Michael Cerny & Rory Truex. (2024). “Under Pressure: Attitudes Towards China Among American Foreign Policy Professionals.” Working Paper.

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How do career and reputational concerns affect China policy discourse within the Washington foreign policy community? We conducted over 50 semi-structured interviews and a novel survey experiment of nearly five-hundred American foreign policy and national security professionals about their views towards the People’s Republic of China. Contrary to concerns of a rigid consensus, we identify a noticeable diversity of policy perspectives among these professionals. However, many participants perceived a degree of what they referred to as “hawkflation” or “groupthink.” Roughly one fourth of survey respondents noted instances of professional pressure to voice a more hawkish point of view towards China, and many feared being perceived as naive or compromised by their views on, ties to, and experiences in China. These pressures were particularly noteworthy for foreign policy professionals that are traditionally marginalized from power- those who are younger, non-white, or female. Our subjects reported a number of different strategies to cope with these pressures, including mirroring hawkish rhetoric in their advice, modifying or self-censoring their views in public settings, and even exiting the field entirely. Taken together, these social dynamics appear to foster perceptions of “consensus” and bias policy discourse towards hawkish prescriptions and inflated threats.