Organizer: Julia F. Andrews, Ohio State University
Chair: Merle Goldman, Boston University
Trends in College Student Demographics and China’s Social Transition
Vilma Seeberg, Kent State University
This paper reports on a study of enrollment in Chinese technical higher education from 1985 to 1995. After the education reforms of the 1980s, what were the trends in who attended college, what they studied, where they worked after graduation, what background factors predicted college enrollment and job variability, and what does this say about Chinese societal changes?
P.R.C. planners and World Bank analysts project the economic demand for technical higher education graduates to continue to increase exponentially. On the private side, however, the structure of the demand is changing unexpectedly. Technical-professional education may be in competition with lower-skilled labor markets in advanced economic zones.
The research design is exceptional in that a large-scale survey was conducted over two time periods by an independent scholar. The quality of the data allows logistic regression and time series analyses of factors of family background, enrollment, post-graduation employment of a stratified, random sample of students, enrolled between 1985 and 1995 (N=3,300) in 13 colleges offering technical-professional degrees throughout the P.R.C.
The study found that by 1990, a new trend in social mobility was emerging among the most privileged urban segment, who preferred lower status enrollment and higher tuition in order to guarantee staying in metropolitan areas after graduation. The rural population continued to prefer leaving the village even to higher job status back home. By 1995, social class mobility had increased dramatically, as significantly larger proportions of the student enrollment came from more marginalized population groups, and more upper status children stayed away from technical colleges.
Comparing Mass Public and Political Elite Subjective Orientations in Urban China
Jie Chen, Old Dominion University
To know the differences (or similarities) both between mass and elite attitudes toward salient sociopolitical issues and between the levels of their attitudinal consistency is important for understanding the interaction between these two groups of political actors and hence political development in such a rapidly changing society as China. Yet there have been scarcely any systematic studies comparing the political preferences and attitudinal consistency among these two groups in an urban setting of that country. Based on survey data collected from urban China, which contain identical questions asked of both mass and elite respondents, this paper investigates the degree of similarity or difference that existed in such political preferences and attitudinal consistency. The findings of this study indicate that: (1) while the two sets of political actors shared similar views on government policy performance and the role of the individual in politics, they held quite different positions on the issues concerning the regime legitimacy, reform assessment, and democratic principles; (2) while the elites and masses organized their subjective orientations to some issues similarly but to others differently, in general, the former had low attitudinal consistency relative to their counterparts in the West; and (3) such relatively low attitudinal consistency among the political elites seemed to be caused at least in part by the ongoing decay of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s grass-roots organizations. The findings have strong implications for China’s sociopolitical stability in terms of the weakness and strength of the CCP’s rule.
The Rewriting of Local History in a One-Industry Town: From Class Exploitation to Entrepreneur Endeavor
Feng Xu, Agnes Scott College
This paper seeks to understand the process of China’s economic reform and the reorganization of social groups by comparing the two major state-sponsored history-writing projects since 1949: the Four Histories Movement launched in 1956 and the history rewriting project launched in the early 1980s. It specifically looks at these issues through the optic of the writing and rewriting of local history in a one-industry town in a coastal province near Shanghai. In both projects, a unified national model was to be followed: in the former one, the historical rupture was always 1949; in the latter one, the Cultural Revolution is considered a historical watershed. In both situations, the narrative was couched in a "before and after" contrast with brightness following darkness. Local histories written during the Four Histories Movement focused on class struggle. This was very prominent in Sicheng where the focus on the silk industry readily lent itself to class analysis. But such local histories are now considered "leftist" legacies, and the priority is now economic development. Local history in Sicheng therefore is written not as a history of class struggle, but as a history of early economic strength, prosperity, and high "population quality" represented by the late imperial gentry class, recast as "entrepreneurs."
Economic reform is not simply about economic change, but also social and cultural change. State-sponsored history writing projects mold and mobilize the readers’ historical consciousness to serve China’s economic development.
The China Market and the U.S. Trade Deficit: An Historical Overview
Xin-zhu J. Chen, Bowling Green State University
There is a common belief among the American public regarding the U.S. trade deficit with China: The ever-increasing U.S. trade deficit is due to numerous restrictions imposed by the Chinese government to discourage foreign imports. Once Beijing begins practicing the market economy, the Chinese imports of American goods would increase and, as a result, the U.S. trade deficit should decline substantially, if not completely eliminated.
This paper will argue that the history of the U.S.-China trade does not render support to such a contention. From the time the first American ship, Empress of China, unloaded its first cargo of ginseng at Canton in 1784 until 1928 when the full tariff autonomy was restored to China, the American exports to China enjoyed many one-sided advantages, such as a very low tariff rate (5% ad valorem) and the duty free status accorded to several major export items, such as tobacco, wheat flour, manufactured cotton, sugar, medicine, etc.
During the 100 years after the conclusion of the first Sino-U.S. commercial treaty in 1844, American traders could freely travel to any of the more than 60 treaty ports to engage in trade with their Chinese counterparts, unmolested by the Chinese judicial authorities, thanks to the extraterritoriality. Americans in China were also protected from the unfair trade competition from the third country citizens by the Most-Favored-Nation clause contained in every major commercial treaty the United States negotiated with the Chinese government. Yet, despite such overwhelming advantages, America’s China trade continuously registered trade deficit. Even after 1928 when the Chinese government sharply increased the import tariff rate, the U.S. exports to China, except for some interval years, kept rising, only to be outstripped by even faster-increasing imports. The trade deficit became wider almost every year.
With the aid of various trade statistics, this paper will try to establish that the U.S. trade deficit with China was caused by multiple factors, the artificial trade barriers imposed by the Chinese government not being one of them. Other conditions, such as the degrees of industrialization of two countries, wars, different cultures, different living standards, and competitions from Russia, Japan, and Britain played much important roles in the issue of negative trade balance for the United States.
One Voice among Many: The New China Lobby and Sino-U.S. Relations in the 1990s
Jing Zhong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The influence of lobbies on the implementation of foreign policy is a peculiar phenomenon in American politics. In the 1950s and 1960s, the effectiveness of the pro-Chiang Kai-shek lobby nearly set the whole direction of American far Eastern policy. In the 1990s, the new pro-Mainland China lobby has received wide attention owing to the annual debate around China’s MFN renewal. This paper explores the impact of the new China lobby on the current Sino-U.S. relations through a case study. Data is collected through personal interviews with the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong’s "Door-Knockers," who annually lobby in Washington for improved Sino-U.S. relations. This paper reveals that the shift in American foreign policy after the Cold War provides a favorable atmosphere for the new China lobby: the coincidence of strategic considerations and commercial profits keeps the position of China high on the agenda of American foreign policy and makes up for the disadvantages brought about by persistent unfavorable public opinion towards China. The paper also argues that the strength of the new China lobby also lies in its role of "broker" between America and China, through which information is conveyed, expertise is displayed, and misunderstanding is reduced. Comparable to its counterpart in the 1950s and 1960s, which succeeded in relating loyalty towards the United States to pro-Chiang sentiment, the new China lobby manages to connect market entry with the American national interest, which helps to resolve the moral dilemma of American China policy in the 1990s.