Governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and social movements have long used international human rights pressure to get a repressive state to modify its behavior. Although foundational literature was optimistic about the effects of such pressure, Hostile Forces is part of recent scholarly efforts to understand the unintended consequences of such pressure.

What is the impact of international human rights pressure inside authoritarian countries? Under what conditions can it backfire and lead to backlash against the international community and increased support for the government? Through an in-depth analysis of international pressure on China, Gruffydd-Jones examines in this book why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allows discussion of some sensitive issues freely, but not of others.

Gruffydd-Jones argues that authoritarian governments can use human rights pressure as a tool to bolster domestic support by strategically passing on foreign pressure to citizens, rather than censoring it. Governments can successfully weaponize pressure when they are able to frame the issue as one of international competition rather than individual justice. To do so, governments typically want to highlight external pressure as hostile. The source (whether such pressure arises from a geopolitical rival or not), target (whether press