Weekend self-promotion leftovers

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Monday, August 11, 2008 - 8:28 PM Share

I had a bloggingheads diavlog with Bob Kagan on China and the Olympics. I play the mainstream member of the foreign policy community to Bob's crusading, articulate neoconservative. My favorite part is when we wander into the abstruse question of how 19th century America viewed Prussia. Go check it out (for the higlights, check out the New York Times synposis). There's also another Marketplace commentary. This one is keyed off of a Boston Globe story from last month on how the Boston Fed is hosting a mortgage counseling session at Gillette Stadium (home of the New England Patriots). I imagine how such an event would be covered by sports announcers. Go check it out too.

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ROB

9:38 PM ET

August 11, 2008

Just wondering how the

Just wondering how the utopian world government/international law crowd thinks of Russia taking out Georgia. Haven't heard much from them. So, what do you and your crowd think of recent events?

IAIN JOHNSTON

2:30 PM ET

August 12, 2008

dan, watched your

dan,

watched your bloggingheads exchange with kagan. just a quick qualification to both of your impressions about rising nationalism in china. based on systematic time series polling data from beijing:

1) there is little evidence that nationalism has in general 'increased' across the board over the last several years -- arguably it has always been high. that said, the portion of the sample that holds strongly anti-american views has remained roughly constant since 2000, while the portion of the population that holds strongly anti-japanese views has increased substantially. so one has to differentiate between targets of nationalism. questions that tap into nativist nationalism don't show any increase in support for these sentiments over time.

2) there is very little evidence that youth in particular are more nationalistic than older folks. in 2007 data for example, there is no statistical relationship between age and amity toward the US, for instance. those who came of age in the 1990s are not more likely than older folks to agree with questions tapping into nationalist sentiments.

bottom line, one has to be very careful about overgeneralizing trends in chinese nationalism. the "rising nationalism among chinese youth" trope is, in my view, suspect; it is based in part on western reporting from beijing that 'selects on the dependent variable', and in part on the extremeley limited contact that western scholars and officials have with ordinary folks in china.