Current Issue
Vol.67 No.4
December, 2024
Public Opinion Under Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign: A Typological Analysis of Corruption Perceptions
Hsin-hao Huang
Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has launched a vigorous crackdown on political corruption. In light of Xi’s extensive anti-corruption campaign, how do Chinese people perceive corruption, and how can their political psychology be understood when confronted with official corruption? From a typological perspective, this study combines two public subjective assessments—”the perceived prevalence of corruption” and “the perceived risk of engaging in corruption”—to examine how Chinese citizens perceive corruption amid the government’s vigorous anti-corruption efforts. The empirical data for this analysis are drawn from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey conducted in China. The study’s
findings reveal that while the majority of the public perceives official corruption as a serious issue, they also view corrupt behavior among officials as highrisk. As anticipated, these two aspects represent independent and distinct subjective assessments. Also, perceptions of corruption vary little across social backgrounds, indicating broad public acknowledgment of the issue in China. For individuals identifying as middle or upper class, these perceptions are more strongly shaped by the government’s anti-corruption campaign. Empirical analysis confirms that people who frequently read newspapers are more likely to view official corruption as high-risk. Additionally, institutional confidence and satisfaction with the political system, as expected, serve as key factors distinguishing between high and low corruption risk assessments. These findings align with the study’s proposed concept of “repairing legitimacy.” This article contributes to the existing literature on Chinese public perceptions of corruption and provides valuable insights into discussions on China’s authoritarian resilience.
Keywords:Xi Jinping, corruption perception, perceived corruption prevalence, perceived corruption risk, World Values Survey
Analyzing Developments of Pinduoduo and Temu and Their Coping Responses to the Regulatory Measures of China and U.S. Through a Political Economic Perspective
Chiu-wan Liu ;Chieh-yu Yang
Pinduoduo was founded in 2015, and it only took a handful of years for the Pinduoduo Platform to become the third largest e-commerce platform in China, and in 2018, Pinduoduo launched an IPO in Nasdaq. In 2023, the growth rate of annual revenues of Pinduoduo achieved almost 90 percent, while the growth rates of the two larger e-commerce platforms, Alibaba and Jindong, were both less than 10 percent. This is likely to be a consequence of China’s strengthened regulatory measures against monopolistic platform enterprises that were taken in October 2020 and July 2023, which was the period that was defined by the regulators as an ‘intense regulatory period’. In addition, established in 2022, Temu only took one year to achieve 5.1 million active users per month. The overarching research question of this paper is: Why did the ‘intense regulatory measures’ impact Pinduoduo less as a market latecomer? Compared to TikTok which has been pressured by the U.S. regulators into terminating the ties with its Beijing-headquartered parent company ByteDance, why has Temu not been under particular scrutiny by the US regulators? How has Pinduoduo coped with the regulations? This research proposes a three-dimensional analytical framework, including: funding structure, technological availability, and policy context to analyze how Pinduoduo has coped with the regulatory frameworks of China and U.S., as well as to flesh out the corporate agency of Pinduoduo as a latecomer platform business. This paper argues that Pinduoduo has a good grasp of the dynamic regulatory contexts of China and U.S., and it has implemented relatively successful coping measures, the tailored corporate and shareholding arrangements, as well as the technological maturity of Pinduoduo Platform and Temu are key to this relative success.
Keywords:Pinduoduo, Temu, Market Latecomer, Regulatory Framework, Agency of Corporations
A Preliminary Study on the Relationship Between the Provincial-Level United Front Work Departments of the Communist Party of China and the Taiwan Affairs Offices (2006-2023): Case Studies on the Operations of Provincial-Level Taiwan Affairs Offices and the Political Mobility of Their Directors
Ying-chao Yang
This paper analyzes the backgrounds of three recent directors and the operations of provincial-level Taiwan Affairs Offices (TAOs) in the PRC to argue that most TAOs are not affiliated with the United Front Work Departments (UFWDs). In the past, most analyses assumed that TAOs were in a weak position in their relationship with the UFWDs. The 2018 reforms of party and state institutions strengthened the view that the TAOs were highly subordinate to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the UFWDs. There are even rumors that local TAOs have been included in the “Great United Front.” However, research on fragmented authoritarianism and central-local relations argues that institutions have their own autonomy. Therefore, this paper investigates the backgrounds of 85 provincial-level TAO directors and the operations of some TAOs. It argues that although the CPC’s party and government reforms emphasized the recentralization of power in recent years, the number of replacements for TAO directors around 2018 has not been significant. Furthermore, the backgrounds of new TAO directors remain diverse, and Taiwan-related affairs in the provinces are still managed by the TAOs. Therefore, at the provincial level, TAOs still maintain relative autonomy from the UFWDs
Keywords:Grand United Front Work, Taiwan Affairs Office, Fragmented Authoritarianism, Integrated Fragmentation, United Front Work Department
How to Explain the Policy Changes During the Xi Jinping Era?
Book Review：Esarey, Ashley, and Han, Rongbin (Eds.). (2024). The Xi Jinping Effect. University of Washington Press.
Wen-hsuan Tsai