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... As events in East Europe and China in the late 1980s show, one party systems are particularly vulnerable to a low level of trust in government (Wong, 2009). China experiences a large number of public protests, each of which is a small instance of social instability (Chen, 2009; Tong & Lei, 2010; Göbel & Ong, 2012). Our interest in this paper is not in these relatively isolated events, but in widespread social tensions that are bubbling under the surface, and can potentially pose a fundamental challenge to stability. ...
Following the 2008/9 financial crisis, China instituted a 4 trillion RMB stimulus package that was spent mostly on infrastructure, with a particular impact at local level. The goal was to sustain economic growth and preserve social stability. We use the Asian Barometer surveys from shortly before and after the stimulus to examine its impact on public trust in government, and find a reversal of a previous downward trend and a substantial increase in trust in local government post stimulus. We consider a number of alternative explanations for this increase in trust, and conclude that the stimulus package is the most convincing explanation. Both perceptions of corruption and experience of corruption increased over the stimulus period. Given the strong negative correlation between corruption and trust, this implies that trust would have increased even further if the level of corruption had remained the same.
... Data source: China Statistical Bureau, China Statistical Yearbook, various issues regarding land acquisition and labour rights, and crime rates increased more than ten-fold between 1993 and 2007 (Chen 2009). To calm down protesters, one-off cash payments and administrative powers have been used to fight the fire. ...
China’s Communist Party has directed the country’s welfare system to maintain party authority amidst changing political, social, and economic circumstances. Welfare during the years of central planning was comprehensively provided either directly by the state or through co-operatives with a clear rural-urban divide. Following the death of Mao Zedong, the Chinese economy was liberalised and capitalists began to be accepted as members of the Party. From the late 1970s until the early 2000s, welfare provisions from state and business enterprises gradually declined even as individuals began bearing ever-growing
personal responsibility in social assistance. While welfare policy had, until the early 2000s, been used to increase economic efficiency, the many social problems that attended the Chinese model of development soon led Beijing to target welfare policy directly at social well-being.
Consequently, more recent policy has sought to spread the benefits of economic growth more equitably.
The relevance of this study stems from the gradual development of the global information space, which promotes an effective harmonization of digital markets of countries participating in international relations. An interesting area of study involves examining the development processes of the Internet and social networks, particularly in the context of their use in public administration, as demonstrated by Russia and China, where this area has become a priority in recent years. This study aims to develop a conceptual framework of factors influencing the adoption of social media in the public sector. In addition, this paper attempts to examine the prospects for further organization of this process. The method used was comparative analysis, which affected the systems of countries with different political regimes with variable information policies. Also, the paper disclosed the appropriateness of taking precautions against the activity of internet users, based on Russian and Chinese regulation policies. We obtained results suggesting that social media helps public authorities engage in discussions and broaden the boundaries of the public sphere, engaging people in new formats of digital communications. The data obtained will be of practical value for the representatives of public authorities, educational organizations, and socio-cultural institutions.
Considering the enforcement of China's Labor Contract Law as an exogenous event, this paper studies the relationship between labor protection and corporate risk-taking. We document a significant negative effect of labor protection on firms' risk choices. The effect is robust after considering several events, including the global financial crisis. After the law was implemented, firms tend to reduce leverage and intangible assets and increase cash holdings. We propose two potential channels for such an effect, reducing firms' operating flexibility and tightening their financial constraints. We also find that the negative impact is more pronounced for firms of lower governance quality. On the cross-section, state ownership and regional and cultural variations also influence the effect of labor protection on risk-taking. Our study sheds light on how government intervention (in addition to corporate law) shapes corporate policies, thus expanding and supplementing the existing literature.
Far from acting defensively to preserve the social relations and red ideologies that originally gave it power, the Chinese Communist Party is leading a social and economic transformation that could be expected to lead to direct challenges to its authority. The surprising degree of change in the Chinese socio-economic transformation and the fact that this transformation has been going on for forty years now and has not yet resulted in fundamental challenges subverting its rule have inspired my study. The overarching theoretical enquiry in my dissertation resonates with one of the most important theoretical questions in political sociology: how does the state maintain compliance from the governed in periods of rapid social and economic transformation, and how does the logic of its governmentality change along with its priorities? My work is built on the Weberian and Gramscian tradition of understanding state rule and highlights the individual’s rationale of “believing” and “consent”, but also takes account of the Foucaudian “governmentality” the state uses to maintain its rule and investigates the underlined rationality. Empirically, I take advantage of the pension changes among China’s social welfare reforms, decipher a two-way story of statecraft in authoritarian regimes and explore whether there may be room for cognitional counter-conduct from the public. My work demonstrates that the Chinese state works through benefit allocation, propaganda, experimentation with policy and many other approaches, in order to shape public expectations and justify its rule. However, the state’s well-designed statecraft needs to enable individuals to make sense of their experience and must resonate with their “common sense”. Individuals can update their knowledge from personal interest, information from government policies, signals from current society (their peers) to decide whether to stay loyal or choose non-compliance. In a situation when active counter-conduct such as resistance is not possible, individuals may choose cognitional rebellion and falsify their public compliance.
What impact is the current rise in workplace conflict having on governance in China? This article argues that, over time, protests are driving the state in two directions at once: towards greater repression and greater responsiveness. Using an original dataset of strikes, protests and riots by Chinese workers between 2003 and 2012, along with government budgetary and judicial statistics, the article demonstrates that significant, positive correlations exist at the provincial level between increased unrest on the one hand and both increased spending on the People's Armed Police (repression) and increasing numbers of pro-worker and split decisions in mediation, arbitration and court cases (responsiveness) on the other. Feedback effects exist with regard to responsiveness, though: more cases in which workers win something in turn seem to spur greater unrest. The article closes by noting the changes since Xi Jinping took office and examining the implications of the findings for China's political development.
Littéralement « petite soeur travaillant pour un patron », le terme dagongmei désigne la main d’œuvre chinoise féminine salariée non qualifiée composée de jeunes filles non mariées souvent originaires de milieux ruraux, et migrant hors de leur village, parfois hors de leur province pour trouver un emploi. Les dagongmei représentent une catégorie de travailleuses précaires, main d’œuvre occasionnelle facilement interchangeable produite par les politiques de développement économique de la Chine au cours des quatre dernières décennies. Depuis les années 90, la médiatisation de scandales sur les conditions de travail des sujets dagong retentit en Chine et au niveau international, appelant les entreprises à repenser leur rôle social. D’autre part, face aux inégalités socio-économiques et politiques qui déterminent les parcours actuels des Chinoises, le gouvernement adopte un positionnement s’affichant comme résolument en faveur de l’empowerment des femmes. Cette thèse porte sur un groupe de jeunes femmes issues de villages ruraux de la province du Yunnan et employées à Kunming dans une entreprise à capitaux étrangers se définissant comme fonctionnant de manière socialement responsable et pourvoyeuse d’empowerment pour ses employées. Si le projet de modernité et de mondialité de la Chine a façonné de nouveaux sujets-travailleurs dagongmei et dagongzai, par la transformation de corps de migrants ruraux en corps de travailleurs industriels, quels sujets dagongmei un projet d’entreprise socialement responsable se propose-t-il de contribuer à produire ? Comment penser les processus d’individualisation au sein de groupes subalternes selon une perspective prenant en compte les rapports sociaux de sexe ?
Chang I-C. C., Leitner H. and Sheppard E. A green leap forward? Eco-state restructuring and the Tianjin–Binhai eco-city model. Regional Studies. China has experienced a remarkable explosion of designated eco-cities since the year 2000, with Tianjin–Binhai becoming the best-practice model. Embedded in broader political economic changes, shifting multi-scalar regimes of environmental governance have shaped this efflorescence. Applying eco-state restructuring, this paper argues that eco-city construction became a new strategic project after the 2000s, driven by central state-driven model cities and assessment initiatives. This also led to a very different kind of ‘best practice’ eco-city model: Tianjin–Binhai, a China–Singapore collaboration in which greenness is manufactured rather than adapted. Notwithstanding significant implementation problems, Tianjin–Binhai's status as best practice persists, raising questions about what it means to claim eco-city status.
A qualitative shift is underway in the nature of labor protest in China. Contrary to prior literature that characterized strikes as being largely defensive in nature, the authors suggest that since 2008, Chinese workers have been striking offensively for more money, better working conditions, and more respect from employers. They explain these developments using a "political process" model that suggests economic and political opportunities are sending "cognitive cues" to workers that they have increased leverage, leading them to be more assertive in their demands. Such cues include a growing labor shortage, new labor laws, and new media openness. Their argument is supported by a unique data set of strikes that the authors collected, two case studies of strikes in aerospace factories, and interviews with a variety of employment relations stakeholders.
I find in the Asia-Pacific new modes of regulatory regional governance-regulatory regionalism. My approach suggests that a variety of regulatory regimes are located inside rather than outside the state. Hence an important implication of my argument is that my analysis of regional governance must be focused much more on the transformation of the state rather than on the creation of new regional institutions. Governance is regionalized within the state bringing with it new actors, forums, and procedures which go unrecognized in much of the literature on regional governance. In the latter half of the article, I examine the mobilization of regulatory governance projects via both the national and subnational state in China. These regulatory projects are in response to the interests and challenges faced by internationalization of state capital. The article concludes by focusing on the increasing contestation between U.S.- and Chinese-led regulatory projects such as the Trans Pacific Partnership and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
The task of this work is to conduct a global political-economic analysis of China's major social media platforms in the context of transformations of the Chinese economy. It analyses Chinese social media's commodity and capital form. It compares the political economy of Baidu (search engine), Weibo (microblog) and Renren (social networking site) to the political economy of the US platforms Google (search engine), Twitter (microblog) and Facebook (social networking site) in order to analyse differences and commonalities. The comparative analysis focuses on aspects such as profits, the role of advertising, the boards of directors, shareholders, financial market values, terms of use and usage policies. The analysis is framed by the question to which extent China has a capitalist or socialist economy.
The article examines a wave of teachers' strikes that spread across China during the fall, winter and spring of 2014-2015. Looking at event data and social media coverage of the wave, it discusses how social media enabled protesters to carry out media-savvy campaigns that involved both online and offline tactics, draw inspiration from claimants in faraway protest sites, and emulate tactics, slogans and symbols from other locations. The episode indicates that claimants in contemporary China are utilizing new media break the geographic bounds of localized protests, and while falling short of nationally coordinated protest movements, are able to generate widespread, cross-regional protest waves that place greater pressure on subnational authorities to give in to protester demands.
A series of the silver(I) complexes of the type {[Ag(L1)][X]}∞ [L1 = 4-(pyridin-2-yl)methyleneamino-1,2,4-triazole; X = PF6−, 1, BF4−, 2, ClO4−, 3, and NO3−, 4], {[Ag(L2)(CH3CN)][PF6]}n (L2 = 4-(pyridin-3-yl)methyleneamino-1,2,4-triazole), 5, and {[Ag(L2)][CF3CO2]}n, 6, have been prepared by reactions of various Ag(I) salts with L1 or L2 in CH3CN. All the complexes have been structurally characterized by X-ray crystallography confirming that complexes 1–4 are one-dimensional coordination polymeric chains, while complexes 5 and 6 are two-dimensional and three-dimensional coordination polymeric net and frameworks, respectively. All the L1 ligands in complexes 1–4 act as tridentate ligands to chelate and bridge Ag(I) ions. The anions PF6−, BF4− and ClO4− in complexes 1–3 are not coordinated to the Ag(I) atoms while the NO3− anions in complex 4 are coordinated to the metal centers through one of the three oxygen atoms. All the tridentate L2 ligands in complexes 5 and 6 bind soft acid Ag(I) ions through the triazole and pyridyl groups forming the two-dimensional and three-dimensional coordination polymeric net and frameworks, respectively, while the anions PF6− and CF3CO2− in complexes 5 and 6 are not coordinated to the Ag(I) atoms. The anions in complexes 1–6 play important roles in linking cationic chains or layers into 3-D supramolecular structures.
Autonomist Marxism is a political tendency premised on the autonomy of the proletariat. Working class autonomy is manifested in the self-activity of the working class independent of formal organizations and representations, the multiplicity of forms that struggles take, and the role of class composition in shaping the overall balance of power in capitalist societies, not least in the relationship of class struggles to the character of capitalist crises. Class compositionanalysis is applied here to narrate the recent history of capitalism leading up to the current crisis, giving particularattention to China and the United States. A global wave of struggles in the mid-2000s was constituitive of the kinds of working class responses to the crisis that unfolded in 2008-10. The circulation of those struggles and resultant trends of recomposition and/or decomposition are argued to be important factors in the balance of political forces across the varied geography of the present crisis.
Using a survey the authors initiated in fifty-four footwear factories in China, this article investigates the extent to which Chinese workers today are subjected to coercive workplace discipline. The authors compare the management practices of state-owned and collective factories, private factories owned by mainland Chinese, and those owned by investors from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The survey selects five indicators of a disciplinary labor regime: corporal punishment, compulsory overtime, discipline vis-a`-vis bodily functions (such as toilet-going restrictions), imposition of monetary penalties, and bonding of labor through mandatory deposits.