Article

The Mandate of Heaven and Performance Legitimacy in Historical and Contemporary China

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

Abstract

This article argues that performance legitimacy, an aspect of state legitimacy neglected by Weber in his original formulation of the theory of domination, played a particularly important role in the history of China and has shaped not only the patterns of Chinese history but also today's Chinese politics. Yet, performance legitimacy is intrinsically unstable because it carries concrete promises and therefore will trigger immediate political crisis when the promises are unfulfilled. This problem is especially profound for a modern state once its power is based primarily on performance because modern states tend to be development rather than maintenance oriented and promise too much. Therefore, although the current government expends much effort to heighten its legitimacy by improving its performance, it will face a major crisis when the Chinese economy cools off unless it establishes legal-electoral legitimacy.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.

... Differing demands. The literature on political legitimacy suggests that public support for a regime may rest on the regime's political institutions and procedures (Fishkin 1991;Tang 2016), on its socio-economic performance (Wintrobe 1998;Zhao 2009), or on a combination of both (Geddes, Wright and Frantz 2018;Pan and Xu 2018). Based on this, we theorize two major types of demands that citizens make: political institutions and socio-economic outcomes. ...
... Economic beneficiary of the current autocracy. Existing literature on authoritarian public opinion suggests that the more dependent an individual is on material benefits provided by their government, such as through public sector employment, the more emphasis this person will place on material outcomes when evaluating a political system (Chen 2004;Frye 2022;Rosenfeld 2017;Zhao 2009). For example, people living in the most developed region of China (Eastern provinces) are more economically dependent on the regime since the prosperity of this region is largely due to preferential treatment by the government, including subsidies and more liberal economic policies. ...
... We operationalize regime-generated economic benefits using three measures: 1) whether a respondent lives in the most economically developed region (Eastern provinces) of China; 2) whether a respondent works in the public sector, including government bureaucracy and stateowned enterprises (SOE); and 3) whether a respondent was born after China's economic reform and opening up in 1980. China has experienced spectacular yet unequal state-led economic growth since 1980, with Eastern provinces receiving substantially more subsidies and liberal economic policies from the regime (Yang and Zhao 2015;Zhao 2009). Thus, people living in Eastern China, as well as those who have grown up in the reform era, are greater beneficiaries of state-led economic development. ...
Article
Full-text available
Opponents of authoritarian regimes are often assumed to desire democracy in place of the current regime. In this paper, we show that authoritarian dissidents hold divergent attitudes towards democracy and identify a key bloc within the regime opposition: “non-democratic critics” (NDCs) or those who are dissatisfied with the current regime but resist adopting democracy. We develop the concept of NDCs, theorize why they exist and how they differ from supporters of democracy and the status quo, and test implications of this framework using interviews and an original survey across China. We find that nearly half of respondents who oppose the current Chinese regime are non-democratic critics who also do not support democracy. Compared to democracy and status quo supporters, NDCs have a distinct set of political and socio-economic demands and higher uncertainty about the performance of democracy in meeting these demands. We also find that NDCs are economically better off than democracy supporters, suggesting that unequal access to the benefits of state-led economic development may motivate differing attitudes toward democracy among regime opponents. These findings put forth an important explanation for why the world’s largest authoritarian regime endures—those who oppose the regime have divergent and unclear visions of what political system should be adopted in its place.
... Por su parte, las dinámicas de creación estatal en China no generaron una división tajante entre Estado y sociedad (Mielants, 2008;Wong, 1997;Zhao, 2015). La filosofía política china del "mandato del cielo" asignaba una alta prioridad al bienestar social de la población, de la cual dependía la continuidad en el poder del soberano, por lo que los oficiales del imperio estaban particularmente interesados en intervenir en la gestión económica y ecológica para evitar rebeliones (Zhao, 2009). ...
... El Estado retomó su tarea de construir un orden moral común compartido por la mayoría de la sociedad y la capacidad de poder moldearlo de acuerdo a sus necesidades. Esta función ideológica del Estado tuvo un desarrollo temprano en la etapa imperial mediante la difusión de la visión del mundo y del orden moral basado en los dos principios de Tiānmìng (mandato del cielo) y la Tianxia (todo bajo el cielo), los cuales eran los pilares del sistema político y religioso de la filosofía confuciana (Wong, 1997;Zhao, 2009). Estas funciones ideológicas se profundizaron durante el período socialista mediante el despliegue de grandes campañas de propaganda y con acciones pedagógicas concretas por parte del aparato del Estado y el PCCh. ...
Article
Full-text available
Este artículo examina el ascenso económico de China y sus características institucionales en la acumulación de capital. Utilizando el enfoque de sistemas mundo y la literatura histórica relevante, se destaca la doble autonomía del Estado chino, resultado de la convergencia de procesos históricos: el período imperial tardío y la Revolución China de 1949. Se introduce el concepto de "contrincante semi-periférico" para describir su posición híbrida en la jerarquía de riqueza. El Estado chino moldea y disciplina a los actores capitalistas para ascender en las cadenas globales de valor, alterando su posición en la dinámica centro-periferia. Esta capacidad de imponer transformaciones profundas en la estructura jerárquica de riqueza global distingue a China como agente relevante. El artículo contribuye a la teoría política del Estado y su dinámica en el contexto global.
... The most well-documented public governance tool in China meant to reduce insufficiently guided agency problems among provincial governments is job promotions of their officials to the central government (Bo, 1996(Bo, , 2002Jia, Kudamatsu, & Seim, 2015;Li & Zhou, 2005;Zhao, 2009;Zhu, 2011). It is likely that this central government tool will significantly, albeit unintentionally, impact the smartness of Chinese provincial governments' SEI specialization policymaking. ...
... At first blush, this seems sensible as it takes significant time for SEI specialization policy choices to yield effects and it is not necessarily a straightforward exercise to attribute meaningful outcomes back to such policy choices anyway. Instead, provincial government officials are usually promoted if they meet much higher-level performance goals in terms of annual provincial GDP growth targets and maintenance of social order (Bo, 1996(Bo, , 2002Jia et al., 2015;Knight, 2014Knight, : 1344Li & Zhou, 2005;Marquis & Qiao, 2022;Zhao, 2009;Zhu, 2011). ...
Article
Full-text available
We examine how the central government's management of subnational governments' agency influences the smartness of the latter's industrial specialization choices. Based on smart industrial specialization theory and agency theory, we hypothesize how two central government tools governing subnational governments' agency – facilitating their organizational efficacy and promoting their officials to higher ranks – explain recent industrial specialization choices by China's 31 provincial governments. We find that provincial governments with greater organizational efficacy, measured by access to better-resourced local state-owned enterprises in focal industries, make smarter specialization policies. In addition, we show that provincial governments with greater numbers of officials previously promoted to the central government make, contrary to conventional wisdom, potentially less smart specialization policies. Our research extends smart specialization theory by explaining that central government tools governing subnational agency problems can have knock-on effects making subnational governments' industrial specialization choices smart or unsmart.
... One yardstick that can be used in the comparison which also applies to Western democracies, again, is the responsiveness of states to civil societies or of elites to citizens. That allows for the inclusion of China which, even though it is an authoritarian party-state rather than a democracy, still seeks legitimacy-sometimes called 'performance legitimacy' (Zhao, 2009). Modi's India has been regarded as going in the direction of authoritarianism (Jaffrelot, 2021) and so away from responsiveness, and also becoming majoritarian and so illiberal and anti-pluralist. ...
Article
Full-text available
The social sciences, and especially theories about communication and digital media, have been dominated by the Global North. This paper attempts to redress this imbalance by reference to two major countries that have also been models in other parts of the world, India and China. In both countries, the autonomy of the public sphere of media is constrained, though less so in India’s half-democracy than in China’s authoritarian party state. Still, a lively and diverse online part of the public sphere which lacks the gatekeeping function of traditional news can contribute to the autonomy of media. Media reflect society imperfectly, but there is much to learn from two countries where the un-gatekept online public sphere is relatively more important than the traditional gatekept public sphere.
... In the Confucian view, the legitimate authority of the monarch is derived from its charismatic power endowed by heaven. He is the embodiment of the god's consummate morality (tiān dào) and, therefore is the legitimate legislator and hierarch of the country's political and legal system [20]. Accordingly, morality has always been the basis and an indivisible element of legal-rational authority throughout Chinese history. ...
Article
Full-text available
With the advancement in technology and big data in recent years, disciplinary systems present an increasing tendency towards digitization. Chinas digital Social Credit system, established to evaluate individuals, businesses, and local institutions trustworthiness, serves as a typical model. Through the lens of Michel Foucaults account of disciplinary power and Max Webers account of rationality and disenchantment, the paper is directed to analyze Chinas digital credit systems implications on the publics moral governance rights. Admittedly, the digital scoring system offers advantages in regard to social stability and public utility; it is suitable to Chinas ideological, historical, and geographical character. However, its digital mass surveillance, through fusing value and instrumental rationality and oversimplifying morality, aggravates the spiritual crisis of disenchantment. In return, the collective disenchantment of the public leads to problematic social and political consequences. In response, the paper offers legislative and propagandize related policy suggestions to allay the undesirable outcomes of digital discipline.
... The CCP's "Red-over-Expert" regime was replaced with a "technocracy," whereby the CCP was reshaped and ruled by a group of well-educated "Red and Expert" cadres (Andreas, 2009). With the historic shift of the Party-state legitimacy from ideology-based to performance-based (Zhao, 2009), the social norms were largely updated by a promotion of the bold pursuit of individual success, and universities were increasingly pressured to cultivate talents to strengthen the nation in a global "knowledge economy" (Ma, 2019). The landmark event was the return of the National College Entrance Examination (gaokao), a standardized paper-pencil test that determines one's access to HE. ...
Article
Full-text available
Western literature has shown that elite universities are not culturally inclusive, presuming that these institutions predominantly reflect the culture of the affluent middle class. While cultural inclusion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students is a globally relevant issue, the overarching presumption does not necessarily apply to non-Western societies. This article reconsiders this assumption in the Chinese context, addressing the lack of systematic research untangling the dominant culture in elite Chinese universities. A two-phase, mixed-methods case study was conducted at two top-ranked universities in eastern and western China. In the first phase, a content analysis of the stories of the universities’ award-winning seniors was combined with a thematic analysis of the in-depth interviews with 49 graduating seniors to untangle the formal and informal dominant culture in China’s elite universities. The findings led to a three-fold model of dominant culture characterized by an emphasis on individual academic performance, loyalty to Communist Party ideology, and the significant influence of students from advantaged family backgrounds. In the second phase, three hypotheses about the impacts of this dominant culture on students’ socio-cultural integration were tested, largely supporting the three-fold model and highlighting the roles of academic and political performance in facilitating cultural inclusion. This study sheds new light on cultural capital studies in non-Western contexts and emphasizes that cultural (dis)advantages should be cautiously examined considering the historical and ideological context shaping higher education.
... Without the procedural legitimacy conferred by free elections, ideology, despite its reduced prominence, remains a key component of legitimacy alongside governance performance in post-totalitarian countries (Zhao 2009). Therefore, such regimes must create specific "missions" to fill the legitimacy vacuum. ...
Article
Full-text available
In the context of a diverse media landscape grappling with an increasingly stringent political climate, this study asks whether the Chinese government’s media-control policies shape public opinion. Drawing on online survey data collected between 2014 and 2018 and using regression models and inverse probability weighting, I find that in 2017, as Xi Jinping began his second term as general secretary, there was a noticeable conservative shift in the political attitudes of the Chinese public. While foreign media might have reduced support for the Chinese Communist Party’s stance and ideology among those with less exposure to the party-state media, state propaganda did shift public attitudes, offsetting the impact of foreign media. These findings underscore the Party’s effectiveness in using media censorship and propaganda to consolidate its legitimacy in the ideological sphere.
... We must fully understand the importance of enforcing ecological red lines. (Zhao 2009;Zhu 2011). This pragmatic mentality has been retained via the discussion of upholding 'ecological red lines' in the TT. ...
Article
Full-text available
Metaphors are intricate linguistic devices and potent cognitive-discursive tools for persuasion in both source texts (ST) and target texts (TT). They primarily function in framing, namely the selection and clarification of cognitive domains, a function that is particularly vital in political communication. Yet, metaphorical framing, aka metaphor framing, as a pivotal cognitive strategy remains underexplored within political translation. In light of this, our study investigates how metaphorical framing operates in translating the Ecological Progress chapter of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China. We find that metaphorical framing in political translation involves cognitive manipulation, emphasizing certain cognitive domain aspects and incorporating models of moral reasoning. In the case of Ecological Progress, institutional translators make explicit urgency and cooperation frames by personifying 'ecology' and establish a resolution frame through the translation of 'red line' and 'thunder pool.' This mediation helps to present China's positive image and manifest its official stance. While ST and TT may differ in metaphor configurations, the TT frames resonate with the ST's ideological and moral principles and align with the moral cognitive model of the target community. As such, the TT seeks to reinforce the moral authority of China's call for international ecological cooperation, legitimate its ecological policies, and shape an image of a responsible, forward-thinking nation committed to ecological protection.
... Previous research has examined electoral legitimacypublic perception of the fairness of the electoral processes and institutionsas a determinant of citizens' political preferences and behaviors (Zhao, 2009). For example, citizens are more likely to participate in elections when they believe that their vote matters (Birch, 2010;Franklin, 2004) and can influence policy outcomes (Norris, 2002). ...
Article
What are the drivers of citizens’ support for electoral gender quotas in transitioning and authoritarian states? Despite extensive research examining public support for women in politics in democracies, we know little about how the public perceives them in less democratic settings. To address this shortcoming, we use original survey data from authoritarian Morocco and transitioning Tunisia – two Arab countries hailed for their progressive gender policies. We argue that in these countries where citizens lack political information, they instead rely on their assessment of the government’s performance to form attitudes toward gender quotas. Furthermore, electoral legitimacy plays an important role in shaping citizens’ support for quotas, which are closely linked to how elections and legislatures operate. The findings offer strong support for our theoretical expectations and uncover important gender differences.
... Rather than political concerns about regime stability and political alignment, as detailed in existing studies, 4 we examine a different set of factors that can motivate a regime to strategically deploy its media control: economic development. Although not all authoritarian regimes share this goal and many dictators have a short time horizon (Olson, 1993), economic performance is often crucial to a regime's political viability (Reuter & Gandhi, 2011;Zhao, 2009). In order to pursue development in the age of globalization, it is imperative to promote economic engagement with other countries, especially in areas of strategic importance. ...
Article
Full-text available
How does an authoritarian regime cover news about foreign countries for its domestic audience? What accounts for the variation in news coverage received by different foreign countries? While existing literature points to political concerns at home, in this article, we argue that a regime's economic interests can also be a driving force: the desire to deepen its international economic engagement can motivate the regime to treat foreign countries differently in its news coverage. To test this argument, we examine foreign news coverage by China's state-run television network between 2003 and 2018. Combining textual and quantitative analysis, we find that countries with stronger economic ties with China receive more favorable news coverage. Moreover, the manipulation of coverage favorability is achieved through selective reporting: negative events such as armed conflicts receive less coverage when taking place in a country with close economic ties with China. These findings contribute to our understanding of international news flow, especially in a non-Western setting. They also demonstrate a pragmatic rather than political use of information control by an authoritarian government.
... [1][2][3] Such collaborative presentation is targeted not only at the international media but also at Chinese citizens. Specifically, the Chinese partystate relies on performance legitimacy-the regime's right to rule is derived from governance outcomes, including economic growth, social stability, and national unity (Zhao 2009;Zhu 2011). It is thus crucial for the authority to present a flawless image of political leaders and highlight the accomplishments of the government in CPPCs to boost domestic support and reinforce regime stability (Yi 2016a). ...
Article
Full-text available
China’s political press conferences have received increasing academic attention as they provide a revealing window into the workings of the political communication system in the authoritarian context. However, the interactional role that interpreters play in these cross-linguistic press conferences remains underexamined. Taking a conversational analytic approach, this qualitative study empirically examines the interactional import of government interpreters’ practices at the Chinese Premier’s Press Conferences (CPPCs) from 2007 to 2023. The analysis reveals that interpreters consistently transform journalists’ questions with respect to (1) word choices, (2) contextual backgrounds, and (3) question forms. These transformative practices work to soften the critical messages that these questions would otherwise convey while also enabling politicians to more easily address these questions without having to deal with the negative consequences that might otherwise follow. I argue that government interpreters in CPPCs actively intervene in substantive ways consistent with a spin doctor role within press conference exchanges.
... Adherents of other traditions also commonly believe in a transcendent origin of morality. For example, most Chinese traditions see morality as having its origin in a command or mandate from Heaven (Tian) 4 (Zhao 2009). ...
Article
Full-text available
The divine command theory holds that morality finds its origin in God or that God is somehow closely connected to morality. Many people across the world hold a related, though different belief that Religious belief is required for proper moral behavior. In this paper, I look at a number of evolutionary and cognitive explanations (supernatural punishment theory, big gods theory, moral dyad, and costly signaling) that purport to explain why people hold beliefs concerning a close connection between God and morality. I assess whether any of these theories provide a reason for epistemic concern.
... Our study contributes to the literature on political support in China, a country that relies on performance legitimacy, a key source of political stability (Treisman, 2011), by providing social assistance, public goods, and economic interest to citizens (Dickson et al., 2016;Huang & Gao, 2018;Zhao, 2009), who in turn link good policy outcomes with support of governments and reduce their support with negative government performance (Alkon & Wang, 2018). A rising line of research, however, reflects the limitation of performance legitimacy; for example, scholars demonstrate that social policy benefits may be inadequate to win local political support (Lü, 2014;Yang & Shen, 2021), and corruption investigation undermines regime support and reduces the supply of political candidates (Wang & Dickson, 2022;Yang, 2021). ...
Article
Full-text available
The economic costs of environmental regulations are well documented, but their political cost is still unclear, especially in cases of substantial pollution reduction. This study presents empirical evidence for the unexpected political costs of China's war on air pollution. Using a clean energy regulation as a case, we demonstrate that it significantly reduces air pollutants over a short period; however, exposure to the regulation erodes local political support and trust in government officials. In addition, we show that stringent environmental regulations significantly reduce local political trust when it entails high policy costs for local residents and had weak policy participation. Our results indicate that stringent regulations may improve environmental quality at the cost of local political legitimacy.
... To maintain legitimacy, the Chinese Ruler had the obligation to act benevolently toward the ruled and to follow the "Mandate of Heaven" (e.g. Zhao 2009 ). That said, Stasavage ( 2016 , p. 148) notes that "the concept of a Mandate of Heaven never extended to obtaining consent, nor did it involve assembling representatives to achieve this goal". ...
Article
Full-text available
To better understand institutional differences across space and time, we propose a two-dimensional framework of the power structure among three players in society: the degree of absolute power of the Ruler over the Elites and the People, and the degree of asymmetry between the latter two in terms of their everyday rights and power. Within this framework, we show that a more absolutist Ruler prefers a more balanced Elite-People relationship. This theory helps in particular to reconcile views on the comparison between imperial China and premodern Europe that would seem contradictory in one-dimensional or two-estate frameworks: the Ruler’s absolute power was weaker in Europe, whereas the Elite-People relationship was more balanced in China. Our approach also helps more generally to interpret specific institutions and other variations in power structures.
... What explains this pattern of public favourability? According to the logic of performance legitimacy (Gilley, 2008;Yang & Zhao, 2015;Zhao, 2009), a government's policy performance drives people to attribute credit or blame to that government, depending on whether policy outcomes meaningfully improve citizens' lives. Therefore, the rapid progress in material lives in the reform era under the CCP is a primary contributor to public satisfaction. ...
Article
During a national crisis, can state propaganda shift public opinion, and if so, in what direction? Existing studies show that the effects of state propaganda on public opinion in China are mixed. Analysing data from an online survey experiment conducted during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, this article finds that the Chinese public responded positively to propaganda that promoted Xi Jinping’s leadership, when these messages included text as well as images that showed Xi being compassionate during his visit to Wuhan. However, when textual propaganda focused on familiar narratives, such as Xi’s leadership, international praise of China’s experience in fighting the virus, China’s efforts to send medical assistance to other countries, and praise for medical workers, it was largely ineffective in changing political opinions. These results suggest that visual components that evoke an emotional response of solidarity can increase government favourability in public opinion. At the same time, propaganda narratives that fail to address critical questions about a national crisis, including its severity and attribution, tend to be ineffective at persuading the public.
... China is a suitable case to study because governance performance is a crucial source of regime legitimacy (Zhao, 2009). Moreover, its remarkable economic growth accompanied by widespread corruption and the increased bureaucratic slack amid anticorruption crackdowns may have convinced the public that corruption and good performance often go hand in hand, and that honest officials sometimes deliver little (Ang, 2020;Wang and Yan, 2020). ...
Article
Full-text available
People's willingness to forgive corrupt government officials has intrigued many researchers. According to a prominent explanation, citizens tolerate corrupt officials in exchange for their ability to deliver public benefits, such as promoting economic development. We contextualize this corruption–competence tradeoff thesis by assessing individuals' evaluations of local officials in China. We conduct a nationwide vignette experiment with 5527 citizens, and find that the corruption–competence tradeoff exists and is hierarchical. Respondents prefer competent but corrupt low-level officials over those who are honest but incompetent, but this relative preference vanishes when they evaluate high-level local officials. Our interviews reveal that proximity to citizens and position in the power hierarchy primarily drive citizens' sophisticated assessments of officials at different levels.
... Because 'uncommon' explanations were rare, and typically held by a single person in a society or were tied to a single instance Article https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01558-0 (for example, a single description of a man in the Tehuelche society declaring that the redness of the setting sun was an omen of war), we focused on commonly held explanations in our analysis and created dummy variables representing whether a supernatural explanation of a particular explanation was absent or uncommon (0) versus common (1). The Supplementary Results replicate our results while recoding uncommon explanations as present rather than absent. ...
Article
Full-text available
Humans across the globe use supernatural beliefs to explain the world around them. This article explores whether cultural groups invoke the supernatural more to explain natural phenomena (for example, storms, disease outbreaks) or social phenomena (for example, murder, warfare). Quantitative analysis of ethnographic text across 114 geographically and culturally diverse societies found that supernatural explanations are more prevalent for natural than for social phenomena, consistent with theories that ground the origin of religious belief in a human tendency to perceive intent and agency in the natural world. Despite the dominance of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, supernatural explanations of social phenomena were especially prevalent in urbanized societies with more socially complex and anonymous groups. Our results show how people use supernatural beliefs as explanatory tools in non-industrial societies, and how these applications vary across small-scale communities versus large and urbanized groups.
Chapter
Building on the general description of China’s reform path, this chapter describes and analyses the various reforms over time in detail.
Article
Full-text available
The spread of democratic ideas and economic growth in China—as suggested by the logic of modernization theory—have not initiated political reform toward democracy in China. Various literatures have attempted to explain this failure by emphasizing economic and social learning factors that clash with China’s national interests rather than emphasizing the context of its spreading process. Generally, this article aims to explain China’s failure to reform its politics toward democracy by focusing on the context of spreading democratic ideas in China. Specifically, this article aims to elucidate the relevance and continuity of the spread of democratic ideas in China during the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the Tiananmen Movement of 1989, and the Umbrella Movement of 2014, to the fifth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS). This article adopts a constructivist paradigm and constitutive localization theory to explain the failure of political reform in China. The findings suggest that Chinese local political ideas have influenced the spreading process of democratic ideas, contributing to China’s failure to acquire political reform toward democracy.
Article
While the Internet in China is subjected to heavy state regulations, Chinese netizens can still access online comments that deviate from official discourse on many issues. To prevent online discussions from getting out of hand, the Chinese government uses soft propaganda such as online comments to channel public opinions. Which type of online comments appeal to Chinese netizens? Using a survey experimental design, we examine the appeal of 4 distinct types of online comments on certain policies. We find that our survey respondents spend significantly more time in consuming emotional comments that deviate from official discourse. When it comes to the effect on attitude, however, we find that deviating-emotional comments are no more persuasive than deviating-informational comments. Our results call into question the effectiveness of China’s state propaganda in channeling online public opinions while highlighting the importance of alternative information in shaping public opinions in an authoritarian context.
Article
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a distinctive opportunity to reassess trust in government by evaluating its performance amidst a critical crisis. This paper employs a generalized difference-in-differences method to probe the causal effects of prolonged lockdown durations on public trust in local governments in China. Drawing on panel data of 44,861 observations from the 2018 and 2020 survey waves, the findings reveal a pervasive decline in government trust caused by extended lockdown durations in China. Specifically, an additional 40 days of lockdown resulted in an average 7.77 % decrease in government trust, with the largest declines seen among individuals with lower education, those born before 1970, those with health issues, and those with rural residence registration. This erosion of trust primarily stemmed from the lockdowns’ detrimental impacts on economic production, financial security, and the conveniences of daily life.
Article
Objective We examine the political identity and its determinants of China's young generation who are increasingly emerging from new industries and platforms. Methods Using survey data collected in China in 2020 from a representative sample, we employ Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and quantile regression models to analyze the effects of multiple factors on the political identity of emerging youth. Additionally, we employ the Shapley value decomposition method to compare the explanatory contributions of different factors. The instrumental variable method (2SLS) is also used to address the possible endogeneity between public participation and political identity. Results We find that the overall political identity of emerging youth scores high, and “authority resilience” rather than “identity decline” is a more suitable term to describe the political identity of this group. Educational enlightenment does not dissolve political identity; the higher the economic benefits and the stronger the sense of external political efficacy, the greater the political identity of China's emerging youth. Young people who are willing to participate in public affairs but lack access to the channels to do so have a lower degree of political identity. Conclusion Governance performance theory and institutional environment theory have more explanatory power than culturalism for understanding the political identity of emerging youth. Although postmaterialistic values prevail among the young generations, they are unlikely to challenge the legitimacy of the Chinese regime in the short term.
Article
Recent research on trust in the Chinese government has increasingly focused on whether it can be seen as the civic foundation of political stability. Differing from previous studies discussing the authenticity of the high mean level of trust in China, this paper responds to this discussion by examining how trust in the government varies across different social classes. By analyzing data from the Chinese Social Survey, our research revealed a gradient in trust towards both central and local governments across social classes, with notably lower trust observed in the lower classes. The social gradient was more pronounced in trust towards local governments compared to the central government. Furthermore, we found that the implementation of equity-oriented policies was effective in bridging the gap in trust between classes. These findings not only indicate that highly stratified trust may lead to potential risk to political stability, but also provide valuable insights into government behavior and its consequences, which are essential for guiding the transformation of governmental functions in the future.
Article
This essay provides an overview of the current state of content moderation on social media platforms. The question the essay addresses is why there are a number of unresolved issues in tackling dysfunctional content. The argument is that there are two intersecting new phenomena which make effective content moderation difficult: one is that social media platforms lack the gatekeeping of content that was characteristic of traditional news media. The second is that the regulation of this un‐gatekept content is still unsettled; it falls between social media companies that span the globe and the regulations or absence thereof bounded by nation‐states. To understand both, an analysis restricted to law and regulation is insufficient. Instead, it is necessary to examine the role of media systems in society in a holistic way, and in a way that distinguishes between gatekept media and the absence of gatekeeping or new forms of gatekeeping. Such a broader account points to why the institutionalization of content moderation is likely to be a protracted and uneven process. The conclusion spells out how the tensions that have arisen with new media could be resolved, but also why they are likely to remain imperfectly resolved.
Article
Full-text available
Recent years have witnessed the theorizing of international order from a global, rather than purely Western, perspective. We contribute to this approach by reviewing recent book-length theorizations by four prominent contemporary Chinese scholars. We outline how these conceptions of international order converge and diverge, identify their contributions and limitations, and compare them with Western paradigms of international order, such as realism and liberalism. We then demonstrate how insights from these Chinese approaches enrich existing international relations debates and shed light on contemporary Chinese foreign policy.
Article
Many are skeptical of the appeal of authoritarian political systems. We argue that global audiences will embrace authoritarian models when they believe that autocracies can meet governance challenges better than democracies. We collect comprehensive data on the external messaging of the Chinese and American governments. We then conduct a randomized experiment in 19 countries across six continents exposing global citizens to real messages from the Chinese and American governments’ external media arms. We find that exposure to a representative set of Chinese messages strengthens perceptions that the Chinese Communist Party delivers growth, stability, and competent leadership. It also moves the average respondent from slightly preferring the American model to slightly preferring the Chinese model. In head‐to‐head matchups, messages from the US government are less persuasive. Our findings show how autocracies build global support by selling growth and competence, with important implications for democratic resilience.
Preprint
Full-text available
In this paper, we sketch a programme for AI driven social theory. We begin by defining what we mean by artificial intelligence (AI) in this context. We then lay out our model for how AI based models can draw on the growing availability of digital data to help test the validity of different social theories based on their predictive power. In doing so, we use the work of Randall Collins and his state breakdown model to exemplify that, already today, AI based models can help synthesize knowledge from a variety of sources, reason about the world, and apply what is known across a wide range of problems in a systematic way. However, we also find that AI driven social theory remains subject to a range of practical, technical, and epistemological limitations. Most critically, existing AI systems lack three essential capabilities needed to advance social theory in ways that are cumulative, holistic, open-ended, and purposeful. These are (1) semanticization, i.e., the ability to develop and operationalize verbal concepts to represent machine-manipulable knowledge, (2) transferability, i.e., the ability to transfer what has been learned in one context to another, and (3) generativity, i.e., the ability to independently create and improve on concepts and models. We argue that if the gaps identified here are addressed by further research, there is no reason why, in the future, the most advanced programme in social theory should not be led by AI-driven cumulative advances.
Article
Cities are emerging as the frontiers of low-carbon transition. The emergence of low-carbon cities in East Asian developmental states is often seen as serving nation-state-led transformative development and economic restructuring. But how are specific low-carbon infrastructures socially produced at the city level, especially in the context of social protests? What is the role of the local state? This paper addresses these questions through the case of Guangzhou’s waste-to-energy incineration, an infrastructure that was selected as a national low-carbon technology in China in 2014. The paper proposes a conceptual framework of “performative legitimation of infrastructure” and, drawing from the empirical work, identifies five performative governance tools – (re)conceptualization, reterritorialization, bureaucratization, culturalization and codification – which respond to evolving social demands, consolidate the legitimacy of incineration and regulate state–society relations in different contexts. The production of urban low-carbon infrastructure is presented as a material-discursive process that supports the legitimation of the local state.
Article
Free speech scholars have been preoccupied with laws, regulations, judicial opinions, and other traditional “legal” materials. However, this article examines an often-overlooked object in at least studying China’s speech rights—the ideological and cultural policy of the party-state. The party-state’s ideological and cultural policy has not only, for better or worse, profoundly shaped speech rights in China; and more significantly and paradoxically, it also contains the seed that might promote China’s speech rights in the future. The party-state has had a long and deep-rooted tradition of promoting a democratic culture; by tracing the development of this tradition from the 1940s to the 2000s, this article argues that it may provide a new context and angle for thinking about people’s right to cultural construction and perhaps free speech in general in China.
Chapter
What is the nonprofit sector and why does it exist? Collecting the writing of some of the most creative minds in the field of nonprofit studies, this book challenges our traditional understanding of the role and purpose of the nonprofit sector. It reflects on the ways in which new cultural and economic shifts bring existing assumptions into question and offers new conceptualizations of the nonprofit sector that will inform, provoke, and inspire. Nonprofit organization and activity is an enormously important part of social, cultural, and economic life around the world, but our conceptualization of their place in modern society is far from complete. Reimagining Nonprofits provides fresh insights that are necessary for understanding nonprofit organizations and sectors in the 21st century.
Article
As a promising Social Science Methodology, Structural/Mechanism Explanation (SME) retains the advantages of mechanism-based explanation (ME), particularly its focus on “identifying causal patterns from micro-level social phenomena.” It also acknowledging the role of “structure”—seen as “macro-level conditions”—in incentivizing or disincentivizing key mechanisms, thus proving valuable for forecasting their emergence and decline. This article explores the theory of SME and applies it to examine how a revitalized “Legalist political structure coupled with a Confucianist ideological structure” can forecast the mechanisms by which China’s National Social Credit System disciplines and punishes the citizens. This is observed across domains of legislation, administration, judiciary, and propaganda.
Article
Full-text available
In recent years, the rise of digital populist and/or nationalist movement and the post-truth phenomenon have affected the political landscapes of many countries, including China. This article focuses on how pop-cultural practices and practices of political participation intertwine in the digital truth-making process of Chinese online “fandom nationalists”. Using over one year of ethnographic mixed-methods data analysis following relevant hashtags and chat groups, I illustrate the truth-making practices of these online users and their clear preference for information with ideological affinities. I argue that the social media affordances allow Chinese online fandom nationalists to create various forms of strong synergies between pop-/fandom-cultural and political practices that provide an ideal ground for the propagation of certain political truths while simultaneously suppressing/hiding the truths of others.
Chapter
The present regime derives much of its legitimacy for its one-party rule, at least from a descriptive context, from the legacy of the liberation of 1949. This chapter will put forward the argument that the legitimation efforts of the present regime are severely limited by the historical baggage of this period, especially the Anti-Rightist Movement (1957), forced collectivisation and the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). After a bright start, the failure of the Chinese state under Mao to answer the first question would render that regime as illegitimate. Economic reforms which started in 1978 without accompanying political liberalisation to answer the first question has raised fresh doubts into the legitimacy of purportedly Socialist regime being in charge of an increasingly capitalistic economic system. The use of the term ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ to mitigate the diminishing relevance of Marxist values seems to lack ideological coherence, as the term is ill-defined and ambiguous. The inherent tension between the stated values of the ruling party and societal norms and practices suggests that Chinese society is still ideological confused.
Chapter
How were state formation and early modern politics shaped by the state's proclaimed obligation to domestic welfare? Drawing on a wide range of historical scholarship and primary sources, this book demonstrates that a public interest-based discourse of state legitimation was common to early modern England, Japan, and China. This normative platform served as a shared basis on which state and society could negotiate and collaborate over how to attain good governance through providing public goods such as famine relief and infrastructural facilities. The terms of state legitimacy opened a limited yet significant political space for the ruled. Through petitioning and protests, subordinates could demand that the state fulfil its publicly proclaimed duty and redress welfare grievances. Conflicts among diverse dimensions of public interest mobilized cross-regional and cross-sectoral collective petitions; justified by the same norms of state legitimacy, these petitions called for fundamental political reforms and transformed the nature of politics.
Article
The China Story, also known as Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream of the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation, is widely accepted as the central narrative for the leadership’s ideological and political legitimacy-building efforts. Despite its significance and the widespread attention it has received in the decade since its inception, surprisingly little literature has examined the Chinese Dream through the lens of narrative theory. This article seeks to close this gap by offering a structural narratological analysis of the China Story. It illuminates how the narrative comprises policy-oriented rhetorical frames that form overarching themes that direct party-state actions and support Xi Jinping’s status as the ‘core’ leader. The paper argues that as a ‘master narrative’, it seeks to provide a spiritual foundation and a compelling vision of a strong, prosperous, and unified China under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chapter
State development in premodern China was shaped by elite network structures that characterized state–society relations, rather than representative institutions or bellicist competition. Imperial China’s rulers faced the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that could take collective action to strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. When elites were in geographically broad and densely interconnected networks—a star network, they preferred a strong state capable of protecting their far-flung interests, and their cohesiveness constituted a threat to the ruler’s survival. Yet when elites relied on local bases of power and were not tightly connected—a bowtie network, they instead sought to hollow out the central state from within; their internal divisions enabled the ruler to play competing factions against each other to secure his personal survival. This capacity–survival tradeoff explains China’s historical state development and highlights the importance of elite social relations in understanding alternative paths of state development outside Europe.KeywordSovereign’s DilemmaElite networkStar networkBowtie networkRuler survivalState capacity
Article
Previous studies on affective governance (情感治理) emphasize how the state has regulated and manipulated citizens’ emotions and psychology. This article, however, shows a different political landscape in which citizens employ emotional strategies to persuade and bargain with the government. Drawing on intensive fieldwork conducted in China from 2019 to 2020, we find that citizens deploy targeted emotional strategies to advance specific interests such as building reciprocal relations with the government, arousing political elites’ empathy, or addressing their most urgent needs. We argue that the government’s deliberate use of affective governance has, on the one hand, unexpectedly revealed and reinforced the conflict between the positive emotions that the state has attempted to exhibit and citizens’ daily experiences and, on the other hand, increased positive feelings towards the government’s efficacy in addressing citizens’ grievances. Taking rare disease patient groups as an example, this article maps and compares three main emotional strategies adopted by civil society in China, namely gratefulness, sadfishing, and dissent. By deciphering these emotional strategies, this article helps us understand the emotional synergy between state and society and sheds new light on the governance of China.
Article
From the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in late 2019 until December 2022, China implemented stringent infection prevention and control measures known as the Zero-COVID policy. Western observers and some Chinese intellectuals have questioned this rigid policy, but few studies offer a comprehensive overview of the political reasonings behind it. This article positions the Zero-COVID policy in a broader historical context of the Chinese Communist Party’s regime maintenance, revolutionary legacies, and political mobilisation. It analyses the political reasonings behind this policy from three dimensions: system, actors, and approach, and provides accounts of the politics of the pandemic. The results reveal that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was caught in a dilemma. The Zero-COVID policy is used to bolster legitimacy of the regime; however, it also set traps in which the Chinese government risked losing the public’s trust. The negative outcomes of the policy were underestimated by the Chinese leadership, which believed in its ability to balance the cost and benefit of this policy for the sake of maintenance of its rule. The politics of COVID-19 mirrors China’s authoritarian politics in general.
Chapter
For 30 years, Kazakhstan’s government prided itself on being the most stable and economically successful country in Central Asia. The January 2022 unrest shook up that image of stability and prosperity. Faced with a serious threat to his regime’s survival, President Tokayev took a number of exceptional measures in an effort to quell the violence and restore order. First, on January 5, he cut off all access to the internet and mobile phone networks after announcing a nationwide state of emergency. Second, at the invitation of the government of Kazakhstan, peacekeeping forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led regional security alliance, were deployed to stabilize the situation. Third, Tokayev declared that the violent rioters were connected to foreign terrorist and criminal organizations and gave a “shoot-to-kill without warning” order against the protesters on January 7. These actions came at a high cost to Kazakhstan’s reputation, undermining the regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of domestic and international audiences. How does a state deal with reputational and legitimacy costs of protest repression when the dust settles? In this chapter, we explore the dynamic of the Tokayev administration’s attempt at damage control through strategic narrative framing. We conduct a critical discourse analysis of Tokayev’s speeches and tweets and demonstrate how the government scripted a hegemonic narrative designed to justify the measures it took during the crisis, adjusted the narrative in response to public pushback, and framed the unrest as a teaching moment that ushered in a “New Kazakhstan.”KeywordsProtestStrategic narrativeFramingLegitimacyKazakhstan
Article
Peer pressure, not hatred of the United States, sent Chinese university students to the streets during the 1999 NATO campaign against Serbia.
Article
In mid-1989 television viewers worldwide were shocked by scenes of bloodshed and brutality as the Chinese government sent troops into Tiananman Square to crush the student protest. As student leaders went into hiding and the full death toll became apparent, the Western world began to question the role of students as the vanguard of a powerful new movement. In fact, intellectuals in China have traditionally served as both servant and moral critic of the government. Many of the features of the student-led protest in Tiananman Square in 1989 echoed events throughout history, from imperial times to the May Fourth movement of 1919. The position of the intellectual as both inside and outside society, priviledged and feared, with a duty to remonstrate against corruption and to defend the nation against the "great chaos" or, as articulated in the uprising, the "abyss of history" has deep roots in the Chinese psyche and has, it is argued here, been exacerbated rather than resolved under Communism. Ruth Cherrington witnessed the massacre of June 1989 firsthand. In this book, she provides a social and historical context to the student led pro-democracy movement. She traces the historical heritage up to the eventual victory of the Communists in 1949 before focusing more closely on the experience of young intellectuals under Mao and his successors. She describes how, in recent years, enthusiasm for higher education in China has been undermined by lack of political change, ideological conflict and poor conditions, eventually leading to a chain of boycotts, demonstrations, hunger strikes and finally massacre.
Article
Max Weber has often been criticized for advocating a wertfrei , ethically neutral approach in the social sciences and for thereby denying to man, in the words of Leo Strauss, “any science, empirical or rational, any knowledge, scientific or philosophic, of the true value system.” On the other hand, Carl Friedrich points out that Weber's “ideal-type analysis led him to introduce value judgments into his discussion of such issues as bureaucracy.” There is some justification for both these criticisms. Indeed, a characteristic of Weber's work is that it can be and has been subjected to opposite criticisms, not only in this respect but also in others. Historians object to his disregard for the specific historical conditions under which the social phenomena he analyzes have taken place, which sometimes leads him to combine historical events that occurred centuries apart into a conception of a social system. Sociologists, in contrast, accuse him of being preoccupied with interpreting unique historical constellations, such as Western capitalism, instead of studying recurrent social phenomena which make it possible to develop testable generalizations about social structures. His methodology is attacked as being neo-Kantian, but his concept of Verstehen is decried as implying an intuitionist method. While his theories are most frequently cited in contradistinction to those of Marx, they have also been described as basically similar to Marx's.
Article
Background The Events:A Chronological Account The Significance of the Movement: Features of the Mass Movement Sources of Discontent: Background of the Mass Movement The Movement The Triggering Events and Initiation of the Movement Stunning Success and Total Mobilization Party Reactions Martial Law, Confrontations, and the Stalemate The Resolution Anatomy of a Movement Diversity of Participants and Motivations Flow of Information Who, What, and Why? Analysis of "Puzzles" Conceptual Analysis of the Mass Movement Organizations, Names and Abbreviations Bibliography Index
Article
Sociologist Craig Calhoun who witnessed the monumental event of which he writes offers a vivid, carefully crafted analysis of the Chinese student uprising in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. Calhoun takes an inside look at the student movement, its complex leadership, its eventual suppression, and its continuing legacy.
Article
The decline of Communism after the end of the post-Cold War has seen the rise of nationalism in many parts of the former Communist world. In countries such as the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, nationalism was pursued largely from the bottom up as ethnic and separatist movements. Some observers also take this bottom-up approach to find the major cause of Chinese nationalism and believe that “the nationalist wave in China is a spontaneous public reaction to a series of international events, not a government propaganda.” (Zhang, M. (1997) The new thinking of Sino–US relations. Journal of Contemporary China, 6(14), 117–123). They see Chinese nationalism as “a belated response to the talk of containing China among journalists and politicians” in the United States and “a public protest against the mistreatment from the US in the last several years.” (Li, H. (1997) China talks back: anti-Americanism or nationalism? Journal of Contemporary China, 6(14), 153–160). This position concurs with the authors of nationalistic books in China, such as The China That Can Say No: Political and Sentimental Choice in the Post-Cold War Era (Song, Q., Zhang Z., Qiao B. (1996) Zhongguo Keyi Shuo Bu (The China That Can Say No). Zhonghua Gongshang Lianhe Chubanshe. Beijing), which called upon Chinese political elites to say no to the US, and argue that the rise of nationalism was not a result of the official propaganda but a reflection of the state of mind of a new generation of Chinese intelligentsia in response to the foreign pressures in the post-Cold War era. Indeed, Chinese nationalism was mainly reactive sentiments to foreign suppressions in modern history, and this new wave of nationalist sentiment also harbored a sense of wounded national pride and an anti-foreign (particularly the US and Japan) resentment. Many Chinese intellectuals gave voice to a rising nationalistic discourse in the 1990s (Zhao, S. (1997) Chinese intellectuals' quest for national greatness and nationalistic writing in the 1990s. The China Quarterly, 152, 725–745). However, Chinese nationalism in the 1990s was also constructed and enacted from the top by the Communist state. There were no major military threats to China's security after the end of the Cold War. Instead, the internal legitimacy crisis became a grave concern of the Chinese Communist regime because of the rapid decay of Communist ideology. In response, the Communist regime substituted performance legitimacy provided by surging economic development and nationalist legitimacy provided by invocation of the distinctive characteristics of Chinese culture in place of Marxist–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. As one of the most important maneuvers to enact Chinese nationalism, the Communist government launched an extensive propaganda campaign of patriotic education after the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. The patriotic education campaign was well-engineered and appealed to nationalism in the name of patriotism to ensure loyalty in a population that was otherwise subject to many domestic discontents. The Communist regime, striving to maintain authoritarian control while Communist ideology was becoming obsolete in the post-Cold War era, warned of the existence of hostile international forces in the world perpetuating imperialist insult to Chinese pride. The patriotic education campaign was a state-led nationalist movement, which redefined the legitimacy of the post-Tiananmen leadership in a way that would permit the Communist Party's rule to continue on the basis of a non-Communist ideology. Patriotism was thus used to bolster CCP power in a country that was portrayed as besieged and embattled. The dependence on patriotism to build support for the government and the patriotic education campaign by the Communist propagandists were directly responsible for the nationalistic sentiment of the Chinese people in the mid-1990s. This paper focuses on the Communist state as the architect of nationalism in China and seeks to understand the rise of Chinese nationalism by examining the patriotic education campaign. It begins with an analysis of how nationalism took the place of the official ideology as the coalescing force in the post-Tiananmen years. It then goes on to examine the process, contents, methods and effectiveness of the patriotic education campaign. The conclusion offers a perspective on the instrumental aspect of state-led nationalism.
Article
We pose the question, What is necessary to build an artificial social agent? Current theories of cognition provide an analytical tool for peeling away what is understood about individual cognition so as to reveal wherein lies the social. We fractionate a set of agent characteristics to describe a Model Social Agent. The fractionation matrix is, itself, a set of increasingly inclusive models, each one a more adequate description of the social agent required by the social sciences. The fractionation reflects limits to the agent's information‐processing capabilities and enrichment of the mental models used by the agent. Together, limited capabilities and enriched models, enable the agent to be social. The resulting fractionation matrix can be used for analytic purposes. We use it to examine two social theories—Festinger's Social Comparison Theory and Turner's Social Interaction Theory—to determine how social such theories are and from where they derive their social action.
Book
Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. This global democratic revolution is probably the most important political trend in the late twentieth century. In The Third Wave,Samuel P. Huntington analyzes the causes and nature of these democratic transitions, evaluates the prospects for stability of the new democracies, and explores the possibility of more countries becoming democratic. The recent transitions, he argues, are the third major wave of democratization in the modem world. Each of the two previous waves was followed by a reverse wave in which some countries shifted back to authoritarian government. Using concrete examples, empirical evidence, and insightful analysis, Huntington provides neither a theory nor a history of the third wave, but an explanation of why and how it occurred. Factors responsible for the democratic trend include the legitimacy dilemmas of authoritarian regimes; economic and social development; the changed role of the Catholic Church; the impact of the United States, the European Community, and the Soviet Union; and the "snowballing" phenomenon: change in one country stimulating change in others. Five key elite groups within and outside the nondemocratic regime played roles in shaping the various ways democratization occurred. Compromise was key to all democratizations, and elections and nonviolent tactics also were central. New democracies must deal with the "torturer problem" and the "praetorian problem" and attempt to develop democratic values and processes. Disillusionment with democracy, Huntington argues, is necessary to consolidating democracy. He concludes the book with an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural factors that will decide whether or not the third wave continues. Several "Guidelines for Democratizers" offer specific, practical suggestions for initiating and carrying out reform. Huntington's emphasis on practical application makes this book a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the democratization process. At this volatile time in history, Huntington's assessment of the processes of democratization is indispensable to understanding the future of democracy in the world.
Article
It is widely claimed that radical anti-US nationalism has become dominant in China, especially among young students. Based on a survey of 1,211 students and interviews with 62 informants conducted in three elite Beijing universities about four months after the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, this article shows that most students believed that the embassy bombing was a deliberate action and that their anger towards the bombing incident was genuine. Yet, contrary to initial expectations, the study also shows that the anger expressed by the students during the anti-US demonstrations was more a momentary outrage than a reflection of a long-term development of popular anti-US nationalism, that Beijing students saw the United States more as a superpower than as an enemy, and that they considered “to counteract US hegemony” the least important among the eight national goal statements that were provided. The findings demonstrate that, at least among China's elite student population, a population that has always been at the forefront of Chinese politics in the 20th century, there is no domination of anti-US nationalism.
The works of Fu Mengzhen
  • S Fu
Fu, S. (1952). The works of Fu Mengzhen. Taibei: Taiwan University Press.
Legitimacy and the state
  • W Connolly
Connolly, W. (Ed.). (1984). Legitimacy and the state. New York: New York University Press.
Xizhou shi [The history of the Western Zhou]
  • C Hsu
Hsu, C. (1994). Xizhou shi [The history of the Western Zhou]. Beijing: Sanlian Publishing House.
The abolition of market control and the problem of legitimacy (i)
  • C Offe
Offe, C. (1973). The abolition of market control and the problem of legitimacy (i). Kapitalistate, 1, 109-116.
Zhongguo de daolu: sanshi nian he liushi nian [China's historical path: Thirty-years and sixty-years
  • G Yang
Yang, G. (2007). Zhongguo de daolu: sanshi nian he liushi nian [China's historical path: Thirty-years and sixty-years]. Dushu, 6, 3-13.
Bring down the great wall: Writings on science, culture, and democracy in China
  • L Fang
Fang, L. (1990). Bring down the great wall: Writings on science, culture, and democracy in China. New York: Knopf.
1587—A year of no significance
  • R Huang
Huang, R. (1981). 1587—A year of no significance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Xia Shang Xizhou de shehui bianqian [Social changes during the Xia
  • F Chao
Chao, F. (1996). Xia Shang Xizhou de shehui bianqian [Social changes during the Xia, Shang and Western Zhou dynasties]. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press.
Deng Xiaoping wenxuan [The selected works of Deng Xiaoping
  • X Deng
Deng, X. (1983). Deng Xiaoping wenxuan [The selected works of Deng Xiaoping] (Vol. 2). Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe.
Son of the revolution
  • H Liang
Liang, H. (1984). Son of the revolution. New York: Vintage.
What does a legitimacy crisis mean today? Legitimation problems in late capitalism
  • J Habermas
Habermas, J. (1984). What does a legitimacy crisis mean today? Legitimation problems in late capitalism. In W. Connolly (Ed.), Legitimacy and the state (pp. 134-155). New York: New York University Press.
Black hands of Beijing: Lives of defiance in China's democracy movement Critical remarks of Weber's theory of authority Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Book of poetry (Shijing) Concluding remarks on two aspects of the Chinese unitary state as compared with the European state system
  • R Bendix
Bendix, R. (1962). Max Weber, an intellectual portrait. New York: Anchor. Black, G., & Munro, R. (1993). Black hands of Beijing: Lives of defiance in China's democracy movement. New York: John Wiley. Blau, P. M. (1963). Critical remarks of Weber's theory of authority. American Political Science Review, 57, 305-316. Book of documents (Shangshu). (1980). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Book of poetry (Shijing). (1980). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Bünger, K. (1987). Concluding remarks on two aspects of the Chinese unitary state as compared with the European state system. In S. R. Schram (Ed.), Foundations and limits of state power in China (pp. 313-323). London: School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.
Xin ran zhai shi lun ji [A collection of the historical writings at xin ran studio]
  • Y Li
Li, Y. (1962). Xin ran zhai shi lun ji [A collection of the historical writings at xin ran studio]. Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe.
Legitimacy in the modern state Foundations and limits of state power in China Western Zhou History The Cambridge history of ancient China
  • J H Schaar
  • E L Shaughnessy
Schaar, J. H. (1981). Legitimacy in the modern state. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Schram, S. R. (Ed.). (1987). Foundations and limits of state power in China. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Shaughnessy, E. L. (1999). Western Zhou History. In M. Loewe & E. L. Shaughnessy (Eds.), The Cambridge history of ancient China (pp. 292-351). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Official conceptions of imperial authority at the end of the Qing dynasty
  • M Bastid
Bastid, M. (1987). Official conceptions of imperial authority at the end of the Qing dynasty. In S. R. Schram (Ed.), Foundations and limits of state power in China (pp. 147-186). London: School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.
Wild swans: Three daughters of China
  • J Chang
Chang, J. (1991). Wild swans: Three daughters of China. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Speech to CPC central advisory commission standing committee
  • Y Chen
Chen, Y. (1990). Speech to CPC central advisory commission standing committee. In O. Michel, R. S. Lawrence, & L. Marc (Eds.), Beijing spring, 1989: Confrontation and conflict (pp. 331-333). Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Shang Zhou wenhua bijiao [A comparative study of the cultures during the Shang and
  • H Wang
Wang, H. (2000). Shang Zhou wenhua bijiao [A comparative study of the cultures during the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties]. Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe.
Introduction Foundations and limits of state power in China (pp. xv-xxvii) London: School of Oriental & African Studies
  • J Gernet
Gernet, J. (1987). Introduction. In S. R. Schram (Ed.), Foundations and limits of state power in China (pp. xv-xxvii). London: School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.
Concluding remarks on two aspects of the Chinese unitary state as compared with the European state system
  • K Bünger
Foundations and limits of state power in China (pp. xv-xxvii)
  • J Gernet