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The article presents the paper "China's Political Party System," published by China's State Council Information Office in 2007. The document examines the political party system adopted by China, focusing on the role that multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party plays in China's social and political life. The author looks at China's basic political system as well as manifestations of socialist democracy. A brief introduction to the democratic parties of China is also presented.

The idea of a left-right ideological dimension helps citizens and parties organize their thinking about politics. While the left-right dimension is traditionally organized around questions of inequality and change in democracies, its meaning under authoritarian rule remains uncertain. This paper uses two national surveys to investigate the policy, partisan, and symbolic content of the left-right dimension in China. The analysis of these surveys reveals that while many Chinese citizens are willing to locate themselves on the left-right scale, their placements are distorted by a variety of perceptual bias known as differential item functioning. The labels of left and right do not carry a consistent programmatic meaning, and the partisan and symbolic content of these ideological labels is limited. One implication of the absence of a shared ideological understanding is that it prevents Chinese citizens from developing the type of vocabulary necessary for exercising political agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, especially through orientalist writings, Eastern or Asian political systems were seen as inherently authoritarian and as the antithesis of the West or Western political systems. Although there is some truth to this, there are aspects of Asian politics and culture which are very much in keeping with Western understandings of political liberalism and this paper tries to focus on some of these similarities. The paper tries to look into the question, ‘Is there is a distinct style of Asian democracy’? The paper argues that there are aspects of Asian culture and politics which sit comfortably with Western notions of liberalism and other aspects which do not. However, for the aspects which do not, these have a lot to do with politicians using aspects of the Asian political tradition, like acceptance of hierarchy and respect for authority, to consolidate their own position when their power base lacks political legitimacy. Before making an assessment of the political systems in Asia, one also has to look at specificities and the particular historical, geographical and sociological context each country is grounded in. This paper has a special focus on South and East Asia and thus makes use of a comparative approach, whilst trying to answer its research question. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conventional narratives hold that parties are "the orphans of political philosophy" and that systematic normative justifications of parties and partisanship have emerged only in recent years in the West. This article aims to show that when antiparty sentiments were prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies, a systematic justification of party politics existed in China. Western antipartyism in that time shifted from an older accusation that parties were divisive and subversive to a "progressive antipartyism" that portrayed parties as elitist and antidemocratic "machines." In China, however, although proparty intellectuals faced the first type of antipartyism, the "progressive" type was relatively absent, as there weren't any mature party machines in the first place. Far from being a hindrance to democracy, parties comprised of public-spirited elites were justified as an instrument for political founding: transforming passive subjects under an imperial despotism into modern active citizens in a constitutional democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom holds that democratic governments listen to their populations, while authoritarian governments do not. This paper questions the extent to which this dynamic applies in cases of government scandals, using the illustrative cases of China and Kenya. We expect democratic countries with free media to be responsive and authoritarian states to ignore public pressure. Counter to this expectation, however, authoritarian China is more responsive to public pressure to clean up scandals than democratic Kenya. Using case studies and quantitative analysis, we argue that while democracy and free media are important for government responsiveness to scandal, they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions. We assert that political will, state capacity to respond and high public expectations for state action are also necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I argue that a reflexive type of exceptionalism was articulated by the reformist elites in late imperial China as a cultural strategy to confront and appropriate the hegemonic representation of modern democratic power and Occidental civilization that was articulated on the basis of Tocqueville's exceptionalist image of America and imposed by Western imperialism. By delineating the temporal and normative structure of this reflexive exceptionalism and reconstructing the quasi-religious meanings of its myths and rituals, I propose that the motif of 'Confucian religion' in the reformist study society movement should be understood in terms of its intent to produce and discipline a social power that could be mobilized for China's ideological and political competition with the West. While the movement ended in failure with the rise of a fundamentalist reaction, the fate of Chinese exceptionalism under the changing power structure of contemporary world society can be properly understood with reference to its historical origin and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, both the European Union (EU) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have considerably stepped up their presence in Africa, including in the field of peace and security. This article discusses how the EU's and China's understanding of governance and sovereignty affects their respective security strategies in Africa. It argues that although European and Chinese rhetoric significandy differs in terms of the doctrines of sovereignty and governance, the conventional wisdom of two competing security models is inaccurate. As a matter of fact, Brussels and Beijing pursue converging security interests in Africa, a fact that can open the door for coordinated Sino-European crisis management efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bill Moyer observed that there are eight stages in a social movement: seeming normal, exposing injustice, ripening conditions, taking off, losing heart, winning the majority, reaping success and consolidating achievement. For more than 30 years, Hong Kong people have been striving for democracy. Applying Moyer's model, Hong Kong should be now at a stage close to reaching its ultimate goal of establishing a genuine democratic system in the territory after years of work, especially the triggering event in September 2014 and the occupation during the Umbrella Movement. However, Moyer's model cannot be mechanically applied to the case of Hong Kong in light of the unique situation faced by Hong Kong people. Hong Kong's authoritarian sovereign holds the final key to Hong Kong's door to democracy. Unless there is a significant shift in the balance of powers in the Chinese polity, Hong Kong's democracy may be so near and yet so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the regional variation in the electoral rules governing village election in China. We argue that China's fast urbanization and land development have undermined the quality of rural democracy because local government officials faced pressure to ensure "right" cadres elected, and therefore had motivation to manipulate election rules. A panel dataset covering two rounds of elections in 2005 and 2008 is utilized to test the hypothesized relationship. Our findings are robust to various refinements in measurement and model specification. These findings contribute to the general literature on land and democratization as well as the recent debate about competitive elections in authoritarian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media platforms and apps have become increasingly important tools for governance and the centralisation of information in many nation states around the globe. In China, the government is currently piloting a social credit system in several cities in an ambitious attempt to merge a financial credit score system with a broader quantification of social and civic integrity for all citizens and corporations. China has already begun to experiment with metrics and quantification of the value and virtue of its citizens, going beyond the function of measuring workplace performance and health-related self-tracking to measuring one's purchasing and consumption history, interpersonal relationships, political activities, as well as the tracking of one's location history. China has also already begun to apply a reward and punishment system that rewards those who comply with the Chinese government's ideals and punishes those who deviate from them. Although there are no such ambitiously unified systems currently proposed in Western liberal democratic countries, some aligned structures and cultures of social media use are already well in place. This article seeks to offer a comparative examination of the structures and cultures of China's social credit system with those which are already present and in place in Western liberal democratic countries. While it may be convenient to digitise everyday social, political and economic life, China's social credit system brings about a vision of what may be to come, should democratic countries continue to do so without stricter data use policies in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue argues for the applicability of the conceptual framework of Multi-Level Governance to the political–administrative regime of China, provided significant adaptations and qualifications are developed. The application of Multi-Level Governance to China enables to account for global influences as well as for the involvement of non-governmental actors in public policy making. More radically, we suggest in this introductory article that the development of Multi-Level Governance may be interpreted as a way of enhancing the societal legitimacy of the political regime under the conditions of new authoritarianism. We conclude this article by drawing a fascinating yet possibly hazardous and overstretched parallel; that is, the development of Multi-Level Governance may be part and parcel of a process of building political legitimacy in China, just as it may be a way of exploring paths for the renewal of beleaguered traditional liberal democracy in Europe. Albeit along profoundly different trajectories, China and Europe might adopt Multi-Level Governance arrangements for a very purposive course of action: enhancing the legitimacy of the respective and very diverse political systems and buttressing their very foundations. This suggests a strongly normative and purposive application of Multi-Level Governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In authoritarian regimes, seemingly liberal reforms are often poorly implemented in practice. However, this study argues that even weak quasi-democratic institutions can offer resources to political activists. Formal institutions of participation offer politically anodyne frames for activism, allowing activists to distance themselves from political taboos. Weak institutions also allow activists to engineer institutional failures that in turn fuel legal and media-based campaigns. Evidence comes from the effects of China's 2008 Open Government Information reform. A national field audit finds that local governments satisfy just 14% of citizen requests for basic information. Yet case studies show how Chinese activists exploited the same institution to extract concessions from government agencies and pursue policy change in disparate issue areas. These findings highlight the importance of looking beyond policy implementation to understand the effects of authoritarian institutions on political accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of scholars have established that authoritarian regimes employ quasi-democratic institutions as part of their efforts to retain power. However, we know little about the potential variation among institutions providing citizens with opportunities for voice and the conditions under which such institutions are true channels of responsiveness. In this article, we develop and test the concept of "receptivity," that is, whether autocrats are willing to incorporate citizen preferences into policy, using a list experiment of 1,377 provincial-and city-level leaders in China. Contrary to expectation, we find that leaders are similarly receptive to citizen suggestions obtained through either formal institutions or the Internet unless they perceive antagonism between the state and citizens, in which case receptivity to input from the Internet declines, while receptivity to formal institutions remains unchanged. Our findings show that whether quasi-democratic institutions are mere window dressing or true channels of responsiveness depends on the perceived quality of state-society relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deploys Bob Jessop’s strategic-relational approach to ask two questions: First, how is China’s party-based power bloc seeking to renew its hegemony, as the symbolic power of ‘Dengism’ erodes in an age marked by class formation and increasing social tensions? Second, how are subaltern social movements seeking to influence the articulation of a new, less elitist hegemonic project? Based on original interview data, I compare two of China’s most famous organic intellectuals, both centrally placed in class-based counter-movements triggered by China’s marketization. Both advocate a non-dissident strategy of change within rather than against the party-state, but their visions differ greatly. Trade unionist and 1989 protest leader Han Dongfang favors a social democratic vision based on strengthening the collective bargaining power of the Chinese working class within the market economy. In contrast, the self-declared ‘petty bourgeois’ vision of agricultural economist Wen Tiejun advocates resisting marketization, reinvigorating traditional lifestyles, and enhancing the power of the peasantry through self-organization. I argue that both visions are in partial tension with the status quo: While Han’s ‘laborism’ is compatible with the power bloc’s plans for a post-exportist accumulation strategy centered on domestic consumption, its liberal democratic premise contradicts the dictatorial state project of the Communist Party of China. Conversely, Wen’s ‘peasantism’ is symbiotic with the Communist Party of China’s hope to renew its political-ideological mandate by revitalizing Chinese culture, yet its radical economic underpinnings (emphasizing de-commodification and de-urbanization) make it hard to square with the overall logic of capitalist reform and opening-up. The successful articulation of a populist counter-hegemony depends on the extent to which the gap between laborism and peasantism is overcome both organizationally and intellectually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the seemingly paradoxical attitudes of the Chinese middle class towards democracy, social stability, and reform. Using fieldwork data from Ningbo, this article shows that a group of objective, middle-class individuals can concurrently display high levels of support for democratic principles and low levels of participation in real-life socio-political events. Being generally confident in China's social stability, these individuals have little to no desire for significant democratic reform, or indeed any reform that occurs outside the purview of the state, as it is considered destabilising. By highlighting the distinction between how these members of the middle class respond to generic democratic concepts, real-life sociopolitical affairs, and the idea of democratic reform, this article argues that the Chinese middle class are aware of what "should be," what "could be," and what "is," which lends their socio-political attitudes a paradoxical appearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dictatorial China contains vivid examples of grassroots deliberative democracy on issues vital to local participants. Three elements in our case studies are relevant to programs of deliberative, participatory decision making elsewhere in the world. First, the Chinese examples have all occurred within longstanding communities. Second, the members of these communities have faced concrete issues of a type they felt they had the knowledge to resolve. And third, all of these communities had access to institutional frameworks established from above that the local populace could utilize as deliberative forums. In addition, a more distinctively Chinese factor was observed in two of our case studies: collective decisions were arrived at based on “moral economy” beliefs rooted in China’s socialist past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We argue that, to effectively understand media effects in authoritarian societies, researchers must assess different types of media strategies adopted by authoritarian leaders. Using survey data from two Chinese cities, we examine the effects of two types of media strategies adopted by the Chinese government, targeting political attitudes and nonpolitical values and norms, respectively. Following a new line of research, we contrast China’s domestic-controlled media to foreign free media. After accounting for the selection bias in Chinese urbanites’ media access, we do not find sufficient evidence for the effect of the media strategies directly targeting their democratic conceptions. However, sufficient and robust evidence shows that more intensive consumption of diverse media sources, including foreign media, does significantly but indirectly counteract the Chinese government’s political campaigns targeting its citizens’ democratic conceptions, via thwarting the government’s media strategies to cultivate a collectivistic norm in the society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the authors conduct focused case studies on Zambia and Ghana to investigate the increasingly diverse popular reactions to Chinese engagement throughout the region of sub-Saharan Africa. In this effort they challenge the existing binary exploitation/opportunity paradigm through which growing Chinese engagement in sub-Saharan Africa is often analyzed. Instead, they propose an alternative framework, which centers less on the positive or nefarious nature of Chinese involvement and more on the institutional structures of African regimes. As opposed to closed autocracies and consolidated multiparty democracies, fluid transitional states create opportunities for the appearance of anti-Chinese populist movements akin to Michael Sata and the Patriotic Front in Zambia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the Sugamo Shimbun (the Sugamo Weekly News), written by Sugamo prisoners between 1948 and 1952 during the Allied occupation of Japan, in broader domestic and international political contexts. The prisoners questioned the legitimacy of both Allied and Japanese authorities as the United States initiated its Cold War strategies with Japanese government support. The newspaper demonstrates that the concept of “democracy” as promoted by the Allies during their occupation of Japan came into question around the time of the Korean War in 1950. Nonetheless, the prisoners’ sense of responsibility in World War II was not impartial. By examining the prisoners’ voices in the Sugamo Shimbun and the power dynamics inside the prison, this article focuses on where the prisoners’ sense of guilt originated—as a result of the prison’s correctional programs—and how the voices of the prisoners more or less reflected national and international politics of that time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent rapprochement between China and Taiwan cannot be understood if our conceptual apparatus is unable to cope with the distinctive new quality of cross-Strait relations. A critical framework provides a transnational account of cross-Strait dynamics. An analysis of the KMT-CCP Forum through the lens of the neo-Gramscian notion of hegemony sheds light on the Forum's strategies, mechanisms, practices and instruments to secure consent for cross-Strait rapprochement. While this mode of governance has broadened the KMT's strategic options, it has also compromised Taiwanese democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the complexity of the internet control mechanisms in China by breaking it down to five layers, ranging from the government, service and content providers to webmasters and individual users. It inquires into the logic of the control mechanisms and how such logic is naturalized into organizations and individuals’ everyday practices. It shows the dynamic between proactive, synchronized and reactive strategies and how the relationship between these components evolves in different phases. Through comparative online ethnography of the two most prominent Chinese forums located in China and the USA, QQ and MIT BBS, data analyses and interviews with regulators and content providers, this article aims at locating internet control in the historical trajectory and the socio-cultural specificity of China. More importantly, it reveals the effectiveness of these control mechanisms and the implications for the average internet user’s everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the impacts of two types of social capital – bonding and bridging – upon the performance of grassroots self-government institutions in rural China, based on an original survey of 410 villages throughout the whole of China. The findings indicate that, on the one hand, bonding social capital still has a very solid foundation in the rural areas of China. On the other, bridging social capital is in formation in Chinese villages, even though the stock of bridging social capital is currently very moderate. Moreover, this study finds that bridging social capital, as manifested in general trust and inclusive social networks, positively affected the governance performance of each surveyed village. Yet, bonding social capital, as manifested in particular trust and exclusive social networks, tends to negatively impact the performance of Chinese rural governance. These findings help clarify some theoretical issues about, and shed some light on the prospects of, the rural self-governance system in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Mao Zedong’s theory of new democracy in order to explicate the relationship between minority nationalities and sovereignty within the state system of the People’s Republic of China. It argues that the position of minority nationalities in China has been overdetermined by territorial sovereignty in the identification of the Chinese peoples, with the result that minority nationalities are fixed within China because of the imperialist framework of the contemporary international order. Chinese government policy remains bound by a contradiction between imperialism and socialism, a dialectic that has created and determines the dialectics of chauvinism— that contradiction between the Han majority and the minority nationalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the views of Indian journalists and how they covered the relationship between India and China within the context and presence of the Dalai Lama. Two themes emerged from the discussions with Indian journalists. First is the belief that China and India have different political institutions, that is, democracy and securalism of India versus China's communist government. The second theme is the assertion that Arunachal Pradesh was a state of India and that Tawang was an irrefutable part of India as demarcated in the MacMohan line.

This article explores the communicative structures of Chinese government web sites and their implications for citizen political participation. Taking issue with the party-state's dubious claim of building a transparent, service-oriented, and democratic administration, the study analyzed web features on 31 Chinese provincial government portals. The UN's e-participation framework was adapted to locate venues for citizen involvement. The results suggest that by manipulating online structures, Chinese government resorts to more subtle forms of online social control through information delivery, agenda setting, and containment of public dissent. Limited improvement in administrative efficiency and transparency serves the dual role of deflating social tension and reestablishing party legitimacy. Paradoxically, citizens' political participation may generate unintended consequences of incremental reform of China's local governance and political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article systematically investigates the impact of elections in rural China on a basic element of the elite-mass relationship: beliefs of ordinary citizens that their leaders are trustworthy. It analyzes data from two surveys of randomly sampled villagers in the same 57 villages in 1990 and 1996, merged with a set of separately collected data detailing features of elections in these villages during the same period of time. The analyses take advantage of uneven progress in grassroots democratization and ask how variation in democratic electoral quality across villages is associated with variation in changed views about the probity (or venality) of local leaders. Results strongly suggest that formal institutions of electoral democracy matter: Designs that feature contestation and encourage voter participation do better at promoting beliefs that leaders are trustworthy. At the same time, results point to the importance of informal community institutions of lineage relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is frequently portrayed as a problem case for the law and development movement because it has achieved economic growth with a weak legal system, has resisted the third wave of democratization, and has a poor record on civil and political rights. Is China a problem case? The author thinks not, or at least that it is too early to tell. China is now following the path of other East Asian countries that have achieved sustained economic growth, established rule of law, and developed constitutional or rights-based democracies, albeit not necessarily liberal rights-based democracies. At this stage of development, for all of its problems, China is meeting or exceeding expectations on most measures. China out- performs the average country in its income class in terms of economic growth, rule of law and most human rights measures, and other indicators of human well-being with the notable exception of civil and political rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores social democracy in China as an intellectual current and political movement, seeking to demonstrate, on one hand, its similarities to European classical social democracy and, on the other, its Chinese peculiarities. It revises the earlier historiography that viewed liberalism in China as irrelevant to the crisis of Chinese society at the time. Instead, it argues that social democracy, linked to state building, capitalist development, and social justice, was a dominant feature of Chinese liberalism and politics, which provided an impetus to China's modern transformation. Many intellectuals, such as Hu Shi, Zhang Junmai, and Zhang Dongsun, were simultaneously liberal, democratic, and socialist. Their frustrations in the end had much to do with the dominant mainstream political culture, represented by the GMD and the CCP, and little to do with the liberal, democratic, or socialist creed itself [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Village elections have been a much talked about subject both inside and outside China since the 1980s. Yet there is little agreement on the exact nature of these elections. The following study is an empirical effort to study peasants' participation in Chinese village elections. The key question asked in this study is What subjective factors motivate Chinese peasants to vote or not vote in village elections? The authors' main findings are that those who tended to vote in village elections were people with low levels of internal efficacy and democratic values, high levels of life satisfaction and interest in state and local public affairs, and that anti-corruption sentiment does not seem to play any role in village elections. Peasants with higher levels of internal efficacy and democratic orientation stayed away from village elections due to the institutional constraints on these elections. These findings call into question the competitiveness and democratic nature of Chinese village elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the democratic and elitist aspects of the May Fourth period in China through an examination of May Fourth theories in literature. Contradictions in May Fourth discourse in literature; May Fourth condemnation of traditional style of literature; Politicization of May Fourth writers; Early works of Lao She.