Subjective Evaluation of Changes in Civil Liberties and Political Rights in China

Abstract

This paper examines the subjective evaluation of the changes and continuity in status of civil liberties and political rights by ordinary people in China. Our analysis, based on survey data, reveals that an absolute majority of people believe that both civil liberty and political freedom in China have improved significantly since 1979. To verify the validity of the survey findings, we analyze the contents of People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party in 1976, 1978, 1988 and 2002. We found that People's Daily, the most conservative newspaper in China, published an increasing number of critical articles about the government. Its criticism not only challenged individual officials but also the fundamental development strategy adopted by the CCP. In content analysis, we also trace how four key terms—democracy, freedom, human rights, and religion—were employed in People's Daily. The analysis shows that the official rhetoric appearing in People's Daily exhibited a steady positive trend in describing these terms. We conclude our discussion by analyzing those who are more likely to perceive civil liberties and political rights as improved over time in China. The analysis reveals that those with a better education and a higher income are more likely to perceive positive changes in Chinese society.

Notes

^1. It is true that students of the Chinese media do study the impact of the reforms on the Chinese media, but we are, however, not aware of any study that tries to explore civil liberties and political rights in China.

^2. While some might disagree with Freedom House Scores and argue that it is observed that Chinese civil liberties and political rights have improved since 1978, few have provided empirical analysis for the development of Chinese civil liberties and political rights.

^3. Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Authoritarian resilience’, Journal of Democracy 14, (2003), pp. 6–17; Minxin Pei, China's Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

^*Tianjian Shi is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He is on leave from 2008 to 2009 and serves as senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and director of its Beijing Office. He specializes in comparative politics with an emphasis on political culture and political participation. He is the author of Political Participation in Beijing (Harvard University Press, 1997). His research has appeared in World Politics, Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, Daedalus, China Quarterly and Journal of Contemporary China. His current research focuses on political culture in Asia. Dr Diqing Lou is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at Rider University. Her main area of research is comparative politics, especially Chinese politics, with a focus on political participation, political representation and development of civil society. For helpful comments and criticism, the authors wish to thank Andrew Nathan, Ashley Esarey, Jie Lu and the anonymous reviewer. For editorial assistance, the authors wish to thank Meredith Wen.

^4. Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Lawrence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

^5. Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Lawrence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 7.

^6. Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Lawrence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 7.

^7. Przeworski attributes the failure of authoritarian regimes to information failure. He argues that if a regime can acquire perfect information, no revolution cannot be suppressed. However, the upward accountability of authoritarian regimes determines that leaders in such societies cannot get accurate information. See Adam Przeworski, Democracy and Development Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

^8. Without further data, it is hard for us to accurately infer how likely citizens are going to participate in politics. Previous literature on participation has long noted the conceptual distinctiveness between the participation potential and actual behavior. In order to predict real political participation, it is important to include factors of opportunities and mobilization in the analyzing process. Barnes and Kasse argued that opportunities and mobilization increase the likelihood of translating dissatisfaction into actual political protest (p. 396). See Samuel Barnes and Max Kaase, Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (London: Sage Publications, 1979). As a study of survey research, this paper is concerned with citizens' perception of civil liberties and political rights. The question remains whether or not these perceived constraints would deter citizens from participating in politics, especially given their high dissatisfaction in corruption and economic disparity.

^9. Ding Xueliang carefully documented the difference between these two kinds of comparison. He found that vertical comparison has been vigorously promoted by the regime in China to consolidate its power. See Xueliang Ding, The Decline of Communism in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Xueliang Ding, ‘Institutional amphibiousness and the transition from communism: the case of China’, British Journal of Political Science 23, (1994), pp. 293–318. Our purpose here, however, is not to argue how beautiful the situation in China is. We believe that the process of liberalization in China is far from being completed and have no intention of arguing that China has become liberalized. In fact, recent suppression of rights protection activists forcefully demonstrates the problem in China. However, as long as the liberalization is conceptualized as a process, we should be able to measure its development which is what we are doing herein.

^10. O'Donnell et al. argued that liberalization usually starts when a country switches from a totalitarian to an authoritarian society and continues when the country transfers from a hard-authoritarian to a soft-authoritarian society. See O'Donnell et al., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. We choose 1978 as the benchmark because students of Chinese politics generally agree that 1978 is the year when China began to transfer from totalitarianism to authoritarianism.

^11. See O'Donnell et al., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule.

^12. See Freedom House Scores.

^13. For studies of media control in China, see among others, Binyan Liu, ‘Press freedom: politics in the air’, in Chin-Chuan Lee, ed., Voices of China: The Interplay of Politics and Journalism (New York: The Guilford Press, 1990); Daniel C. Lynch, After the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and ‘Thought Work’ in Reformed China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Yongming Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); Chongshan Chen, Jian-Hua Zhu and Wei Wu, ‘The Chinese journalist’, in David H. Weaver, ed., The Global Journalist: News People around the World (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc., 1998); Zhongdang Pan, ‘Improvising reform activists: interpreting China's journalism reforms’, in Chin-Chuan Lee, ed., Power, Money and Media: Communication Patterns in Cultural China (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002), pp. 68–111.

^14. For systematic analysis of the validity of survey data acquired from China, see among others Melanie Manion, ‘Survey research in the study of contemporary China: learning from local samples’, China Quarterly, (1994), pp. 741–765; Tianjian Shi, ‘Survey research in China’, in Michael X. D. Carpini, Huddy Leonie and Robert Y. Shapiro, eds, Research in Micropolitics (Greenwich, CT: JAL Press, 1996), pp. 213–250; Wenfang Tan, Public Opinion and Political Change in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005).

^15. Interested readers can consult Tianjian Shi, ‘Survey research in China’.

^16. The 1993 data came from the 1993 Survey of Chinese Social Mobility and Social Change, which was conducted in August 1993 by the Social Survey Center at People's University in Beijing across China. The dataset is designed to be representative of the adult population over 18 years old in China, excluding those living in Tibet. A stratified multistage area sampling procedure was employed to select the sample.

^17. The year 1993 was more than four years after the 1989 student movement in Tiananmen Square, and it is tenuous to argue that the 1993 data are connected with the 1989 student movement.

^18. Interested readers can consult Tianjian Shi, ‘Survey research in China’.

^19. For pioneering researches in analyzing the DK in survey methodology, among others, please see Tom W. Smith, ‘The hidden 25 percent: an analysis of nonresponse on the 1980 general social survey’, Public Opinion Quarterly 47, (1983), pp. 386–404; Jianhua Zhu, ‘“I don't know” in public opinion survey in China: individual and contexts causes of item non-response’, Journal of Contemporary China 12, (1996), pp. 223–244.

^20. Will the political fear deter respondents from giving answers at all to sensitive questions of civil liberties and political rights? To investigate this possibility, we conducted the ‘two part models’ and analyzed the possibility of respondents declining to provide answers to the interviewer. See Haihua Duan, Willard G. Manning, Jr, Carl N. Morris and Joseph P. Newhouse, ‘A comparison of alternative models for the demand for medical care’, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 1, (1983), pp. 115–126. We found that political fear is not at all likely to hinder (in this case, political fear is actually prone to facilitate statistically) respondents from giving responses to questions of civil liberties and political rights.

^21. Lynch, After the Propaganda State, p. 90.

^22. Roderick MacFarquhar, ‘A visit to China's press’, China Quarterly 53, (1973), pp. 144–152; Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics: Five Studies (Berkeley, CA: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992).

^23. Won Ho Chang, Mass Media in China: The History and the Future (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1989); Robert L. Bishop, Qi lai!: Mobilizing One Billion Chinese: The Chinese Communication System (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1989).

^24. Guoguang Wu, ‘Command communication: the politics of editorial formulation in the People's Daily’, China Quarterly 137, (1994), pp. 194–211.

^25. Andrew J. Nathan, Chinese Democracy (New York: Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1985).

^26. For the rationale behind the decision by the communist party to relax its control over media and the impacts of power struggles within the party on media control, see among others Nathan, Chinese Democracy; Yan Sun, The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism 1976–1992 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).

^27. Criticism on the Gang of Four and political leadership during the Cultural Revolution were excluded from our analysis. We only code criticism towards current leaders.

^28. Yan Sun, The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism 1976–1992.

^29. The major issues facing people in Chinese society, such as inequality, corruption, and environment, labor, etc. require a decision from central government to change its developmental strategy.

^30. To experts in Freedom House, the level of civil liberties and political rights in China returned to seven after 1989.

^31. We coded both the tone of the article and the tone of the appearance of each key term, which are highly congruent, and we reported the result of the tone of the article in the paper.

^32. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘Introduction: comparing experiences with democracy’, in Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds, Politics in Developing Countries (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990).

^33. According to Mao, democratic revolution in China is divided into two stages. The first stage is the ‘traditional democratic revolution’ and its major goal is to establish capitalism and a free society. The second stage, according to Mao, is the ‘new democratic revolution’ and its goal was to establish socialism in the economic arena and a people's democratic dictatorship in the political arena. By creating the phrase ‘people's democratic dictatorship’, Mao redefined the term and fundamentally changed its connotation. See Zedong Mao, ‘On people's democratic dictatorship’, People's Daily, (1 July 1949), p. 1, reprinted in Selected Works of Mao Zedong (Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1967), pp. 1357–1371.

^34. According to James Townsend, the definition of socialist democracy, rather than giving people the rights to supervise their government actually legitimizes the regime in China making decisions without the consent of its people. See James Townsend, Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley, CA: University of Berkeley Press, 1967).

^35. The major issue at debate within the central committee of the CCP was the priority of the reforms. Some argued that economic reforms should be first and others advocated introducing political reform into China as the first step in its reform. See Nathan, Chinese Democracy; Yan Sun, The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism 1976–1992.

^36. See Karl W. Deutsch, ‘Social mobilization and political development’, American Political Science Review 55, (1961), pp. 493–514; Seymour M. Lipset, ‘Some social requisites of democracy: economic development and political legitimacy’, American Political Science Review 53, (1959), pp. 69–105; Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, ‘Modernization: theories and facts’, World Politics 49, (1997), pp. 155–183.

^37. See Kevin J. O'Brien, ‘Chinese people's congresses and legislative embeddedness: understanding early organizational development’, Comparative Political Studies 27, (1994), pp. 80–109; Bruce J. Dickson, Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kellee S. Tsai, Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).

^38. See Smith, ‘The hidden 25 percent’; Jianhua Zhu, ‘“I don't know” in public opinion survey in China’.

^39. See Madan Lal Goel, Political Participation in a Developing Nation, India (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1975); Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Tianjian Shi, Political Participation in Beijing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

^40. See Kevin J. O'Brien, ‘Rightful resistance’, World Politics 49, (1996), pp. 31–55; Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, ‘The politics of lodging complaints in rural China’, China Quarterly 143, (1995), pp. 757–783; Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, ‘Accommodating “democracy” in a one-party state: introducing village elections in China’, China Quarterly 162, (2000), pp. 465–489; Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Tianjian Shi, ‘Voting and nonvoting in China: voting behavior in plebiscitary and limited choice elections’, Journal of Politics 61, (1999), pp. 1115–1138; Tianjian Shi, ‘Village committee elections in China: institutionalist tactics for democracy’, World Politics 51, (1999), pp. 385–412.

^41. V. I. Lenin, What is To Be Done? (first published in Germany, translation republished in Penguin Classics, 1902) (New York: Penguin Books, 1988).

^42. National Statistical Yearbook (Beijing: National Statistical Bureau, 1999).