Modelling Chinese Youth Support for Military Intervention in the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands: Beyond Nationalism and Militarism

Research on public opinion and foreign policy in China has focused nationalism as the driver behind support for use of force. However, is just one many potentially significant factors that can increase military deployments. In this article we build a mediation model to test relative effects psychological predispositions, attitudes, perceptions opposing state calculations about likely outcome conflict sending naval forces disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. We find dislike Japanese government belief would be victorious with Japan are both powerful predictors Nationalism militarism directly but also indirectly it via different pathways. Nationalists more confident Chinese victory while militarists have stronger government.