Zhengxu Wang

Zhejiang University | ZJU

This volume brings together chapters authored by scholars of multiple disciplines. These chapters collectively attempted to show several things. First, there was a long-last model of state making and social organization that exited in an East Asian zone before the arrival of the Europe-originated “modern” challenges of industrialization, capitalism...

Is there a coherent model of state making and governance in East Asia before the modern period? What are the ideas and institutions that made such a state? How did such a state form, and with what cross-time and cross-country variations in the East Asia region? How does this premodern state still stay with the contemporary East Asia and the contemp...

The premodern Chinese state maintained strengths and continuity with a minben-meritocratic belief system. This belief system continues to reproduce itself into the contemporary era and becomes a vibrant factor affecting the public's political beliefs and attitudes. This chapter proposes a theory of political culture that puts the minben-meritocrati...

Social capital is generally believed to facilitate protest mobilization. We examine, however, whether and how it might reduce an individual’s tendency to join a protest. Analyzing survey data of a migrant population in Beijing, China’s capital, we find that social capital operating as better embeddedness in local social networks lowers the likeliho...

Previous studies on political trust found ageing leads to support for authority, while education encourages a critical view of governments. We speculated the two effects would moderate each other and complicate the story. By applying Hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) modelling to the Asian Barometer Survey (2001–2016) data, we found significant...

The Internet has played important roles in driving political changes around the world. Why does it help to topple political regimes in some places but improve the quality of governance in others? We found Internet usage in general leads to citizens’ distrust in political institutions. Different political environments, however, can condition such tr...

In China, the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s rules govern the terms and tenures of party and state leaders. This chapter recounts the evolution of the party-state’s term-related rules from the Mao (1949–78) to the Deng (1980s–90s) and post-Deng (1990s–2012) eras. Formal rules developed from the 1980s through the 2010s to govern the tenure of part...

Social capital has commonly been viewed as facilitative of protest mobilization. However, this paper examines whether and how it limits or reduces participation in protests. Analyzing unique survey data of migrant workers living in Beijing, China’s capital, we found that stronger embeddedness in local social networks significantly reduces the likel...

One important way to understand political change in China is to examine how citizens participate in and interact with China’s grassroots system of governance. Urban grassroots self-governance is organized around the residents committees (RCs) of various urban neighborhoods. While earlier research tends to characterize the RC as an institution for g...

In research on China’s state-controlled elections, whether pro-democratic and politically efficacious citizens vote or abstain more has dominated the debate. Analyzing an up-to-date data set, we find class status and citizens’ institutional environment command overwhelming power in determining voter turnout, while psychological and motivational var...

The way political scientists engage with China has been more or less a one-way epistemological traffic—scholars study ideas, concepts, theories of political science, and go to China and examine the China case. Concepts or theories developed out of China studies are unlikely to become part of the standard political science lexicon. Due to the rich c...

Under Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party started to institutionalize leadership succession in the 1980s. Peaceful and orderly succession of the top political offices, however, only started to take shape in the early 1990s. We identify three sets of rules and norms formed since then to govern elite replacement and power succession. These con...

Amidst China’s emergence as a global power, Xi Jinping is pushing through a range of ambitious reform plans that are reconfiguring both Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy. A fierce anti-corruption campaign has led to the dismissal of a large number of powerful figures, while a major effort has begun to bring party, state, and military pow...

Political trust has been in decline in China. In this article, we capture this decline as reflecting the modernization of Chinese political culture. While the government managed to deliver a sustained period of rapid economic growth, the public's trust in it is diminishing through two mechanisms. On the one hand, Chinese citizens are acquiring stro...

As China`s economic development brings the country out of poverty and into modernity, a long-lasting debate concerns whether the Chinese public`s value system is also changing toward the so-called "modern values," or whether some distinctly traditional Chinese values remain unchanged. Using empirical data collected at three points in time during th...

This article situates the future trajectory of the China-Europe relationship within China's emerging “grand strategy” for its engagement with the world. I argue that the second decade of the 21st century has seen China choose to rise into, instead of drastically change, the world order. China's incremental intercontinentalism accepts U.S.'s dominan...

Since the late 1990s, a large number of electoral reforms have occurred in China's towns and townships across the country. While scattered cases of direct election of township heads happened in the early years, recent cases have acquired very diverse and complicated institutional arrangements. Three ideal types of innovation have emerged that range...

We surveyed 2,221 rural residents in twenty towns across ten provinces in China. Structural equation models (SEM) found the quality of government, impartiality of institutions, and authoritarian values among citizens are the three main sources of citizens’ trust in local government. Among various types of recent institutional innovation and governm...

China, soon to be the world’s largest economy, is renowned for its impressive growth and development over the past thirty years. This has been mostly fuelled by fossil fuels, which, as has been widely discussed, have negative effects on the environment. As of June 2010, China was the largest carbon emitter in the world, and its emissions are only f...

In the last few years, the demands of homeowners in Chinese cities have gradually shifted away from economic rights and towards political ones. At the same time, alliances across different communities have emerged and vigorous attempts to form citywide solidarities have been made. In this process, a group of dedicated leaders has emerged, contribut...

Dekker, Henk and Wang, Zhengxu (2013), Introduction, in: Dong, Lisheng, Wang, Zhengxu and Dekker, Henk (eds.), China and the European Union, London and New York: Routledge, 3-8. This book gives the reader insight into how Chinese citizens and officials think about the European Union. The insights that we present in this book are the results of a r...

Dong, Lisheng, Wang, Zhengxu & Dekker, Henk (eds.) (2013), China and the European Union, London and New York: Routledge. (ISBN 978-0-415-63079-5 (hbk), 978-0-203-56292-5 (ebk); 255 pages). DOI: 10.13140/2.1.2234.4642. The European Union is China’s largest trading partner, and Chinese views of the EU are of crucial importance in shaping how the rel...

We examined women's participation in village self-governance in an Eastern Chinese county. While they have more or less been universally participating in voting in village elections, their representation in the village self-governance bodies remains low, and their political aspiration and sense of empowerment remain limited. A wide range of factors...

Strong Society, Smart State: The Rise of Public Opinion in China's Japan Policy. By JamesReilly. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. xv, 331 pp. $50.00 (cloth). - Volume 71 Issue 4 - Zhengxu Wang

Shi Tianjian's whole academic career was devoted to the understanding of citizens? values and behaviours in China. With exceptional competence in survey design and analysis, he aimed at explaining how citizens perceive and interact with politics within the Chinese cultural and institutional context. His studies on the Chinese case are at the same t...

Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies. Edited by CarlsonAllen, GallagherMary E., LieberthalKenneth, and ManionMelanie. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xii, 316 pp. $99.00 (cloth); $29.99 (paper). - Volume 70 Issue 3 - Zhengxu Wang

Assessment of the quality of governance has so far relied on socioeconomic statistics and expert opinions, while largely neglecting citizens’ perceptions. Using AsiaBarometer 2008 data, this paper examines the factors affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their government in six Asian-Pacific countries: America, Australia, China, India, Japan, and...

China’s Embedded Activism: Opportunities and Constraints of a Social Movement, HoPeter and Louis EdmondsRichard . London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xviii + 258 pp. £75.00; $150.00 ISBN 978-0-415-43374-7. - Volume 196 - Zhengxu Wang

Economic development and the social changes it brings are changing people's world views among the East Asia Confucian societies. Most notable is a change from stressing hard work and achievement toward stressing enjoyment, self expression, and a fulfilling lifestyle. With this people also have become more pro-equality and tolerant toward different...

It is clear that public support for democracy is high in China. Public opinion surveys show that more than 90% of Chinese citizens believe that having a democracy is good. But the majority is not yet ready for a major effort towards democratization because they still see economic growth and social stability as more important than freedom of speech,...

East Asia is one of the most dynamic areas of political change in the world today-what role do citizens play in these processes of change? Drawing upon a unique set of coordinated public opinion surveys conducted by the World Values Survey, this book provides a dramatically new image of the political cultures of East Asia. Most East Asian citizens...

East Asia is one of the most dynamic areas of political change in the world today-what role do citizens play in these processes of change? Drawing upon a unique set of coordinated public opinion surveys conducted by the World Values Survey, this book provides a dramatically new image of the political cultures of East Asia. Most East Asian citizens...

Using survey data to analyse the strength of the Chinese regime, it is argued that economic development has generated substantial public satisfaction. The public also recognises that the Chinese Communist Party is reforming the Government. The public's satisfaction with Government performance in both the economic and political arenas translates int...

Political trust has been declining among the publics of almost all advanced industrial societies in recent years. This has been attributed to a Materialist–Postmaterialist value shift, which has given rise to a public that is less deferential to authority and increasingly ready to challenge government. This phenomenon has been interpreted as a ‘cri...

Using survey data to analyse the strength of the Chinese regime, it is argued that economic development has generated substantial public satisfaction. The public also recognises that the Chinese Communist Party is reforming the Government. The public's satisfaction with Government performance in both the economic and political arenas translates int...

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan.