Patriotism or Pressure? Public Opinion and China’s Ontological Security in South China Sea Dispute

The South China Sea dispute illustrates how public opinion, nationalism, and security perceptions jointly shape state behavior. This study examines how Chinese citizens’ patriotic orientations and views of security dilemmas influence support for escalation. Using replication data from surveys and experiments in China and the United States, the analysis combines perspective-taking experiments, mediation and interaction models, and dynamic game-theoretic simulations. Results show that perspective taking reduces escalation preferences, but its mediating effect through security dilemma perceptions is limited. By contrast, nationalism consistently predicts hawkish support, and its effect intensifies under hostile attributions. Simulation outcomes further reveal that even moderate increases in nationalism significantly raise the probability of mutual escalation, creating feedback loops that sustain high-risk equilibria. Rather than producing short-term spirals, patriotism functions as a transnational constraint on ontological security strategies. These findings advance theoretical understanding of nationalism’s structural and psychological roles and highlight implications for managing Sino-American tensions.