Perceived Protest Efficacy: How Economic and Diplomatic Ties with China Influence Support for Anti-China Protests Over South China Sea Disputes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
How do citizens in Southeast Asia view and support protests against China's aggression in the South China Sea (SCS)? Despite the critical role of public opinion in shaping Southeast Asian states' bargaining power with China and preferences for resolving SCS disputes, little research has addressed this question. This article examines how the multifaceted economic and diplomatic relations between China and SCS claimant states influence public attitudes toward anti-China protests, focusing on the mediating role of perceived protest efficacy—the belief that protesting can effectively address SCS disputes. Using survey experiments in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, I find that information about diplomatic relations with China exerts a stronger influence on public attitudes than economic factors. Emphasizing broader political tensions increases support for anti-China protests in Vietnam and Indonesia, while highlighting improved diplomatic ties reduces it. In Malaysia, exposure to economic dependence on China diminishes support for protests. Crucially, the findings reveal that perceptions of protest efficacy mediate these effects, demonstrating how the salience of certain narratives affects collective action. By highlighting the balance between confrontation and diplomacy, this study provides fresh insights into regional dynamics, public mobilization in authoritarian regimes, and the challenges of building anti-China coalitions in Southeast Asia.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".