The Messenger Overwhelming the Message: Ideological Cues and Perceptions of Bias in Television News

Survey research has demonstrated that citizens perceive ideological bias in television news, specifically with regard to CNN and Fox News Channel (FNC), which allegedly represent the liberal and conservative viewpoint, respectively. In this paper I argue that attaching the CNN and FNC labels to news stories sends an ideological cue to the viewer regarding the content of the story. Utilizing an experimental design that allows manipulation of the network attribution of actual FNC and CNN content, I am able to demonstrate that the CNN and FNC labels function as ideological signals to the viewer, with this signal being most pronounced among ideologues whose views are supposedly at odds with those attributed to the network.

Currency convertibility, cost of capital control and capital account liberalization in China

This paper provides a synthetic view of the capital account liberalization, capital control and currency convertibility issues in China. A quantitative analysis following Henry’s study¹ fails to provide clear links between liberalization, diminishing capital controls and Chinese stock market returns. An institutional explanation is then offered to complement the quantitative analysis. We suggest that the property rights regime is an indispensable institutional variable when studying this topic. Originating from the current property rights regime; price distortion, moral hazard and monetary overhang are the main impediments towards capital account liberalization and full convertibility. Therefore, property rights reform should be given the first priority in Chinese economic reform. He is the author ofProperty Rights, Renminbi Full Convertibility and Economic Development [Chanquan Zhidu, Renminbi Ziyou Duihuan yu Jingji Fazhan] (Wuhan, China: Wuhan University Press, 2003). This research is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 70273030). The authors thank Dr. Sujian Guo, Mr. Robin Child and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and Miss Cate Bain and Mrs. Patricia Merton for their proofreading. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors.     

影视产业国家促进的法制建构——以财税优惠政策为视角

自2018年影视行业补税风潮以来,影视行业的税收问题就成为实务界关注的焦点,然而影视行业的税收问题不仅是自查自纠、或是改变核定征收方式,更应该追本溯源检讨其源头。本文试对以财税优惠为代表的特定的产业政策是否能够发挥其功能、国家促进影视行业所应遵循的法治路径和扮演的角色定位等实践与理论问题予以思考、回应。文章对影视产业相关优惠政策的完善提出了建议,即财税优惠作为国家权力,首先,应遵循基本的权力限制原则,即实现财税优惠的法治化,既包括政策制定也包括执行环节;其次,优惠政策不能沦为企业规避法定义务的工具,即优惠政策的适用主体也应遵循从形式到实质的标准;最后,优惠政策应有合理的绩效评价和效应分析。     

Backsliding and Reversal: The J Curve Revisited

In this article we argue that democratic transitions can reverse, oscillate, or simply stall. These transitions are exemplified in the different types of states we categorize. We construct a model of stability vs openness using three dimensions of stateness, namely authority, legitimacy, and capacity. With the additional application of a six-fold typology of states, we offer a robust analytical framework with which to identify and explain changes in state status. Our construct of stability and openness leads to a novel development of a global conflict damage index, which is built upon conflict risk, but considers a state’s capacity to deal with conflict. The paper concludes with implications for policy and the application of the model to conflict prediction when states under go transition.     

Retrospective and Prospective Performance Assessments during the 2004 Election Campaign: Tests of Mediation and News Media Priming

According to many theoretical accounts of the vote choice, distal determinants (e.g., party identification) influence proximal determinants (e.g., perceptions of candidates), which in turn shape candidate preferences. Yet almost no research on voting has formally tested such mediational hypotheses. Using national survey data collected between February and September of 2004, this paper begins by illustrating how to conduct such investigations. We explored whether public approval of President Bush’s handling of a series of specific national problems (e.g., the Iraq war) influenced overall assessments of his job performance and evaluations of his likely future performance versus John Kerry’s, which in turn shaped vote choices. The results are consistent with the claim of mediation and shed additional light on the impact of various issues on the 2004 election outcome. We also tested what we term the “dosage hypothesis,” derived from news media priming theory, which posits that changes in the amount of media coverage of an issue during the course of a campaign should precipitate changes in the weight citizens place on that issue when evaluating the president’s overall job performance, particularly among citizens most exposed to the news. Surprisingly, this analysis did not yield consistent support for the venerable dosage hypothesis, suggesting that the conditions under which priming occurs should be specified much more precisely in future work.

中国城市化进程中社区发展的思考

中国近三十年来的快速城市化进程带来了许多前所未有的社会问题,给城市的管理和发展提出了新的挑战。其中值得重点关注的一个挑战就是如何改造、更新和发展城市社区。结合中国现阶段的发展现实,将社区按各自的特点进行分类,分析了它们的成因、功能和存在的问题,提出要重新认识这些社区的价值,结合新的社区发展理念,有针对性地制订不同的发展战略,实现社区发展的目标,保障城市化过程的健康稳定与和谐。     

社会保障资源安排中的逻辑与政治——以华北一个村庄为例

采用"质的研究"方式,对社会转型期华北一个村庄内各种保障或救济性质的资源安排进行了微观分析。相对于宏观政策层面的简单与明晰,正式的社会保障资源在农村社区的分配与利用过程中的功能、内容和形式都更为丰富,如作为消解其他政策和项目所带来的负面影响的工具,或演变为被争夺的竞争性经济资源,或将动态的保障制度异化为长期的养老保障,或作为维稳和社区治理的一种政策性工具等;这些变异一方面有悖政策初衷,使得政策目标发生偏离,另一方面也可能侵蚀社会公正。因此,社会保障政策制定与执行过程中需要充分考虑农村社区复杂而多元的现实,更具规范性、透明性和参与性,这也要求建立起更为健全的农村社会保障体系以及相应的监测与评估机制,厘清社会保障与社会治理的关系,尽可能避免进入政策资源异化与资源补偿型维稳的怪圈。与此同时,非正式的保障资源或社区内部的某些安排则在一定程度上弥补了正式的政策性资源的缺位或短缺,而如何将正式的保障政策资源与社区的、社会的力量有效结合起来是有待进一步研究的课题。     

实现人人享有基本医疗保健的中国道路

人人享有基本医疗保健是世界卫生组织1978年在著名的《阿拉木图宣言》中提出的世界各国共同奋斗的目标。中国共产党在其成立后的百年奋斗历程中,始终不渝地带领各族人民朝着这一基于公平正义核心价值观的目标迈进。虽然在中国革命和建设的不同历史时期,需要重点解决的问题和所能采取的手段有差异,但预防为主的核心卫生工作方针、强调公共卫生和基层医疗卫生体系建设的工作重心是中国用较少的投入相对有效地解决世界四分之一人口的基本健康问题、不断有效应对各种疫情挑战的政策法宝。党的十八大以来,全民健康与全面小康的紧密关系得到更加深入的认识,健康民生问题得到更大的重视,中国织起了、并不断织牢世界上最大的两张网:一张是世界上最大的基本医疗保障网,另一张则是世界上最大的基本医疗服务网。     

新中国成立六十周年青年人生价值观发展变迁研究

分析建国六十周年青年人生价值观的发展变化能为我们做好新时期青年人生价值观教育提供经验教训。推进当代青年人生价值观教育,应该重视青年人生价值观的核心教育地位,坚持社会主义核心价值的主导教育,优化青年人生价值观教育环境,了解青年群体。     

Cultivating self-health subjects: Yangsheng and biocitizenship in urban China

China's transformation from state-run socialism to market economy has resulted in the progressive privatization of a number of key areas, including public health. At the same time, research suggests that the privatization of public service has given accelerated the formation of self-governing subjects who will enrich and strengthen Chinese authoritarian rule. This is most vividly demonstrated in the tendency of Chinese consumers to engage in the practice of self-health, an integral dimension of the wide-spread yangsheng (life-nurturing) practice at the grassroots level. Engaging with the concept of biocitizenship, and combining critical analysis of media with ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines a nationwide process of health literacy education through popular media and the ways in which this process shapes yangsheng as both discourse and practice. It also identifies a range of ethical positions adopted by individual citizens in response to yangsheng as a discourse, practice and industry. The discussion reveals that biological citizenship has indeed become a new and integral dimension of China's citizenship project in the twenty-first century. We learn that while there is indeed an unambiguously top-down process of making biocitizens, a certain level of biological citizenship ‘from below’ is also present, albeit with distinct Chinese characteristics.     

Tackling unemployment in China: state capacity and governance issues

Abstract

This paper considers China's state capacity and changing governance as revealed through its policies to tackle unemployment. Despite high levels of growth, economic restructuring has resulted in rising unemployment over the last decade. The Chinese state has been able to manage job losses from state enterprises, demonstrating some state capacity in relation to this sector and some persistent command economy governance mechanisms. However both design and implementation of policies to compensate and assist particular groups among the unemployed have been shaped by weak state capacity in several other areas. First, capacity to gather accurate employment data is limited, meaning local and central governments do not have a good understanding of the extent and nature of unemployment. Second, the sustainability of supposedly mandatory unemployment insurance schemes is threatened by poor capacity to enforce participation. Third, poor central state capacity to ensure local governments implement policies effectively leads to poor unemployment insurance fund capacity, resulting in provision for only a narrow segment of the unemployed and low quality employment services. Although the adoption of unemployment insurance (and its extension to employers and employees in the private sector), the introduction of a Labour Contract Law in 2007, and the delivery of employment services by private businesses indicate a shift towards the use of new governance mechanisms based on entitlement, contract and private sector delivery of public-sector goods, that shift is undermined by poor state capacity in relation to some of these new mechanisms.     

Genro Rule in China and Japan: A Comparative Perspective

For a time in both Japan (roughly 1890–1915) and much more briefly in China (about 1987–1992), major political decisions were made by cohesive groups of retired elders of the founding generation. Necessary if not sufficient conditions for rule by elders include a closed system, with the elite not held responsible to a wider public; and a constitutional or practical vagueness about the locus of final political authority. The more general pattern in such systems is personal dictatorship, with rule by elders as an alternative when cultural or political conditions stand in the way of one-man rule. This essay explores the pattern, conditions, and characteristics of rule by elders in China and Japan as genro rule serves as an alternative to one-man rule in generational transitions in political regimes with a relatively cohesive ruling group and a weak institutional structure. Peter R. Moody, Jr. is professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and he specializes in the study of Chinese politics. His more recent books include Tradition and Modernization in China and Japan, Political Change in Taiwan, and Political Opposition in Post-Confucian Society. He is editor of China Documents Annual and book review editor for the Review of Politics. He has written on Chinese politics, Asian international affairs, Chinese political thought, international relations theory, and theory of political parties.     

Outsourcing in China: an exploratory assessment

The increasing demands for public services, growing resource externalisation and decentralisation have driven Chinese governments to seek alternative means of service delivery. This article addresses the largely ignored outsourcing practice in China. Lack of awareness of and research on the widespread outsourcing was a result of the conceptual barriers created by China's economic transition and its choice of incremental reform path. By decomposing national fiscal expenditures, the article finds that from 2002 to 2004, outsourcing accounted for about one‐third of the total governmental services expenditures and demonstrated a trend of continuous growth. Such developments effectively transformed the basic landscape of public service delivery and created significant external dependence. Within just three decades, China has quickly shifted from an omnipotent state to an ‘incomplete’ state. The capacity of the administrative hierarchy has become severely constrained. Nonetheless, the political risks of the macro‐level transformation are largely mitigated at the micro‐level by mechanisms of public–private cooperation. These developments are embedded in informal arrangements that, remarkably, maintain the survival of the current power structure. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Response and responsibility: China in East Asian financial cooperation

Abstract

China's behaviour in East Asian financial cooperation has overall changed from passively responding to external pressures to taking proactive initiatives, which are highlighted by Chinese elites as evidence of a sense of responsibility. China has taken varied positions towards proposals for Asian financial regionalism, from ‘silent’ objection, to lukewarm or superficial support, to enthusiastic participation and substantial contribution, and this variance has not always taken place in a chronological order. Despite much speculation over the trajectory of China's role in East Asian regionalism, there has not been a study focused on China's policymaking towards East Asian financial cooperation. Therefore, this paper fills the gap by analysing the factors and policymaking processes that have led to those varied positions. It argues that China, recognising the momentum in the region to enhance cooperation, has replaced the blunt dismissals of proposals, particularly those from Japan, with a more subtle approach that is aimed at ensuring China's influence and promoting the image of a responsible great power; that the extent to which it can contribute to this process is mainly constrained by its economic conditions, particularly the financial institutions.     

Difference in Marx: the lumpenproletariat and the proletarian unnamable

This article considers the place of difference in Marx's politics through an exploration of his categories of the lumpenproletariat and the proletariat. Far from a simple set of class subjects or empirical peoples, these two categories are argued to describe particular modes of political composition . Despite the frisson of difference and excess which is usually associated with Marx's lumpenproletariat, it is argued to describe a mode of composition - and, in relation to anarchism, a politics - oriented not towards difference and becoming, but towards present identity . The proletariat, on the other hand, is shown to be not a People, historical Subject or identity, but a 'minor' political mode of composition immanent to the manifolds of capitalism, and premised on the condition that, as Deleuze puts it, 'the people are missing'.     

Testing the China Threat paradigm: China's high-speed railway diplomacy in Southeast Asia

Vying for high-speed railway projects overseas has become a prominent feature of China's diplomacy in recent years, including in Southeast Asia. These efforts have been widely depicted within the premises of the China Threat narrative – as a part of Beijing's agenda to alter the power balance in Southeast Asia at the expense of the economic, political, and security well-being of countries in the region. This paper challenges such interpretations and concludes that these projects do not have either the intention or capacity to facilitate such a hostile and far-reaching agenda toward the region.     

China and the world: Perception and analysis

Abstract

This paper considers whether China's images of itself may have influenced analyses of China from the outside, and thereby skewed understanding. A sense of Chineseness, of a culture and civilization which is somehow very different from any other, is a recurrent theme in China's history and in the history of Europe's direct contacts with China. Acceptance by Europeans of such images as true representations of China is itself a tradition which stretches back many centuries, and the sentiment of China's uniqueness often seems to have been drawn into contemporary studies of China.     

In Search of Public Accountability: The 'Wenling Model' in China

This article specifically attempts to answer two interrelated research questions: firstly, how do democratic consultation assemblies (DCAs) heighten public accountability in the current institutional setting of China's sub-provincial localities?; and secondly, what can be learned, from the Chinese case, in relation to achieving public accountability elsewhere? To address the first question, this article will explore two particular variations of the DCAs, and will focus on the interplay between the managerial and democratic accountability orientations to address the second question.     

China in East Asia: The process and implications of regionalization

This paper assesses the impact of foreign direct investment on China's integration into the East Asian regional economy. The phenomenal growth of investment since 1992 has both benefited from, and also fuelled, the growth of local autonomy in post‐Mao China. The central state's ability to control the process of integration has subsequently been significantly undermined as the relationship between the local and the international becomes ever more important. While the tendency to emphasize low cost production advantages has attracted considerable inward investment in some areas, impressive short‐term growth rates may hide less beneficial long‐term consequences for China's position within East Asia, and for the trajectory of China's development in general.