What kind of role can the middle class play in potential democratization in such an undemocratic, late developing country as China? To answer this profound political as well as theoretical question, Jie Chen explores attitudinal and behavioral orientation of China's new middle class to democracy and democratization. Chen's work is based on a unique set of data collected from a probability-sample survey and in-depth interviews of residents in three major Chinese cities, Beijing, Chengdu and Xi'an--each of which represents a distinct level of economic development in urban China-in 2007 and 2008. The empirical findings derived from this data set confirm that (1) compared to other social classes, particularly lower classes, the new Chinese middle class-especially those employed in the state apparatus-tends to be more supportive of the current Party-state but less supportive of democratic values and institutions; (2) the new middle class's attitudes toward democracy may be accounted for by this class's close ideational and institutional ties with the state, and its perceived socioeconomic wellbeing, among other factors; (3) the lack of support for democracy among the middle class tends to cause this social class to act in favor of the current state but in opposition to democratic changes.  The most important political implication is that while China's middle class is not likely to serve as the harbinger of democracy now, its current attitudes toward democracy may change in the future. Such a crucial shift in the middle class's orientation toward democracy can take place, especially when its dependence on the Party-state decreases and perception of its own social and economic statuses turns pessimistic. The key theoretical implication from the findings suggests that the attitudinal and behavioral orientations of the middle class-as a whole and as a part-toward democratic change in late developing countries are contingent upon its relationship with the incumbent state and its perceived social/economic wellbeing, and the middle class's support for democracy in these countries is far from inevitable.

A Middle Class Without Democracy: Economic Growth and the Prospects for Democratization in China

Chen, Jie

History

Oxford University Press

This book provides an alternative analytical approach to the study of China's political changes since the Cultural Revolution, which treats those changes as a transition from totalitarianism to authoritarianism. While depicting important political-economic events, it focuses on the changes in such major sociopolitical factors as the people's attitude toward the regime, government policy, the ruling methods of the regime, and the interrelationships among them. Based on the analyses of these factors, the book also predicts the future of the current Communist regime in terms of the challenges it will face and its ability to meet them.

China Since the Cultural Revolution: From Totalitarianism to Authoritarianism

Deng, Peng

Asia

Praeger

Medical Product Safety Evaluation (Chapman & Hall/CRC Biostatistics Series)

Science & Math

Mathematics

Routledge

Model-based fault detection and isolation requires a mathematical model of the system behaviour. Modelling is important and can be difficult because of the complexity of the monitored system and its control architecture. The authors use bond-graph modelling, a unified multi-energy domain modelling method, to build dynamic models of process engineering systems by composing hierarchically arranged sub-models of various commonly encountered process engineering devices. The structural and causal properties of bond-graph models are exploited for supervisory systems design. The structural properties of a system, necessary for process control, are elegantly derived from bond-graph models by following the simple algorithms presented here. Additionally, structural analysis of the model augmented with available instrumentation indicates directly whether it is possible to detect and/or isolate faults in some specific sub-space of the process. Such analysis aids in the design and resource optimiza

Control Oriented System Identification: An H∞ Approach

Gu, Guoxiang

History & Philosophy

Wiley-Interscience

Jie Chen and Bruce J. Dickson draw on extensive fieldwork as they explore the extent to which China’s private sector supports democracy, surveying more than 2,000 entrepreneurs in five coastal provinces with over 70 percent of China’s private enterprises. The authors examine who the private entrepreneurs are, how the party-state shapes this group, and what their relationship to the state is. China’s entrepreneurs are closely tied to the state through political and financial relationships, and these ties shape their views toward democracy. While most entrepreneurs favor multi-candidate elections under the current one-party system, they do not support a system characterized by multi-party competition and political liberties, including the right to demonstrate. The key to regime support lies in the capitalists’ political beliefs and their assessment of the government’s policy performance. China’s capitalists tend to be conservative and status-quo oriented, not likely to serve as agents of democratization. This is a valuable contribution not only to the debates over the prospects for democracy in China but also to understanding the process of democratization around the globe.

Allies of the State: China's Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change

Business & Money

Dickson, Bruce J.

Economics

Harvard University Press

Popular Political Support in Urban China

Has the current political system in the People's Republic of China lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese public? On the basis of three carefully drawn surveys of Beijing residents between 1995 and 1999, the author finds that diffuse support for the current political system―based on attitudes toward institutions and values―remains strong, at least among city-dwellers, though it is gradually declining. Specific support for current political authorities, as measured by evaluations of their performance in major policy domains, is much weaker, with many citizens evaluating the authorities' performance as mediocre. In analyzing the longitudinal data presented here, the author finds that the same set of key sociodemographic attributes and sociopolitical orientations variably influence citizens' attitudes toward the political system and their evaluations of leaders' performance. Further, the study shows that citizens' attitudes toward the system, on the one hand, and their evaluation of incumbents' performance on the other, have different impacts on forms of political participation, such as voting and contacting authorities.

Stanford University Press

Has the current political system in the People's Republic of China lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese public? On the basis of three carefully drawn surveys of Beijing residents between 1995 and 1999, the author finds that diffuse support for the current political system―based on attitudes toward institutions and values―remains strong, at least among city-dwellers, though it is gradually declining. Specific support for current political authorities, as measured by evaluations of their performance in major policy domains, is much weaker, with many citizens evaluating the authorities' performance as mediocre. In analyzing the longitudinal data presented here, the author finds that the same set of key sociodemographic attributes and sociopolitical orientations variably influence citizens' attitudes toward the political system and their evaluations of leaders' performance. Further, the study shows that citizens' attitudes toward the system, on the one hand, and their evaluation of incumbents' performance on the other, have different impacts on forms of political participation, such as voting and contacting authorities.

Stability of Time-Delay Systems (Control Engineering)

This book is a self-contained presentation of the background and progress of the study of time-delay systems, a subject with broad applications to a number of areas.

Computers & Technology

Gu, Keqin

Kharitonov, Vladimir L.

Computer Science

Birkhauser

This revised and expanded second edition is an in-depth study of the change point problem from a general point of view, as well as a further examination of change point analysis of the most commonly used statistical models. Change point problems are encountered in such disciplines as economics, finance, medicine, psychology, signal processing, and geology, to mention only several. More recently, change point analysis has been found in extensive applications related to analyzing biomedical imaging data and gene expression data. Extensive examples throughout the text emphasize key concepts and different methodologies used. New examples of change point analysis in modern molecular biology and other fields such as finance and air traffic control have been added to this second edition.

Parametric Statistical Change Point Analysis: With Applications to Genetics, Medicine, and Finance

Gupta, Arjun K.

Education & Reference

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