The Chinese Communist Party's Strategy for Survival

good afternoon everybody thanks for coming uh I'm really glad to see a good turnout this is uh not our regularly scheduled uh time for lectures this is our occasional lecture series which

means regular not regularly scheduled time basically uh please turn off your cell phone before the talk begins today because we are recording the talk and I'd like to just introduce our speaker

Bruce Dixon he's a professor of political science and international Affairs and director of The Score Center for Asian studies at George Washington University he received his ba in

political science and English literature his ma in Chinese studies and his PhD in political science all from the University of Michigan which meant you were here for how long 20 years

continuously not continuously okay okay wasn't one long stretch okay he joined the faculty of the George Washington University and the Elliot School in 1993 his research focuses on the political

Dynamics in China particularly the adaptability of the Chinese Communist party and the regime that it governs uh his current research examines the political consequences of economic reform in China and the Chinese

Communist party's evolving strategy for survival which he will be speaking on today he's published several books uh his first book was on democratization in China and Taiwan he's also published two

books on the relationship between the party and private capital R capitalists and wealth into power and he will be speaking today on his uh book that was just published this year by Oxford

University press the dictator's dilemma the Chinese Communist party's strategy for survival please join me in welcoming him thank [Applause]

you first I want to thank uh Mary for inviting me here today it's always a pleasure to be back in an arbor um it's always when people find out I've gotten three degrees from the same school

there's always this look of pity on their face like you couldn't get it anywhere else um and uh I remember at um when I was

deciding whether to come back to U ofm for my PhD uh my undergraduate advisor and my my uh one of my Master's advisers was Ellen Whiting who was here for a

long time as a professor at that point had uh semi-retired and mooved out to Arizona um and I said' okay I've got these offers from these different schools where should I go and he saidwell

you''ve done everything in China studies at U ofm but you'd never done polical science there so why don't you go back there so um his uh I followed his advice

and uh didn't really regret it so it was a great place to uh to be in school and uh great place to to return to uh uh whenever I

can this uh The Talk today is from uh this book called the dictators dilemma which is formally being published next month and will be uh available a few

weeks after that and this is the first time I've given this version of the talk I've spoken on different aspects of the larger project uh in different ways but because it's kind of the first time sort

of laying out some of the broad themes uh from it uh over on the table you know academics are used to selling our ideas but not actually used to selling our books uh but this sheet here there's a

30% discount if you order with the code on this sheet um you can get a hard back for only

$9.60 so um with graduation coming up and Mother's Day soon after that uh no end of

possibilities um so for people who study China or are from China uh or travel and visit there the themes of the book may

not seem all that surp surprising um what I'm going to talk about is uh the idea that the Communist Party

um does not face imminent demise the way many scholars um have have argued or predicted throughout the postmount peiod ofie form there's been anticipation that

the party will not be able to survive economic reform it won't be able to survive globalization it won't be able to survive one thing or another uh and it at all always has so uh this in part

is designed to tap into the debate about whether or not the Communist Party in China is adaptable or even resilient on

the one hand or if it is fragile and in danger of imminent collapse the way other people have have discussed um what is original in the

book is not so much the broad themes but uh the survey data that underlies uh the argument that I put forward in it and this is there are two Nationwide surveys

that were done in 2010 and 2014 coming two years before and two years after the change of leadership that took place at the 18th party Congress in

2012 uh these surveys kind of provide a before and after picture of public opinion uh before and after the Xin ping era um so kind of look at uh some degree

of public opinion change and continuity across these through a short period of years but important years uh in terms of both leadership and economic and other

other kind of policy changes um in short here uh the party's survival strategy which is the subtitle of the book focuses on on three different things and this this is not

unique to China this is the the case for just about any authoritarian regime to stay in power they have to rely upon some combination of repression of dealing with real or perceived threats

from with in society um I'll talk about that issue first uh different aspects of legitimation or what the regime does to try and generate popular support uh it

doesn't want to just rely upon coercion and repression it wants to actually uh generate support in different ways and through uh Economic Development Rising

living standards the promotion of certain values changes in the way in which uh the party governs Society designed to try and uh elicit popular

support uh and not just uh rule with a heavy hand uh and third they rely upon some degree of co-optation in terms of who they L into the political system

into the political process and who gets excluded um and this has been a dilemma that the party has faced uh really from its Inception about who can it trust to

be members of the party Who present potential threats to the party that need to not just be pushed out of the pcal system but repressed in different ways so their voices cannot even be heard uh

but it does want to incorporate different sets of Elites different types of talent into the party for different purposes um we don't know exactly what

combination of these three things is optimal uh it would be you know if we had a nice equation for what balance between these three uh uh parts of its

strategy was be most effective uh uh we'd be able to predict much better which authoritarian regimes were fragile and which ones are likely to endure uh

and autocrats themselves don't know what combination of these things is necessary or which ones may be a threat to his survival and that's what the title of

the book refers to is the dictator's dilemma autocrats don't really know can't really predict with certainty which of these strategies will be

successful which ones that may have a shortterm fix to a problems that they identify May create long-term problems for them um and what therefore whether

or not what they're trying to do in the immediate sense uh will have longlasting benefits or creating long-term problems that they'll have to face in the

future um so with that I'm gonna kind of walk through uh some of the key aspects of these three different parts of the survival strategy um and with it

incorporate some of the survey data to kind of show how it plays out uh much of what we read about in the

western media has to do lightly with uh different aspects of repression about different protests and how they're handled uh the Crackdown on lawyers uh

more recently on churches on different voices that have uh either critical or dissenting view about politics in China

um and many of the people many scholars have said that given how strongly the party represses Civil Society uh how

limited the autonomy of these groups are that essentially China has no Civil Society um and yet there are over half a million registered NOS in the country

it's estimated there's at least twice that many unregistered but active uh Civil Society organizations in the country many of them are now partnering with local governments to provide

different types of public goods such as education job retraining uh uh legal advice and so on uh as ways to benefit Society in one way

or another um but that are doing so as a way of supporting the the regime's

survival and not posing a threat to it um the people who are active in Civil Society in China of face a a double

Challenge on the one hand even the ones who are not political in what they do face skepticism from local officials uh about what they may be up to and

constant scrutiny about their operations and their activities that skepticism is is also matched by many people in Chinese Society uh who don't really trust what

NOS are up to or even understand what they what they can do uh in in previous uh studies of China

whether through ethnographic work or survey work uh one of the consistent findings is how little trust there is of people outside of your immediate family

and perhaps your close friends uh and also that the amount of trust that you have in party and government officials declines noticeably as you go from the central level where is relatively High

trust in central officials and the key institutions lower for provincial level lower for city and county level and even lower for

uh Township officials noos are trusted even less uh the the level of trust for NOS is just a little bit above perfect strangers uh in other words there's not

a lot of trust at all in what these groups are up to so not only is the state um alert to what they may doing and and repressive in different ways to

prevent a potential uh any kind of Potential Threat that it may pose but they don't even get much support from the people they're trying to help um and

so it's a a particular um uh odity there's criticism of the parties Crackdown in Civil Society but at the same time it's not clear that other people in society are all that worried

about it because they themselves are skeptical about what these groups may be up to um similarly there's been attention to uh crack down in descent on true

political activist uh democracy promoters uh of which there are very few in existence uh either in jail or in

Exile or otherwise uh forced into being quiet um uh what I not going to present this aspect of it here but one of the curious

things is that when you ask uh people in China how Democratic is China today most people say it is increasingly democratic um that over time there's been a growing

level of democracy in the country and that most people are satisfied with the level of democracy that currently exists in China now they they don't Define it in terms of Elections and competitive parties and rule of law and so on you

know how you select leaders and how you hold them accountable uh they Define it more in terms of what the state does for them what it what it provides in terms of policies and public goods and so on

so as long as the state is doing things on their behalf govern wining in their interest they see it as as increasingly Democratic the fact that they can travel there's more mobility in the country

less control over their personal lives again is seen as an indicator of Greater democracy in the country so when President Obama or other Western leaders criticize the party for not being

Democratic enough this often Falls is confusing uh to people in China because they see growing levels of democracy what's wrong with these people who are criticizing our government because

that's they're working with a different definition of it um as the consequence interpret it uh the progress in in different

ways um third area getting a lot of attention recent years has been censorship especially over the internet and um this has clearly been a key part

of the party strategy controlling the flow of information what is available who has access to it and so on um and there there's this

this assumption or perhaps this image conveyed that uh information is is carefully scrutinized access to it is carefully controlled and that uh it

creates tremendous frustration by people within China uh about the the lack of uh free access to information uh however when you ask

people about their experience with censorship um you get a rather different picture so first of all about half of the people in

these are in in urban areas of the country not not including rural areas which are usually treated separately but in urban China about half of the population is not online at all uh these

are people who are usually older less educated uh usual you know my parents are not on very much online either so it's similar Trends within China about

who is and who is not online people who are online uh the large group of them say that they don't experience censorship when they're

online uh and only um little little more than 10 somewhere almost 15% encounter it on somewhere

between a rare and frequent basis uh that's because most people go online in China are not looking for political information are not looking at airing

grievances uh they're playing games they're checking their email they following celebrities or doing things that many people do outside the people who

do uh want to cross the red line of Chinese politics they may encounter censorship uh but in the larger scheme of of people online uh it's surprisingly

small number that say they they encounter it the more qu question though is what is your reaction when you face it uh what emotional response do you

have when you encounter censorship um the most common answer it doesn't matter uh which suggests that they're so used to it by now that they've just

resign to the fact that they can't get full access to information um and just learn to to uh to lump it instead of challenging it um

there is a significant group of people who see they're angry about it these are the people that get the most attention uh especially by journalists because they are quite angry about it in some

cases uh had a former student of mine who who would say that she always considered herself very patriotic except she went on when she went online and

then she'd get so bad um and for people who are angry about it um it it does have a big impact on degree to which uh

how they assess the regime as a whole uh so in the larger scheme if you know sort of if this is the range of Chinese Society about half of them are not

online of the ones who are online most of them don't encounter censorship the ones who do encounter s censorship only a little bit are angry about it um we

have this notion that everybody is angry about censorship um and in fact that's not what uh the people themselves uh often

report what has changed is that the range of people who are now uh exposed to censorship so particularly uh expats foreign

businessmen Scholars students who used to rely upon vpns which no longer work as well as they used to uh people who used to be able to evade the great

firewall are now being caught by it uh in journalists as well and so it's it's uh it may be that the people who are being exposed to it are reacting now way

they didn't used to and this is part of the uh issue I mentioned about dilemma about how will people react to the different parts of the party's strategy

the more people that get exposed to repressive tactics who don't pose a threat but may react as my former student did uh who would otherwise be

patriotic but when she's exposed to censorship her NE her feelings would would change dramatically uh if you overreact overly

do uh censorship uh the response may not be constraining uh public opinion and threats but in fact creating more frustration uh at least for the people who do feel

angry about it uh a fourth area what I put under the category of repression has to do with corruption it doesn't fit in quite as

neatly as the other types of repression I just talked about uh but in this case there are people uh if you have to give bribes you obviously feel that you are

not being treated fairly and in order to get things done you have to pay a bribe uh and now now the people who are being investigated for corruption themselves

are now facing the very repressive heavy-handed tactics that the the state provides to uh even top party and government officials and now military

officials who are um charged with corruption uh it's been a prominent theme of The xiin Ping eras the ongoing anti-corruption

campaign uh public opinion about this is is interesting to show what change has has taken place as a consequence of the change of leaders and and she's new

priorities in the 2010 survey before the campaign started people were more or less evenly divided between whether they thought corruption was getting better getting worse or about the same uh in

2014 two years into the campaign the vast majority of people saw it getting better at the local level they could see that the number of limos going up and down the streets the Banquets the more

ostentatious Lifestyles by local officials and their children uh had noticeably changed and diminished uh so if you're XI Jin ping

this is good news you're pushing a a campaign and people see the the benefits of it on the other hand it's also

tarnishes the party's reputation um in asking how widespread do you think corruption is uh in the 2010 survey less than half of the people

thought that it was particularly common at the central level as a consequence of this campaign which does Target very high level officials party government

military officials uh now uh almost 70% of the people think it's common place even at the central level um the old rule was you don't go after top level

officials uh she has gotten rid of that old rule uh and now exposed it more and more uh at the local level uh there wasn't that much change people always

thought local officials were pretty corrupt um and they haven't changed their view that much about the local officials but the the change for Central

uh is is is quite prominent um so even the campaign might be good for shei himself because people identify him with it and the success of it uh but it's bad

for the party's reputation as a whole um so you know this is the Dilemma that that most regimes face about dealing with corruption in order to really

tackle it you have to expose it and by exposing it you show how prevalent it is uh so on the one hand you may seem like you're creating more legitimacy by

showing you're cracking down on something but you're also revealing how terribly widespread the problem was in the first place um and many regimes choose to Simply bury the information

rather than uh expose it and have public opinion turn cynical about it so that's that's one area of the party strategy which looks at areas of

repression um the second area has to do with with leg legitimation uh in particularly first and most important is is economic growth probably the most

frequently repeated Mantra about the party's legitimacy it's based largely on economic development and this is often

seen as why the party needs to create at least an 8% growth rate few years ago they got rid of that Target but for a long time they had to have at least an

8% growth rate local officials were uh encouraged to promote growth well beyond that um and you can see the the graph on the left shows that it it had spiked up to

14% uh before its recent decline um this is obviously this this uh particular chart is itself a bit all is forecasting development by now that

is a couple points above what it really is but n the thought was it was the overall economic growth that was the source of the party's

legitimacy um in the literature on American politics there's often a debate about what influences electoral results is it the aggregate economic conditions

uh what often refer to as sociotropic conditions or is it the individual pocketbook factors uh in the second chart here uh illustrates uh Rising

levels of per capita income and the Assumption also these two things tend to go together uh so that as the economy in China has been slowing in recent years

uh predictions that this is presenting a potential crisis legitimacy for the party which could you know unravel public support for

it um but individual incomes don't rise and fall at the same Pace at the same time as the aggregate economy does for

during China's boom years individual incomes were not Rising nearly as fast as the overall economy was growing uh and as the economy is now

slowing uh individual incomes are not necessarily falling um so in uh this asks a question of now compared to five

years ago what is your your level of family income uh and there's virtually no difference between the two surveys if anything a slight increase in the more

recent survey well into the period where the economy had slowed down um if you ask people how optimistic they are about the future again just as

optimistic now or in 2014 public opinion can change very quickly it's now 2016 but at the end of 2014 when these uh

results were collected um people were uh assessing their recent improvements of income very positively we're optimistic about the future uh and that

is not the kind of conditions under which you expect widescale ferment for change uh and even the support for for revolutionary

change um so as long as the party can handle this difficult challenge of making sure

that incomes continue to grow individual can believe that they're prospering their aspirations are rising uh even though the economy is

slowing uh the slowing overall economic growth rate does not need to be a threat to the price legitimacy if anything it it may enhance it because most people uh

the heavy-handed tactics often done to promote growth also undermine popular support for the party the incessant land grabs things that were done to boost

boost development um if those can be discontinued and they kind of shift how they generate growth uh it may be advantageous to the party's reputation at the same time allowing

incomes to continue to rise uh that is however a tricky combination to pull off to make sure incomes do continue to rise that unemployment does not become to be a

problem again uh and that people don't become more uh cynical about the future uh in addition to S material

factors the part's also been promoting uh a variety set of of values uh to help support uh itself simply providing material benefits isn't enough it also

wants to inculcate certain values within within Society uh one of the debates in recent years has been whether or not

um Rising levels of nationalism in the country are sort of in indigenous and and popularly motivated or to what

degree they're mobilized by the state um and one thing that we find in the different ways of asking different types of questions about being either

patriotic or having more of an assertive anti-foreign Viewpoint that the people who feel patriotic uh waving the flags on the

left-and side uh and the ones who are bashing Japanese cars on the other they're not the same set of people um and in the United

States people who are patriotic tend to also be nationalistic uh and and vice versa uh in China there seem to be separate these are separate strands uh

overlap quite a bit but not all people who with strong patriotic viewpoints uh are the ones who are also willing to take uh more assertive uh

steps against what they proceed to be foreign insults or for foreign actions against the interest of China um this is one of the dilemmas the party faces is

exactly to what extent it wants to promote nationalism through education through the media and through other things uh because it has also been the

basis for large scale uh popular protests in the country uh which often then snowballed into something else uh new demands uh or new

issues new criticisms get raised that are unrelated to the Nationalist dispute at hand um Andy Nathan and Andrew scobel have argued that nationalism is the only

legitimate form of dissent uh in contemporary China uh because the party can't really crack down on nationalist statements even if they're critical of

the government for fear of of stoking a stronger reaction um so a dilemma on the one hand trying to create a sense of patriotism without becoming uh a target

of more nationalistic uh anti- forign sentiments um a second key area of of promoting new

sets of or a different set of values has to do with the current Embrace of Confucianism in the country uh China's leaders uh in different ways have always

drawn upon Chinese the Chinese past to legitimate much of what um many of their policies are uh um uh first

expression up on the upper right seek truth from Facts um is associated most of all with with dunsha pinging in the reform era uh but he didn't come up with

it it was first identified with Chairman Mao uh above his home in yanan these words were written we don't think of Mao being a often don't think

of being a great pragmatist uh but he himself had very pragmatic streak in a very idealistic streak um and so he often promoted more idealistic uh more

pragmatic elements this phrase didn't begin with ma for that merer either it was originally from from I'm forget know either from uh the book of Han or from

from menus um but it it a long pedigree in the country that began long before uh the Communist party was was formed in the 1920s and long before dun shaing

once again championed the fr to legitimize reform efforts uh each of the Chinese leaders have coined different phrases again drawing back in the

Chinese history as a way of legitimizing what they're doing uh xiin Ping's notion of a China dream is doesn't have confusion Origins per se but it does

hearken back to the goal from the 19th century and perhaps earlier about creating a strong prosperous wealthy country uh the China dream is very very

different from the American dream the American dream is anybody through hard work and effort can rise from from poverty to wealth uh through their own

efforts it's a very individually oriented dream uh the China dream is has less to do with individuals and much to do with the country as a whole so the goal is to make the Country Strong to

make the country Rich uh in your efforts are designed to make that goal more possible not say necessarily that you yourself would be um

uh the goal is not for you become wealthy and prosperous and successful is that you uh make the country that way um in the in the the surveys that that

were're done for this project um there's different ways of looking at different Confucian Traditions it can be about about meritocracy it can be about self-improvement uh it can be about uh

adherence to Orthodoxy um we had a series of questions about the degree to which more so it's a

social level to degree to which um children should uh obey their parents uh that when there's dispute you should seek the advice of Elders in the community and so on so much more sort of

a social level not a political dimension of confusion but more of a social level um and what we found here was was that

uh when I say me we was part of a larger team of people and I just uh uh the book is my book but the ideas for it and kind of carrying out and discussion of much

of it was was really much a a a collaborative effort and I've benefit a lot from the research team I work with in China to carry this out um what we

found was that the people who were most inclined to agree with these kind of confusion sentiments about social hierarchies uh uh were were people who

had Urban hooko and who who had hooko in the in the cities in which they were currently living the people who had migrated into the cities either from the

countryside or from other cities people who were separated from their original social network who didn't have people to rely upon in the way that a traditional

uh families might they had the lowest support for these types of confusion values because adherent to this social hierarchy was not as relevant for them because they were removed from that

original hierarchy um so it's a curious case that we don't think of Migrant workers uh being the Leading Edge of modernization

uh but in terms of of changing Traditional Values they seem to be the least traditional even though they had rural Origins living in the cities and experience they had made them more

skeptical about simply adhering to uh the Trad traditional hierarchy um that they've faced a third area of of values the part's been trying

to promote has been about um um maintaining stability and it has both been actively repressing threats or

or protests before they escalate been talking uh a lot about the need to maintain stability as a way of achieving economic

and other goals um and it turns out that this fear of instability that the party promotes resonates with with many people uh in

society so here are three different um either types of groups or

activities that um could be a threat to local stability and um in each case

um there was a a slight increase between 20 2010 and 2014 in terms of degree to which people saw uh a potential multip multiple party

system within the country uh diverse social groups at a local level or public demonstrations leading to wider instability in the country and and a in

that sense support for the party's um goal of of nipping these things in the butd so they don't pre present a bigger uh source of conflict and

stability um so even though there's been criticism within the country criticism abroad about the party's uh intolerance

of protests even peaceful protests um there's not the same sense of outrage uh throughout much of Chinese society that also see these Trends as

being a Potential Threat to stability this may in fact be this more the success of the party's propaganda effort efforts to show that that these things

could be a threat but even if that's the case they've created an environment in which cracking down on uh both peaceful

and violent protest is seen as acceptable to to manyan society so the third area I mentioned of of the party's strategy for survival has

to do with co-optation who it recruits into the party this has been a prominent theme of elite politics uh

throughout much of the party's existence a lot of the politics during the Mau period turned down who should be recruited who should be promoted to official positions uh and that debate

has continued in more muted form but still uh in contemporary China um in asking people why do you join the

party uh what were your reasons for joining the party uh it really depends upon how old you are what cohort you

belong to uh so for uh the people who are joining the party now uh people referred to in the post 92 generation the people who came of age after

1992 uh the main reason they joined the party was it was helpful to their career uh very self-serving self-interested uh any of you who are you know know people who have joined the

party or maybe you yourself joined the party uh this seems to be the prominent reason that and people are quite open about it it's one more uh credential that you acrew in the course of many

case your college education uh Chinese colleges are the main source now of of party members that have been so for for at least a decade

um the idea that you're um join the party uh because you believe this gets truncated that only China only the party can lead sh to

Prosperity um or that you want to work for communism for younger cohorts this does not really motivate them to join the party they're doing it for the benefits that that it brings to them uh

it used to be early in the reform era that there was a certain stigma attached to being a party member and if it was known you're a party member you may have a hard time finding a job uh especially

among foreign firms uh that seems to have changed uh if you you know when you realize that Walmart who is not otherwise known as being

pro-union um allows its workers in China to be unionized uh and allows a Communist party organization to be in place in its operations in China uh you

realize that situation is is quite different what party membership means is quite different uh in contemporary China uh in some ways is it means that you've been screened you've been vetted there's

not you have no skeletons in the closet as we would put it uh in the west uh and it's just seen as that you're a good scout and and if you've got also got a good college degree and other

credentials uh party membership can in fact make it easier to get hired even by Foreign companies uh than than in the

past uh the dilemma here is is whether or not the party can trust the people that join the party now to be loyal

supporters uh in the future uh and and interviewing with uh people in charge of recruitment on college campuses this is a huge dilemma for them who can they

really who do you believe when they tell you that they really are loyal people and and they're joining for all the right reasons

um they if they guess wrong and this person then becomes a troublemaker you know they could be in trouble and so they're they're very cautious about who

they who they let in um for local officials who who have a target of promoting the economy if you surpass your target you get rewarded if

you're a party recruiter you have a hard cap if you go over your limit you get in big trouble uh because Party leaders believe the party has gotten too big uh

they want to if not shrink it at least keep it from growing quite so fast it now has over 90 million or almost 90 million members

uh and informally there's the the uh thought going around in recent years they don't want to exceed a 100 million because that just is a threshold that

they don't want to go across but it's getting closer and closer to that uh so they want to be careful about who they l in uh and make sure that uh they behave

loyally uh if you ask questions about you know who votes party members almost twice is likely to vote the non-party members uh if you ask who donates to

terrible organizations uh who volunteers to do um uh volunteer work party members again much more likely some of them might just

be good citizens uh but more commonly the party mobilizes them to demonstrate their loyalty to the party by voting by making donations by volunteering to do

unpleasant work uh so they show to other people as party members that they are doing things and setting examples uh for others to follow

um so to kind of wrap things up there's there's several different elements of conventional wisdom uh that uh these

results and others in the book uh uh look at one is that uh economic growth is the primary basis for the party's legitimacy uh in in a larger

sort of multivariant statistical analysis uh GDP levels of GDP and GDP growth have no impact on uh different ways of measuring regime support but

individual incomes do a ver individually uh strong predictors of regime support uh is how well you are doing uh

yourself uh which means as the party is slow is the economy is slowing that need not be a crisis for the party uh assuming it's a soft landing and assuming that people remain optimistic

about the future uh second of all I mentioned is the the part relies primarily through repression on staying in power uh but

also does a variety of things to promote support more popular support uh not simply uh using their heavy-handed tactics

um uh in the in the book I go into more detail about the different ways in which so Civil Society is active in the country but in more select areas often

at the periphery of things uh but nevertheless um if these types of groups can be successful and these are you know business associations uh groups that are

organized to uh support migrant workers in terms of education and health care and so on uh about uh groups that are

designed to uh provide charity relief uh in the case of of uh emergencies if these groups can be successful uh then they take some of the

pressure off of the party and the government to deliver those things so uh just as we see Civil Society being the basis of a stable democracy the same

types of groups if they're active in China could also produce stability there as well uh some more politically active ones uh that challenge the state that we normally think of as being the only

legitimate Civil Society in a country like China uh that if you're not politically motivated you're not in opposition to the state you're not truly Civil Society uh but we don't have that

same notion for groups that exist uh in other type of regimes um and lastly that uh

uh the Chinese Society has has gotten uh fed up with the party uh lost hope and its ability to govern and to reform um and

ready for democracy this was a prominent theme leading up to the 18th party Congress uh in a lot of the western coverage of China um and in fact uh

there are certainly people who are fed up with the party there are certainly people who would like to create a democratic regime tomorrow if not sooner

uh but not everybody uh is quite that uh forceful about things uh or quite that uh articulate about things

um so why does this all matter there couple different ways in which uh this this uh is of Interest not just to uh

China Specialists but but more broadly uh one is that there have been uh people looking at the prospects for regime change uh in China as well as

other authoritarian regimes and the Assumption has often been that that the alternative to an authoritarian regime is a democracy but in increasing what we see is the alternative is another

authoritarian regime often an unstable regime um and again uh this is using anecdotes for my students which is probably unfair uh but many of them look

at Russia higher level of of income lower levels of corruption they wouldn't trade their situation for Russia in a second

uh because they see Russia being so poorly governed um that uh there they feel they're much better off than than the alternative uh as people look at

what what happened in Middle East and Northern Africa after the 2011 uprisings uh again it's sort of not much

inspiration uh for them uh the debates among China Specialists about the party's future and and it's its uh endurability has been a prominent theme

uh one of the more prominent themes in the study of Chinese politics for for a couple of decades uh much of which is posed more

on uh what people would prefer to happen than on what is actually happening on the ground um and uh a lot a lot of the

uh uh my colleagues who were promoting the idea that that democracy is likely in the country is much more based upon what they would prefer to see happen in China as opposed to How likely it

actually may be uh they're not here to give the other side so I'm I'm distorting their their Viewpoint uh to make it simple um but but never this has

been an ongoing debate uh for years and and we remain a debate as long as the party stays in power I'm sure uh and

lastly the Practical significance of it uh this is of Interest not just to to Scholars and journalists but um uh in

terms of what uh especially the US government other governments do in terms of dealing with regimes that they don't

particularly like um the idea that uh some regimes are just thirsty for change uh that if you could simply get rid of the current

leaders uh a stable liberal democracy would magically appear uh this seems to be increas that used to be a very prominent theme I think less so given

the the results of the past 10 or 15 years of American foreign policy uh but nevertheless important to understand that uh the values that uh policy makers

and Scholars and perhaps journalists hold dear May me not the same ones that uh travel well in other other situations

uh so with that um we get back to the beginning and uh be happy to take your your questions or comments thank you Mary I have a lot of questions but I'll

just ask one question or questions so when you talk about the predictors of support only

and then related to that about whether or not people are voting with their pocket at longm development China one thing that I think I've seen a lot with

economists talking about inequality in China and also how people's incomes have grown a lot in the last years and a lot of that

growth is attributed to um income or wealth from Real Estate and if that's the case then I wonder if this kind of soft will actually work because it's

possible that if People's sense of income growth or wealth growth is related to real estate that could be verying in the event of some

kind the bubble is actually so I'm just wondering if you have any okay uh uh yeah two good places to start one is um besides income what else

contributes to regime support and um the positive factors would be um obviously patriotism was another another element that talked about uh the more

anti-foreign sentiments do not have a discernable impact on regime support so really they're there kind of separate types of of of values and the people who

hold them and the people who um what impact it has on on regime support um uh confustion values were very weakly tied with that in part

because um it's it's just not as systematic that their Viewpoint is not as systematically shared across society as as patriotism

uh and the fear of instability was also very strong the more that you're worried that these multiple parties uh diverse social groups public demonstrations the more that you're

worried that these things pose a threat to stability the more you support the party because you think it's the main block against those those things um

party membership is uh also a predictor but not a not a real strong one uh which I think is why the part's a little bit worried about who it lets into the into

into uh the party's new members um not very much age is age definitely is important the older you are the more you support the regime younger people

being more idealistic perhaps or more cynical or have different experiences um don't have the same level of support

that their Elders do question is that I can't answer is whether that is a life cycle issue that as they get older they will become more supportive or is it a

generational change that you know 20 years from now the overall support will be less just because the people with the most support have died off uh we'll get come back in 20 years and

and we'll answer that question uh but right now now we we can with what we have available to us um

um education didn't it's one of those curious things that if you measure education in terms of the years of education or if you measure in terms of

what's your highest degree you get different results so it's it's in that sense it's a little bit unclear exactly what is the best indicator of of

Education whether years of education or the High degree that you have um but it it's not a clear picture from that either um age may it maybe the age is wiping out

the the impact of Education because younger people tend to be better educated uh and remember this is an urban only sample so education to begin with is going to be higher than the

countryside as a whole um yeah so so I guess each of the things um those contribute to support what I mentioned

about things that we think would would really undermine support don't always do so so just being exposed to censorship doesn't affect your overall level of

regime support unless you're angry about it in which case that does have an impact so it's not just the treatment that not the exposure to censorship it's your emotional response to it that matters

um uh now your question about real estate um the question that was in the in the surveys was intentionally subjective so

we don't ask how much did you make five years ago how much did you make this year it's often difficult to really figure out what incomes are um I will

say that uh I was uh talking with some of the people involved in the China household income project survey and they they found a similar Trend that that they weren't expecting to find either

that incomes and when it was objectively measured and their very meticulous about how they measure income that incomes were continuing to rise and their last

survey was also in 2014 so I don't think it's just I don't know how many people get a large part of their income from Real Estate Investments

um just because that that may be a select group uh of people but I I don't think that by itself is driving the overall difference between uh the two

years and and the surveys yes compare Chinese nor

Korean uh I'll give you a short answer a long answer the short answer is no I can't really compare them uh in part because we know so little about the North Korean plal system

uh it's really hard to compare uh having said that the North Korean government is a great example

that you don't need any legitimacy at all to survive um and um you know I've

uh have uh some colleagues who work in Korea who've been doing interviews with people who have um immigrates from from North Korea these were people who are

prominent in the military and government and it's amazing uh uh how dependent everybody is

on the state and nobody has an incentive to challenge and nobody has an incentive to cooperate um and the real

puzzle is despite that high level of repression despite the poverty the famine the hunger and so on as far as we can tell there there have been no

opposition mov movements in the country um and yet you would expect if they have if anyone has reason to be unhappy uh it's the North Koreans but I think they're so intimidated this this is a

regime that's so successful at identifying any potential source of opposition and dealing with it very heavy-handedly uh that everybody else is

just lulled into submission um it could it is probably a much more fragile system and could collapse much more quickly uh and that's for for

China's leaders that's one of their big fears is that they recognize the situation that's going on North Korea and if it collapse they're probably going to get a huge flow of

refugees across the border into China which they don't want uh and so they're not as eager as the US Japan South Korea and putting pressure on North Korea

because they don't want that kind of implosion and they probably have a better sense of uh the likelihood of that than than other people do

chines people I guess that's corruption because people right but in Korea I don't

know not it's not transparent right how the North Korea I have no Insight on that it is it is the same black box as it is I guess

for anybody else um yes well you've indicated that less than 10% of the population belong to commun party I'd be interested to know

whether more theun party members live in urban areas and U just how people feel in general toward members of party do they advertise the fact that they are

members or would they rather conceal um it is party membership has always been much more common in the cities than in the countryside and in the reform era almost all the growth has

come in the in the cities uh there's been very little recruitment among uh in China's villages in part because the people who have the

ambition who the party would want to recruit they've migrated somewhere else and so they may recruit them as migrant workers in cities but the the party organization the countryside is is

pretty much a shambles um it is it is no longer the stigma that it used to be uh joining the party or

discussing it openly um even some are reluctant to talk about it outside of China because they realize that you know Americans May react to

them differently if they knew that they were a party member uh uh but it's it's not much of a secret um and it used to be that PE when I would ask students if

they were party members uh they'd usually kind of either just say no or or sort of kind of be evasive now the ones who are are open about it um but they

often don't have real principal reasons for joining uh one of my grad students remembers that they were just she and a bunch of her friends were sitting around the dorm one night when they were

undergrads and they decided to fill on um and she can't really say why she did it except that all her friends were doing it um the attitude in members of

the Party by non-members uh they are less um the rest of the population uh sees their incentives

being much more self-serving than even the party members themselves do um so people who are not in the party think the only reason you join the party uh is

for self-interested reasons and and most party members nowadays would agree with that um having said that though

um there's there there there's not the same sense that people who who are joined the party are necessarily the enemy they to join the enemy in some in some way or that they're tainted in some

way by their membership it is just seen as almost a neutral type of of uh membership um that's often at least within China it's

it's a little bit more murky abroad because you know on college campuses party members are organized and attend meetings and it's just but it's just not talked about very much

because many would be alarmed by that um when uh xiin ping came to DC last fall uh there were a couple of students

that were out in class that night um and it turned out the embassy had reached out inv invited them to be part of the people on the street you know clapping their hands and waving flags and the

ones who party members said yes the ones who are not came to class um so um so the short short answer is is that uh it

is not a big deal um among most the people that I've talked to about whether or not your party members espe if you're college educated the chances are you are a party member uh if you have any

position of influence in any kind of or organization uh Banks schools factories you're a party member so it's just sort

of seen as an essential credential uh to get past otherwise a very low glass ceiling yeah a couple of questions related to the data one of the arguments

that one hears often with respect to China is that the increasing prosperity of the last 35 years is essentially bought off the middle classes um such that they feel their lives constantly

improving instability but on the other hand sometimes people say they have more insecurity about their new town wealth too I was wondering if you could extrapolate from that an argument larger

argument about the cities the urban sample that you're taking your data from because the cities have in the last 20 30 years pulled away from the countryside as well so you would expect Urban residents to be more satisfied

certainly needs to be the countryside so how much does does your data reflect the fact that cities are disproportionately better off than the countryside and then

the question which is related to that is do you detect any Regional variation between say first tier cities and second tier cities or north and south your

answer okay uh the second question is easier to answer given the design of the survey which were uh prefecture level cities um and so by definition these

were the provincial capitals the largest cities uh and it was done that way in part to that's where the part has been devoting most of its attention

uh so seem to um this would be a place to see whether its strategy is working or not um the main Regional difference

was that uh cities in central China not along the coast not in the Northeast not in the Far West the center of the country uh were had the lowest levels of support now that it may be for the

reasons that you're identified they haven't seen the tangible benefits of economic growth and modernization that other regions have with the open the West

policies they may feel again left out of that Rising Prosperity uh but that area stood out as being is having lower levels of support than than other parts

of the country um for uh the first question about you know shouldn't we expect that people who were doing well

would would be satisfied and supportive um we should at the same time there's social science literature that says Rising Prosperity creates political

expectations for Change and and desire for accountability and so on um the often stated revolution of rising expectations for which there's almost no

evidence of um and so part of it was designed to kind of look at what are the issues that really animate people uh which what I didn't talk about here but but uh gets a lot of coverage of the

book are things about how people assess the environment and food safety and and issues of poverty alleviation housing and so on and there you get much

more I'd say people are more disgruntled but not really dissatisfied uh in the same way that Americans will complain about the cost of Health Care and the decline of our schools and the

environmental issues they're much worse in China but similar discussions take place there as well without necessarily seeing the solution to those problems being the

overthrow of this government the creation of a new one um uh so these people who who are living in the cities

also are seeing some of the the uh the downsides of of Rapid modernization as well with environmental de degradation

and the growing food safety scandals now more recently about um vaccines and so on so the lack of government regulation over these things uh but the desire

seems to be having the government do a better job of monitoring and regulating these things not that all hope is lost we have to start over again uh so that

may be coming down the road and that's as part of this dilemma that I mentioned that what they're doing now to try and address concerns May in the future

create expectations for even more accountability for even more public um assertiveness to influence

policy change but so for that's just speculated but not really shown yeah I'm curious about doing public opinion research in China uhuh part because also

mentioned that people are suspicious of that one that

unw would be's the St they interest ex you have shs are they doing their own uh

um believe believe it or not that question has been asked before about uh how reliable this this uh uh survey data are from China

um and I I I don't want to you know under sell it it is a huge problem uh and that's why working with reliable survey

teams who know what kind of questions will get you a predictable response um which ones people simply won't answer because it seems too sensitive or too

abstract they really can't answer it um you don't you don't have to get government permission to do survey work at the local level uh foreign Scholars

cannot be directly involved in it you have to have a a Chinese partner that actually does it they let the local governments know that they're going to be working in the area and broadly what

the topic of the survey is that's often more a a uh informal Common Sense than really getting

permission to do it um and when we go through the design the questionnaire a lot of it is is this too sensitive you know will we get in trouble will people answer it so there's

car in terms of how these things are put into the into the uh the questionnaire uh do people lie about it um uh is Kent Jennings was another

professor here for many years and and he would say that they may be lying but they're lying in ways that are predicted by social science theory so unless they know how a middle-aged woman with a

college degree should answer this question which seems a little bit on the face unlikely uh there's a certain amount of of uh degree of at least a

degree of Truth to what they're saying uh these are not there is variation and systematic variation in how people respond to things uh and we were careful

not to ask questions that we know are just off limits so in the United States every week we get a new survey about uh President Obama's approval

ratings uh how likable or unlikable Hillary and Trump and other people are you cannot ask about individual leaders uh in China it's simply off limits uh

you cannot ask about uh certain hot button issues like Tibet and uh Taiwan and Fallen gong and things like that um so you you have to steer clear of

things that you know are important but you know are also not going to get you reliable results um uh there there was a couple questions embedded in it to kind of measure

people's level of political fear um and those questions were not correlated with responses on what

might be sensitive questions um uh so recognizing that all these things can Doom The credibility of a survey uh we

tried to be careful about uh the questions the wording and so on um having said all that some people may have not been given the full and

complete honest opinions uh because just as Americans don't always give honest answers when they're asked you know would you vote

for races for president in fact they would um so but they're not irrelevant either they do contain useful information it's a question of how you use them uh and how you ask them to

begin with uh but that is for anyone doing any kind of survey work in an authoritarian regime like China's that's that's the initial question you have to pass that smell

test in order for the rest of it to have any any credibility yes a question about the Civil Society Rel to NGS I was interested in your comment that they're

highly not trusted wonder what the role of NOS were in China because I know if you were to talk to people in India about NOS it's a career line that people go into and they

can't get a job somewhere else that's one kind of conceptualization if you're in Africa and you're in Nigeria you say ngos well it's a way to avoid the government because because the government is so corrupt but I'm not

sure you know I've had a little bit of contact with NGS in China but I was what what role they seem to play and why you think they're so

um the people that I know who who really focus on ngo's in the course of their research you know frown and Nod when when they hear me say that that people

don't trust NOS in China um and the reason for it is in part because on the one hand the government

is suspicious about them and even though uh people don't automatically absorb and repeat what the government says the government has a lot of influence on how people look at things

um and the fact that these groups may not have the full blessing of the government makes people suspicious about what they're up to um uh the ones especially ones that that

get International funding for what they do even more so because the worry is that they're they're carrying water for the West instead of benefiting uh

Chinese Society and that Viewpoint is very widespread not just in China but in uh it was the case in Egypt even before the Arab uprisings it was that way

throughout uh Central Europe uh that people are worried that NOS are just the stalking horse for the CIA or something else and are just very suspicious about

what they're up to uh which is very frustrating for the for people who are trying to do uh do good uh and some of them are a

lot of people in the NGL sector in China are um there's not a lot of should we say uh professionalization of a lot of Nos and

they're not very stable they staff turn over a lot they open and close with some regularity um so you know all the are reasons for people sort of be susp suspicious about

what they're up to uh but it's not it's not unique to China that that Viewpoint seems to be shared uh you know if it wasn't for for toille telling us that this was the

basis for stable democracy I'm not sure it would necessarily seem seem that way um but we've sort of absorbed that idea that Civil Society is all things right

and good about a society um other people find that there's plenty of good reason to be suspicious about organized groups that don't have the government's

blessing yes I was intrigued by that same issue about trust I can tell you true to me from a I've been working at a business as a businessman in China for

about 15 years and businesses don't trust each other uh we we have supplier Partnerships here between customers and suppliers that work very closely and the

Chinese guys I work with just won't do it but I found another thing intriguing what you said that you looked at the comparison of trust levels at different

levels of the government from the national on down to the local and I believe you said that there was a Rel speaking higher level of trust with the upper levels and lower with local uh my

perception in the US is it's exactly the opposite that's right lots of us are delighted with our local officials and we're happy with our individual Congressional rep and yet we think

Congress is awful so it seems like it's exactly the opposite and I wonder if you can comment on that uh the reason for it is pretty straightforward in democracies we have more we can see more of what

local governments are doing we have more accountability over them and so we tend to evaluate the work that they do more especially in a very decentralized federalized system like in the United

States a lot of what happens is done at the local level and local leaders often run on blaming Washington as a way of of uh diverting attention from their own

problems uh in authoritarian regimes where you don't really have the same sense of transparency or accountability uh officials are

appointed from above not not uh with any type of of you know popular mandate uh people tend to blame them for the problems in China in particular the

central government will often announce very wonderful signing policies without providing any resources to local governments to carry them out and so people blame local governments for

either being inept or corrupt for not doing what the center promised but local leaders see these as being unfunded mandates they have no ability to to carry out um some people have argued

that the level the higher level of trust in the center is a bit like what used to be referred to as the myth of the good are that because they were so far away

they they were sort of mythical figures that you didn't they weren't you know Flesh and Blood people and so you had great trust in them if only those wise leaders would see what was

happening here surely they would fix these problems and so that creates this no notion of of high trust at the center

than is at each level less and less um and that that has been the case in every survey I've seen has been that pattern uh but not unique to China and Vietnam

is exact same pattern uh with the center being more trusted than local governments uh democracies typically local leaders are valued more than

national leaders in part has to do with how they're selected and how Society um the degree to which they can

be accountable to the society yes one more okay surve that

right right I mean that that's sort of my cop out is that given the nature the design of the survey only at urban areas and for the most part uh the land grabs

are really the outer Suburban areas or into the rural areas and so we're not capturing the people who are being most affected by it having said that it

is it's amazing to me that the Chinese government hasn't solved this problem that local governments because they are not able to the state owns the land so they can't

tax it right I pay tax on the little land that my house surrounds my house because I embly own it uh in China the government owns the land and that they

can't tax the land they can only tax they can only get revenue from it if they sell the rights to it uh and so by grabbing them away from people who

currently have the rights and reselling it to somebody else that's a key source of revenue for a lot of local governments the solution to that is to find other revenue streams for local

governments to count on uh in the absence of that it's been difficult to really resolve the issue um and it's a hugely popular issue which makes it all

the more puzzling why there hasn't been a more uh systematic effort to address the problem um for people living in the rural areas

or in the very you know what you would call exurbia far reaches where the city starts to blend into the countryside uh that is a huge source of

frustration and anger and has led to often very violent clashes as a result um for whatever reason the central government you know Wags the finger and

says you know you shouldn't do that but don't really crack down on it uh because local governments are already starved for Revenue to begin with uh rightly or

wrongly this has become one of their Source alternative sources of revenue um without sort of changing the entire

fiscal system uh they're left with they're very unpopular policy it's illegal everyone recognize it's illegal yet very widespread uh it is people have looked

at the land grab issue um one of the most interesting studies I've seen has been about how people respond to the settlement that they get from the local governments that

if you get a lump sum a one-time lump sum you tend to spend it all often in maau or somewhere else and then you come back to the government and say okay I need more money I'm out and

the government says we already gave you money you're done and then you have ongoing conflict if you get a dividend every year an an annuity of the

value of your lands so it kind of subsidizes what else you're doing to get income those people tend to be more satisfied with the outcome or more at

least more accept cep of it uh so it's not just the land grabs it's also how the local government gives its admittedly inadequate compensation to

people if it's a lump sum it tends to create more conflict if it's done as an annuity it seems to alleviate some of those concerns so they're still doing the land grabs but how they're

compensating people helps determine whether not people are dissatisfied or whether they are willing to acques in the outcome so in that sense there is some flexibility and some innovativeness

at the local level and how to how to deal with it um but uh I gu I guess that's about all all I can say about it because they were sort

of outside the scope of of this project yeah yeah I'm gonna stop you thank [Applause]

you