Influence of Chinese state media on a global audience examined at April 19 program

The perception and influence of messaging by an autocratic government’s state-run media and its implications for democratic resilience will be the focus of the next program in Cal State San Bernardino’s Modern China Lecture series.

“Chinese State Media and Its Global Audience,” presented by Daniel Mattingly, assistant professor of political science from Yale University, will take place at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, April 19.

The talk is free and open to the public. No advance registration is required. The in-person event will take place in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences building, room SB-210, and can also be accessed at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/388207496.

Mattingly will join via Zoom.

Mattingly is one of the authors of a paper, “Chinese State Media Persuades a Global Audience That the ‘China Model, is Superior: Evidence From A 19-Country Experiment,” the findings of which will be discussed during his talk. The abstract reads, in part, “Many are skeptical of the appeal of authoritarian political systems. By contrast, we argue that global audiences will embrace authoritarian models when they believe that autocracies can meet governance challenges better than democracies.”

Mattingly studies authoritarian politics and historical political economy with a focus on China. He is the author of “The Art of Political Control in China (Cambridge University Press, 2020),” which examines how the Chinese state controls protests and implements ambitious social policies. It was named one of the best books of 2020 by Foreign Affairs and received the best book award from the Democracy and Autocracy Section of the American Political Science Association. His current book project examines the role of the military in China’s domestic and international politics. He received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Yale University.

The Modern China Lecture Series was initiated to promote awareness of important issues related to China for those on the CSUSB campus and in the community.

Looking ahead to the programs set for 2022, series organizer and CSUSB history professor, Jeremy Murray, said, “It will be a diverse group of presentations this fall, ranging from Mao and Xi and the apex of state power, to Hong Kong, to everyday policing practices in China, to nation-building at the frontiers in the Republican Period (1911-1949). I’m excited to learn from these events, and to share the work of these global scholars with our campus.”

In the series of more than 60 lectures, workshops, film screenings and roundtable forums since January 2014, China scholars from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, the Claremont Colleges, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, Columbia, Oxford and other institutions have visited the CSUSB campus to share their expertise and opinions.

Speakers in the series have included specialists in history, economics, political science, philosophy, finance, security studies, literature, anthropology and other fields.

The series cosponsors this year are the CSUSB Department of History, the History Club/Phi Alpha Theta, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration, and the Intellectual Life Fund. Series organizers are Murray and Alexander Serrano.

For more information on the Modern China Lecture Series, contact Jeremy Murray, associate professor of history, at jmurray@csusb.edu.