Almost immediately, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made an official statement of China's position and announced territorial baselines for the islands, thus giving surrounding waters out to 12 nautical miles the specific legal status of territorial waters under Chinese law. This was followed by the institution of regular patrols by Chinese official boats within the territorial waters. Since September 2012, this has occurred on well over 50 separate days to date - averaging more than once a week - giving credence to official media claims that China has "regularized" patrols in the area and "broken the situation of Japan's actual control" of the islands.
Beijing's regular official presence in the territorial waters
represents a major change to the status quo prior to September 10. Chinese government boats entered the 12-nautical-mile zone only twice in the year leading up to September 10, and just once in the three years prior. The media blitz that followed Tokyo's island purchase mirrored that during Scarborough Shoal, with the public expressions of anti-Japanese outrage and bloodlust working, paradoxically, to create what one Chinese scholar has described as "grassroots deterrence".
Since that time, China has tested Japan's resolve on several occasions, first with plane flights and then possibly with radar-locking incidents, PLA and CCP voices have warned Japan directly that opposing these new activities could lead to war. Major General Peng Guangqian declared any warning shots fired near Chinese planes around the Diaoyu Islands would be "firing the first shot" in a Sino-Japanese war, while the Global Times said public opinion would demand war.
Domestic "Indoctri-tainment"
Sensational statements add drama to international issues - such as disputes over distant, uninhabited maritime features - that may otherwise be relatively distant from ordinary Chinese people's lives. Luo Yuan has spoken frequently of his ambition to increase "national defense education" and engender "imperilment consciousness" (youhuan yishi) among China's population. He also has repeatedly stated that he believes the masses, especially the young, have "patriotic potential", with appropriate measures required to stimulate and guide it.
Dai Xu also has called for youhuan yishi, stating that having a "population that is resolute, brave and full of imperilment consciousness" is more important for China than strategists such as himself. [5] Major General Luo has even taken his defense awareness mission to the gaudy stages of Hunan Satellite TV, where he has appeared in uniform on variety shows aimed at young viewers. "Using the medium's universal appeal," journalist Zhang Jianfeng wrote, "he embedded education within fun."
Luo Yuan said his dealings with Hunan TV showed him that the young have a patriotic fervor and reverence for military heroes. The problem, he said, was "how to release and mobilize their patriotic potential ... simple preaching is no good, boring inculcation doesn't work, we must move with the times...in short, national defense education should have new content, new formats and new methods". This mirrors an approach that emerged in the Chinese media in the late 1990s that media theorist Wanning Sun described as "indoctri-tainment". [6]
The hawks may have attracted attention internationally, but their impact on China's domestic discourse is even more readily apparent. Aside from their prominence in centrally-controlled, commercially-driven media like CCTV and the Global Times - whose content is republished widely on China's major privately-owned commercial online - they also have proven their ability to shape the discourse on largely user-driven social media. Dai Xu and Luo Yuan's names in particular, are often raised in popular comments, even where they were not mentioned in the corresponding news article.
Luo's suggestion that the Diaoyu Islands be turned into a target range has been widely repeated by other commentators on blogs, online forums and even a government petition site. A microblog post raising the target range idea became the most-forwarded item on Sina Weibo on August 19 - a day when anti-Japan protests took place in more than 10 Chinese cities. It was forwarded 147,000 times and attracted more than 48,000 comments, but did not mention Luo, who had started making the suggestion at least nine days earlier.
According to Baidu Baike, the Chinese Wiki, Dai Xu, meanwhile, was voted one of nine "Internet Persons of the Year" in 2010, alongside iconic figures such as Lang Xianping and Yu Jianrong, in an Internet poll that attracted several million votes. Additionally, each of his books has an average five-star average rating on DangDang, China's equivalent of Amazon.
The hawks' prominence in audience-driven media can be explained partially as a result of the universal news value of conflict, but they also may answer deeper psychological needs. The enormous numbers of responses that their statements generate on mainstream news portals, and their widespread reposting on blogs and in discussion forums, are one illustration of the strength of their market appeal.
The existence of such a market does not imply approval or agreement from more a fraction of the China's population-both Luo Yuan and Dai Xu have been mercilessly lampooned than on Weibo this year, showing that they are viewed as buffoons by many Chinese people. Nonetheless, to legions of leftists and military enthusiasts online, they are iconic figures: heroes and truth-speakers ("real military men" who "represent the people") fighting to overcome traitorous enemies-within that are selling out the country's interests.
Public criticism or questioning of these PLA pundits sparks paranoid, conspiratorial reactions from fans online. As Luo Yuan recently explained, public expressions of yearning for a military leadership that will show no mercy to any provocateurs on China's borders is "the citizenry's hope for the Chinese military, an appeal to a sense of heroism, and even more so, it is a nostalgia for our party and army's period of suffering and glory". It is also, according to Luo, an expression of "imperilment consciousness" that both Luo and Dai Xu aim to encourage.
The hawks' warlike public statements, contrasting with official government positions, frequent fierce disagreement with their co-panelists on television and even occasional direct criticisms of the policy status quo, all help perpetuate the narrative that a hawkish faction exists in the military. The rise of the term "hawkish faction" (ying pai) in Chinese discourse on international affairs suggests the idea is widespread.
Discussion of opposing factions within the party or military might once have been dangerous in the People's Republic, as it implies division, which the regime has generally sought to hide over the past two decades since the 1989 crisis. Today, however, such theories are flourish in both conventional Chinese media outlets and online. Not only have mainstream published numerous discussions on the "hawkish faction" as a phenomenon, state-run news outlets have even run translations of detailed international discussions on the PLA's hawks. Moreover, both Luo Yuan and Dai Xu publicly embrace the label.
This indicates that public belief in the existence of a PLA hawkish faction fighting for aggressive countermeasures against external enemies is acceptable or desirable from the perspective of military and civilian propaganda and ideological authorities. From a regime legitimacy perspective, it may be useful to maintain the appearance of a powerful faction working to push the country's foreign policy in aggressive directions, so that nationalist desires and hopes for revenge (to some degree a result of the regime's own "patriotic education" agenda) can be focused within the present system.
Conclusion
The hawks' activities may have contributed to the Philippines and Japan's acceptance of the new status quo in a number of ways, though further research is needed to obtain specific indications of which areas in particular the hawks' influence is strongest. Their promotion of "imperilment consciousness" probably has contributed to public demands for hardline foreign policies, and their combative rhetoric has legitimized and encouraged public criticism of China's current foreign policy.
In turn, the narrative of popular nationalist pressure on the government's position, which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has emphasized to foreign interlocutors for many years, is frequently interpreted outside China as a domestic constraint on the Chinese regime's foreign policy choices - a perception that improves China's position at the international negotiating table by credibly rendering various forms of compromise "impossible".
On maritime territorial disputes in particular, the narrative of policy pressure from a hawkish military - or elements within the military as well as an intensely nationalistic public (partially engendered by the military) - has created a widespread perception that an "accident or miscalculation" on the water probably would spiral out of control, which China has wielded to secure acceptance of the advances it has made via non-military means. The PLA's "hawkish faction" appear integral to this combined civil-military approach to international conflict under informatized conditions.
Notes:
1. These aspects of military external propaganda work are perhaps better understood as "external publicity", rather than "propaganda" in the sense of negative demonization of the enemy and disinformation. In addition, the Chinese term also means "promotion", in the sense of public service messages (health promotion). In Chinese, these are all xuanchuan, literally "announce [and] pass-on".
2. David Shambaugh, "China's Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy", The China Journal, No. 57, January 2007, p31; Anne-Marie Brady, "Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China", Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008, p13.
3. The organizational structure of the GPD traditionally reflected distinctions between propaganda and ideological education work aimed at officers and soldiers (GPD Propaganda Department), mass work aimed at the domestic audience (GPD Mass Work Department) and external propaganda work (GPD Liaison Department). See, David Shambaugh, "The Soldier and the State", The China Quarterly, No. 127, September 1991, pp 545- 546.
4. Author's Interview with a Philippine diplomat, Beijing, November, 2012.
5. As a Strong China Forum writer observed in the wake of Dai Xu's 2010 "dismemberment" lecture, "whether what he says is right or not is secondary". The crucial point is that he is awakening people to the need for national defense construction (Military.china.com, February 24, 2010)
6. Wanning Sun, "Semiotic Over-Determination or 'Indoctritainment': Television, Citizenship, and the Olympic Games", in Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Michael Keane and Yin Hong, eds, Media in China: Consumption, Content, and Crisis, New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, p116.
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