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AbstractObjectiveThe COVID‐19 pandemic has fueled exclusionist attitudes toward various outgroup minorities. This study examines the support among Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean citizens for restrictions on the entry of foreigners and fellow citizens living abroad during the pandemic.MethodCross‐national surveys were conducted using quota sampling.ResultsThe results showed that the citizens of all three countries supported border restrictions, and this tendency was the strongest in China. Nationalist and authoritarian orientations were positively associated with the exclusion of foreigners and fellow citizens abroad in all three countries, revealing their universal impact. Social trust and beliefs in a country's capacity to deal with crises were expected to be negatively associated with exclusionism. This negative relationship was only confirmed in Japan and South Korea.ConclusionWe discuss the possible reasons for the exceptional case of China and contextual factors that affect interventions for mitigating exclusionism.

Abstract: As part of a scholarly endeavor to explore micro-foundations of international relations (IR), amid the changing relations between China and the United States, this study examines the Chinese public's view of the United States using three-wave nationally representative survey data from 2011 to 2019. I established a theoretical framework to find out the cognitive, evaluative, and affective dimensions of the public view of a foreign country. The results indicate a lower perception of US influence in Asia and a higher perception of the negative impact of the United States on China. The view of the United States as a model country has also declined among the Chinese public. Mass media and nationalist orientations are associated with this unfavorable evaluation of the United States and an underestimation of its influence. However, internet use, international orientations, and the liberal democracy of the United States are associated with more positive views. China's engagement with the world and the Chinese authorities' manipulation of political socialization are two competing forces shaping the Chinese public's view of the United States.

Abstract
People's pro-war attitudes provide an important lens for understanding the various conflicts and wars taking place around the globe. The present research bridges the social psychological insights on ingroup identity with the macro realism theory of international relations studies. It examines the association of populism and collective narcissism with support for war under the conditions of offensive and defensive realist foreign policies. The research comprises two studies. Study 1 shows that populism is linked with offensive realism, whereas collective narcissism is associated with defensive realism. Study 2 further demonstrates that the perceptions of threat mediate the relationship between collective narcissism and support for war, rather than mediating the relationship between populism and support for war. Both populism and collective narcissism are related to authoritarianism. This research contributes to a theoretical understanding of the effects of populism and collective narcissism on resorting to military actions in international politics.

Even though the public's interest in politics is an indispensable element of civic culture and is also important for the practice of democratic citizenship, it has different and local meanings in an authoritarian regime. This article analyses the dynamics of the public's interest in politics since the Communist Party of China took power and investigates the characteristics of people who express an overt interest in politics in China. The results present a sophisticated and nuanced picture of the interactions between the Chinese government and its people in contemporary China. On the one hand, as modernisation theory has predicted, people with higher levels of education and higher socio-economic status have greater levels of interest in politics. On the other hand, the expression of interest in politics in China is observed among people who adhere to authoritarian values and those who trust the national government. Conversely, citizens who are dissatisfied with the level of democracy in the current regime report low levels of interest in politics. The findings have important implications for China's future political development. (China/GIGA)

How citizens in authoritarian regimes evaluate the practice of democracy in both new and established democracies has important implications on the prospect of democratisation in their own country. As an authoritarian country with the largest population around the world, China has resisted waves of democratisation and maintains the one-party rule. This study examined the Chinese case and explored how Chinese citizens evaluated democracy in the United States, India and Taiwan. It theorised that the tendency towards ingroup favouritism and attitudes towards democracy are the factors that primarily influence citizens' evaluations of democracy in other countries. The results show that Chinese citizens perceive the democratic level of China as being as high as that of the United States and Taiwan, whereas they gave lower evaluations in the case of India's democracy. The effects of the aforementioned factors varied between the three countries. After presenting the findings, the theoretical implications are also discussed.

AbstractIt is widely acknowledged that poor government policy performance undermines public trust in government. However, there has been insufficient study of how citizens attribute responsibility to different levels of government within an authoritarian unitary context. Inquiry is needed to assess the ways government performance in various policy domains affects central–local political trust. This study uses the case of China to addresses these questions. Results show that, in particular, local governments risk losing public trust for corruption. Nevertheless, the central government loses public trust due to unsatisfying economies. Both local and central governments lose public trust for poor performance regarding environmental protection, food safety problems, public health, and primary/middle school education. The central government cannot always avoid blame, depending on different policy issues. The results indicate that the perceived administrative responsibility of different levels of government affects citizens' evaluations of the performance of the central and local governments as well as their political trust.

La présente étude se fonde sur la distinction théorique entre soutien spécifique et soutien diffus pour examiner et comparer les effets de la qualité de la gouvernance sur le soutien politique en Chine, au Japon et en Corée du Sud. Comme le type de régime est un facteur contextuel important, les trois pays constituent des cas idéaux pour vérifier la manière dont les effets de la gouvernance sur le soutien politique varient selon les différents systèmes politiques en Asie orientale. Les résultats montrent que la gouvernance économique et politique affecte le soutien spécifique dans les trois pays. La gouvernance politique est plus importante pour le soutien spécifique au Japon et en Corée du Sud qu'en Chine, même si le type de régime ne modère pas l'effet de la gouvernance politique sur le soutien diffus. De plus, la gouvernance économique est plus importante pour le soutien diffus en Chine qu'au Japon et en Corée du Sud. Dans le domaine du soutien spécifique, la gouvernance économique est plus importante pour le soutien aux responsables gouvernementaux au Japon et en Corée du Sud qu'en Chine. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens L'adhésion du public est essentielle à l'efficacité, à la stabilité et même à la survie des systèmes politiques. La qualité de la gouvernance détermine le destin des régimes autoritaires. C'est à cause de la mauvaise gouvernance que les masses cessent de tolérer les autorités et prennent des mesures pour renverser les dirigeants autoritaires. Conformément à l'argument de Fukuyama (2013) selon lequel un régime autoritaire peut être bien gouverné, le gouvernement chinois tente d'améliorer la qualité de la gouvernance afin de soutenir le leadership autocratique en favorisant l'innovation technique dans la gestion administrative. Cependant, les défauts intrinsèques des systèmes autoritaires, tels que l'absence de contraintes constitutionnelles sur le pouvoir, minent leur capacité à améliorer la gouvernance politique. On peut se demander ce qu'une bonne gouvernance politique dans un système autoritaire peut accomplir sans réforme démocratique du système politique.

The past few decades have witnessed a radical religious revival in China, where economic inequality has been sharply increasing as well. This study examines the impact of religion on the Chinese public's perceptions of income disparity and political trust. The findings show that there is a significant difference in the perceived fairness of personal income distribution between religious and non-religious people. As the opiate thesis on religion predicts, religious beliefs are positively associated with a high level of perceived fairness about personal and national income distribution. Such perceptions of fairness contribute to fostering citizens' trust in both political institutions and government officials. However, contrary to the opiate thesis, religious beliefs are negatively associated with institutional trust. Moreover, religious beliefs offset the positive effect of the perceived fairness of income distribution on institutional trust. Hence, when income distribution is perceived to be unfair, institutional trust declines more drastically among religious believers than among their non-religious counterparts.

It is widely acknowledged that the economic situation is of vital importance for the stability of an authoritarian regime, but it is rarely known how the public's economic evaluation contributes to such outcomes. This study examines the effects of citizens' retrospective and prospective evaluations of their household economic situation and the national economy on the level of regime support in China. The findings show that the national economy outweighs household economic conditions in its effects on the public's support of the regime. However, the gap between evaluations of the national economy and individual economic situations debilitates regime support. The population in different age cohorts has distinct patterns of relationships between retrospective and prospective economic evaluations and regime support. This study elucidates the political-psychological mechanism of the public's economic evaluation affecting regime support, and the ruling strategy in authoritarian regimes of manipulating this evaluation.

Democracy is a contested concept; this article empirically examines how Chinese people understand the concept of democracy in practice when they use this term. Using four rounds of national survey data, we seek to clarify the characteristics of the Chinese people's perception of democracy and its longitudinal changes during the past few decades. The results show an increase in the percentage of people who view democracy procedurally. The popular perception of democracy does matter. People who view democracy substantively tend to see democracy as less suitable for China, and to overrate the democratic level of the current regime, compared to those who view democracy procedurally. No matter how people perceive it, satisfaction with democracy has declined over the past decade. The demographic analysis shows that Chinese youth adhere to a procedural concept of democracy more than a substantive one, which has important implications for China's future political development.