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In April 2005, tens of thousands of anti-Japanese protesters took to the streets of China's largest cities, condemning Japan's textbook revisions, its U.N. Security Council bid, and its claim to resources in the waters between China and Japan. The anti-Japanese protests demonstrated the capacity for mass collective action among China's urban elite and potentially laid the groundwork for future challenges to the government itself. Given the risk to regime stability that these demonstrations posed, why did China's authoritarian leaders permit the anti-Japanese protests to go on for weeks before reining them in? The 2005 Chinese protests are just one illustration of a larger puzzle: when will authoritarian leaders allow and even encourage anti-foreign protests, and when will they seek to prevent or crack down upon anti-foreign demonstrations? In this paper, which presents the preliminary results of my dissertation fieldwork, I suggest that the government's decision to allow anti-foreign protests in April 2005 was a strategic choice--to use the specter of domestic instability and the escalating costs of domestic repression to gain leverage over Japan on the UN Security Council negotiations. Contrary to the standard literature on audience costs, I suggest that authoritarian governments can indeed generate credible signals vis-à-vis the decision to allow nationalistic protests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Korea has pursued a nuclear weapons capability for about two decades. Many different diplomatic efforts have been made to convince or cajole the Northern regime to give up this quest-and all have so far failed. Since 2003, a new multilateral approach-the Six-Party Talks involving the Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States-has raised hopes anew. These hopes are based largely on China's active role. China has the potential both to guarantee North Korea's security, and to impose and enforce a denuclearization agreement. We analyze China's changing grand strategy and its implications for China's Korea goals and policies. This discussion indicates that China is more concerned to preserve the North Korean regime and prevent a second Korean War than to eliminate the North's nuclear capability. Therefore, the Six-Party Talks are unlikely to succeed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]