Authoritarian China Research Articles

Viral Politics: What a Public Health Crisis Reveals About Government Credibility in Authoritarian China

We exploit the coincidence of a vaccine crisis in China and the administration of a nationally representative survey in summer 2018 to study how citizens in a strong authoritarian regime respond to harmful governance failure. We analyze the impact of the crisis on how citizens consume information and how inclined they are to participate politically. We theorize that crisis causes substantially greater loss of government credibility for citizens who experience it as a “familiar failure”—recurrence of a recent, similar crisis. We find that citizens who experienced a vaccine crisis in 2016 are more likely in 2018 to reject official information in favor of information from intimate or non-conformist sources and more inclined to engage politically to remedy governance wrongs. We interpret this as support for our theorized impact on government credibility: a familiar failure makes the official version of events less believable and government protection of citizen interests less dependable.

Educated acquiescence: how academia sustains authoritarianism in China

As a presumed bastion of the Enlightenment values that support a critical intelligentsia, the university is often regarded as both the bedrock and beneficiary of liberal democracy. By contrast, authoritarian regimes are said to discourage higher education out of fear that the growth of a critical intelligentsia could imperil their survival. The case of China, past and present, challenges this conventional wisdom. Imperial China, the most enduring authoritarian political system in world history, thrived in large part precisely because of its sponsorship of a form of higher education closely tied to state interests. Although twentieth-century revolutions brought fundamental change to Chinese politics and pedagogy, the contemporary party-state also actively promotes higher education, cultivating a mutually advantageous state-scholar nexus and thereby reducing the likelihood of intellectual-led opposition. As in the imperial past, authoritarian rule in China today is buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state. The role of educated acquiescence in enabling Chinese authoritarianism highlights the contributions of a cooperative academy to authoritarian durability and raises questions with prevailing assumptions that associate the flourishing of higher education with liberal democracy.

The Diffusion of the Concept of Public Figure in China

This article considers how and why the legal concept of public figure, which holds public figures to a higher standard that makes it more difficult for them to recover damages when suing for libel, has been diffused in China. The public figure concept developed in the U.S. context as an extension of New York Times v. Sullivan from public officials to public figures, reflecting the deeply embedded value of freedom of expression. Despite authoritarianism in China, the concept was adapted in the rulings of some local courts to define the limits of the right to reputation. The diffusion was a response to a stream of litigation against media organizations. In the process of diffusion and adaptation, courts have acted strategically to reshape the public figure concept and refashion its justifications. Given the political constraints on courts in authoritarian China, they have been careful to avoid applying the concept to public officials, and instead have applied the concept to public figures such as celebrities. The diffusion of the concept in China sheds light on theories of legal diffusion more broadly, by illustrating how the process of diffusion can be bottom-up and open-ended, and how it can occur even in a counter-intuitive case in which there are significant political and ideational differences between the two countries.

Responsive Authoritarianism in China -- a Review of Responsiveness in Xi and Hu Administrations

Xi Jinping’s efforts to recentralize political power have triggered a debate over if these changes will destroy the “authoritarian responsiveness” in China credited with regime durability. This review essay assesses “responsiveness” based on empirical research on three types of mechanisms through which the Hu-Wen administration interacted with citizens – within official settings (e.g. responding through government online portals), beyond official government arrangements (e.g. responding to protesters), and channels “in between” (e.g. responding to public outcry on social media). Recent studies seem to suggest that government responsiveness has been declining due to the centralization of political control, the tightening of ideological discipline, and the intolerance of citizen participation. Through our evaluation of the literature on responsiveness of the Chinese government under Xi’s leadership, we find that although initial signs of a less responsive government do exist, there are also counter-forces both inside and outside of the political system. Our findings suggest the need for longitudinal empirical studies of responsiveness to understand if the government might be less resilient due to changing feedback mechanisms.

Editor’s Introduction: Southeast Asia Plus

Southeast Asia – its politics, governance and foreign relations – is the strong suit of this 44th issue of Asian Politics & Policy. From May 2018 until May 2019, we witnessed several elections taking place in this region which is known for its very diverse political systems and lively internal power dynamics. For this edition of Praxis, editor Jacob Ricks has assembled brief essays providing analyses of elections in Malaysia, Timor Leste, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. All are written by young scholars working on these six countries. As Ricks notes, we have been bemoaning the decline of democracy at the global level in recent years. Both the government’s backtracking on the practice and promotion of multi-party democracy, and authoritarian China and Russia’s touting of their own model, represent threats to democracy. Whether or not influenced by these trends, how the Southeast Asian elites and publics try to grapple with their own challenges of governance and development through elections is as important to the future of democracy in the world. Governance in Southeast Asia is also given the spotlight in Hai Hong Nguyen's article which looks at state-society relations in Vietnam, mediated by the communist leadership that has to maintain strong central control for the regime to survive, and yet be responsive to demands from below. Gabriel Lele examines the effects of asymmetric decentralization, a situation where several subnational governments of the same level (e.g. provincial level) are allowed varying political, fiscal, and administrative arrangements by the central government. The experiences of four Indonesian provinces – Papua, Papua Barat, Aceh, and Yogyakarta – are offered as case studies of how asymmetric decentralization can succeed or fail. On another note, how domestic political factors affect the foreign policy choices of three countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, and China) in relation to the South China Sea territorial disputes, are the subject of three articles by Chow-Bing Ngeow, Yohanes Sulaiman and Mingjiang Li, respectively. These papers draw from a research project curated by Mingjiang Li and run from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. An accompanying contribution on the Philippines by Mark Bryan Manantan looks, not at the domestic factors, but at the geopolitical calculations of a weak country navigating relations with and between two competing great powers in this same maritime arena. Finally, to give us a breather from Southeast Asia Glenn Diesen takes us to the far opposite end of the continent as he writes about the economic interests and strategies undergirding Russia’s Greater Eurasia Initiative – a geopolitical project, too, no doubt, as Russia inches closer to the rest of Asia at this time of turbulent great power relations.

State of Sensitivity: Navigating Fieldwork in an Increasingly Authoritarian China

State of Sensitivity: Navigating Fieldwork in an Increasingly Authoritarian China

China: Determined to dominate cyberspace and AI

ABSTRACTChina is chasing dominance in emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in both the private and military sectors, as a central part of its effort to be the leading global cyber power. The rise of AI – a subset of cyber as are machine learning, quantum computing, and other new technologies – does not herald a new arms race equivalent to that of the Cold War. Rather, the concern should be on the profound disruption to the existing westernized global order. This piece reviews how the 1990s westernized national creation called cyberspace created so many ubiquitous, embedded vulnerabilities whose easy exploitation directly accelerated the rise of an otherwise impoverished authoritarian and aggressive China. Today no single democracy has the scale and sufficient resources to alone match the foreknowledge and strategic coherence of the newly confident and assertive China. To change current global trends, the small group of consolidated democratic civil societies needs a collective approach to counter China’s growing dominance across all fields of cyberspace. The piece ends describing the Cyber Operational Resilience Alliance (CORA) to provide the public and private scale and collective strategic coherence required to ensure the future wellbeing and security of democracy in an overwhelmingly authoritarian, post-western, cybered world.

Charitable Crowdfunding in China: An Emergent Channel for Setting Policy Agendas?

AbstractSocial media in China has not only become a popular means of communication, but also expanded the interaction between the government and online citizens. Why have some charitable crowdfunding campaigns had agenda-setting influence on public policy, while others have had limited or no impact? Based on an original database of 188 charitable crowdfunding projects currently active on Sina Weibo, we observe that over 80 per cent of long-term campaigns do not have explicit policy aspirations. Among those pursuing policy objectives, however, nearly two-thirds have had either agenda-setting influence or contributed to policy change. Such campaigns complement, rather than challenge existing government priorities. Based on field interviews (listed in Appendix A), case studies of four micro-charities – Free Lunch for Children, Love Save Pneumoconiosis, Support Relief of Rare Diseases, and Water Safety Program of China – are presented to highlight factors that contributed to their variation in public outcomes at the national level. The study suggests that charitable crowdfunding may be viewed as an “input institution” in the context of responsive authoritarianism in China, albeit within closely monitored parameters.

The Alternative Public Sphere in China: a Cultural Sociology of the 2008 Tainted Baby Milk Scandal

This article studies critical news reports about the 2008 Chinese tainted baby milk scandal, which the World Health Organization identified as one of the largest food safety crises in recent years. Examining the discursive practices adopted to legitimize journalistic criticism in authoritarian China, it reveals that critical-minded journalists avoid criticizing the state during the period of heavy censorship, preferring instead to target local governments. Journalists develop more explicit criticisms of the state as censorship becomes loosened, but they continue to rely on the strategic use of official statement and a heavy dose of praise to appear complimentary. Findings indicate that while critical journalism is constrained by political censorship, the Chinese critical press has managed to circulate counter-hegemonic interpretations of the scandal through strategic discursive practices.

Contributors to This Issue

Previous article FreeContributors to This IssuePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAlexsia T. Chan is assistant professor of government at Hamilton College. Her research focuses on comparative politics, the political economy of development, and Chinese politics, and her interests include inequality, authoritarian rule, labor, public service provision, and social control.Xi Chen is associate professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China (2012) and is currently completing another book, Disempowering Contention: Restructuring, Resistance, and State Domination in China. He has also published articles in journals such as Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Society, China Quarterly, and Journal of Democracy.Wing-Chung Ho (何榮宗) is associate professor of sociology at City University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD in anthropology from SOAS, University of London. Ho has published broadly on community studies and social problems in relation to subordinate people in Hong Kong and China in journals that include China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and China Review.Carsten A. Holz, an economist, is a professor in the Social Science Division at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on China’s reform-period economy, most recently on the quality of Chinese statistics, issues of economic growth, and economic development in underdeveloped regions of the PRC.Yu Huang (黄瑜) is a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her research interests include industrial automation and robotization, science and technology studies, labor studies, agrarian change and rural development in China.Tao-chiu Lam teaches at the College of Professional and Continuing Education, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests are local government and politics and governance issues in China.Carlos Wing-Hung Lo is professor and head of the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and director of the Centre for Business Sustainability in the Faculty of Business Administration. His main research interests are in the areas of law and government, environmental governance, public sector management, and corporate social and environmental responsibility.Jian Lu (陆健) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University in Beijing. His research interests include contentious politics, environmental governance, and environmental nongovernmental organizations in China.Kevin J. O’Brien is the Alan P. Bedford Professor of Asian Studies and Political Science and director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on Chinese politics since 1978, and his interests include policy implementation, legislative politics, village elections, popular resistance and protest policing.Naubahar Sharif is associate professor in the Division of Social Science and the Division of Public Policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His current research is on the process of industrial automation, including robotics, unfolding in southern China. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 81January 2019 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700669 Copyright 2019 by The Australian National University. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Differentiated Government Control: Political Connections and Revenues to NGOs in China

This dissertation hypothesized a theory of differentiated government control that posits the strength of NGOs’ political connections is positively associated with their major revenues in authoritarian China. This dissertation quantitatively tested this theory using a sample of 2,021 foundations in China. The main findings are as follows. First, organizational legitimacy, i.e., nonprofit evaluation, tax exemption qualification, and pretax deduction qualification are positively associated with foundations’ donation income; higher degrees of political connections count only partially the more charitable donations; political connections potentially leverage the association between pretax deduction qualification and charitable donations in favor of politically connected foundations. Second, foundations’ political connections are partially positively associated with their income from government grants; issue area (meaning what foundation work on) is not significantly associated with government grants; among organizational legitimacy measures only nonprofit evaluation shows a positive relationship with government grants; however, nonprofit evaluation matters only for foundations with strong political connections. Third, different levels of political connections show different levels of association with both charitable donations and government grants that foundations received. Specifically, individual political connections are associated with neither source of revenues; organizational political connections remain associated with charitable donations and government grants as discussed above; the two levels of political connections do not interact; the insignificance of individual political connections may indicate the government’s retreat from despotic intervention of foundation operations. The findings in this dissertation suggest that the Chinese government has adapted its strategies to control the nonprofit sector through the use of more sophisticated measures than are generally acknowledged. To some extent, differentiated government control consolidates the recent research on the multidimensions of government-nonprofit relations in China.

The Formation and Sustenance of Authoritarianism in China : Approach to Comparative Political Thought of Authority

The Formation and Sustenance of Authoritarianism in China : Approach to Comparative Political Thought of Authority

Manoeuvring within a Fragmented Bureaucracy: Policy Entrepreneurship in China's Local Healthcare Reform

AbstractPolicy entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in policy changes in both electoral democracies and authoritarian systems. By investigating the case of healthcare reform in Sanming City, this article illustrates how the fragmented bureaucracy in China enables and constrains local policy entrepreneurs, and how entrepreneurial manoeuvring succeeds in realigning the old institutional structures while attacking the vested interests. Both structural conditions and individual attributes are of critical importance to the success of policy entrepreneurship. Four factors and their dynamic interactions are central to local policy entrepreneurship: behavioural traits, political capital, network position and institutional framework. This study furthers theoretical discussion on policy entrepreneurship by elucidating the fluidity of interactional patterns between agent and structure in authoritarian China. The malleability of rigid institutions can be considerably increased by the active manoeuvring of entrepreneurial agents.

Slacktivist USA and Authoritarian China? Comparing Two Political Public Spheres With a Random Sample of Social Media Users

The rise of social media has put back on the agenda questions about the Internet's potential as an online public sphere, particularly in authoritarian states. However, random samples have never been employed to investigate political speech on social media, necessarily limiting knowledge. This article presents an analysis of political speech based on a random sample of more than 1,000 active U.S. Twitter users and Chinese Weibo users collected in late 2014. Political speech by ordinary users was found to be more frequent on both platforms than expected—9.4 percent on Weibo and 6.8 percent on Twitter—lending support to hopes of an online public sphere. However, existing powerholders make up around a fifth of U.S. Twitter accounts, and political speech acts by ordinary U.S. Twitter users are largely “slacktivist” in nature. In contrast, 98 percent of active accounts on Weibo belong to ordinary users, with active political speech making up more than 1 in 50 posts by these users. Although they largely fall within the bounds of what is permitted by the Chinese state, these findings point to the potential of the Internet as a (limited) public sphere in China, while raising questions about its contribution to political processes in the United States.

Shades of Authoritarianism and State–Labour Relations in China

AbstractAttempts to analyse authoritarianism in China tend towards a static focus on the state that is homogeneous across time. We argue for a more nuanced approach that captures the dynamism and contours of state–civil society relations, and state–labour relations, in particular, in authoritarian states. Taking state–labour relations as a bellweather, we conceptualize ‘shades of authoritarianism’ as a framework for better understanding the complexities and evolution of state–society relations in authoritarian states. We illustrate this through the case of China, distinguishing different shades of authoritarianism in the Hu‐Wen era (2002–2012) and in the current regime of Xi Jinping

Responsive Authoritarianism in China: Land, Protests, and Policy Making, by Christopher Heurlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 244 pp. US$99.99/£64.99 (cloth), US$80.00 (eBook).

Responsive Authoritarianism in China: Land, Protests, and Policy Making, by Christopher Heurlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 244 pp. US$99.99/£64.99 (cloth), US$80.00 (eBook).

Bridging critical institutionalism and fragmented authoritarianism in China: An analysis of centralized water policies and their local implementation in semi‐arid irrigation districts

AbstractThis paper attempts to bridge critical institutionalism and fragmented authoritarianism in China. Moving beyond the predictive functionalist perspective and the overemphasis on state primacy, the paper focuses on how top‐down water policies are exercised by local agencies, collective communities, and individuals at the county level and below. Through a case of irrigation management in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, this paper posits that institutional bricolage and fragmentation are prevalent despite the imposition of the authoritarian state. Moreover, it shows that local water policy implementation is reshaped by various contested discourse, the pursuit of different interests, social relations, and broad transformative forces. This high degree of diversity not only manifests an increasing institutional flexibility, as water policies are operated outside China's hierarchical bureaucratic system, but also is embedded in an era of socio‐economic transformation where the processes of industrialization, urbanization, and neo‐liberalization have changed the dynamics of rural governance.

Securitizing HIV/AIDS: a game changer in state-societal relations in China?

BackgroundChina has experienced unprecedented economic growth since the 1980s. Despite this impressive economic development, this growth exists side by side with the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crises and the persisting deficiencies in public health provision in China. Acknowledging the prevailing health problems, the Chinese government has encouraged the development of health non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to respond to the health challenges and address the gaps in public health provision of the government. HIV/AIDS-focused NGOs have been perceived as the most outstanding civil society group developed in China. Considering the low priority of health policies since the economic reform, the limitation of the “third sector” activity permitted in authoritarian China, together with the political sensitivity of the HIV/AIDS problem in the country, this article aims to explain the proliferation of HIV/AIDS-focused NGOs in China with the usage of the securitization framework in the field of international relations (IR).MethodsThe research that underpins this article is based on a desk-based literature review as well as in-depth field interviews with individuals working in HIV/AIDS-focused NGOs in China. Face-to-face interviews for this research were conducted between January and May in 2011, and between December 2016 and January 2017, in China. Discourse analysis was in particular employed in the study of the security-threat framing process (securitization) of HIV/AIDS in China.ResultsThis article argues that the proliferation of HIV/AIDS-related NGOs in China is largely attributed to the normative and technical effects of HIV/AIDS securitization ushered in by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (hereinafter Global Fund) observed in China. Despite depicting a positive scenario, the development of HIV/AIDS-focused NGOs in China generated by the international securitization efforts is largely limited. An internal and external factor was identified to verify the argument, namely (1) the reduction of international financial commitments, as well as (2) the fragmentation of HIV/AIDS-focused NGO community in China.ConclusionsThis article shows that international securitization weakened with the rise of Chinese commitment on HIV/AIDS interventions. In other words, HIV/AIDS-related responses delivered by the national government are no longer checked by the global mechanism of HIV/AIDS; thus it is unclear whether these NGOs would remain of interest as partners for the government. The fragmentation of the HIV/AIDS community would further hinder the development, preventing from NGOs with the same interest forming alliances to call for changes in current political environment. Such restriction on the concerted efforts of HIV/AIDS-related NGOs in China would make achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to foster stronger partnerships between the government and civil society difficult, which in turn hindering the realization of ending HIV/AIDS in the world by 2030.

Floating control: examining factors affecting the management of the civil society sector in authoritarian China

Civil society organisations can both assist and threaten autocracies’ monopoly of power. Pre-emptive measures have thus been strategically adopted by nondemocratic regimes to harness and manage the civil society sector. One tacit sanctioning strategy observable from a macro-institutional perspective is to mediate the institutional space for civil society organisations. This study explores how the Chinese authoritarian state manipulates such institutional space according to the changing internal and external environments, especially domestic crises and international movement waves. The study uses a 31 × 17 panel data-set about China’s social organisations covering 31 administrative units (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) during the period of 1998 to 2014 to gain insight into the management pattern. The results show that economic performance, natural disaster, social instability and political instability are critical factors affecting regulatory dynamics.

Lost in internationalization: Rise of the Renminbi, Macroprudential Policy, and Global Impacts

The internationalization of China’s Renminbi will be a game changer to the global finance and politics, and its success thus far has been evidenced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s recent move to include the currency in its SDR basket. This scheme provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the very nature of law and finance and calls into question the conventional understanding of how financial institutions function: Why has authoritarian China, with its peculiar market settings, been able to make rapid progress in internationalizing its currency? This article applies the theory of macroprudential policy to examine the scheme’s viability, timeline, and impacts. It argues that currency internationalization does not only depend on market forces but also requires strong state-led actions at critical junctures to reset the institutional equilibrium. China has taken advantage of its extra-large economy by carrying out fragmented but coherent institutional engineering, and adopting an institutional bridging approach for amplifying the effects. However, systemic risks inherent in China’s banking system have been triggered by the project’s international success due to its aggressive timeline and procyclical nature. In this regard, this scheme has wrongly pitched itself as an international project rather a domestic one. As a responsible issuer of a major international currency, China has to re-align the project to focus on domestic institutions macroprudentially, with special caution paid to any attempt to pursue the prestige normally conferred upon such issuers, including extraterritoriality and export of institutional designs overseas.