Michael Cerny (APRW)

Speaker & Title

Michael Cerny, "From Altitude to Attitude: How the Chinese Balloon Incident Reshaped U.S. Attitudes towards China"

Abstract

How does geopolitical insecurity influence American foreign policy attitudes? Prior research documents the effects of war and terrorism, but less is known about how the public responds to sovereignty violations that generate national attention yet uneven local exposure. We study the 2023 Chinese high-altitude balloon incursion into U.S. airspace, a salient episode involving the United States’ principal strategic competitor. Using high-frequency geolocated survey data collected during the incident and an original national survey fielded nine months later, we examine the consequent spatial distribution of attitudes towards China. Implementing a dynamic difference-in-differences approach, we show that although the incident coincided with a nationwide increase in attention, hawkish attitudes did not shift uniformly. Instead, adversarial views became increasingly correlated with geographic proximity to the balloon’s trajectory after entry into U.S. airspace and this spatial gradient persisted over time. Cross-sectional evidence months later reveals similar patterns and links proximity to greater recall and informational exposure, consistent with localized salience and media amplification rather than uniform national persuasion.