The Attitudes of the Chinese Middle Class Towards Democracy

Little has been done to quantitatively establish the connection between the middle class and a specific regime type. In an effort to fill in the gap, this study uses Asian Barometer survey dataset to examine the attitudes and orientation of China’s rising middle class. We find that the Chinese middle class does show higher democratic orientation than those we categorize as lower class, but only if class is defined by occupation or by self-identification, and not by income level. We interpret this result to mean that economic development offers new life experiences with the creation of new types of professions and enhances people’s agreement with modern democratic values by arousing people’s consciousness of their new social class status.

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.     

Citizen Attributions of Blame in Third‐Party Governance

The authors use a survey experiment to examine how structural differences in governance arrangements affect citizens’ notions of who is culpable for poor service quality. More specifically, two questions are investigated: (1) When things go wrong, do citizens attribute more blame to political actors if the provider of government services is a public agency or a private contractor? (2) Does the length of the accountability chain linking political actors to service providers influence citizens’ attributions of blame? The authors hypothesize that provider sector and accountability chain length affect citizens’ perceptions of political actors’ control over service delivery, which, in turn, inform citizens’ attributions of blame. Mixed support is found for this theory.     

Political Culture and the Study of Chinese Politics

It is both a truth and a truism that Chinese politics cannot be understood without reference to Chinese culture (a truth and truism that would apply to any other society as well). But within the academic discipline of political science political culture has lost status over the past generation as not conducive to the development of empirical political theory. The usual candidate for replacement is rational choice theory. But properly understood, political culture is compatible with rational choice, inasmuch as there is no single standard of rationality, but, rather, it will vary from society to society and era to era. Considerations of the cultural background are necessary to provide content to rational choice theory, since without consideration of culture context rational choice threatens to reduce to a set of colorless banalities.

Political legitimacy and china’s transition

This study reveals a distinctive Chinese cognitive model of political legitimacy, and analyzes how political leaders in Beijing have maintained its legitimacy through cultivating different elements of this traditional model. The central argument developed in this study is that so far the government in Beijing has shown remarkable adaptability to a changing political environment. However, the transition towards a market economy has redefined the meanings of the century-old cognitive model. Consequently, the existing system of legitimization is being seriously challenged. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Brandies University. His recent articles appeared onAsian Survey, Modern China Studies, Twenty First Century (Hong Kong), andAmerican Review of China Studies. The author wishes to thank for the helpful comments made on earlier drafts of this paper by Yang Zhong, A. Jack Waskey, He Li, Jim Stevenson, John Hebestreet, Tang Wei, and anonymous reviewers.     

Tianjin Binhai New Area: A Case Study of Multi-Level Streams Model of Chinese Decision-Making

The authors develop a new multi-level streams model in order to explain the Chinese decision-making process with regards to the top-down allocation of resources and administrative reforms. Using this policy model, the 2005 decision to upgrade the Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) to the national level can be regarded as a relatively rational choice with a series of interaction of political processes among the elites at the central and local levels such as the local officials and social elites, and central leaders. However, in the administrative system of economic development, there are disagreements and conflicts among different parts within and outside the TBNA. The central and the Tianjin governments are now trying to coordinate the relationship among local governments within the Circum-Bohai Region and within the TBNA through structural reform and personnel reshuffling.

Language, myths and rhetoric

Political language can evoke a set of mythic beliefs in subtle and powerful ways. Murray Edelman is professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has been a consultant to various national and state commissions concerned with economics planning and collective bargaining. He has published widely in the fields of political psychology, labor management relations and public policy. His recent workds include The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Politics as Symbolic Action: Mass Arousal and Quiescenceand American Polities: Public Policy, Conflict and Change.     

Max weber and China’s transition under the new leadership

Some scholars have applied Max Weber’s three ideal types of authority (traditional charismatic and rational-legal) and general transition theory to China. This paper argues that the application of these Weberian concepts is faulty. Weber’s understanding of rationality is specific, a narrow reference to modern Western capitalist rationalization of action. When Weber’s account is forced upon the issues of Chinese political leadership, it simplifies the complexity of historical phenomena, and falls prey to the difficulties of universalism and dualism. Chinese political ideas and practices have developed in a distinctive cultural tradition and may not be able to be fully understood in Western terms and categories. This paper proposes an alternative tongbian interpretation of Chinese politics. His research interests focus on comparative Western and Chinese political philosophy. He has published a number of articles in English and Chinese. He has taught American Politics, International Relations, Western Political Philosophy and Theory, and team-taught ASIAN Nations: China. He is currently teaching Advanced Chinese Language at the Japan American Institute of Management Science (JAIMS) and is a Liaison of Exchange Programs with China at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.     

Western Political Research Approaches and the Development of Political Science Methodology in China

The restoration and development of political science as a discipline in China since 1980 benefits from its methodological improvements that were made largely by introducing research approaches from western academia. The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of the introduction based on articles published in Chinese academic journals since 1990. There exists a wide diversity in research approaches in political science, and the authors try to explain why each approach has a different impact on Chinese political studies and how the introduction of such knowledge has changed the way Chinese political researchers understand the methodology and political science as a discipline.

Why stalin? A national debate

He is also the codirector of the Wiener Library of Contemporary History in London. He is the author of major studies on terrorism, political movements, ideological trends, and cultural forms. His books include: Soviet Realities; Culture and Politics from Stalin to Gorbachev; America, Europe, and the Soviet Union;and The Political Psychology of Appeasement.He is also editor of European Peace Movements and the Future of the Western Alliance.     

Enigma of all enigmas: Capitalist takeover? Assessment of the post-mao economic transformation

Post-Mao’s economic reforms have led many China analysts to observe that post-Mao China has been moving toward capitalism or “capitalist takeover” has occurred in post-Mao China. This observation has a significant implication both for the US foreign economic policy and in the study of regime change in post-Mao China. The purpose of this article is to revisit and reassess the economic transformation in post-Mao China to obtain a holistic understanding of the central reality in post-Mao China on the one side, while on the other to rebut the assertion of “capitalist takeover” in post-Mao China. Through a systematic survey of party documents, policy statements, leaders’ speeches, official newspapers and magazines, general academic studies on the post-Mao reform in English and in Chinese, this article examines the post-Mao economic transformation along the three key empirical dimensions in terms of systemic change: the existence of capitalist elements, the ownership structure, and the role of the market in the Chinese economy. The findings based on fresh empirical evidence suggest that China has not made any significant change from communism toward capitalism in any of those fields despite the considerable change made in the past 20 years. Sujian Guo was a former policy analyst at the Party Central Committee during 1987–1991. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, writing a dissertation entitled “The Totalitarian Model Revisited: Assessing the Post-Mao Regime Change.” His areas of specialization are Comparative Politics, International Relations and Political Methodology. His research interests have focused on comparative communist and post-communist studies, democratic transition/democratization, regime change in post-Mao China, China/Asian politics. His publications include numerous articles in some of the above areas. His most recent articles appeared inCommunist and Post-Communist Studies, Issues & Studies, andJournal of Northeast Asian Studies.     

Personalization in attributing responsibility for national problems to the president

The studies reported test two hypotheses concerning the conditions under which citizens will attribute more of the responsibility for political events to the president. The first hypothesis, derived from Heider's theory of defensive attribution, is that citizens who feel more threatened by national political problems will judge the president to be more responsible for those problems. The second hypothesis is that those who lack knowledge about political events will attribute more of the responsibility for such events to the president as a cognitive simplifying strategy. These hypotheses were tested in three studies—two surveys on inflation and unemployment and an experiment on nuclear war. The results of all three studies support Heider's defensive attribution hypothesis. Each suggests that those more threatened by a national political problem will hold the president more responsible for that problem. The survey results also suggest that such attributions of responsibility have an influence upon voting behavior, with those who hold the incumbent responsible for national economic problems more likely to vote for the other presidential candidates. The results of the three studies are equally clear in the case of knowledge effects. In none of the studies do those who lack political knowledge attribute increased responsibility for national problems to the president. In addition, there is no evidence of an interaction between threat and knowledge. Instead, threat-induced increases in attributions of responsibility to the president are found to occur to an equal degree at all levels of political knowledge.     

Popular Attitudes toward Distributive Injustice: Beijing and Warsaw Compared

Popular reactions to the transition from centrally planned socialism to a market-based economy are explored through an examination of survey data on distributive justice and injustice attitudes in Beijing, China, in 2000, and in Warsaw, Poland, in 2001. In both capitals objective socioeconomic status characteristics of respondents have weaker and less consistent associations with distributive injustice attitudes than measures of subjective social status and self-reported trends in family standards of living. When objective and subjective respondent background characteristics are controlled for statistically, residents of democratic and enthusiastically capitalist Warsaw have stronger feelings of distributive injustice than respondents in undemocratic and only partially reformed Beijing. However, one exception to this pattern is that Beijing residents favor government redistribution to reduce income differences more than their Warsaw counterparts. Conjectures about the sources of these differences in distributive injustice attitudes are offered. Martin King Whyte is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His recent research focuses on changing family patterns in contemporary China, China’s distinctive economic development path, and popular attitudes toward distributive injustice issues. His recent publications include two edited volumes: China’s Revolutions and Intergenerational Relations (University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies) and One Country, Two Societies? Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China (Harvard University Press, forthcoming). Chunping Han recently completed her PhD in Sociology at Harvard, with a doctoral thesis entitled, Rural-Urban Cleavages in Perceptions of Inequality in Contemporary China.     

Two Diasporas: Overseas Chinese and Non-resident Indians in Their Homelands’ Political Economy

This paper, through a comparative study of the roles Chinese and Indian diasporas in the United States play in the political economy of their respective homelands, explores the relationship between the diaspora and homeland development and how this dynamic relationship contributes to economic growth and foreign relations of the homelands. The author argues that the roles of Indian and Chinese diasporas in their respective homelands’ development consistently reflect, and are heavily influenced by, their homelands’ economic development strategies as well as political history and culture. The author also argues that the impact of the diaspora on the foreign relations of their homelands is conditional upon the state of bilateral relations between their homeland and the country of residence. This study raises issues for future research, such as the relationship between the diaspora and regime type of the homeland. The author concludes by suggesting that since activities of overseas Chinese and non-resident Indians provide a unique perspective in the comparative study of Chinese and Indian political economy, the two diasporas warrant more scholarly and policy attention. Zhiqun Zhu, Ph.D. is currently Assistant Professor and Chair of International Political Economy and Diplomacy at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He is the author of US-China Relations in the 21 ^st Century: Power Transition and Peace (Routledge, 2006). His research and teaching interests include international political economy, East Asian politics, and US-China relations. He wishes to thank panelists at the 102^nd annual conference of the American Political Science Association in Philadelphia for their helpful comments. He also wants to acknowledge Dr. Dave Benjamin’s useful suggestions and editorial assistance.     

Taiwan’s presidential election and sino-U.S. relations

This article analyzes the dyadic relationship between mainland China and Taiwan and between China and the United States by focusing on the internal factors in the three countries. It has been an important assumption in theories of international relations that there is an inextricable linkage between foreign policies and domestic socio-economic and political conditions. Yet, policy makers as well as some policy analysts in Beijing, Taipei and Washington still do not pay enough attention to the internal factors in each of the three countries. Misperceptions continue to be a major source for the conflicts in the bilateral relations between mainland China and Taiwan and between China and the United States. More often than not, the misperceptions are culturally and ideologically based. Until the three sides can minimize their misperceptions of the other parties, the future relationships between Beijing and Taipei and between Beijing and Washington look grim indeed. His research interests include East Asian and Chinese politics, political culture and participation in China, Sino-American and cross-Taiwan Strait relations. His publications have appeared in journals such asAsian Survey, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, East European Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Contemporary China, Political Research Quarterly, PS: Political Science and Politics, andProblems of Post-Communism.     

China’s Harmonious World: Beyond Cultural Interpretations

A culture “specter” is haunting the ongoing discourse regarding China’s declared policy of “peaceful rise” for a “harmonious world.” While some Western scholars “cherry-pick” “evidence” of China’s aggressiveness from Confucius legacies, the same cultural heritage is heavily tapped by many Chinese scholars to interpret the current policy of striving for internal and external harmony. Both seem to ignore, though to different degrees, the historically specific political environment, within which the cultural elements function and interact with other socio-political variables. China’s current pursuit of harmony is possible and desirable only at a time when China is able to achieve sustained sociopolitical stability (30 years) in the past 160 years and after its protracted encounter and experiment with Western liberalism, Marxism and capitalism. Although it has not explicitly rejected any of these Western ideologies, China has tested the limits of all of them—hence China’s search for its own identity and policy alternatives at the onset of the new millennium. It is toward a more historical and holistic explanation that this paper constructs the political space and historical trajectory of China’s search for modernity and for itself in the past two centuries and into the future. Yu Bin is Professor of Political Science and Director of East Asian Studies at Wittenberg University, Ohio, USA; Senior Fellow at Shanghai Institute of American Studies; analyst on Russian-China relations for Pacific Forum (CSIS) in Honolulu, Hawaii; and former president of Association of Chinese Political Studies (1992-94). Yu is the author and co-author of several books including the most recent ones: The Government of China (Stockton, NJ.: OTTN Publishing, 2006); Power of the moment: America and the world after 9-11 [Shunjian de Liliang: 9-11 Hou de Meiguo Yu Shijie] (Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 2002); and Mao’s Generals Remember Korean (The University Press of Kansas, 2001). He has published more than 60 articles in journals including World Politics, Strategic Review, Asian Survey, International Politics Quarterly (Beijing), The China and Eurasian Forum Quarterly, International Journal of Korean Studies, Harvard International Review, Comparative Connections, etc.     

How people organise cultural attitudes: cultural belief systems and the populist radical right

Political scientists generally agree that all individuals structure their cultural attitudes in the same unidimensional fashion. However, various populist radical right parties remarkably combine moral progressiveness with conservatism regarding immigration-related issues. This suggests that the structuring of cultural attitudes among the electorate may also be more complex than typically assumed. Applying Correlational Class Analysis to representative survey data, the study uncovers three cultural belief systems. For individuals adhering to an integrated one, all cultural attitudes are interdependent, as typically assumed. However, two alternative belief systems are also uncovered: intermediate and partitioned. In the latter, positions on one cultural attitude (e.g. ethnocentrism) are barely related to positions on others (e.g. rejecting Islam or opposing homosexuality). The existence of multiple cultural belief systems challenges the widely held assumption that all people organise their cultural attitudes similarly. Both political party agendas and individuals’ education level and religion appear key to understanding variation in belief systems.     

The Struggle for Recognition: Diplomatic Competition Between China and Taiwan in Oceania

The PRC and Taiwan are competing to gain diplomatic recognition from Pacific Islands states, a number of which recognise Taiwan and serve as a barrier to its international isolation. Since much of Oceania is in Australia’s sphere of influence, this struggle has often involved Canberra. This paper focuses on the intensifying conflict–with conclusions about the local political economic situations of the countries in Oceania that are most likely to switch recognition, the dilemmas that the issue poses for Australia and its alliance with the US, and the game theory of these auctions of diplomatic recognition. The rental of recognition is analysed as a “sovereignty business” in which some Pacific Islands states engage—similar to the offshore financial centres which are prevalent in the region. Anthony van Fossen is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences in the School of Arts, Media and Culture and member of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. He has written extensively about the Pacific Islands, particularly in relation to its offshore financial centres and ‘sovereignty businesses’. His most recent book is South Pacific Futures: Oceania Toward 2050 (Brisbane: Foundation for Development Cooperation, 2005), the first comprehensive survey of expert views of the future of the region.     

Citizens’ Perceptions of Governance in Rural and Urban China

This article presents three main findings from a purposive stratified survey of urban and rural residents. First, Chinese citizens “disaggregate” the state with high levels of satisfaction for Central government that fall dramatically as government gets closer to the people. Satisfaction levels are noticeably lower for those in rural China. Second, attitudes about the way policy is implemented by local governments raise concerns. Irrespective of place of residence, respondents feel that when implementing policy local officials and governments are mainly concerned with their own interests, are more receptive to the views of their superiors rather than those of ordinary people, favor those with money, and are formalistic in implementing policy rather than dealing with actual problems. Third, the areas of work that citizens would really like government to concentrate on are job creation and providing basic guarantees to protect against the shocks of the transition to a market economy. Tony Saich is the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Asia Center. His recent research focuses on the development of social policy in China, particularly on the provision of public goods by local governments. His publications include Governance and Politics of China by Palgrave and edited volumes on Financial Sector Reform in China (with Yasheng Huang and Edward Steinfeld) and AIDS and Social Policy in China (with Joan Kaufman and Arthur Kleinman both by Harvard University Asia Center. He would like to thank Edward Cunningham for his great help in preparing this article. He also wants to thank Victor Yuan (Horizon Market Research Company) for his tremendous help in designing the survey and implementing it. In addition, I would like to thank Anita Chan, Martin King Whyte and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft.