Authoritarian China Research Articles

Pension Systems and Labour Resistance in Post-socialist China and Vietnam: A Welfare Regime Analysis

ABSTRACT Situated within the literature on welfare regimes, this article investigates workers’ contestation of pension arrangements in post-socialist, authoritarian China and Vietnam, and considers the effects of their actions. Scholars have highlighted economic, cultural, political regime type and political institutions as factors crucial to understanding the welfare regimes of China and Vietnam. However, the “labour factor” – that is, how worker resistance and mobilisation shape welfare provisions – has been under-explored. Focusing on pension provisions in China and Vietnam, this article contends that a labour perspective can deepen knowledge of pension systems and welfare regimes in these two countries. Based on case studies of two notable strikes, interviews and documentary research, this article illustrates that, against the background of transitioning from state socialism to market-Leninism, pension provisions and welfare regimes in China and Vietnam have been constantly contested by workers. It also shows that labour resistance has influenced welfare arrangements at various levels in both countries, and that the Vietnamese state was more accommodating to workers’ pension demands than the Chinese state, because of its more strongly redistributive orientation and, relatively, a less controlling political system.

The multiple streams framework in a nondemocracy: The infeasibility of a national ban on live poultry sales in China

AbstractIn response to calls to apply the multiple streams framework to nondemocracies, this article adapts the framework to an authoritarian context and applies it to a case study of live poultry sales in food markets in China, a key issue in epidemic prevention. Using a dataset consisting of Chinese policy documents, Chinese news articles, World Health Organization data, and secondary literature, the study shows that despite the public health threat posed by live poultry sales and despite high‐level political support, a national‐level permanent ban has not been adopted because it is technically infeasible, financially inviable, and inconsistent with existing norms and values. The study suggests that—despite the country's top‐down governance style and lack of political pluralism—policy preferences expressed by members of the policy‐making elite are not necessarily adopted in authoritarian China. Future research should test the proposed hypotheses in other policy areas and other authoritarian contexts.

Ohne-Tun und Selbstwandel

AbstractIn the text “The Principles of a Liberal Social Order”, Friedrich A. von Hayek quotes from Chapter 57 of the Daoist classicLǎozǐ老子 (alternative transliterations are Lao Tzu, Laotse, etc.; the text is also known under the titleDàodéjīngorTao Te King道德經). Appearing in a text devoted primarily to the concept of “spontaneous order”, the quote opens up questions regarding the relationship between liberalism and Daoism, which I address in this essay. The discussion comprises three parts. In the first part, I turn to the translation cited by Hayek and, by way of a commentary to the translation, I attempt to gain access to the motifs of “effortless action/without doing” (wúwéi無為), “self-transformation” (zìhuà自化) and “self-government” (zìzhì自治); the second part offers a hermeneutic commentary through which I discuss interpretative approaches found in the Chinese commentarial tradition; finally, the third part outlines transcultural correspondences which explore the political meaning of the Daoist “without doing” and the idea of “spontaneous order” in the context of the discursive struggle between the “democratic West” and “authoritarian China”.

The dynamic role of governments in adopting policy innovations in China

A growing number of studies have paid attention to the dynamic nature of vertical government interactions in authoritarian China. Yet, less attention has been paid to the question of why higher-level governments play different roles in diverse cases of innovation adoptions. Building on the extant literature, this study introduces the concept of innovation copyright, that is, the perceived ownership of the innovation, to explain the different roles of higher-level government involvement in innovation adoption. A comparative case study of policy innovations in China highlights that if higher-level governments perceive that they own the innovation copyright, they act as proactive facilitators, and if higher-level governments perceive that the innovation copyright belongs to local governments, they are involved as political backers. The copyright structures the expectations of higher-level and local governments and as a consequence determines their roles in innovation adoptions.

Gauging reference and source bias over time: how Russia’s partially state-controlled search engine Yandex mediated an anti-regime protest event

ABSTRACT Massive efforts have been dedicated to studying political search engine bias in democratic contexts, and a growing body of literature has scrutinized search engine censorship in authoritarian China. By contrast, very little is known still about political search engine bias within Russia’s slightly more open authoritarian media system. In order to fill in this gap, this study asks: How has Russia’s leading partially state-controlled search engine Yandex mediated a large-scale anti-regime protest event (anti-corruption protests on 26 March 2017) in the twenty months thereafter? The study analyzes a data set of 30,471 results, retrieved in regular intervals for nine query terms from four platforms: Yandex.ru, News.yandex.ru, Google.ru, and News.google.ru. As the findings demonstrate, both Yandex algorithms (by comparison with their Google counterparts) referred users to significantly fewer websites that contained information about the protest event (reference bias). In a similar vein, both Yandex algorithms forwarded users to fewer websites that regularly featured criticism of Russia’s authoritarian leadership (source bias). Moreover, Yandex algorithms tended to be particularly biased in the event’s immediate aftermath. In the first week after the protests, for instance, the difference in reference ratios between Google and Yandex Web searches were massive (mean difference: 23% points), while they were less pronounced during the remaining time period studied (mean difference: 7% points). These findings are highly politically relevant because rapid diffusion of information about protest events can be considered of key importance to further protest mobilization.

‘Barbarising’ China in American trade war discourse: the assault on Huawei

How is the legitimation of the American trade war with China discursively managed and conferred in recent American political discourse? This paper critically examines this under-explored question in the current literature. Taking cues from critical international theory and its insight on discourse and foreign policy, I start by historicising the discursive practices, which I call ‘barbarising China’, in the construction of civilisation vs barbarism as a hierarchical opposition. Mapping authoritarian China onto this historically contingent liberal civilisational edifice, I argue, has prepared the ground for American political action in the trade war. Through a critical analysis of how China has been constructed as a ‘barbarian’ economic aggressor in recent American political discourse, I further argue that the ‘political reality’ and ‘knowledge’ this discursive practice produces serves not only the political imperative of legitimising American trade war policy choices, but also a particular need of the ‘civilised’ hegemon to legitimise its power and practices beyond the trade war. Through a close examination of a coordinated assault on Huawei, I illustrate how ‘barbarising’ China has been discursively done as an integral part of the trade war and assert that ‘barbarising’ China has become indispensable in American strategy to sustain its precarious hegemony.

To Mobilise or to Mediate? Re-assessing the Democratic Role of News Media in Social Protests in China

Protester-sympathising media reports validate activists’ claims, expose official wrongdoing, and mobilise public support, which allows scholars to highlight the importance of the media in promoting democratic participation in authoritarian China. Reaffirming media’s crucial role in sustaining communicative rationality, the article re-evaluates media coverage of four rural protests against land expropriation in China, combining framing analysis of media reports, in-depth interviews, and an extensive reading of court files, etc. It unveils that two storylines—transgressive collective action for maximising economic gains and conflicts inside villages—are tailored off, when information is woven into the dominant media frame “struggle of the weak”. Simplified, but logically coherent, the media narrative is likely to exclude the necessity for public deliberation, reduce the fleeting public activism into anger-venting, and pressures local governments into makeshift concessions at the cost of public good. The one-dimensional civic engagement urges Chinese journalists to consider innovating protest reporting frame.

Double trouble? Effects of social conflict and foreign investment on consultative authoritarianism in China

ABSTRACT It remains contested whether Chinese public consultation practices can be called local deliberative democracy or a sort of consultative authoritarianism. Yet, these different evaluations lack an appreciation of regional variations as well as underlying drivers. This study fills this gap by developing a political economy approach and constructing panel data of 36 Chinese cities over 12 years. Our study reveals that the functional purpose of appeasing social conflicts serves a key underlying incentive that drives China’s deliberative turn, yet heavier dependence on foreign investment in a local economy hinders public consultation. Content analysis of 3082 public hearing documents further shows that adoption of public hearings varies by regions with economically and politically advantaged municipalities being more likely to adopt consultative institutions for transparency. This study brings together the scholarship of contentious politics and deliberative politics while offering a nuanced understanding of regional differences of public consultation.

Policy entrepreneurship under hierarchy: how state actors change policies in China

How do actors develop entrepreneurial activities to bring about policy change? To what extent do the contexts in which they are embedded shape their behaviors? Relying on three comparative case studies, we use the structure-, institution- and agent-based analytical framework to investigate the complex and dynamic interactions between contexts and actors in the process of policy change initiated by state actors in authoritarian China. We propose a conceptual framework, ‘policy entrepreneurship under hierarchy’, which highlights the influence of power domination during the policy change process. It allows us to offer a renewed definition of policy entrepreneur and to identify a pattern of successful policy entrepreneurship in contrast to the ‘four central elements’ suggested by Mintrom and Nomann. We conclude that hierarchical policy entrepreneurship in China is displayed through two kinds of relationship: the proposal-approval between policy entrepreneurs and their superiors; and the instruction-execution between policy entrepreneurs and their subordinates.

The implications of deliberative democracy in Wenling for the experimental approach: Deliberative systems in authoritarian China

The implications of deliberative democracy in Wenling for the experimental approach: Deliberative systems in authoritarian China

Geography of Chinese rock and roll: cultural, political and economic forces intertwined

This chapter mines the literature to bring out the richness and heterogeneity of Chinese rock. The first part charts the geography of music as the intersection of situated material space and networked topology, the encounters of which are enacted by, and in return reshape, political, economic and cultural forces. The construction of Chinese rock as a liberal voice in authoritarian China has put it into a continuous struggle with three missions: counter political surveillance, counter capitalist-driven consumerism and counter westernization. Chinese rock thus assembles disparate elements from the two wests: the music style of rock and roll as subversive force in the capitalist-west and, ‘northwestern folk influence’ (xibeifeng) of the western China that imagines a cosmopolitan culture of the silk roads. The second part addresses the live rock scenes (live house and festivals) that has mushroomed in cities, some as forces of dissenters that attempt to construct small commons in cities encroached by neoliberalism, some as state-sanctioned role models to propagate alternative music as new economy and as new city images, or more frequently, as a hybrid form of both.

The End of Liberal Engagement with China and the New US–Taiwan Focus

Using neoclassical realist theory, this paper focuses on how the liberal logic underpinning the US engagement policy with the People's Republic of China (PRC) – to promote the PRC's greater marketization, internationalization, political opening, and even democratization – has shaped Washington's One‐China/strategic ambiguity policy since 1972. This approach is used to deal carefully with the Taiwan Strait impasse. However, as strategic competitions intensify between the United States and PRC, the Donald Trump administration is strengthening Washington–Taipei ties, in line with conservative nationalism, to counter a more assertive and authoritarian China. Declaring the failure of past engagement upheld by presidents following Nixon, the Trump government is less cautious about upsetting Beijing through the United States' more explicit backing of the island democracy. The United States’ bolstering of Taiwan's status, though short of recognizing its sovereignty, has received strong bipartisan support in Washington and is unlikely to be changed even if Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, is elected president in November 2020.

A Reachable Governance to Fight COVID-19: Democracy and the Legacy of Embedded Autonomy in Taiwan

Different country showed different governing capacity to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With reference to the classical concept of embedded autonomy, as used in developmental state of political theory, this paper aims to study the capacity and progression of democratic country, Taiwan, in its fight with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and how democratic state, civil society and bureaucrats have affected the response and measures. Taiwan’s case provides a valuable empirical contribution to the understanding of the long term effect of embedded autonomy in a democratic country. This study argues that democracy does matter to fight Covid-19 pandemic, moreover, the legacy of embedded autonomy can be expanded beyond economic development, and successfully used to explain Taiwan’s capacity to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in its early stage. Key observations and discussion addressed in this study includes, first, the extent to which the concept of embedded autonomy is applicable in evaluating and in shaping Taiwan’s efforts to manage the pandemic; second, the extent to which the political system is better at managing COVID-19 crisis by comparing democratic Taiwan and authoritarian China. A central finding of this paper is that, democracy has proven it has the edge in coping with COVID-19 pandemic practically. Theoretically, Taiwan’s case demonstrates a valuable and supplementary example to Evans and Heller (2018) on their broadening view of embedded autonomy. The legacy of the developmental state is applicable to explain Taiwan’s immediate and effective response to the COVID-19 outbreak. A reachable governance to fight COVID-19 lies in ‘the nature of democracy’ and ‘the legacy of embedded autonomy’.

Nonprofit-Government Relations in Authoritarian China: A Review and Synthesis of the Chinese Literature

This study provides a comprehensive review and synthesis of the Chinese literature on nonprofit-government relations. A total of 1,222 nonprofit research articles have been examined. It assesses the key insights and contributions of nonprofit-government relations studies across macro-, meso-, and micro-level. It identifies three important limitations of extant research: the lack of autonomy (i.e., it is state-guided), indigeneity (i.e., it is largely an exercise of applying Western theories), and sophistication (i.e., it has limited theoretical depth and methodological rigor). The middle-range approach to theory building is suggested as a most appropriate future direction to advance research in this area.

Distrust in Government and Preference for Regime Change in China

The article argues that distrust in government reflects a preference for regime change in authoritarian China. It shows that individuals who have stronger distrust in government also have a stronger preference for multiparty electoral competition which runs against the gist of one-party rule and would be a stepping stone toward representative democracy. The article suggests that the relationship between trust in government and system support in an established democracy is fundamentally different from its variant in an authoritarian state. The target of distrust shifts from an electorally accountable government to a self-appointed one, while the target of support shifts from a system that protects freedom and rights to one that restricts them. The article concludes that the buffer between distrust in government and preference for regime change is particularly thin and fragile in China, where the vices of authoritarianism are proven and the virtues of democracy look promising.

Self-Caging or Playing With the Edge? News Selection Autonomy in Authoritarian China

This article studies how the political affiliation and administrative rank of news organizations in a nondemocratic setting affect news selection autonomy. While existing studies have found that further commercialization contributes to more news selection autonomy, the extent to which political affiliation and administrative rank of news media explain autonomy remains unknown. Eight Chinese news organizations of varying political affiliations and administrative ranks were thus selected to compare their news and frame selection strategies. The findings reveal that political affiliation largely explains news selection autonomy: Party-affiliated outlets generally have lower news selection autonomy than nonparty outlets. Administrative rank has some effect on news selection autonomy in the highly competitive media markets, where news organizations with a lower administrative ranking must play more with propaganda control to compete with their higher ranking counterparts.

Social capital, guanxi and political influence in Chinese government relations

Social capital has emerged as a promising theoretical approach to understanding political influence in the public relations literature. However, the rationale of using social capital to influence corporate government relations in authoritarian societies is indistinct. To remedy this, we integrate Bourdieu’s (1986) and Lin’s (2001) social capital theories to explore how applying a variant form of social capital (e.g., guanxi) might shape corporate government relations in authoritarian China. A multi-method, qualitative approach was employed involving 44 interviews, participant observation and document review. The findings highlighted an underexamined “vertical” dimension of social capital (i.e., links with authority in a hierarchy), which enables corporations to exercise agency over the pre-existing and often vague regulatory environment. This study adds a new perspective to social capital with hierarchical guanxi that enriches our understanding of guanxi-based political influence in Chinese corporate government relations.

Are good governance principles institutionalised with policy transfer? An examination of public–private partnerships policy promotion in China

AbstractThis article explores the following question: To what extent are good governance principles being institutionalised in China as a result of public–private partnerships (PPP) policy transfer? Since 2013, China has been pursuing PPP and applying aspects of related good governance drawing from Western experience despite its radically different fragmented authoritarian regime. This makes China a unique case to observe the extent to which good governance principles can be institutionalised in very different contexts. This article assesses the degree of institutionalisation of three good governance principles that guide PPP policy elsewhere: transparency and accountability, willingness to collaborate and equity between partners. It argues that while the PPP policies have been applied extensively in recent years, these good governance principles have been institutionalised to varying degrees as they have had to be adapted and compromised to fit with existing power relations in authoritarian China. The findings aim to add value to the literature regarding PPP policy transfer and good governance, by revealing the challenges of institutionalising good governance principles through PPP policy transfer in an alien context.

The Power of the Square: Public Spaces and Popular Mobilization after the Wenchuan Earthquake

The wave of volunteerism and popular participation in disaster relief activities after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in authoritarian China has attracted much academic attention. Existing literature leverages the erosion of state capacity, the moral symbolism and emotions of disaster relief, and civil society’s ability to provide crucial public goods and services to explain this popular mobilization ([12]; [15]; [22]). However, these arguments do not satisfactorily explain why sustained, self-organized non-state activities were concentrated in few sites across the region most affected by the earthquake. This paper investigates the lingering puzzle of uneven grassroots activities through the lens of spatial theory. I argue that conditions favorable to popular mobilization were mediated by the creation of large and accessible public spaces in the form of emergency shelters, breaking the ordinary cellular spatial order which enhances state control through partitioning, surveillance, and securitization. Public spaces open to all increased contact among citizens, enabled coordination and collective activities, and created new common symbols and histories, thus facilitating sustained and self-organized popular activities. To test this theory, I conduct a most similar cases comparison between two prefectural-level cities, Deyang and Mianyang, in Sichuan province. I demonstrate that despite the similar lack of civil society organizations before the earthquake and similar needs after the earthquake, Mianyang saw more sustained grassroots activities due to the presence of large, dense, highly visible and accessible emergency shelters, while Deyang’s distributed emergency resettlement strategies better maintained the cellular spatial order that left few sites for sustained popular activities. This paper seeks to understand the spatial nature of popular mobilization and aims to address a so far understudied element of civil society formation in China.

Negotiations between Christian communities and authoritarian China : some comments on the current state of scholarship on Christianity in China

Negotiations between Christian communities and authoritarian China : some comments on the current state of scholarship on Christianity in China