Perceptions of injustice in the Chinese countryside

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 17, Issue 55, 2008, Pages 319-337

  Jennings, M Kent ^a   Chen, Kuang Hui ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

PERCEPTION; POLITICS; SOCIAL JUSTICE;

EID: 42049106376     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: 14699400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670560701809551     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. An earlier version of this article was presented at a conference on 'The Transformation of Citizen Politics and Political Culture in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong', held at Academia Sinica, Taipei, November 2004.
2. See, for example, Jennifer L. Hochschild, What's Fair? American Beliefs about Distributive Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981)
3. Sidney Verba et al., Elites and the Idea of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)
4. Norman Frolich and Joseph A. Oppenheimer, Choosing Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). There is a large literature on discrimination and entitlement, especially with respect to the United States, but this scholarship usually employs a different conceptual framework than that associated with social justice per se.
5. James R. Kluegel and Petr Mateju, 'Egalitarian vs. inegalitarian principles of distributive justice', in James R. Kluegel, David S. Mason and Bernd Wegener, eds, Social Justice and Political Change (New York: Aldine deGruyter, 1995), pp. 209-218.
6. Tom R. Tyler, Robert J. Boeckmann, Heather J. Smith and Yuen J. Huo, Social Justice in a Diverse Society (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997).
7. Ian Walker and Heather Smith, eds, Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
8. Faye Crosby and A. Miren Gonzalez-Intal, 'Relative deprivation and equity theories: Felt injustice and the undeserved benefits of others', in Robert Folger, ed., The Sense of Injustice (New York: Plenum Press, 1984), pp. 141-166
9. Francine Tougas and Ann M. Beaton, 'Personal and group relative deprivation', in Walker and Smith, eds, Relative Deprivation, pp. 119-135.
10. See, for example, Philip Brickman, Robert Folger, Erica Goode and Yaacov Schul, 'Micro and macro justice', in Melvin J. Lerner and S. C. Lerner, eds, The Justice Motive in Social Behavior (New York: Plenum, 1981), pp. 173-204
11. Morton Deutsch, Distributive Justice: A Social-Psychological Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)
12. Kenneth A. Rasinski, 'What's fair is fair - or is it? Value differences underlying views about social justice', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53, (1987), pp. 201-211
13. Kluegel and Mateju, 'Egalitarian vs. inegalitarian principles of distributive justice', pp. 209-218.
14. The research project represents a collaborative effort originally undertaken by scholars at the University of Michigan and Peking University, with support from the Luce Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Chinese State Education Committee, and the Academic Senate of the University of California, Santa Barbara. We thank all the participants for their aid in executing the project, in particular Shen Mingming and Yang Ming, Peking University, and Melanie Manion, University of Wisconsin.
15. The Chinese versions read: 'Nin renwei xianzai youmeiyou shenme ren dedao de dongxi chaoguo le tamen suo ying dedao de?' and 'Xianzai youmeiyou shenme ren dedao de dongxi bi tamen ying dedao de yao shao?'.
16. Marvlee C. Taylor, 'Fraternal deprivation, collective threat, and racial resentment', in Walker and Smith, eds, Relative Deprivation, pp. 13-43
17. Tougas and Beaton, 'Personal and group relative deprivation', pp. 19-35.
18. These figures exclude around 30% of the sample with missing data, which is a common occurrence in survey research in China, especially in the rural areas and when questions reflect cognitive abilities with respect to comprehension and verbal expression. (See the Appendix for more details.)
19. The Chinese versions read: 'Tamen dou shi shenmeyang de ren? (Haiyou bie de ren ma?)'.
20. Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lu, Taxation without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
21. Jonathan Unger, The Transformation of Rural China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002)
22. Kevin J. O'Brien, 'Rightful resistance', World Politics 49, (October 1996), pp. 31-55. Such beliefs have been fortified by massive numbers of investigations and punishments rendered by the party and state.
23. See, for example, Melanie Manion, Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland China and Hong Kong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 119-199.
24. Data found in Samuel H. Barnes, Max Kaase et al., Political Action: An Eight-Nation Study, 1973-1976 (ICPSR Codebook 7777) (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1979).
25. A cross-national survey conducted in the early 1990s showed that people in post-communist countries were less likely than those in capitalist countries to claim that they themselves had been unjustly treated in terms of their race or age. See David S. Mason, 'Justice, socialism, and participation in the postcommunist states', in Kluegel et al., eds, Social Justice and Political Change, pp. 55-56.
26. This is an adjusted measure obtained through subtracting reported family from the mean village income as computed by summing across the villagers' reports. Using less contemporary government data yields essentially the same results.
27. The lead-in to the series read: 'Do you think any of the following are problems here?' A card listing the problems was shown to those respondents (the majority) who were literate. In all instances each problem was read aloud. If the respondents answered 'yes', a follow-up asked if they considered this problem to be not serious, serious, or very serious.
28. See, for example, Jean C. Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
29. Bernstein and Lu, Taxation without Representation in Contemporary Rural China.
30. A quarter of the respondents answered yes to the question. In a follow-up question (excessive) appropriation of public goods; banqueting on public funds; and embezzlement received the most mentions.
31. Missing data cases were assigned a middle value of 0.5 for each question.
32. The LR chi-square test is used to indicate whether or not all coefficients of the predictors in the model are simultaneously equal to zero. When they are not, the goodness of fit of the model is deemed acceptable.
33. Although they have little or no theoretical standing, these models have also been estimated with the inclusion of three predictors commonly used: Sex, age, and education. Their inclusion has no significant impact on the estimates contained in Table 2.
34. Scholarly interest in local participation in the Chinese countryside has grown in response to a series of economic and political reforms initiated in the 1980s, including provisions for the establishment of competitive local elections. See, inter alia, M. Kent Jennings, 'Political participation in the Chinese countryside', American Political Science Review 91, (June 1997), pp. 361-372
35. Melanie Manion, 'The electoral connection in the Chinese countryside', American Political Science Review 90, (December 1996), pp. 736-748
36. Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O'Brien, 'The struggle over village elections', in Roderick MacFarquhar and Merle Goldman, eds, The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 129-144
37. Jean C. Oi and Scott Rozelle, 'Elections and power: The locus of decision making in Chinese villages', China Quarterly 162, (June 2000), pp. 513-539
38. and Tianjian Shi, 'Village committee elections in China: institutionalist tactics for democracy', World Politics 51, (April 1999), pp. 385-412.
39. Kevin J. O'Brien, 'Review essay: Collective action in the Chinese countryside', The China Journal 48, (July 2002), pp. 139-154.
40. Donald R. Kinder and David O. Sears, 'Public opinion and political action', in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson, eds, The Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. II, 3rd edn (New York: Random House, 1985)
41. Walker and Smith, eds, Relative Deprivation.
42. John T. Jost, 'Review of Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)',
43. Political Psychology 25, (August 2004), pp. 668-673.
44. The relevant questions ran as follows: ''Have you ever worked with other people, including family and relatives, to try to solve some local problem?'; 'Have you ever written a letter to a cadre or offered an opinion or suggestion to a cadre?'; and 'Have you ever contacted a delegate of the county people's congress or township people's congress or a member of the village committee?'.
45. We omit voting in village elections and attending all-village meetings from this measure because their performance is highly contingent on local regulations and because they are not as purposive and demanding as those of the three acts included in the index.
46. Jennings, 'Political participation in the Chinese countryside', pp. 361-372.
47. The question for this last variable read: 'If you heard that leaders of this village/town were considering a measure that you thought unjust or harmful, what do you think you could do about it?'. Respondents who said that they would take some sort of action were coded 1.
48. Henry Brady, 'Political participation', in John P. Robinson, Philip R. Shaver and Lawrence W. Wrightsman, eds, Measures of Political Attitudes (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999), pp. 737-801
49. Alan Marsh and Max Kaase, 'Background of political action', in Samuel H. Barnes, Max Kaase et al., eds, Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979), pp. 97-136
50. Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie and Jae-Kim, The Modes of Democratic Participation (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971)
51. Alan S. Zuckerman and Darrell M. West, 'The political bases of citizen contacting', American Political Science Review 79, (March 1985), pp. 117-131.
52. Political reform began with the passage of the Law of Villagers' Committees in 1987 and was strengthened in 1998 by legislation that reflected recommendations from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which had been charged with implementing the Law.
53. We recognize the perils of using this measure given that there are only four counties and many possible variables involved. However, political reform represents the most plausible county characteristic for this analysis. Additionally, other analyses revealed only very weak relationships between this variable and other county-level features.
54. There is little reason to think that the broad outlines of our results would differ from more recent inquiries. If anything, inequality and injustice have become topics of greater public concern and seeming spurs to civil unrest in the countryside in the interim.
55. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983). Our usage of Walzer is informed by Miller's interpretations.
56. See David Miller, 'Introduction' and 'Complex equality', in David Miller and Michael Walzer, eds, Pluralism, Justice, and Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 1-16, 197-225.
57. Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 191-203.
58. Deutsch, Distributive Justice; Melvin Lerner, 'The justice motive in social behavior: Introduction', Journal of Social Issues 31, (1975), pp. 1-19
59. David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
60. Miller, Principles of Social Justice, ch. 5; Tyler et al., Social Justice in a Diverse Society, ch. 7.
61. Tom R. Tyler, Kenneth A. Rasinksi and Kathleen McGraw, 'The influence of perceived injustice upon support for the president, political authorities, and government institutions', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 15, (1985), pp. 700-725.
62. See, for example, Tom R. Tyler, 'Justice in the political arena', in Folger, ed., The Sense of Injustice; Frolich and Oppenheimer, Choosing Justice.
63. Bjorn Alpermann, 'The post-election administration of Chinese villages', The China Journal 46, (July 2001), pp. 46-67
64. Rong Hu, 'Economic development and the implementation of village elections in rural China', Journal of Contemporary China 14, (August 2005), pp. 427-444
65. Li and O'Brien, 'The struggle over village elections'; Oi and Rozelle, 'Elections and power', pp. 513-539
66. and Yang Zhong and Jie Chen, 'To vote or not to vote: An analysis of peasants' participation in Chinese village elections', Comparative Political Studies 35, (August 2002), pp. 668-712.
67. Tianjian Shi, 'Survey research in China', in Michael X. Delli-Carpini, Leonie Huddy and Robert Y. Shapiro, eds, Research in Micropolitics Vol. V, New Directions in Political Psychology (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1996), pp. 213-250
68. Jian-Hua Zhu, '"I don't know" in public opinion surveys in China: individual and contextual causes of item non-response', Journal of Contemporary China 5, (July 1996), pp. 223-244.