Nation-State Contexts and Authoritarian Value Changes of Ethnic Chinese

Abstract

The recent global populist wave has reignited interest in how authoritarianism gains momentum in different nation-state contexts. A central question remains: under which conditions do individuals abandon or embrace authoritarian values? In the context of ethnic Chinese, this paper argues that Confucianism still plays a pivotal role in shaping attitudes and values. Specifically, it asserts that the Confucian value of meritocracy maintains importance in the ethnic Chinese value system. The study utilized the Chinese social media platform WeChat to deploy a four-question, snowball sample survey of 1,763 ethnic Chinese in seven regions from around the globe to evaluate their levels of authoritarianism. It tested six hypotheses derived from previous theories concerning assimilation, individual/ family resources, group competition, communist influence, and generational gap. The empirical results, however, provide the strongest support for the theory of meritocratic and conditional authoritarianism, which suggests that ethnic Chinese around the world will become more authoritarian when they perceive a threat to their status quo and will become less authoritarian when they perceive threats to their upward mobility. Keywords: ethnic Chinese, authoritarianism, political culture, immigration, meritocracy