Open-Ended Questionnaire on the Significance of Different Types of Protest in China

In recent years media across the globe have grown increasingly interested in nationalist demonstrations in China. These protests, frequently violent in nature, are often cited as evidence of an increasingly nationalist turn in Chinese public opinion, which could eventually push the government to take up a more aggressive international position. This paper attempts to clarify the political implications of different types of protest in China via an analysis of responses to a large-scale open-ended online survey. In this survey, 507 participants were asked to interpret the feelings and goals of participants in protests on economic/quality-of-life and nationalist issues, and suggest reasonable government responses. After analysing the survey results, we found that while most respondents saw protests on economic issues as being a negotiating tactic designed to obtain specific concessions from the authorities, nationalist protests were seen as having the primary goal of expressing protesters’ emotions rather than to influence policy, with the main target being the Japanese people and leadership rather than the government in Beijing.