when the international order could rapidly change, it would be highly imprudent to sit on the sidelines or take a position of strategic ambiguity. Over the past five years, the Moon Jae-In administration adopted an ambiguous stance in its foreign policy, with a disproportionate focus on North Korea. The end result was diplomatic isolation. Moreover, Russia’s invasion reminds us once again of the importance of values and norms in international politics. The right to self-determination—the right of citizens of a given state to determine their own destiny—is a basic principle of the international community, enshrined in Article 1 of the UN Charter.

The Need for a Consensus on “Core Interests”

The once-popular paradigm of an-mi-gyeong-joong (“the United States for security, China for the economy”) is now obsolete. It is time for South Korea to seriously consider a foreign policy based on common values. While accounting for economic interests, it is critical to formulate a consensus on its “core interests”—that is, on fundamental political values. The rising tide of anti-China sentiment among South Korea’s youth is rooted in their rejection of China’s illiberal, authoritarian modus operandi.[8] They want to stand side-by-side with fellow liberal democracies, in opposition to authoritarian powers. This is part of a global trend. According to a 2021 poll of 17 advanced economies by the Pew Research Center, unfavorable views of China were near “historic highs.” 88% of respondents in Japan, 80% in Sweden, 78% in Australia, 76% in the United States, 63% in the United Kingdom, and 71% in Germany held unfavorable views of China. 77% of respondents in South Korea indicated the same—the highest ever recorded by Pew for Korea.[9]

In its policy toward North Korea, Seoul should avoid overemphasizing the “special” nature of inter-Korean relations on the basis of belonging to the same ethnic nation. It should also abandon the illusion that it can act as a mediator between Pyongyang and Washington. Seoul’s North Korea policy should be cognizant of the larger context of today’s international politics, which is defined by competition between authoritarian regimes (Russia, China, North Korea) and liberal democracies (United States, European Union, South Korea). As transatlantic cooperation on security issues intensifies, South Korea should also strengthen its ties with Europe. It was thus timely for Yoon Suk-Yeol, while he was president-elect, to send special envoys to the United States, Japan, and the European Union. The U.S.-South Korea alliance should also serve as a basis for Seoul to broadly solidify its relations with fellow democracies across the world.

This does not imply that South Korea must proclaim an “anti-China” policy stance. It is also unnecessary to needlessly provoke North Korea. Nonetheless, South Korea should clearly declare to the world its resolve to honor and defend universal values, including democracy, human rights, sovereignty, and core international norms. It will face difficult decisions in its relations with Beijing, especially due to economic considerations, and it will be impossible to treat North Korea just like any other country. As will be the case with every other democracy, South Korea will have to confront vexing challenges as it seeks to pursue its interests while upholding its values.

Since 1945, South Korea has been the largest beneficiary of the post-WWII liberal international order. It is time for South Korea to defend democratic norms and help uphold the rule-based international order. There is no free ride. As the tenth-largest economy in the world, South Korea’s economic heft alone entails certain responsibilities. If democracy is defeated by authoritarianism, there will be no future for South Korea. Intellectuals and policymakers in the United States are keeping a close eye on how South Korea responds to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They are hoping that Seoul will join hands with its fellow democracies in their arduous struggle against authoritarian powers.

The Lessons of Korea’s History

Watching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brings to mind the painful and bitter history of Korea’s recent past, which was marked by the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), and the Korean War (1950–53). South Korea did not succumb to adversity, however. It overcame formidable obstacles to become the economic and cultural powerhouse that it is today. As a result of its failure to appropriately respond to trends in international politics in the late 19th century, Korea lost its sovereignty. Amidst the chaos of division in 1945, the foundations for South Korea’s remarkable development were laid when it aligned with the United States instead of the Soviet Union. In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, South Korea pursued peace on the Korean Peninsula through its “Northern Policy,” also known as Nordpolitik.[10] It is especially interesting to note that at key junctures in the history of the modern international order, conservative leaders (Syngman Rhee in 1945 and Roh Tae-Woo in the 1990s) played a decisive role in steering South Korea in the right direction.

Faced with the relentless march of imperialism across the world, Korea’s leaders and intellectuals in the late 19th century responded in one of three ways. The first group advocated for Western-oriented reform, calling for the adoption of Western institutions and practices to achieve modernization. Seo Jae-Pil and Syngman Rhee were prominent figures in this camp. Second, there were those who called for Asian solidarity. Under this view, Korea would join hands with China and Japan to resist Western imperialism. An Jung-Geun’s vision of “Peace in East Asia” is a famous example. Lastly, some responded with a focus on Korean nationalism. Sin Chae-Ho and Park Eun-Sik made significant contributions to this strain of thought.

In the end, Korea was unable to coalesce around a unifying vision for the country. The Joseon Dynasty failed to achieve modernizing reforms, and Korea became a colony of Japan. Seo Jae-Pil and Syngman Rhee left for the United States. Furious at Japan’s betrayal, An Jung-Geun assassinated Itō Hirobumi, a leading advocate of Asian solidarity, at Harbin in October 1909. Korean nationalism evolved in controversial directions under colonial rule, as reflected by Yi Kwang-Su’s theory of national reconstruction.[11] Sin Chae-Ho, who wrote influential works of nationalist historiography, eventually turned to anarchism in his later years. This is the tragic portrait of a country, and of national leaders, who failed to gauge and adjust to shifting geopolitical winds.

With Japan’s defeat in 1945, the Korean Peninsula was once again thrown into a political vortex. Liberated from colonial rule, Korea was divided due to the strategic calculations of great powers. There was a tremendous loss of life not only during the Korean War, but also in the political instability that followed liberation. As the Cold War order began to take shape, North Korea stood with the Soviet Union. Fortunately, South Korea sided with the free world. Syngman Rhee played a critical role in this regard. Rhee was not well acquainted with Korea’s domestic politics, but he was perhaps the most perceptive Korean leader when it came to international politics. It is terrifying to imagine what may have transpired if South Korea had joined the communist bloc. Although Rhee’s legacy has been stained by his authoritarian rule, it is important to acknowledge his prescience in international affairs.

Storms on Both Fronts

As the Cold War order collapsed in the 1990s, South Korea once again stood at a geopolitical crossroads. The Berlin Wall unexpectedly fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. Amidst this sea change in international affairs, the Roh Tae-Woo administration seized a historic opportunity. South Korea established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1990, entered the United Nations at the same time as North Korea in 1991, and normalized ties with the People’s Republic of China in 1992. By pursuing this audacious “Northern Policy” in the face of staunch opposition from some conservatives, the Roh Tae-Woo administration laid the foundations for sustainable development and peace on the Korean Peninsula. Perhaps the present moment, in which China and Russia are disrupting the international order, calls for a new Northern Policy that redefines Seoul’s relationship with Moscow and Beijing. The core of this new Northern Policy, of course, must be rooted in solidarity with fellow democracies against authoritarianism.

It is difficult to anticipate how the geopolitical storm set off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may develop. For the time being, it appears quite likely that this storm will grow into a major typhoon instead of fizzling out, but it is hard to tell how powerful it will be or what direction it will take. What is certain is that the international order will not be the same, and this change will have significant repercussions for South Korea.

In fact, South Korea may already be at the center of this storm. There is momentary calm in the eye of a typhoon, but the full force of its impact will be felt in due course. When South Koreans finally experience the damage from this storm in a few years, it may be too late.

The Yoon administration has barely sailed out of the harbor, but it is already being battered on two fronts. As noted in last month’s essay, which focused on domestic issues, South Korea’s democracy is heading into troubled waters. This essay has examined an external shock: the geopolitical storm raging across the world since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both present formidable challenges for South Korea.

History unfolds in mysterious ways. Just as in 1945 and 1991, a conservative leader is once again in the wheelhouse as South Korea heads into a geopolitical storm. The Yoon Suk-Yeol administration must keep its eyes wide open and firmly grasp the helm as it navigates these troubled waters. Syngman Rhee and Roh Tae-Woo turned geopolitical crises into opportunities for South Korea. I sincerely hope that Yoon Suk-Yeol will also be able to chart a safe course for South Korea through the coming storm

This Q&A first appeared in The Diplomatmagazine.

The Gwangju Uprising of May 18-27, 1980, was a pivotal step in South Korea’s march toward democratization. After protesting students were brutally attacked by soldiers, the people of Gwangju joined in armed resistance against the martial regime of Chun Doo-hwa, who had seized power in a coup. The uprising was put down by government troops; the final death tally remains hotly debated, but most academic estimates place it at over 1,000 dead.

The public outrage sparked by the incident sowed the seeds of Chun’s downfall, though it would take another seven-plus years for South Korea to hold its first democratic presidential election.

The Diplomat interviewed Gi-Wook Shin – the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the founding director of the Korea Program, both at Stanford University – about the legacy of the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea, and how it resonates today. Shin is also the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University.

The Gwangju Uprising was in 1980; South Korea would finally hold democratic elections in 1987. What role did the Gwangju Uprising — and the resulting massacre — play in South Korea’s democratization process?

The tragic outcome was a brutal wakeup call to Korean democratic movements. Their failure in 1980 called for a new movement strategy to build an alliance between students/intellectuals and grassroots citizens. This alliance became instrumental in successfully organizing and mobilizing the masses in the summer of 1987, when millions of people marched together for democracy. Gwangju also became a symbol of the struggle for freedom and human rights throughout Korea’s democratization.

The massacre also created serious legitimacy problems for the Chun regime throughout its tenure. Chun was widely portrayed as the only ruler in Korean history who mobilized government troops to kill their own innocent citizens. It was almost impossible to justify extending autocratic rule beyond his regime, and Chun and his military colleagues had to accept democratic reform and elections in 1987.

Finally, the massacre provoked anti-American sentiments and movements in the 1980s during pro-democracy movements. Largely pro-American until then, Koreans expected the U.S. to support their fight for democracy – in fact, the Carter administration pressed the Park Chung-hee regime to improve human rights and political freedom. However, Koreans were disappointed and angry that the U.S. did not stop the Korean military, which was under the U.S. commandership, from killing innocent citizens. While there existed controversies over the extent to which the U.S. was complicit in the tragic incident, the U.S. was no longer deemed an ally in their fight for democracy but just another neocolonial power supporting dictatorship.

Both Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Gwangju massacre, among other charges. Both former presidents, however, were pardoned in 1997. Chun and Roh passed away in 2021, eliminating any possibility of an apology. Is there still a sense of “unfinished business” or a lack of closure after the massacre of May 1980? 

Gwangju became the most important issue of transitional justice in the democratic era and victims were compensated through a special law, while perpetuators such as Chun and Roh were punished. The uprising was officially recognized as “Gwangju Democratization Movement,” and May 18 is celebrated as an unofficial memorial day in Korea.

However, there remains a sense of lack of closure. Besides the two former presidents passing without making an apology, there has been little progress on efforts to recognize the “May 18 Democratization Movement” in the preamble of South Korea’s constitution. President Yoon made campaign promises to support such recognition, and if/when this happens, it will be an important step toward a final closure.

Gwangju’s legacy remains contested. The far-right claims (as Chun did until his death) that North Korea was behind the unrest and that death counts were overblown. Is this a fringe view, or does it resonate more broadly with South Korea’s conservatives?

Gwangju’s legacy is now much less contested, and such a view is held only by the far-right minority. Presidents of conservative administrations such as Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye attended the May 18th Memorial Services held in the city and the main conservative party apologized for its past members (far rightists) who “defamed” and “insulted” the Gwangju movement a few years ago.

President Yoon visited the city to pay a tribute to the victims during his presidential campaign and attended this year’s memorial services on May 18. Furthermore, his cabinet members and presidential advisers, as well as National Assembly members of his party, all accompanied him to the service. This shows a broad consensus about the meaning and legacy of Gwangju in Korean society, regardless of political or ideological orientation.

How does the legacy of the Gwangju Uprising reflect a broader disagreement in framing the legacy of South Korea’s past dictators? For example, after Chun’s death Yoon Suk-yeol – then a candidate, now South Korea’s president – praised the former dictator for being “good at politics.” 

There certainly exists a nostalgia among some conservatives in South Korea who believe that leaders like Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan did well in improving the nation’s economy, while being authoritarian. Yet even those people would not contest the tragic nature of the uprisings and their aftermath.

Yoon’s comment was made as an attempt to explain that even though he does not have much experience in politics, he could do well by relying on able technocrats, as did Chun. I don’t think he meant by it that he supports dictatorship, and he immediately made an apology for his remark.

How does South Korea’s struggle for democracy factor into modern day politics, especially as the generation directly involved are aging out of the political sphere? Does the legacy of the Gwangju Uprising resonate with young South Koreans? 

Democratic activism has become a valuable type of political capital since democratization, and former activists have become the ruling elite of the progressive governments, especially in the Moon Jae-in administration. As these so called “386 generation” activists (those who were born in 1960s, entered college in the 1980s, and were in their 30s at the time of their activism) became the power elite, however, they acted no differently than their conservative counterparts. After all, they were accused of simply becoming another new establishment.

As a result, after the Moon administration, past activism lost moral ground and is no longer valued as political capital. As I pointed out elsewhere, the former activists played a crucial role in bringing in democracy but have since stopped short of advancing liberal democracy in Korea.

As far as I know, the legacy of the Gwangju Uprising does not resonate much with young South Koreans – it is just part of Korean history.

What is the relevance of the U.S. approach to the Gwangju Uprising for the modern-day relationship? Does past U.S. support for South Korea’s dictators, despite the bloodshed at Gwangju, still rankle? 

Charges of U.S. complicity in the Gwangju massacre and the subsequent rise of anti-Americanism in Korea undoubtedly concerned American policymakers. When millions of people filled the streets again demanding democratic reform in the summer of 1987 with such anti-American slogans as “Yankees, Go Home,” the U.S. was deeply concerned. This time the Reagan administration moved decisively by sending Gaston Sigur, an assistant secretary of state, to Seoul to meet with Chun, who was considering mobilizing armed forces once again to resolve the crisis. The U.S. seemed to learn lessons from what had happened in Gwangju seven years prior. Pressured by the Americans, Chun cancelled plans to crush the opposition by using military force and granted political concessions that paved the way for a democratic transition in Korea.

Still, anti-Americanism continued to rankle U.S.-ROK relations for many more years that followed. In 2002 when two Korean school girls were killed by U.S. military vehicles during the military exercises, for instance, another wave of anti-Americanism swept the country and the progressive candidate Roh Moo-hyun, who took a tough stance toward the U.S., won the 2002 presidential election.

Since then, however, anti-American sentiments gradually declined, and now the majority of South Koreans do not any longer hold resentment against the U.S. On the contrary, an increasing number of South Koreans support a stronger alliance with the U.S. in the face of rising China. The new Yoon government is expected to join the U.S. in defending a liberal international order that is threatened by autocratic leaders like Putin and Xi.

Why would authoritarian regimes lacking electoral incentives invest in deliberative institutions designed to respond to citizen appeals? There are many reasons, according to APARC Predoctoral Fellow Tongtong Zhang, who argues that providing responses through such channels can incentivize citizens to conform to the regime and appease potential dissidents, while also informing them and the general public that organized opposition is not an effective way to pursue their interests.

Zhang is currently at work on her dissertation, entitled “Whose Voice Matters? Loyalists, Dissidents, and Responsiveness in China,” which examines this very question by looking at deliberative institutions as well as other political communications channels in China. After completing her predoctoral residency at APARC this summer and earning her PhD, she will join the Stanford Internet Observatory at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center as a Postdoctoral Scholar. While at Stanford Internet Observatory, she will collaborate with Dr. Shelby Grossman and other scholars on research projects studying authoritarian regimes’ online political communication.

In the following Q&A, Zhang discusses her research and fellowship experience at Stanford. The interview was slightly edited for length and clarity.

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Your research centers on how authoritarian regimes (particularly the Chinese government) perpetuate their rule over societal actors and how preferences and behaviors of these societal actors are shaped as a result. How did you come to develop an interest in this topic?

I think it’s a combination of my life experience in China and the literature I read in the seminars on comparative politics in my first year of PhD. Those readings introduced me to differences in the logic of governance between democratic and authoritarian governments. In democracies, the behavior of officials is mainly shaped by the incentive to win elections. In non-democracies, the governance behavior of officials is largely shaped by the desire to secure citizen compliance and, by extension, to maintain social stability. Existing literature on how autocracies obtain citizen conformity has largely focused on two strategies — co-optation and repression. However, while growing up in China, I observed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has more tools at its disposal to control the public. 

Among these tools, I am particularly interested in the fast-growing channels for public deliberation under authoritarian rule because, without free popular elections, authoritarian rulers should have little incentive to invest in these institutions designed for citizens to express grievances and make appeals to the government. So I am curious about what role these quasi-democratic, participatory institutions play in authoritarian control and how societal actors (e.g. citizens, firms) feel about and react to the regime thanks to these institutions.  

You are working on your first book project; can you tell us a bit about what to expect from it? 

The book is based on my dissertation and asks why dictators lacking electoral incentives invest in deliberative institutions that are designed to respond to citizen appeals. An overarching question is whether the government actually responds. If it does, do all citizen appeals receive equal consideration? Previous research on authoritarian responsiveness largely contends that autocrats prioritize the appeals of potential dissidents. However, my research leads me to argue that autocrats may respond to all appeals but with qualitatively different types of responses.

More specifically, I hypothesize that for autocrats, providing substantive responses — responses that resolve the appealed problems — to regime loyalists can incentivize more citizens to conform to the regime. On the other hand, providing symbolic responses — responses that are rhetorical without solving the problems — to potential participants of collective action can appease these potential dissidents while also informing them and the general public that organized opposition is not an effective way to pursue their interests. Taken together, I theorize that authoritarian officials would selectively provide substantive responses to citizens who show higher compliance with the regime’s control and that officials would selectively provide symbolic responses to citizen appeals that are more likely to elicit collective action. I support this argument using primary government documents, interviews with local officials, and original, large-scale datasets of online appeals and government responses in China.

You have mentioned your interest in political communication in non-democracies. What are some aspects of political communication that you find especially interesting? 

My research primarily focuses on deliberation and responsiveness in non-democracies. I am curious as to why dictators invest in deliberative institutions designed to answer citizen grievances, under what circumstances these institutions would help citizens resolve their problems, and perhaps more importantly, how these deliberative institutions shape citizen attitude towards the regime and their political behaviors.

Beyond deliberation and responsiveness, I’m also interested in other communication strategies (e.g. education, media) that authoritarian regimes use to secure citizen compliance. For example, I’m currently working on a paper studying the political behavior of teachers at Confucius Institutes (CI), the Chinese government’s overseas program for cultural and language promotion. The prevailing view in media and policy writings is that the Chinese regime prescribes specific actions that CI teachers must take (e.g. censorship) when encountering politically sensitive questions. However,  using interviews, a global survey, and experimental methods among CI teachers in over 70 countries, we find that the Chinese regime only prescribes broad goals to CI teachers, such as “defending China’s national interests,” without specifying how to pursue these goals behaviorally. We also find that under these ambiguous instructions, men and women CI teachers choose divergent behaviors to advance the regime's goals.​​

What do you see as some of the biggest challenges to development in non-democracies? 

Development is a huge topic. I’m only able to provide some observations based on my research about authoritarian responsiveness. In this area, the biggest challenge I observe is still the lack of institutional channels for citizens to hold the government accountable. It is a sign of development that authoritarian governments are investing increasingly in deliberation channels, online and offline, for citizens to express grievances and demand public service. While less than 10% of appeals in my sample receive a substantive response from the government, it also shows that some citizens do get their problems resolved through these participation channels. 

Yet, when authoritarian officials fail to provide substantive responses, citizens have no legal, formal channels to punish officials. In democracies, unsatisfied petitioners can vote for the opposing party in the next election, expose government unresponsiveness to media outlets, and even sue the government in court. However, in autocracies, these methods of punishment are weak or absent. Some citizens may use non-institutional methods to punish the government, such as protesting or exposing official misconduct on social media. But these behaviors, which aim to attract a lot of public attention, are often cracked down on if they achieve this goal. Without credible punishment from the bottom-up, authoritarian officials treat these deliberative institutions as a tool for their social control rather than a channel to serve the public.

My research also finds that the Chinese central government does conduct regular audits on government responsiveness at the local level. But this top-down monitoring is largely symbolic and focuses on the quantity rather than the quality of officials’ responses to citizens. Therefore, I think that to improve government responsiveness in non-democracies, it is still crucial that the customers of these deliberation channels, that is, citizens, have some formal, legal channels to punish officials when officials fail to resolve the appealed problems. 

Your robust research methodology includes qualitative interviews, archival research, computational methods with large-scale datasets, and survey and field experiments. How did you develop this approach?

My PhD department (Political Science) provides us with many training opportunities for both quantitative and qualitative methods since our first year in the program. Our course sequences in quantitative methods and formal theory introduced me to a variety of powerful analysis tools and causal inference designs. I’ve also received quantitative training from the departments of Statistics, Communication, and Computer Science. In particular, the methods courses taught by Prof. Jennifer Pan and Prof. Dan Jurafsky helped me lay a good foundation for skills in web-scraping and natural language processing. 

My qualitative training started from the Chinese politics course sequence taught by Prof. Jean Oi. Later on, I continuously learned from Prof. Oi every time I talked with her about doing fieldwork in China. She guided me to extract and focus on the “big question” from lots of seemingly unstructured details I collected in the field, and she also gave me many helpful suggestions on what homework I should do before going to the field, how to approach people in the field, and how to design my questions and learn to improvise during the interviews. 

This combination of quantitative and qualitative training has made me a strong believer in mixed-methods research. I think that quantitative methods are powerful in showing systematic patterns and qualitative methods are powerful in uncovering the mechanism underlying these patterns. Moreover, qualitative fieldwork has helped me a lot in understanding how things actually get done at the micro level (e.g. the step-by-step workflow of a specific bureau within a municipal government when handling a citizen appeal), which I think is useful for identifying important research questions and developing hypotheses before collecting data systematically. 

Beyond your book project, what are you working on while at APARC? How has your time here aided your research?

I very much appreciate APARC’s support in the 2021-22 academic year. I was applying for postdoctoral fellowships in the past fall, and the Center’s generous funding and supportive staff have greatly helped me concentrate on market preparation. I also enjoyed the office space provided by APARC. Due to the pandemic, we were not in the office all the time but while I was there, I had very interesting conversations with several other fellows at the Center. Chatting with them broadened my horizon about the Asia-Pacific region. They also offered me some fresh perspectives on my research, which I find helpful while revising my dissertation. 

Thanks to these valuable resources provided by APARC, I was able to make progress on my dissertation and several related projects. In one paper, I show that citizen petitioners can increase government responsiveness by using certain rhetoric to communicate with local officials in China. I find that compared to appeals using a “legal script”, which invokes citizens’ legal rights to obtain public service, appeals using a script of “performance legitimacy,” which invokes the CCP’s moral commitment to deliver socio-economic welfare to the public, have a significantly higher likelihood to obtain substantive responses from local governments. Another paper I’m working on investigates how the characteristics of petitioners, appeals, and government responses change over time in China by comparing the appeals under Hu Jintao’s rule vs. appeals under Xi Jinping’s rule.

Has the global pandemic affected your ability to travel and do research? How have you adapted?

I was planning to conduct field interviews in the Sichuan province of China in 2020 and had to cancel because of the pandemic. However, on the positive side, the travel restrictions provided me with a relatively long period of time to concentrate on the quantitative parts of my dissertation and enabled me to make substantial progress on some time-consuming work such as scraping Weibo and reading and coding the posts. 

What is on the horizon for you? What's next? 

I plan to graduate this summer and will join the Stanford Internet Observatory at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center as a Postdoctoral Scholar. While at Stanford Internet Observatory, I will collaborate with Dr. Shelby Grossman and other scholars on research projects studying authoritarian regimes’ online political communication. I will also go onto the tenure-track academic market and hopefully get a faculty position in a university.