Professional Affiliation

Assistant Professor, Princeton University

Expert Bio

Dr. Naima Green-Riley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab. Dr. Green-Riley specializes in Chinese foreign policy with a focus on public diplomacy and the global information space. Before pursuing her Ph.D., she was a Foreign Service Officer at the State Department. Dr. Green-Riley was a 2021 Public Intellectual Program Fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and she was featured on New America’s 2020 list of Black American Foreign Policy Next Generation Leaders. Her writing has been published by Security Studies, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, The Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post, the National Bureau of Asian Research, The Root and in the 2022 book, The China Questions II.

Expertise

• US-China Relations
• Chinese nationalism

Wilson Center Project

Beyond Nationalism: Understanding Chinese Public Attitudes

Project Summary

Given rising tensions, limited opportunities for people-to-people exchange, and significant cultural differences between the United States and China, discussions of Chinese attitudes within the American intellectual and public spheres are often lacking in nuance and depth. While the dominant variable used to discuss Chinese attitudes in contemporary discourse is nationalism, a greater multiplicity of constructs would aid in adding deeper insight to our understanding of Chinese attitudes. This project uses tools and constructs from the field of political psychology in order to better develop our understanding of Chinese public attitudes. While some scholars have attempted to translate measures of psychological attributes that were developed in the U.S. for use in China, these translations do not adequately account for cultural differences between the U.S. and Chinese contexts. Through studies that will reframe cultural and social issues in a manner more suitable to the Chinese context, this project will revamp our understanding of Chinese attitudes.