[MUSIC] Now that we've discussed the whole question of political culture, then we want to think about the way that people actually participate in politics. And here we will use the definition of Political Participation. As you can see in this list there, that Political Participation is political activity by private citizens designed to influence government decisions, to influence the outcome of those policy decisions or to change leaders. So it's those three key aspects that can be involved. Right? So you want to influence decisions. Once they make the decisions, those decisions come down and you can try and adjust those decisions. Or, and it's not uncommon, but not so common in China that citizens themselves try to change the leaders. Now most participation in China, and as we go on in this course, you'll discover one of my major complaints is that there really are very few opportunities for people formally to participate in politics in China. Though, we'll see that there are a number of lists of ways that people can do it. But generally, participation, particularly autonomous participation, all right, people deciding to participate on their own, other than voting in elections or deciding to join the party and run for office. Those are really not sanctioned, really not supported by the Communist Party. Though as we'll see, it does happen. Now, that's partly because the Communist Party sees all kinds of group efforts, and we'll spend more time in this next discussion about group activism or group activity in China. But the Communist Party sees all group efforts that go on outside its control as illegitimate. And that's based on the assumption that the Party itself is it's role is to direct social change. It's supposed to understand where society should go, the rules, the future, that's supposed to be it's job to make those decisions and guide and direct society. And that it's job is not to respond to demands from society. That that's not the way politics will work in China. Now, first of all, I just give you a brief list here of modes of participation from the Political Science Literature. So, you can Run for Office. You can Vote. You can be involved in Campaign related activities, trying to get people out to vote, organizing, busing people to get them into polling stations so that they will vote. Then there is Group activities and groups in Western political science are acceptable forms of political activism. People sharing a value will get together, and we'll talk about that. Another is what we call Personalized contacting. You may pick up the phone and phone your member of Congress or phone a member of Parliament. You may go to the office of some official and try and lobby them to give you, your community, your company, some kind of benefits. The sixth is you resist the state in a very passive way, that you don't want to be actively involved going out against the state, because you might feel you're going to get into trouble, but so you use a passive way, but you are resisting. You are trying to hold back the state's pressure on you, and six and seven are somewhat similar. But the idea of sort of everyday forms of resistance is, for example, workers in an auto plant, right, there is a speed up and they don't like it. And, they don't want to work faster. So, what do we find that they sometimes do? What they'll do is before they screw on the door to the inside door of the car, they may throw a Coke bottle into the door frame. And knowing that by doing that they're making a mess of the production line and causing problems, and the hope is that would slow down the production line. Now in China, I came up with 12 different ways that people can participate in politics, and you can read through them, but I will highlight some of them. And, as you will see of subsequent discussion. I will focus more on some of these. So, one of the big ways is to join the Communist Party, and I will give you some information about who are the people who join the Communist Party. We know about elections, rural elections, but I'll share some data again. Mass campaigns, particularly in the 1950s, many people would join a mass campaign, let's say land reform. They would try and join that campaign, maybe lead that campaign. And that would be a way that they would get into the political system. And then get promoted. We'll have a whole discussion about Collective action and we'll look at some of these forms of protest. Passive Resistance, petition higher levels. Lobbying has become more common. As you saw before on the political culture when we compared Shiyan to Guangzhou, we saw that in Guangzhou, people were much more willing to use their business association to try and lobby the government to change the policies. One of the concepts I like, developed by a professor named Zhou Xueguang from Stanford University, used to teach with us here at HKUST, is what he calls Unorganized collective action. And I'll go into more detail. And then you can see resisting policies, Everyday Form of Resistance, Personalized contacting just like in the West. And I'll talk in more detail about that. And then, the last topic that I will talk about is if you are really dissatisfied with society. Then you may decide to Become a dissident. And we'll talk about that in greater detail.
