PEACEFUL WORLD LEADERSHIP OR NATIONALIST ADVOCATE? HOW CHINA USES SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROJECT ITS STANCE ON RUSSIA'S INVASION OF UKRAINE.

Authoritarian states are increasingly using international social media platforms as a tool to influence public discourse iii foreign states. But what narratives do these authoritarian states prioritize? What motivates this choice of narrative? And, are these narratives amplified by their target audience? This article addresses these qiiestions by quantitatively measuring the evolution of the People's Republic of China's state-backed media narratives on Facebook about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This analysis covers the period in the lead zip to, and the nionths that follow, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I use the case of PRC rhetoric on Ukraine for two reasons. First, the PRO's policy approach to Ukraine is unclear, as there is a coiitradiction between its support for Russia and the assertion that Ukraine has territorial sovereignty. The PRC, therefore, presents no clear narrative on what it seeks to convey to international audiences. Second, in light of this contradiction and the lack of an obvious policy stance on Ukraine, this case is an opportunity for us to observe how the PRC's choice of narrative evolves over time, and which foreign policy goals the PRC prioritizes in its international rhetoric. This article finds that the PRC's state-backed media rhetoric on Facebook alternates between: (1) presenting the PRC as a diplomatic and responsible actor with no clear stance on the conflict; and (2) fuelling domestic nationalism by framing the war as the result of Western aggression. Yet, while the PRC stateba, cked media appear eventually to settle on the latter narrative as its solution to the aforementioned policy contradiction, over the whole time period, state-backed media outlets on Facebook produce a higlier volume of content promoting the PRC as a responsible actor than they do blaming the West. The PRC's shift between two narrative approaches on Facebook reflects the larger contradiction at the heart of the PRO's foreign policy, that is: does it project itself as seeking to enhance the lise of diplomacy, or as stridently anti-West? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]