Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:15:09.039Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Culture and Participation in the Chinese Countryside: Some Empirical Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2004

Yang Zhong
Yang Zhong
Affiliation:
The University of Tennessee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Democracy in rural China has attracted much attention in recent years. During President Bill Clinton's visit to China in 1998, he made a public stop at a village outside Xian to chat with a few Chinese villagers about village elections in China. In fact, village democracy has become one of the rare subject matters that the Chinese government is eager to publicize and the Western academia and media are interested to investigate. The Chinese government, often through the Ministry of Civil Affairs, has organized and allowed foreign journalists, social scientists, dignitaries, diplomats, and political, academic, and social organizations (such as the U.S. International Republican Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Carter Center, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations) to go to Chinese rural areas to observe village selfgovernment and elections. There is no doubt that the Chinese government intends to showcase its village selfgovernment to the outside world, hoping to improve its tarnished image from the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. Western media and governments are interested in this new development in China in the hope that this will be the beginning of the long-delayed democratic transition in the most populous country in the world.

Type
Features
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 2004 , pp. 445 - 453
Copyright
© 2004 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almond Gabriel, and Sidney Verba. 1989. Civic Culture: Political Attitudes in Five Nations. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Almond Gabriel. 1991. “Capitalism and Democracy.” PS: Political Science and Politics 24 (3): 467– 74.Google Scholar
Burns John P. 1988. Political Participation in Rural China. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Changzhou Statistical Yearbook [in Chinese]. 1998. Beijing: China Statistics Press.Google Scholar
Dahl Robert A. 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gibson James L., Raymond M. Duch, and Kent L. Tedin. 1992. “Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union.” The Journal of Politics 54 (2): 329– 71.Google Scholar
Goldman Merle. 1994. Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lindblom Charles E. 1977. Politics and Markets. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kristof Nicholas, and Sheryl WuDunn. 1994. China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of A Rising Power. New York: Time Books.Google Scholar
Manion Melanie. 1994. “Survey Research in the Study of Contemporary China: Learning from Local Surveys.” China Quarterly (139): 741– 65.Google Scholar
Moore Barrington. 1966. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Beacon.Google Scholar
O'Brien Kevin J., and Lianjiang Li. 1995. “The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China.” China Quarterly (143): 756– 83.Google Scholar
Ogden Suzanne. 1999. Global Studies: China. 8th edition. Sluice Dock, Guilford, CT: Dushkin/MaGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Overholt William. 1993. The Rise of China: How Economic Reform Is Creating a New Superpower. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum Arthur Lewis. 1992. State and Society in China: The Consequences of Reform. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Schumpeter Joseph A. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Shi Tianjian. 1997. Political Participation in Beijing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shi Tianjian. 1999. “Voting and Nonvoting in China: Voting Behavior in Plebiscitary and Limited-Choice Elections.” Journal of Politics 61 (4): 1115– 39.Google Scholar
Suzhou Statistical Yearbook [in Chinese]. 1998. Beijing: China Statistics Press.Google Scholar
Taicang Municipal Government. 1999. Newsletter of Taicang Municipal Government Affairs [in Chinese] (151). Taicang: Taicang Municipal Government.Google Scholar
Townsend James. 1967. Political Participation in Communist China. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Verba Sidney, N. H. Nie, and J. Kim. 1978. Participation and Political Equality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
White Gordon. 1993. Riding the Tiger: The Politics of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
White Gordon. 1994. “Democratization and Economic Reform in China.” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 31: 73– 92.Google Scholar
White Tyrene. 1992. “Reforming the Countryside.” Current History 91 (566): 273– 77.Google Scholar
Wuxi Statistical Yearbook [in Chinese]. 1998. Beijing: China Statistics Press.Google Scholar
Zhong Yang. 1996. “Legitimacy Crisis and Legitimation in China.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 26 (2): 201– 20.Google Scholar
Zhong Yang, Jie Chen, and John Scheb. 1998. “Mass Political Culture in Beijing: Findings from Two Public Opinion Surveys.” Asian Survey 38 (8): 763– 83.Google Scholar
Zhong Yang. 2000. “Village Democracy in China: The Case of Southern Jiangsu Province.” In Taiwan and Mainland China: Democratization, Political Participation and Economic Development in the 1990s, ed. Thomas Bellows. New York: Center of Asian Studies, St. John's University: 269– 300.Google Scholar
Zhu Jianhua, Xinshu Zhao, and Hairong Li. 1990. “Public Political Consciousness in China.” Asian Survey 30 (10): 992– 1006.Google Scholar