Table of Content

01 April 2017, Volume 3 Issue 2

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Social determinants of household wealth and income in urban China

Yongai Jin, Yu Xie

2017, 3(2):  169-192.  doi:10.1177/2057150X17695689

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Using data from a nationwide household survey-the China Family Panel Studies-we study how social determinants-political and market factors-are associated with wealth and income among urban households in China. Results indicate that both political and market factors contribute significantly to a household’s economic wellbeing, but the political premium is substantially greater in wealth than in income. Further, political capital has a larger effect on the accumulation of housing assets, while market factors are more influential on the accumulation of non-housing assets. We propose explanations for these findings.

The relationship between infant peer interactions and cognitive development: Evidence from rural China

Ai Yue, Xiaohong Wang, Sha Yang, Yaojiang Shi, Renfu Luo, Qi Zhang, Kaleigh Kenny, Scott Rozelle

2017, 3(2):  193-207.  doi:10.1177/2057150X17702091

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Social interactions in infancy have implications for long-term outcomes. This study uses data from a sample of 1412 rural Chinese infants aged 6-12 and 24-30 months to examine the relationship between peer interactions and cognitive development. Over 75% of the infants in this sample had less than three peers and around 20% had no peers in both periods. The prevalence of cognitive delays is high within this sample and increases as infants age. Multivariate analysis reveals that peer interaction is significantly associated with cognitive development. Heterogeneous analysis suggests that peer interactions and mental development may be related to the child's primary caregiver and the distance from the child's household to the center of their village.

From online to offline: The formation of collective action and its contributing factors: A case study of a food waste treatment facility location protest

Yumei Bu

2017, 3(2):  208-236.  doi:10.1177/2057150X17700044

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This study examines the process from online mobilization to offline action in a case study of a community collective protest against the construction of a food waste treatment facility in a neighborhood. The method of virtual ethnography is employed to study the formation of internet-initiated collective action and its contributing factors. The study finds that online shared views and identity do not necessarily have a definitive influence on the transition from online discussion to offline action. In fact, whether such a transition can be realized depends on the characteristics of the action and the stage of the movement. For initial and insubstantial offline action, online mobilization seems to be effective. However, sustaining the movement requires further mobilization and organization building. The study concludes that all three factors of online mobilization, characteristics of action, and stage of movement play a role in the transition from online discussion to offline actions. Characteristics of action and stage of movement are interrelated, both aiming to accomplish goals, as one is to act and the other is to react to the risks posed by political control. To keep the movement alive is always a challenge for online mobilization. Political risks influence decisions on strategies and tactics of online mobilization, and shape the behavior of netizens, often being described as a special type of 'slacktivism.' In conclusion, the Chinese political culture and environment, people's adaptation to it, and their risk-aversive nature help create the unique type of Chinese online activism that, in turn, determines the effectiveness and outcomes of online mobilization and offline collective action.

How do people get engaged in civic participation? A case study of citizen activism in rebuilding Enning Road, Guangzhou

Dongya Huang

2017, 3(2):  237-267.  doi:10.1177/2057150X17702089

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This paper discusses how citizens become engaged in networks for civic engagement and what affects the initiation, continuity, and impact of an actual action. My case study of the citizens' engagement in rebuilding Enning Road in Guangzhou found that virtual communities expanded people's actual connections; Internet mobilization, owing to its broad connectedness, helped stimulate the initiation of public participation but the shared channel of this type of media lacked the power to start an actual action or maintain the momentum. The existing studies suggested that whether the public attention and discussion based on virtual communities could be transformed into sustainable and influential public participation in action depended upon whether the 'issue' had its own sustainability and also upon whether the mobilizing 'agent' was a rights-protecting group that shared similar interests. The case study reported in this paper, however, found that the off-line 'liaison and mobilization mechanisms,' as well as their closely related characteristics, were also significant factors. Connection and mobilization via interpersonal networks pushed virtual discussions into real actions and helped keep the actions going on, while the open space of the city expanded the actual social and policy influences for such actual civic engagement. The distinction of different liaisons from the mobilization mechanisms illustrated in this paper facilitates the explanation of the civic engagement in contemporary China from the 'diachronic' and 'differentiated participation' angles. The paper concludes that either interpersonal networking organizations being supplementary to the organization of social groups or the public space opened up by the city being supplementary to the closed nature of the structure of the political system itself is still quite limited in the civic engagement in China.

Religious revival in rural China and the fate of 'religion' in China

Yongjia Liang

2017, 3(2):  268-290.  doi:10.1177/2057150X17703282

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This paper explores three aspects of the question of religious revival in rural China, one of the most 'unexpected' phenomena since the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy. Firstly, by offering a critical reappraisal of the three models of explaining religious revival - 'invention of traditions,' 'state-society relation,' and 'religious market theory' - argue that religion should not be reduced into such categories as 'politics' or 'economy' but taken as a set of facts sui generis. I delineate some premises implied in the religious market theory, premises that are rather Christian in worldview and cannot fit the Chinese context. Secondly, it is necessary to understand the process of shaping 'religion' by the political and intellectual elites in modern Chinese history. Academic claims to legitimize some of the religious practices merely continue the complicity among these elites. Thirdly, religious revival in rural China is largely separated from this process of elite complicity, implying an unknown mechanism with the potential to yield an indigenous social theory. Referring to the recent model of 'doing religion,' I emphasize the dimension of morality being central to social solidarity. Finally, I suggest that rather than trying to apply secularization or market theories, we try using a 'gift model' to study religious revival.

Reflection upon mores and the Reconstruction Movement: A dilemma of the Yongjia Conservatives during the Post-Taiping Restoration

Jundan Hou

2017, 3(2):  291-326.  doi:10.1177/2057150X17700052

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The law of power in Xia-Qi (chivalry) destroyed the hierarchical structure of the Imperial and produced an equalization so that the traditional governance was involved in crises. It was on the reflection upon the crises that the reconstruction prompted by literati during the Tongzhi and Guangxu periods was based. Confucian classics studies played an important role in shaping the elites' ideology and individual wills. Associations of literati and kinship networks also contributed to the spread of these academic studies. Different judgments about the real relations between people of different social statuses caused conflicts in social transformation practices. For example, a higher-ranking group of literati in Wenzhou in southeast ZhengJiang province adopted a conservative scheme of reconstructing the patriarchal clan system and Confucian academic traditions in order to realize moralization in the imperial political structure. This conservative reconstruction, however, had an impact contrary to its initial goal of moralization: scholar-tyrants plundered finite land resources in the local mountainous society, while those disciples following the higher-ranking masters corrupted the academic atmosphere so that aristocratic politics became the principles dominating the private school of the prominent clan. In addition, immorality among close relatives in the prominent family ruined local customs. Superficially, it seemed that conservative moralization was obstructed and that local affairs managed by the literati had failed, but this created a new historical opportunity for the transformation of social structure in modern China. Social organizations that were based on general individual mind structures would play a fundamental role in the modern democracy in China.