Introduction

Double standard: Chinese public opinion on the Hong Kong protests

“…Our findings confirm that violent protest undercuts external audience support, but only if protests are framed in terms of rights-based mobilization and not when protesters are depicted as having separatist inclinations. This conditional signaling effect is consistent with previous scholarship which shows that radical groups are not penalized for engaging in violence, presumably because observers already perceive them as extremist and their violence is thus in keeping with character (Simpson et al, 2018). The conditional effect, however, is sensitive to media framing.…”

“…It is also possible that the average treatment effects reported in Models 1–3 are heterogeneous across respondents. As Simpson et al (2018) point out, sympathetic audiences are less likely to view an agenda as radical and thus more likely to be turned off by violence. Our 2 × 2 factorial design can only test the first part of this logic.…”

“…A desire to cultivate or maintain public sympathy is one reason why social movement organizers invest so heavily in non-violence and civil disobedience, even in the face of brutal state repression (Tilly, 1979). Yet, as Tilly and many others have recognized, WUNC is often in the eye of the beholder and observers are likely to interpret the same protest events in vastly different ways (Muñoz and Anduiza, 2019;Saunders and Klandermans, 2020). Muñoz and Anduiza (2019), for instance, argue that public attitudes toward violent protesters are conditioned by underlying sympathies toward the protest agenda.…”

“…Muñoz and Anduiza (2019), for instance, argue that public attitudes toward violent protesters are conditioned by underlying sympathies toward the protest agenda. Looking at violence by white nationalist protesters and counter-protesters in the US, Simpson et al (2018) show that violence on the part of both groups led to general reductions in public support. However, they also find that the treatment effect for white nationalist violence was limited to a small subset of respondents with prior sympathy for the white nationalist agenda.…”

“…The literature on contentious politics tells us that non-violence is often the most effective protest strategy (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011), in large part because violence tends to be unpopular with observers (Tilly, 1979). Experimental studies, however, appear to show that not all protesters are held to the same standard and that popular movements, pursuing moderate political agendas, tend to face higher penalties for engaging in violent protest than do more radical organizations (Simpson et al, 2018). This apparent double standard has clear implications for the study of contentious politics and conflict management in open societies, but how does the logic play out in controlled authoritarian settings where any anti-government activity can be characterized as radical by authorities?…”