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1 |
ID:
130443
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
How do authoritarian elections affect voters' attitudes toward the regime and their support for democracy? This article draws upon the case of village elections in China to argue that elections may have two simultaneous effects. First, free and fair elections increase citizens' confidence in the government. Second, elections also allow voters to exercise political rights and accumulate democratic experience through participation, and this in turn may trigger greater demand for further empowerment. Empirical analysis of data from a two-round nationwide survey conducted in 114 villages confirms both effects. One implication of these findings is that competitive elections may simultaneously boost regime popularity and increase public demand for further democratic reform.
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2 |
ID:
130442
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Consensus crisis and civil society: the Sichuan earthquake response and state-society relations
A consensus crisis is characterized by challenges to the state's managerial capacity, a critical need for civil society's services, a general agreement on priorities and goals, and the state's efforts to construct a morally respectable image. These features amplify the structural conditions favorable for relatively amicable state-society interactions. Existing studies of social response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake focus on state-society relations, but neglect the role of situations. I argue that the earthquake is an example of a consensus crisis, which provided civil associations with a situational opening of political opportunity.
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3 |
ID:
130445
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Based on newly available memoirs and previously unexplored policy speeches by insiders, this article conducts a political analysis of the Chinese Communist Party's decision to radically expand college enrollment in June 1999. I argue that the decision exemplifies a "guerrilla-style approach" to policy-making. From late March to early June of 1999 when the radical expansion policy was formulated and legitimated, the top leadership ignored opposition from the Ministry of Education (MOE), overturned established policies and assumed de facto control over MOE bureaucratic power. This abrupt, forceful, disruptive and non-professional policy intervention, which aimed to ensure regime survival in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, was antithetical to regularized educational policy-making in post-Mao China.
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4 |
ID:
130433
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
While the high rates of female suicide in rural China have attracted much scholarly attention, previous studies have not addressed the psychological processes by which individual women in rural areas decide to attempt suicide. Based on ethnographic research in Hebei villages, this article examines different types of gendered subjectivity that lead some rural women to make fatal decisions. Suicidal behavior is an important form of female agency that asserts rural women's moral aspiration for freedom and individual rights, but this form of agency does not highlight their ability to resist. Rather, it points to their powerless positions in the community. From these findings, I argue that neither the concept of resistance nor that of subjection can properly represent the complex realities and inner voices of rural women who attempt suicide.
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5 |
ID:
130432
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
In this mixed-method longitudinal study, we examined the continuity of son preference and daughter preference from adolescence to adulthood, and investigated how perceptions of gender equity shape these preferences among 2,273 youth born in Dalian between 1979 and 1986 under the one-child policy. The majority expressed no preference in adolescence or adulthood. Results from multivariate analysis and the narratives of 23 participants revealed that child gender preferences in adolescence were predictive of later preferences in adulthood. Furthermore, in adolescence, child gender preferences were associated with individuals' beliefs about gender as manifested in their attitudes towards women and employment, as well as their perceptions of parental and social gender biases against women. Our findings suggest that increasingly gender-egalitarian attitudes in urban China shape the child gender preferences of singleton youth in adolescence, and are likely to contribute to their later childbearing decisions, with important social and demographic implications.
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6 |
ID:
130435
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
The Chinese Communist Party has often used history as a tool to serve its political purposes. This article analyzes the ways in which mythological accounts have been manipulated in order to strengthen Beijing's control over the restive northwestern province of Xinjiang. Relying on an analysis of various materials (including museum exhibitions, textbooks and travel guides), I explore how the figures of the Queen Mother of the West and King Mu of the Zhou have been used to assert that Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of China since prehistoric times. The materials analyzed treat mythological texts as valid sources of geographical and historical data, whereas Western scholars largely agree that these cannot provide any reliable information of this kind. In accordance with the tradition of early commentators, I define this approach as euhemeristic, in that it treats mythological accounts as a reflection of historical events.
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7 |
ID:
130439
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
In the past two decades, the number of grass-roots NGOs in China has grown dramatically, yet most scholarship on Chinese civil society has had little to say about the resources on which they rely for survival. This article presents the first large-scale study of these groups and their resources. We compare 263 NGOs across issue areas (including HIV, education, the environment and labor rights) and regions (Beijing, Guangdong and Yunnan). We find that these groups are tapping into high levels of human resources-volunteers, boards of directors and informal government ties-even without official government approval for their activities. We also detail their sources of funding, revealing a diverse support system with clear regional and issue-based biases. Taken together, our findings form a baseline for understanding China's grass-roots NGOs and point out new research questions that have yet to be addressed in the civil society literature.
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8 |
ID:
130449
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Societies of Senior Citizens (SSCs) are often thought to be non-political organizations focused on community traditions and services for the elderly. In Huashui Town, Zhejiang, however, SSCs took the lead in mobilizing protest and caused 11 factories to be closed. From 2004 to 2005, SSCs helped to fund a lawsuit, engineered a petition drive and organized tent-sitting at a chemical park notorious for its pollution. Huashui's SSCs were effective mobilizing structures owing to their strong finances, organizational autonomy, effective leadership and the presence of biographically available, unafraid older villagers. Skillful mobilization led to efforts to rein in village SSCs and a reorganization which, however, had only a limited effect. SSC experiences in Huashui suggest that organized protest in China is more feasible than often thought and that understandings of protest outcomes should go beyond the success or failure of an episode to explore long-term consequences for the organizations involved.
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9 |
ID:
130447
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Publication |
2014.
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Summary/Abstract |
Within the operational procedures of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadre appointment system, age restrictions hinder cadre promotion. As a result, three different methods have emerged to bypass these restrictions, allowing officials to attain faster promotion. These three methods are the Communist Youth League route, temporary transferred duty and non-regulation promotion. This article will explain the age restriction system, and then outline the three methods and discuss their impact on the appointment system as a whole. The examples of Zhou Qiang and Lu Hao, rising political stars, demonstrate how these methods are used to gain substantial age advantages for successful career progression.
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