A decade of insecurity paradox in contemporary China, 2008–2017

Abstract

As a primary component of human development program, sense of insecurity (SI) is widely voiced yet unstudied, particularly in developing countries that have gone through a rapid transition, such as China. To map the trend of SI in China, we identify two types, sense of personal insecurity (SPI) and sense of social insecurity (SSI), that have shown opposite trends from 2008 to 2017. While SPI has been declining, SSI seems to grow. To address the extent to which SPI and SSI in China are changing due to age, period, or cohort effects, we adopted a hierarchical age-period-cohort model. The results reveal that period effects are central in defining the trend of SPI and SSI in both rural and urban areas. The changing pattern is largely due to the varying effects of gender, schooling and wealth, three main dimensions of social stratification. Specifically, schooling is more prominent in defining the insecurity pattern in rural areas, while the effects of schooling and wealth are more evident in urban areas.

Notes

1 Please refer to the link: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/12/28/china-the-most-insecure-party-state-of-the-21st-century/

2 We did not use the 2011 survey, as data on insecurity were not collected that year.

3 The selection of items to the specific factors is based on larger than 0.5 factoring loadings criteria, and Cronbach’s alpha. Note that, the CSS questionnaire does not involve any questions relevant to security of political freedom, we thus omit this item in SSI.

4 Gasper (2005) argued that security of persons was not only about physical safety of individuals, but it also involved the ability to hold their basic goods, like their own and family property. However, the insecurity or vulnerability of personal and family property involves economic risks, it depends on the social and economic environment around them. In this vein, we also take sense of personal and family wealth security as part of SSI, and reconduct the whole analysis as the robustness check. The correlation between the newly constructed SSI and the previous one is 0.973, whereas the correlation between the newly construct SPI and the previous one is 0.88. The results of HAPC remain largely consistent using newly constructed factors. Due to space limitations, results are not shown but are available upon request.

5 To check the robustness of the results, we also try ten-year birth cohort intervals, 1935–1944, 1945–1954, 1955–1964, 1965–1974, 1975–1984, 1985–1994, the results remain consistent. Considering the limited space, the results of additional analyses are not shown, but available upon request.

6 To keep as many cases as possible, we generate a category called “missing” for the work sector.

7 We used this statistic rather than simple house ownership is because ownership is measured at the household level. In each wave of data, over 85% of individuals were married at the time of the survey. Most married individuals own a house, as per Chinese custom, while most unmarried people live with their parents. Thus, more than 90% of individuals in our survey reported owning a house, making the variation too small to be significant.

8 The results are not shown, but available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Grant Number: 010914370123].

Notes on contributors

Ting Ge

Dr. Ting Ge is an assistant professor at School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University (Email: [email protected]). He earned his Ph.D. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2018. His research interests lie in social welfare, child development, and advanced quantitative methods. He has published in Children and Youth Services Review, Public Health, Personality and Individual Differences, etc.

Guangye He

Dr. Guangye He is an associate professor at School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University (Email: [email protected]). She earned her Ph.D. from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2016. Her research focuses on family sociology, social stratification, and quantitative methods. She has published in Social Science Research, Social Science and Medicine, Chinese Sociological Review, Journal of Contemporary China, etc.