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Strong State or Vulnerable Homeland: How Chinese State Media Sought to Combat Democratic Diffusion during the 2019 Hong Kong Protests

ABSTRACT Departing from its typical silence on pro-democracy movements around the world, Chinese state media encouraged a flood of reports about the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Movement in Hong Kong . This article investigates two different media framing strategies to prevent democratic diffusion: demobilizing the masses by emphasizing state capacity and repression, and rallying the masses by emphasizing threats to national unity. Analyzing an original dataset of articles about the Hong Kong protests in the People’s Daily, this article documents a greater overall reliance on the rallying strategy, a tendency that became particularly pronounced in the later stage of the protest movement. Chinese media selectively reported events that would emphasize threats and downplayed stories about repression.