This book addresses these questions by focusing on the most digitally embedded segment of Chinese population – university students. Using survey evidence from more than 1200 observations, data confirm that Internet exposure to information generated by fellow netizens promotes democratic orientation, enhances political resistance to indoctrination, and boosts popular nationalism. However, exposure to government-managed websites encourages regime support and, at a less significance level, decreases democratic orientation, and elevates official patriotism. Building upon quantitative evidence, this book draws a nuanced picture of Internet exposure and its political implications.
Internet usage in China has recently grown exponentially, rising from 59 million users in 2002 to 710 million by mid-2016. One in every two Chinese has currently been exposed to the Internet. This upsurge has made political communication among citizens and between the government and citizens less costly and almost instantaneous in China. Despite these advances, scholars are only beginning to understand and systematically explain the ways in which increased Internet exposure may affect behavior and values of Chinese netizens. Can the Internet help liberalize Chinese society due to its innate pluralism? Has the Internet become an efficient tool assisting the ruling elite to remain in power given the tendency of Internet service providers and users to be easily manipulated by the Chinese state? This book addresses these questions by focusing on the most digitally embedded segment of Chinese population – university students. Using survey evidence from more than 1200 observations, data confirm that Internet exposure to information generated by fellow netizens promotes democratic orientation, enhances political resistance to indoctrination, and boosts popular nationalism. However, exposure to government-managed websites encourages regime support and, at a less significance level, decreases democratic orientation, and elevates official patriotism. People who perceive the Internet as a tool enhancing the vertical communication between the Chinese government and netizens tend to become patriotic and supportive of the regime. Building upon quantitative evidence, this book draws a nuanced picture of Internet exposure and its political implications.
As China rises as an economic and an international power, new relationships are being forged with all areas of the world including Central and Eastern Europe. This book explores how this relationship is developing. It considers how China’s links with Central and Eastern Europe fit in to China’s overall international relations strategies. It looks at economic and trade ties, diplomatic initiatives and the role of the European Union, and examines China’s bilateral relations with the different states of the region. These relationships are particularly interesting because before the end of communism in Eastern Europe China had many direct links with the countries of the region.
This book examines facets of popular politics that are, above all, animated by a quest for justice as law, fairness and public virtue. The aim is to better understand how "the political" emerges in the interstices of state law and local moralities. The contributors to the book focus on the interplay between private and public spaces, between morality and law, and between ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage,’ to explore how the common quest for justice, which takes on state slogans but cannot be absorbed by state institutions, changes Chinese society from the bottom-up by creating self-reflective new publics.
Political discourse in contemporary China is intimately linked to the patriotic reverie of restoring China as a great civilisation, a dream of reformers since the beginning of the twentieth century. The concept and use of suzhi – a term that denotes the idea of cultivating a ‘quality’ citizenship – is central to this programme of rejuvenation, and is enjoying a revival. This book therefore offers an accessible and comprehensive analysis of suzhi, investigating the underlying cultural, philosophical and psychological foundations that propel the suzhi discourse. Using a new method to analyse Chinese governance – one that is both historical and discursive in approach – the book demonstrates how suzhi has been made into a political resource by the Chinese Communist Party-State, journeying from Confucianism to socialism. Ultimately, it asks the question: if we cannot rely on Western models of governance to explain how China is governed, what method of analysis can we use? Making use of over 200 Chinese-language primary sources, the book highlights the link between suzhi and similar discourses in post-Mao China, including those centring on notions of ‘civilisation’, ‘harmonious society’ and the 'China dream'. As the first book to provide an in-depth study of suzhi and its relevance in Chinese society, Civilising Citizens in Post-Mao China will be useful for students and scholars of Chinese studies, Chinese politics and sociology.
Since the 1978 opening up of China and her active engagement in economic reformation and modernization, China has become a truly global economic power. These developments have, consequently, had an impact on ethnic Chinese people living across the world. Traditionally, the study of immigrant communities has focused on internal factors, such as the leadership and social organization of the actors inside the communities. This book, however, turns attention to the exogenous factors, which have helped shape the lives of the Chinese diaspora. In doing so, it provides a valuable contribution to the recent literature, which focuses on the effect of globalisation on the Chinese overseas. Using a number of empirical case studies, including the San Francisco Bay, Canada, South Africa and Hungary, it provides an investigation into how China’s contemporary position in the world has affected the identity of the various locales of the Chinese in different continents. Whilst demonstrating the implications of China’s rise on patterns of circular migration and transnational movements, it also explores how the social and economic relations between Chinese communities and their host and ancestral countries have changed. Ultimately, it highlights how China’s rise has brought new economic opportunities and political clout for the Chinese overseas, but at the same time, has created new stereotypes and racial images by association. As an in-depth study of Chinese societies as well as current migration trends, this book will be useful for students of Chinese Studies, Ethnic Studies, Anthropology and Sociology.
When the Chinese economic reforms began in 1978, Marxist economics infused all the institutions of economic theory in China, from academic departments and economics journals to government departments and economic think tanks. By the year 2000, neoclassical economics dominated these institutions and organized most economic discussion. This book explains how and why neoclassical economic theory replaced Marxist economic theory as the dominant economics paradigm in China. It rejects the idea that the rise of neoclassical theory was a triumph of reason over ideology, and instead, using a sociology of knowledge approach, links the rise of neoclassical economics to broad ideological currents and to the political-economic projects that key social groups inside and outside China wanted to enable. The book concludes with a discussion of the nature of economic theory and economics education in China today.
The recent rise in reported public security issues in China is one of the most repeated concerns amongst the Chinese authorities. During the past 30 years of reform in China, stability maintenance as a governance strategy has in fact laid a solid foundation for the overall development and growth of the nation. However, it remains to be seen whether this approach can sustain economic growth as well as political stability in the near future. This book examines this policy of stability maintenance, as adopted by the Chinese government, in different social circumstances. Using a variety of examples, including hospital disputes, incidents of environmental pollution, food safety issues and disaster settlements, it takes a multi-disciplinary approach, using empirical data to assess the true picture of contentious politics in China. Although stability maintenance has played a major role in confronting many of the serious challenges posed to China’s public security, ultimately, the book concludes that as a governance strategy it can only be short-term and will surely be replaced, due to its high costs. Using case studies from across China, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Political Science and Sociology. It will also appeal to journalists and policy analysts with an interest in Chinese politics and society.
A monarch is usually born, a member of parliament or a president is usually elected, but a regional leader in China is usually orchestrated to replace his or her predecessor through an opaque process and for reasons not normally made public. The professional trajectories of Chinese regional leaders are mysterious in many ways. Their promotions and demotions can be "predictable" in terms of their age, gender, nationality, education, factions, and previous engagements in the political system. Yet, speaking of their capability, performance, opportunities and arrangements, their future can also be "unexpected". Such arrangements are always originated from the Organization (zuzhi) which represents the Chinese Communist Party. What are the factors the organization considers in order to make its final decisions on nominating and appointing a regional leader? Today’s regional leaders of China will very likely become the central leaders of China in the future. By making an empirical analysis of Chinese regional leaders’ political mobility, Qiao establishes a descriptive political mobility model that reveals leadership trajectories in Chinese politics.
A new era in the democracy movement in Hong Kong began on July 1, 2003, when half a million people protested on the streets, and has included the 2012 anti-National Education campaign, the 2014 Occupy Central Movement and the rapid rise of localist groups. The new democracy movement in Hong Kong is characterized by a diversity of interest groups calling for political reform, policy change and the territory’s autonomy vis-à-vis the central government in Beijing. These groups include lawyers, teachers, students, nativists, workers, Catholics, human rights activists, environmental activists and intellectuals. This book marks a new attempt at understanding the activities of the various interest groups in their quest for democratic participation, governmental responsiveness and openness. They are utilizing new and unconventional modes of political participation, such as the Occupy Central Movement, cross-class mobilization, the use of technology and cyberspace, and human rights activities with cross-boundary implications for China’s political development. The book will be useful to students, researchers, officials, diplomats and journalists interested in the political change of Hong Kong and the implications for mainland China.
