Table of Content

01 June 2015, Volume 1 Issue 2

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Has smoking really declined in China?

Weixiang Luo, Yu Xie

2015, 1(2):  165-176.  doi:10.1177/2057150X15579140

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It has been reported that the prevalence of smoking among Chinese men has decreased substantially in recent decades. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) (1991–2009) and the triple standardization method, we assess this trend and the relative contributions to it from three explanatory factors – age, whether the person has ever smoked, and smoking cessation. Results do show that the prevalence of smoking among Chinese men has decreased noticeably during the study period. Furthermore, the decrease in the proportion of men who have ever smoked is the single most important factor accounting for most of the decline. The contributions of the changes in age structure and in smoking cessation are small. Hence, we conclude that a decline in smoking among Chinese men is a real historical change and not an artefact of the survey methodology or the changes in age structure.

Residential concentration and marital behaviors of Muslim Chinese

Zheng Mu, Xiwei Wu

2015, 1(2):  177-200.  doi:10.1177/2057150X15579141

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This article examines how the marital behaviors of Hui Muslims respond to varying residential concentrations of Hui. Specifically, the marriage patterns indicating responses to local demographic availability of marriageable Hui and adherence to two Islamic norms – universal marriage and endogamy – were explored. Marriage market conditions were measured by local concentrations of Hui and we estimate discrete-time hazard models of marital outcomes using the China 2005 1% inter-census survey. The results show that in places with higher Hui concentrations, Hui tend to have higher marriage rates, to marry earlier, and to marry more endogamously. Conditional on being married, the logged odds of exogamy over endogamy are significantly lower in places with higher Hui concentrations; nevertheless, if exogamy is treated as an alternative to being single, the coefficient of the logged odds of exogamy over being single is significantly negative only for women. This suggests coexistence and competition between the two Islamic norms. Moreover, women have consistently higher marriage rates than men, regardless of Hui concentration. This suggests that women are universally more strictly constrained by the norm of universal marriage than men are. However, men show more variation in marriage rates, suggesting that they are more responsive to changes in Hui concentrations. Men and women are equally restricted by the norm of endogamy.

Max Weber and patterns of Chinese history

Dingxin Zhao

2015, 1(2):  201-230.  doi:10.1177/2057150X15579145

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Max Weber’s The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (1951) has been regarded as a book containing many distortions, wrong characterizations, and politically incorrect arguments by the contemporary Western social scientists. This article, however, argues that while Weber has made his analyses based on very limited information, his arguments about the nature of Chinese cities and Chinese religions, and his explanation of China’s impossibility to achieve industrial capitalism before the advent of Western imperialism, are largely correct. This article further argues that the current attack on Max Weber, particularly by the so-called California school scholars, represents not a genuine intellectual advancement but fads and fashions of today’s Western scholarship.

Gendered pathways to hukou status mobility in China

Jun Xiang

2015, 1(2):  231-253.  doi:10.1177/2057150X15579147

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One of China’s most important institutions is its hukou system, a registry that assigns benefits to household members based on rural or urban location. Changes in hukou status are not easy, but hukou mobility from rural to urban status is an important path to upward social mobility in China. While this hukou conversion is well covered in the literature pertaining to other research, previous studies have failed to solve the puzzle as to why this status change is achieved more often by rural women than rural men, even though these women are less likely to have more education, Communist Party membership, or military service – the three best-known predictors of hukou mobility in China. I believe this lapse in previous studies is because researchers assume that mobility is gender-neutral and then only examine the predictors of hukou conversion that favor rural men. These studies overlook a crucial predictor that probably favors women – marriage – and thus
their findings are subject to an omitted variable bias. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2008, a nationally representative dataset with unique information on the hukou conversion process, this paper explicitly brings the gender perspective into hukou mobility studies and finds gender-specific pathways in the hukou conversion process. The patterns of gendered divergence in hukou mobility reflect how the socioeconomic status of rural migrants is shaped by the institutional, economic, and sociocultural factors that impose constraints and provide opportunities in China.

Inter-organizational network structure and formation mechanisms in Weibo space: A study of environmental NGOs

Ronggui Huang, Yong Gui, Xiaoyi Sun

2015, 1(2):  254-278.  doi:10.1177/2057150X15579150

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This study explores the structures of follower/identification networks among non-government environmental organizations on Sina Weibo by using social network analysis techniques, and unpacks the formation mechanisms of these networks by integrating the literature of inter-organizational networks, social movement coalitions, Internet studies and the institutions of social organization management in China. In particular, this study proposes an ‘appropriateness principle’ to explain the effect of registration status on network structure. Descriptive network analyses show that close virtual relations exist among environmental NGOs, and reciprocal relations are prevalent. The findings highlight the importance of legitimacy and lend support to the appropriateness principle. Non-governmental organizations which have offline collaborations or reside in the same province are more likely to form follower/identification relations, and those with similar focus areas are more likely to form identification relations. Weibo activity also has a positive impact on the formation of inter-organizational relations. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that ‘low cost of Internet use’ alone does not provide a sufficient explanation of inter-organizational relations on the cyberspace. The authors argue that on a highly interactive social media platform like Weibo, the trustworthiness of an organization and its capacity to earn recognition from peer organizations
play a crucial role in the formation of inter-organizational networks.

Street, behavior, art: Advocating gender rights and the innovation of a social movement repertoire

Wei Wei

2015, 1(2):  279-304.  doi:http://chs.sagepub.com/content/1/2/254.full.pdf+html

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In the media, the year 2012 has been named the ‘First Year of Chinese Feminist Activism’. By closely examining the widely influential gender-related media events, this article documents and analyzes the rise and development of ‘street behavioral art’ as a new contentious action repertoire in current Chinese society. In contrast with the flourishing literature on contentious politics in recent years, there is a visible gap in the study of social movement repertoires in China. In order to help fill this gap, the research used in-depth interviews and document analysis to collect data from individuals and organizations that had been participating in today’s Chinese feminist activities. The article first reviews the current theoretical perspectives and related studies in this field, then briefly presents the background of the
political contentions in contemporary China around the emergence of street behavioral art. Using empirical data from street activism for gender equality, the article then focuses on analyzing the three key components of this contentious repertoire – street, behavior, and art – by looking at how each contributed to the success of this contentious action repertoire. It is argued that, in considering the rise of street behavioral art, there is a need to examine it in the context of the globalization of social movements (particularly, the flow of social movement discourses and tactics) interacting with the reality of contemporary Chinese society and its particular opportunities and constraints. In conclusion, the author discusses the impact of street behavioral art in advancing a social movement’s agenda in terms of policy advocacy, participation mobilization, and cultural change.