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4.2: Political Culture as Empirically Measurable Variable

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Chinese Politics Part 1 – China and Political Science

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

4.8 (152 ratings) | 10K Students Enrolled

This course offers a conceptual framework for understanding China that highlights the intersection of politics and economics. It shows that rather than develop into a full blown market economy, state and party officials at all levels of the political system maintain significant influence in economic development. Such a “political” economy has had both positive and negative outcomes, which we will assess in detail. We also look at the origins, views, backgrounds and relations among leaders, and how those leaders make decisions about public policy and try to get those decisions implemented down through the system. China has few formal institutions through which citizens can participate in politics, but we will study the strategies Chinese people use to try to influence their leaders’ decisions. Finally, we assess China’s future and whether rapid economic development and the emergence of a vibrant middle class will push China towards greater democracy or whether the single party system is likely to survive into the future. The course is a quite useful background for Chinese Politics Part 2 – China and the World. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/7FpNL67EbE4

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4.8 (152 ratings)

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MJ

Aug 09, 2019

Very interesting class with a great teacher! Only complaint I have is that the tests have overly-specific questions, and that there are some typos on the notes slides.

JD

Mar 06, 2016

A well-structured, thoughtful course delivered by a true expert on the subject. One of the finest courses available throughout the entire Coursera platform.

From the lesson

Module 4: Understanding Societal Engagement in Politics in China

4.1: Political Culture in China10:47

4.2: Political Culture as Empirically Measurable Variable14:53

4.3: Political Culture in Rural China15:58

4.4: Political Participation6:59

4.5: Details on the Modes of Participation16:17

4.6: Group Activity and Group Politics13:27

4.7: Collective Action and Protest9:09

4.8: Key Social Groups who Participate in Politics5:14

4.9: Concluding the Modes of Participation9:19

Taught By

David Zweig
Chair Professor of the Division of Social Science and Director of Center on China’s Transnational Relations

Transcript

[MUSIC]

Now we're going to talk about political culture as an empirically measurable

characteristic of a society.

And what do I mean about empirically measurable?

It means that we can go out through surveys, we can go out and

measure the extent to which different aspects of political culture.

Or we can measure the political culture of a society by surveys.

So we can ask questions about, and

we can ask the same questions in different societies.

And, see how people respond.

So, that measurement is what I mean by empirically measurable variable.

Right? Now,

we can see that some values are more wide spread in different societies.

For example, Chinese tend to be less willing to speak out in a public setting.

And tend to be uncomfortable with a public display of conflict.

Now other countries, we'll see, those kinds of concerns are not so strong.

But one of the arguments in the China case is that as the add,

as the level of education increases the attitudes will change.

And that Chinese become more comfortable with

displays of disagreement or public speaking, things like that.

People speaking out publicly in meetings as they get to be more educated.

So, what we would then think is,

that if you take 100 Chinese people, you take 100 British people,

you then ask them the questions about their level of uncomfort.

Right.

You would find that Chinese tend to be less comfortable.

But part of the reason that they're less comfortable is that it's likely that those

100 Chinese people are also less well educated than let's say,

some British people.

So because China has so many uneducated people, the mean score or

the average score on that kind of question

about participation would then reflect a more subject,

as compared to a more participant political culture.

Now, if you can follow that, I'll demonstrate for you what I mean.

So here is, this is a survey that was done by Andrew Nathan, and by the late.

It's a national survey done in China.

And the data on China, here the purple line, are compared

to several other countries, all of which are western countries.

The question is, what percentage would tolerate to have some public

display of conflict in a public setting.

The willingness to accept these public displays of conflict.

Now Chinese you can see overall,

much less comfortable with that level with that kind of demonstration.

But part of it is because the Chinese tend to be

less highly educated than people in the West.

But as you move up the level of education, so here's no education,

some primary education, some secondary, and then some college.

By the time we are interviewing people who have college education,

the Chinese people are not that different than the Italians, right.

Seven percent difference in terms of their discomfort or

their willingness to tolerate.

Whereas if you go back to the less educated Chinese here,

you see a much bigger gap.

So that gap really disappears.

So, that makes, supports the argument that education is a very important factor

affecting the extent to which people will be uncomfortable.

Or, will tolerate this kind of display.

All right?

Now, the data, also suggests that Chinese talk a lot about politics

and that rather than compare here, rather than compare Chinese

to British people, or Germans, or Italians.

We can even argue that within Chinese societies, Taiwan, the mainland,

and Hong Kong, people have different levels of political culture.

And that they can be more involved, more interested,

more willing to talk about politics.

And there, the big difference is the political system.

That, as we will see, that here we have data

from 1991 to 1997 for Taiwanese.

These are surveys I've collected the data from surveys in Taiwan,

or you can find them at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Here's survey data done 1996 to 1998 for Hong Kong.

And here is a survey which I'll talk about more later,

is a survey that I did of 2,400 people, villagers living in rural China.

And so each of them were asked the question of how

often frequency of discussions of economic or political issues.

So, what's the frequency of their discussion about politics and economics?

Do they talk about it often, sometimes, not often or never.

And in the case of Hong Kong, they only did a three point scale.

Often, sometimes not very often, and then never.

And the amazing thing is, if you look at this, is rural China, people are actually

the most willing or the most active in talking about politics.

You would think that this would be the most traditional, right?

Village China, very Confucian, that they would be the least willing to talk.

But in fact they are more willing to talk and

in terms of never talking they are much less likely than people in Hong Kong or

Taiwan to never talk about politics.

And the middle score here pretty much the same Hong Kong

people 62% if you add these up together again it is 64% or

65% and here you get 64, 65%.

But the key difference you can see here, is that even

across the same ethnic group, Chinese.

The culture of being Chinese is not so strong that if you live

in Taiwan, you live in Hong Kong or you live in rural China that you

can't have different attitudes towards talking about politics.

Now, political culture can also effect what institutions are established,

and that the culture can be influenced by changes in those institutions, all right?

So, here the argument would be that if you can go out and change the institutions.

So, you go from, let's say, a social or an authoritarian regime and

then, you take the society and transfer it into a more democratic regime,

that people will respond differently despite being Chinese.

So that again, the point of being Chinese is not the key factor,

the key factor is what are the institutions like, right?

And Zhu Yunhan, who was a very well known Taiwan political scientist,

I once was talking to him about changes in the views

towards democracy in Taiwan, and he said that one of the strongest factors

making Taiwanese feel more democratic was to participate in elections.

That the more people go out and vote and

feel that their voting has an impact on who gets elected,

they feel more Democratic in their own way and they adopt

Democratic values much more strongly.

Now, Wang Zhenyao, who was also a very close friend of mine,

he was the person who led the movement in China to develop village elections.

And once over dinner just outside of Peking University, he, his wife, and

I were having dinner and

I asked them a question about whether the peasants could be fooled.

That these village elections were really not very serious, not very successful,

because the peasants could be tricked by the local officials and

told who to vote for.

And his argument was, by the time of the third round of elections,

these elections were happening every four years.

So within ten years, the leaders could not fool the peasants anymore and

the peasants just understood much better the game of democracy and

therefore demanded that the election be more democratic.

So again, you change the norms, you change the rules, you change the structure, and

people will behave in a more democratic way and have more democratic values.

Now, this is one of my favorite slides, which clearly demonstrates that when you

change the political structure In a regime,

in a government, that people's attitudes towards politics.

Their attitudes, their normative attitudes.

Their views of politics will change as the regime changes.

So what we have here are ten statements given, read out, will be through a survey.

Ten statements read out to people in Taiwan.

The survey was done in 1985, in 1990 and then again in 1991.

And these are statements disagreeing,

these are the percentage of people who disagree with these norms.

So for example the norm is the first norm, is elders should manage politics.

The idea being, that only the old people,

the senior people should be the ones In charge of politics and the junior people,

younger people in their lives shouldn't be involved in politics.

Now in 1985, 49% of people disagreed with that statement.

Which meant that 51% agreed with that statement.

So that would be a relatively conservative view point.

Half and half.

Half the people actually agreed that elders should manage politics.

Now the big difference here between 1985 and 1990, I don't know how many of

you out there know the big changes that happened in Taiwan in this period.

But what happened was between 1985, actually in 1986, the Kuomintang,

the ruling party in Taiwan, ended marshal law and really

began the end of authoritarian state in Taiwan and

started to move more towards a democratic system.

And by 1989 we saw a real democratic election.

I actually was there in Taiwan watching the election, that was the first time for

a really democratic election in Taiwan.

And when you make that shift, so you take away martial law, you can't arrest people,

the secret police can't go around arresting people the way it had before.

Information flows start to open up, and the whole system becomes more democratic.

Look at the change that that brings about.

So now 81% of the people disagree with that statement.

So only 19% of the people in Taiwan agreed with that statement.

81% of the people believed

that the elders should not be the only one managing politics.

So that's a very significant right here, the percentage change between 85 and 91.

The percentage change is 32%.

So the idea being, if you change the environment, the external,

the big national environment, people's values will change.

And so here if you go down this column, you can see that for all of these top.

Particularly the top ones,

significant changes in people's attitudes towards politics, right?

A good one is, thought diversity leads to chaos.

Right? If there's too many different viewpoints,

we will get chaos, right?

And so in Taiwan, only 18% disagreed with that,

82%, my math isn't so good, 82% of the people agreed with that statement,

thinking that if we let people think too much,

too freely, there will be chaos within the political system.

Right?

Then what happens?

Well, very quickly you lift martial law, 11% more disagree with that statement.

Then it goes up to 32%.

So another 14%.

So, in that period of time,

over five years, 14% of the people changed their views.

Now, a question of course could be when martial law,

this survey was done initially in 85, it was still martial law, and

maybe people weren't willing to express their views.

And only after martial law is lifted were people willing to express their views.

That's possible.

But, in any case, we see this consistent change towards politics

as the regime moved from martial law to a more open democratic system.

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