Thesis Title:
The Party, The People and The Enemy: Strategic Enemization in China
Abstract:
Beijing’s public list of domestic enemies is extensive, diverse and puzzling. In 2014, Premier Li Keqiang warned that “corruption is a natural enemy of the people’s government,”. In 2008, Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party chief of Tibet, called the struggle against the Dalai Lama a “life and death battle between us and the enemy”. Amid the governmental spirituality crackdown in the summer of 1999, the state called the founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi “the people’s enemy”. Why would an authoritarian regime publicly divulge that enemies exist within their state? Are domestic enemies inscribed in Beijing’s political terrain? How has the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) managed to perpetuate the narrative of enmity?
My research examines the construction of domestic enemy narratives in Chinese political discourse and explore how demarcations of purported enemies within have served and continue to serve as a core component of state and society dichotomies. Through disentangling the similarities and differences between the framing of enemies under three regime flashpoints , this research will showcase the central role that enemy narratives occupy in the CCP’s toolbox. In each of these episodes under Jiang, Hu and Xi, “enemies” perform as important stock stories that exercise constructive influence when the appropriate cues are present, and the environment necessitates it. Beyond a stock story, I additionally argue that hyping the notion of “enemies” work as a valve mechanism to offload societal emotion and target it towards an external subject. As such, this study aims to answer the following research question: how are narratives of enmity used and reproduced by the Chinese Communist Party?
Primary Supervisor:
Astrid Nordin
Publications:
N. Lock, “From Great Powers to Great Victims”, Stanford International Policy Review, (Fall 2020).
N. Lock, “Friend to the State or Foe to the System: China, America, and the Disinformation Wave”, Winner of the University of California San Diego China Focus Essay Contest, ($1000 prize), (Summer 2022).
https://fsi.stanford.edu/sipr/content/sipr-lock
Social media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-lock-%E6%B4%9B%E5%A4%8F-a9b059b3/
Pathway:
Pathway 12: SRSS
Cohort:
2023-24