Commerce and coercion in contemporary China : local leader responses to foreign policy crises

During foreign policy crises involving China and its most important foreign economic partners, some local leaders in China willingly threaten foreign commercial interests, while others attempt to protect foreign commerce from diplomatic tensions. This subnational variation in participation in economic retaliation is surprising given the presence of a strong central government. As key stewards of foreign commerce, local leader participation in state punishment is critical to China's coercive capacity. I argue that the Chinese Communist Party's system of personnel management, which emphasizes both meritocratic and patronage elements, generates cross-cutting incentives that shape local leader responses to foreign policy crises. The first is economic dependence, or whether a locality's commercial ties to the targeted state are essential for local economic growth.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Miura, Kacie Kieko.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• M. Taylor Fravel.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130616

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/130616