Doublespeak: China's Hard and Soft Propaganda during Policy Changes

How effective are different authoritarian propaganda strategies in cultivating support and maintaining social stability during periods of crisis and policy changes? Existing literature has identified two main strategies of authoritarian propaganda: soft propaganda which uses persuasion to convince the population that the government is competent, and hard propaganda which uses dry and threatening language to signal regime strength and deter potential rebellions. Yet, few have directly compared the effectiveness of these different strategies, especially during periods of crisis and policy changes when support and social stability matter most. In this study, we theorize that both hard and soft propaganda strategies have pitfalls, particularly during policy changes, that are previously overlooked. For hard propaganda, bland slogans do not just signal regime strength but also government policy resolve, which might increase, rather than decrease, collective action because citizens are more likely to participate in rightful resistance against local authorities. For soft propaganda, policy changes force the regime to send contradictory arguments that undermine their persuasiveness. To support our arguments, we leverage the rare opportunity of China's COVID policy U-turns in November and December 2022. We first collect data on official propaganda and show that both hard and soft propaganda strategies are widely used. At the same time, the messages turned sharply from pro-strict COVID restrictions to pro-reopening. We then conduct an original survey experiment in China that randomly exposes respondents to different COVID propaganda messages ranging from hard to soft and pro-restriction to pro-reopening. Consistent with our theoretical arguments, pro-reopening hard propaganda increases individuals' belief that their protest would be deemed "rightful" by the state which subsequently dampens its protest-deterring effects. Moreover, inconsistent soft propaganda messages due to the policy change decrease individuals' assessment of China's COVID responses. Our findings provide the first direct comparison between different propaganda strategies and highlight important limitations of both hard and soft propaganda in authoritarian regimes, particularly during crises when the regime needs them most.