Framing Foreign Aid: Chinese Propaganda and Domestic Support for Checkbook Diplomacy

As China emerges as one of the largest global development financiers, it remains puzzling why the Chinese public supports the government’s decision to spend billions of dollars overseas while many citizens still struggle to make a living. We hypothesize that part of the explanation lies in how Chinese foreign aid is framed and communicated to the public through state propaganda. To test this, we plan to conduct a large-scale survey experiment with 2,400 participants in which respondents are randomly assigned to different treatment groups exposed to distinct framings of Chinese foreign aid, derived from aid-related news coverage from 2015 to 2021. We will then assess how these framings influence levels of public support for aid compared to a baseline control group.