Some 38.1 per cent of those surveyed held more conservative values, were more critical of overall individualism and leaned towards the “left”, a term that commonly refers to those more patriotic, according to the study by scholar Zhang Mingshu, director of the political culture research centre at the academy.

Only 8 per cent leaned to the “right”, supporting more individual freedoms and a smaller government, and were more critical towards the Communist Party’s legacy. The rest of those polled were categorised as centrists, neither left nor right.

“I was surprised,” Zhang told the Guangzhou-based liberal newspaper Southern Weekly. “But if you calmly look around you – not only among intellectuals, but also in your hometown, if you go on the streets – you’ll see that this ratio is fundamentally accurate.”

Zhang surveyed 1,750 adult urban residents across the nation on their political views, their attitudes towards participating in politics and their knowledge about politics.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, leftists, liberals, surveys, urban population
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The Blue Book of Social Mentality, the latest annual report on the social mentality of China, analyzed respondents’ trust toward different people and organizations and drew a conclusion that trust in society is poor. The trust level was 59.7 points out of a full mark of 100 points.

In 2010, the trust level was 62.9 points.

[...] It showed that around 30 percent of the people polled trusted strangers on the street and about 24 percent trusted strangers online.

While People’s Daily attributes the distrust to “the lack of shared social values” among Chinese, a report from South China Morning Post suggests that the reason might lie in Chinese parenting:

In most cases, a higher number of Chinese parents admitted to telling ‘instrumental’ lies which entice the child into doing something.

The report, published in the International Journal of Psychology, found that in both countries [China and the U.S.] the practice of lying to one’s children to encourage behavioural compliance was rife and most frequently took the form of falsely threatening to leave a child alone in public if he or she refused to follow the parent.

[...] Cross-cultural differences were also seen: a larger proportion of the parents in China reported that they employed instrumental lie-telling to promote compliance, and a larger proportion approved of this practice, as compared to the parents in the US.

The arrests of six fake monks at the sacred Buddhist mountain Wutaishan will do little to solve the problem. From Josh Chin at The Wall Street Journal:

Some in China have argued that a revival of religion might help fill the moral vacuum that has been swirling at the center of Chinese society ever since the country shed its belief in communism to embrace market economics three decades ago. But with surveys showing trust eroding in China, news of a fake monk scheme at a sacred mountain suggests even religion isn’t immune to the no-holds-barred hustler ethos that has come to dominate so much of the country.

[...] The Temple for the God of Wealth and another temple called Foguo Zhongxin reportedly hired fake monks to trick tourists into donating money and buying expensive incense, Xinhua said, adding that the temples also fooled tourists into paying too much for ceremonies.

[...] The companies in charge of managing Wutaishan and some of China’s other sacred peaks have made headlines in recent years by announcing plans for initial public offerings on stock markets. Those announcements prompted Liu Wei, deputy director of China’s State Administration for Religious affairs, to issue a press release in June saying the administration would object to the commercial exploitation of religious resources.

See also One-Child Policy Accused of Breeding Mistrust, via CDT.

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Post tags: Buddhism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, monks, moral vacuum, parents, trust crisis, Wutai Shan
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“I was deeply humiliated because I was not required to provide any hukou document when I was applying for visas to France and the United States after 9/11,” Yu told the Sunday Morning Post.

[…] The incident comes amid growing calls to reform the system from inside and outside the government. Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun yesterday ordered local police chiefs, who handle routine hukou matters, to co-operate with other agencies in reforming the system, state television reported.

[…] “I demand that the British government stop requiring Chinese applicants to provide a hukou document, which is a discriminatory system created under the planned economic era of the last century and conflicts with today’s common international values,” Yu wrote in an open letter to the British government.

The hukou is not normally required for U.K. visas: Chan implies that the professor’s customarily “tattered” clothing may have prompted the additional demand. Yu also spoke to Global Times about the incident. From Zhang Wen:

“I’ll never provide my hukou, even if it’s at the cost of not being able to attend the conference in the UK. It’s my principle,” said Yu.

[…] “What made me even angrier is that when I said I would never show them the hukou, an agent standing at the next counter immediately told me that he could help me to get the visa without me providing it,” Yu said.

“It’s blackmail. The agent is obviously familiar with the embassy employees,” he said.

[…] Liu Guofu, an expert on immigration law from Beijing Institute of Technology said an embassy can ask for any supporting documentation it likes.

For more on China’s hukou system, see two recent conversations with Tom Miller, author of China’s Urban Billion, via CDT.

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Post tags: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, hukou, public security, United Kingdom, urban rural divide, visa, visa laws, Yu Jianrong
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Using surveys of 421 men and women in Beijing and testing their skills in economic games, researchers in Australia found those born after the 1979 policy were more pessimistic, nervous, less conscientious, less competitive and more risk averse. They also found them to be 23 percent less prone to choose an occupation that entails business risk, such as becoming a stockbroker, entrepreneur or private firm manager.

[…] Xin Meng, a co-author of the study who grew up in Beijing and left China in 1988, said she detects a different behavioral attitude among the only-child population compared with the previous generation. A 2011 incident where a two-year-old girl in southern China died after she was struck by two vans and ignored by 18 passersby caused a furor, with domestic media and Internet users criticizing Chinese society for a lack of morality.

“An incident like this is just unthinkable 20 years ago,” said Meng, a professor of economics at the Australian National University in Canberra. “If you’ve lived in the Chinese society for a long time, you can sense the difference as people become more individualistic.”

Lisa Cameron, another of the study’s authors, discussed the findings (PDF transcript) with Sarah Crespi on the Science magazine podcast.

Some have expressed reservations about the study, however. From Rebecca Morelle at the BBC:

Professor Stuart West, from the University of Oxford, said the study was “very interesting”.

However, he cautioned against some of the conclusions that had been drawn.

He explained: “They are making very strong claims about differences in behaviour for people born before or after 1979, and they are inferring it is all to do with the introduction of the one child policy in that year.

“The problem is that is a potential explanation for that data – but there are almost an infinite number of other explanations of anything else that could have varied with time: variation of socio-economic environment, prosperity, nutrition, political environment – anything.”

And from Louise Watt at the Associated Press:

Toni Falbo, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas in Austin who studies these children, was puzzled that the study’s findings showed poor performance so consistently in virtually all measures. She said she would have expected a more mixed picture, and she hopes follow-up research is done.

[…] Careful studies done elsewhere that look for certain qualities in the only child find that “on average, they’re pretty much like everybody else,” she said.

A recent survey of 51,100 people by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences supports the idea that Chinese society lacks trust, according to Xinhua. Its authors, though, point to a wider range of contributing factors including migration.

The Chinese public was given a “trust score” of just 59.7 points out of a total of 100, according to the results of the CASS survey conducted among residents in seven cities, including Beijing, east China’s Shanghai, south China’s Guangzhou, central China’s Wuhan and southwest China’s Chongqing municipalities.

The survey showed that residents in China’s central and western regions tend to trust others more than their eastern counterparts.

[…] Yang Yiyin, one of the survey’s organizers, attributed the lack of trust to migration, China’s transformation from a planned economy to a market economy and declining “family culture.”

“People are more concerned about trust, especially in a transformative period when a new system of trust has not been established,” said Yang.

Migration would not account for differences between the Australian study’s native Beijingers, but its role in loosening the traditional social fabric finds anecdotal support in the Wang Yue incident cited above by Xin Meng. In October 2011, The Telegraph’s Malcolm Moore visited the Foshan marketplace where the accident took place:

Although many other families live in the market above their stores, there is little sense of community. Just as in countless other hardscrabble suburbs across China, the residents are mostly migrants, drawn from all over the country.

They have little in common, beyond their shared desire to make money and improve their lot. And in the evenings, they close their shutters and retreat into their lonely stores.

“It is quite sad that we don’t really talk to each other because we all sell different things,” said a 50-year-old woman who would only name herself as Ms Hu, from a store selling abrasive pads a short stroll away from the Wang’s shop.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, demographics, Foshan, little emperor, migration, moral vacuum, one-child policy, population control, trust, trust crisis, Yueyue
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“Intercepting petitioners” refers to local officials using various measures to intercept people attempting to petition at the [provincial] or central offices and forcibly taking them back to their hometowns. In China’s current political climate, the intercepting of petitioners has long been an open secret, an “unwritten rule” of petition office stability management work, an uncivilized but tacitly accepted rule for government work, and an important part of the job of those who “greet petitioners.” Whenever the two congresses or National Day or some other “sensitive” time rolls around, many additional ‘petitioner interception’ workers come to Beijing to intercept petitioners from their local area to prevent petitioners from staying in Beijing and increasing the number of complaints about their locale on the record.

[…] Meeting petitioners’ and ‘intercepting petitioners’ are both important reflections of the variation in today’s national petitioning system. Petition officers and officials, local governments, and the central government all participate, using the system as a platform for a kind of game in which they attempt to maximize their own interests. But because of this they have fallen into problems [like the three Yu just listed and those below], this can be called the ‘petitioning paradox.’

[…] The result is that as local governments use even more severe methods to deal with petitioners, the complaints of petitioners become more extreme, creating a vicious cycle.Because of this, the petitioning system has gone from useless to harmful; from reducing pressure to actively increasing it.

Yu was ranked 54th in Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2012 for his ten-year plan for political reform in China.

Ten interceptors were said to have been jailed by a Beijing court early this month for illegally detaining petitioners. The court dismissed this as “fake news”, however, and demanded an apology from Beijing Youth Daily, which first published the story. Petitioners were a key target of the security operation surrounding the recent 18th Party Congress, with some 10,000 detained. Read more about petitioners via CDT, including John Garnaut and Sanghee Liu’s recent account of a former “stability preservation” official’s experience as a petitioner, and Economic Observer’s sympathetic profile of two Beijing-based interceptors.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, black jails, Charlie Custer, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, local government, National Day, petitioners, petitions, stability maintenance, stability preservation, Yu Jianrong
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A large number of reports and analyses are produced daily by Party and government organs, state-owned research institutes, media organizations and quasi-governmental organizations in China, according to the many who have written them over the years. These reports are not published for the benefit of society at large. Rather, their circulation is restricted to senior officials, in order to keep them better informed of the situation in the country. Because they are kept as internal documents, these reports discuss problems more candidly and often include data and information that are deemed sensitive and are therefore withheld from the public.

…

The extensive and elaborate system for utilizing social-science research to develop policy recommendations for decision-makers should have made the Chinese government one of the best informed and advised in the world and uniquely equipped to address challenges facing the country. Yet, in many areas, the billions of yuan poured into government-funded research and the page after page of internal reference advice offered by the country’s best scholars do not seem to have resulted in any improvement in the government’s performance.

…

I asked a government researcher why all the good advice people like him had offered decision-makers did not seem to have any effect. “A lot of it is filtered out and does not reach people at the very top,” he said. “Besides, the thinking of many decision-makers has ossified and just can’t be changed.”

Seeking advice is always easier than following it. The Chinese state has developed a sophisticated system for collecting information, analysis and policy recommendations. Whether it has made good use of the system is an entirely different matter.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, civil society, internal reference reports, state-owned research institutes
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Riot police in Shifang, Sichuan.

The turmoil in Shifang subsided on Wednesday as the local government canceled plans to build a copper molybdenum processing plant. Earlier this week, street protesters were greeted with tear gas and billy clubs. Unarmed residents were beaten and arrested. Now those detained have been released.

The events speak to the power of public scrutiny, facilitated by Weibo, to force political change in China. A police notice issued July 2 references the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Assemblies, enacted in October 1989 after the bloody crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen months earlier. That law requires all protests to be formally approved by “competent authorities five days prior to the date of the activity.” The website Over the Wall (墙外楼) posted the notice, along with scenes from the Shifang streets and a call to arms written by protesters:

Shifang City Police Department
Public Notice Regarding Illegal Assembly, Protest and Demonstration

Shifang Police Notice #1 (2012)

On July 2 a group organized and instigated illegal protest activities in violation of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Assemblies, severely affecting normal social order and causing negative repercussions. To preserve social order and ensure the safety of all citizens and their property, we hereby hereby issue the following notice in accordance with the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Assemblies, Processions and Demonstrations:

1) Gathering or participating in assemblies or demonstrations of any kind which have not been approved by public security organs is strictly prohibited.

2) The use of the Internet, cell phone SMS messages or other means to organize or instigate illegal assemblies, protests or demonstrations of any kind is strictly prohibited.

3) Public security organs will, in accordance with the law, order those holding or participating in illegal assemblies, protests or demonstrations to disperse. Public security organs will forcibly break up those who refuse to disperse.

4) Public security organs will, in accordance with the law, halt all those exhibiting extreme behavior while participating in illegal assemblies, protests or demonstrations. Those who refuse to obey orders will be removed or detained by force.

5) In firm accordance with the law, public security organs will stop, investigate and prosecute any persons who threaten public safety or damage social order by engaging in illegal activity while participating in illegal assemblies, protests or demonstrations.

6) Public security organs will, in accordance with the law, punish those who engage in criminal activities, including: participating in or taking responsibility for illegal assemblies, protests or demonstrations; gathering and disturbing social order; taking advantage of the situation to destroy property.

Shifang City Police Department
July 2, 2012

Save Shifang! All City Residents Unite!

People of Shifang, let’s save our city!! It already a “cancer town,” and they still want to build that molybdenum copper plant. We resolutely oppose this! This is our shared home, and it is our responsibility to protect it. Everyone is responsible for protecting the environment!!

Perhaps many people still do not know Shifang plans to build a molybdenum copper plant, and still more people do not know the damage this will cause. Once construction of the factory begins, it will already be too late. We do not want to leave Shifang! Shifang is the “Bright Pearl of Western Sichuan.” We cannot leave! Heavy metal pollution will cause us terrible harm.

Are there really that many Shifang residents who have the money to move to another province? We must come together and work to keep the molybdenum copper plant far from Shifang!

People of Shifang, rise up!!

“Mass incidents” (群体事件), local protests targeting specific grievances, are on the rise. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) estimates that there were 90,000 such incidents in 2009, up from 60,000 in 2006. Yu Jianrong of CASS put the number of mass incidents in 1993 at only 8,709.

But it isn’t protest alone that may be shifting power to the people. Like the backtracking forced on authorities after last year’s train crash in Wenzhou, the outcome of Shifang depended on social media. Without the video, photos and documents circulating online, this week’s protest may well have been fruitless.

The sheer volume of chatter about Shifang, and Han Han’s blog post on the subject, seem to have kept relevant terms unblocked from Weibo search results. Authorities may also not have anticipated a local issue going national. Whatever the reason, the Shifang incident has remained surprisingly uncensored. Weibo, clearly, is power. What remains to be seen is if the public will simply continue to pressure the government case by case, or if true reform will follow.

Translation by Little Bluegill.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CASS, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, environmental protests, mass incidents, riot police, Shifang, Sichuan, sina weibo, weibo
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