Democratic Ties That Bind? US–China Conflict and Foreign Policy Opinion in Japan and Korea

Abstract

Abstract While the Biden administration has framed US–China relations as part of a broader contest between democracy and autocracy, the potential international repercussions of this stance remain unclear. How will other democracies and, in particular, the citizens of key democratic US allies respond to a world characterized by increasing rivalry between dictatorships and democracies? We seek to answer this question through survey experiments in Japan and South Korea. We randomly assign information to respondents, highlighting the differences in democracy and human rights practices in the US–China relationship. Despite prior research and recent US policy documents suggesting that increasing tension over democracy and human rights in US–China relations will lead to democratic US allies moving even closer to the United States, our findings diverge from this expectation. When provided with information about this tension, the level of support for more cooperation with Washington decreases in both Japan and Korea. Our findings point to the need to revisit an assumption in much of the academic literature: Given a choice between cooperation with authoritarian and democratic countries in conflict, democracies—and their publics—will gravitate toward the latter.