How modernization theory has stumbled in China: A political interception perspective

ABSTRACT

Economic development fails to greatly increase demand for liberal democracy in China. Is China an exception to modernization theory? If so, why? This paper studies these questions by analysing five waves of Asian Barometer Survey data from 2002 to 2019. We have three major findings. First, the shift of political values exhibits an inverted U-shaped curve with the mid-2010s as its turning point. Second, the better educated and more media exposed turned conservative much faster than the rest after the mid-2010s. Third, to trace the mechanism of this unusual reversal and divergence, we resort to a Difference-In-Differences model, taking political indoctrination, measured by media exposure and education, as treatment and the post-2013 era as treatment time, finding that political indoctrination significantly explains political cultural backsliding. Our findings enrich modernization theory by identifying the “interceptive” power of the state between economic development and cultural shifts.

KEYWORDS:

• Modernization theory
• democracy
• political indoctrination
• cultural shift
• Chinese exceptionalism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank three anonymous referees as well as the Editor for their valuable comments which substantially improved the quality of the paper. We are grateful to the Asian Barometer Survey and Dr. Yu-han Chu for sharing the data used in this paper. Comments received from Dr. Donald Lien on earlier drafts if this paper are also gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Rowen, “The Short March: China's Road to Democracy.”, Pei, “Transition in China? More Likely Than You Think.”, Gilley, China's Democratic Future How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead, Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: the Human Development Sequence

2 Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy.”, Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Barro, “Determinants of Democracy.”, Glaeser et al., “Why Does Democracy Need Education?.”, Papaioannou and Siourounis, “Economic and Social Factors Driving the Third Wave of Democratization.”

3 For the critics, see Przeworski, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Material Well-being in the World, 1950-1990, Acemoglu et al., “Income and Democracy.” For the defenders, see Boix and Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization.”, Epstein et al., “Democratic Transitions.”, Treisman, “Economic Development and Democracy: Predispositions and Triggers.”

4 Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: the Human Development Sequence, Welzel, Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation.

5 Guan, “Demand for Democracy in Resilient Authoritarianism: Evidence from Rural China.”

6 Jin and Zhou, “An Authoritarian Undercurrent in the Postmaterialist Tide: The Rise of Authoritarianism Among the Younger Generation in China.”

7 Lu and Shi, “The Battle of Ideas and Discourses before Democratic Transition: Different Democratic Conceptions in Authoritarian China.”

8 Yang and Tang, “Exploring the Sources of Institutional Trust in China: Culture, Mobilization, or Performance?.”

9 Meng and Yang, “Governance Performance and Political Trust in Transitional China: From “Economic Growth Legitimacy” to “Public Goods Legitimacy”.”

10 Zhai, “Remarkable Economic Growth, But So What? The Impacts Modernization on Chinese Citizens' Political Satisfaction.”

11 Welzel, “The Myth of Asian Exceptionalism: Response to Bomhoff and Gu.”

12 Zhai, “Do Confucian Values Deter Chinese Citizens' Support for Democracy?.”

13 Ibid.

14 Welzel, “The Myth of Asian Exceptionalism: Response to Bomhoff and Gu.”

15 Huhe et al., “Creating Democratic Citizens: Political Effects of the Internet in China.”

16 The 1989 movement is a testament to China's earlier normalism, in which the better-educated urban youth rose up and demanded more political rights.

17 Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of “Rights” : From Mencius to Mao--and Now.”, Bomhoff and Gu, “East Asia Remains Different: A Comment on the Index of “Self-Expression Values,” by Inglehart and Welzel.”, Shi and Lu, “The Shadow of Confucianism.”, Lu, “Democratic Conceptions in East Asian Societies: A Contextualized Analysis.”, Chu, “Sources of Regime Legitimacy and the Debate over the Chinese Model.”, Min-Hua et al., “Popular Understandings of Democracy and Regime Legitimacy in East Asia.”

18 Zhai, “Do Confucian Values Deter Chinese Citizens' Support for Democracy?.”

19 Lu and Shi, “The Battle of Ideas and Discourses before Democratic Transition: Different Democratic Conceptions in Authoritarian China.”

20 Mishler and Rose, “What Are the Origins of Political Trust?: Testing Institutional and Cultural Theories in Post-communist Societies.”, ---, “Generation, Age, and Time: The Dynamics of Political Learning during Russia's Transformation.”

21 Kirsch and Welzel, “Democracy Misunderstood: Authoritarian Notions of Democracy around the Globe.”

22 Nathan, “The Puzzle of Authoritarian Legitimacy.”

23 Welzel, “The Myth of Asian Exceptionalism: Response to Bomhoff and Gu,” 4.

24 ---, “The Asian Values Thesis Revisited: Evidence from the World Values Surveys.”

25 Wang, “Empowering the Police: How the Chinese Communist Party Manages Its Coercive Leaders.”, Wang and Minzner, “The Rise of the Chinese Security State,”---.

26 Pei, “China: Totalitarianism's Long Shadow.”

27 O'Brien and Deng, “Preventing Protest One Person at a Time: Psychological Coercion and Relational Repression in China.”

28 Truex, “Focal Points, Dissident Calendars, and Preemptive Repression.”

29 Lu and Shi, “The Battle of Ideas and Discourses before Democratic Transition: Different Democratic Conceptions in Authoritarian China.”

30 Jin and Zhou, “An Authoritarian Undercurrent in the Postmaterialist Tide: The Rise of Authoritarianism Among the Younger Generation in China.”

31 Chen and Yang, “The Impact of Media Censorship: 1984 or Brave New World?.”

32 Cantoni et al., “Curriculum and Ideology.”

33 Shirk, “China in Xi's 'New Era': The Return to Personalistic Rule.”

34 Pei, “China: Totalitarianism's Long Shadow.”

35 Zhao, “Xi Jinping's Maoist Revival,”---.

36 Except in 2012, the score was 16.

37 Freedom House, “Aggregate Category and Subcategory Scores, 2003-2021.”

38 Qin et al., “Media Bias in China.”

39 Article 11 of the Higher Education Law of the PRC.

40 Since 2012, the CCP has advocated the “Three Confidences,” namely “confidence in (China's) road, confidence in theory, and confidence in institutions.”

41 Provisions on the Administration of Internet News and Information Services (2017), Article 8. http:// www.cac.gov.cn/2017-05/02/c1120902760.htm

42 King et al., “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument.”

43 Ibid.

44 Southern Daily editorial, “The Party Must Firmly Grasp the Leadership of the Work of Universities,” Dec. 14, 2016. See http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-12/14/c129403653.htm

45 Feng, The Schools of Marxism Have Surpassed 1400 in Universities.

46 Minzner, Intelligentsia in the Crosshairs: Xi Jinping's Ideological Rectification of Higher Education in China.

47 Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Bem, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs, Harmon-Jones and Mills, Cognitive Dissonance: Progress on a Pivotal Theory in Social Psychology.

48 This is probably particularly so for better-educated elites, who face higher rewards and punishments because they have more to gain or lose.

49 Although there are some technical differences between Wave 1–3 and Wave 4–5 in the fourth stage of the sampling process, we want to point out that the biggest drop in liberal values happened between Wave 4 and Wave 5 (whereas the change between Wave 3 and Wave 4 was relatively mild), so the above-mentioned technical difference in the fourth stage sampling can hardly explain the change of survey results before and after 2013. For methodological details of the ABS, please refer to the project's website: http://www.asianbarometer.org.

50 Heckman et al., “Characterizing Selection Bias Using Experimental Data.”, Heckman et al., “Matching as an Econometric Evaluation Estimator: Evidence from Evaluating a Job Training Programme.”

51 Norris, Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government, Qi and Shin, “How mass political attitudes affect democratization: Exploring the facilitating role critical democrats play in the process.”

52 Kirsch and Welzel, “Democracy Misunderstood: Authoritarian Notions of Democracy around the Globe.”

53 The values of the KMO and Cronbach's $\alpha$are 0.77 and 0.63, indicating the validity and reliability of these 8 items in measuring liberal democratic orientation.

54 Samejima, “Estimation Of Latent Ability Using A Response Pattern Of Graded Scores.” The latent trait model is implemented in the R package mirt.

55 We would measure political indoctrination much better if the ABS provided us information on specific materials the correspondents consume from media, but unfortunately the ABS does not have such information. Therefore we are left with using the amount of political news consumption, the best measurement we can utilize, as a proxy of political indoctrination.

56 It should be noted that the Wave 1 data and discoveries based on it should be viewed with caution. There are two reasons. First, the Wave 1 survey did not ask about Internet consumption in the exact same way as in later rounds. Instead of asking two questions, it directly posed a single question: “How often do you use the Internet to consume political news?” We code those who did use the Internet to consume political news to be 1 and 0 otherwise. The difference makes the longitudinal comparison somewhat shaky. Second, the reliability of the Wave 1 data is also somewhat questionable, probably due to the lack of experience of surveyors or technical difficulties in initial fieldwork. For example, the proportion of college-educated respondents in the Wave 1 sample is 10.6%, significantly higher than Wave 2 (4.6%); and this proportion doesn't match national census data.

57 The PSM is implemented using the R package MatchIt (Ho et al., “MatchIt: Nonparametric Preprocessing for Parametric Causal Inferenc.”).

58 Of particular regret is the fact that we chose not to control for income, given the large scale of missing data.

59 Ai and Norton, “Interaction terms in logit and probit models.”, Brambor et al., “Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses.”

60 Cantoni et al., “Curriculum and Ideology.”, Chetty et al., “Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence.”, La Ferrara et al., “Soap operas and fertility: Evidence from Brazil.”, Li et al., “Does flattening government improve economic performance? Evidence from China.”

61 Enikolopov et al., “Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia.”

62 Adena et al., “Radio and the Rise of The Nazis in Prewar Germany.”

63 Alesina et al., “Nation-Building and Education.”, Bandiera et al., “Nation-building Through Compulsory Schooling during the Age of Mass Migration,”---.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by the National Social Science Fund of China under the project title “concepts of democracy and democratic consolidation” (20BZZ017).

Notes on contributors

Yu Liu

Yu Liu is an Associate Professor at Tsinghua University of China. Her teaching and research interests include comparative democratization, political culture and Chinese politics. She has published in Modern China, Washington Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Democratization, and authored several books of political essays in Chinese: Details of Democracy, Stage of Ideas, and the Art of the Possible. Her research book The Day After: Choices and Lessons of New Democracies is in production (incoming in 2023).

Yu-Sung Su

Yu-Sung Su is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Tsinghua University. His research interests involve Political Methodology, comparative political development, and Latin American and East Asian politics. His papers appear in journals of many disciplines (Political Science, Sociology, Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, Civil Engineering, and Computer Science). His R packages arm, MI, and r2jags are widely used in academia. He is the author of Propensity Score Matching: From Statistical Correlation to Causal Inference (in Chinese).

Wenquan Wu

Wenquan Wu is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Tsinghua University. His research interests include comparative democratization and political culture.