Researchers (in the West) pinned down a long time ago the business of knowing what ‘type’ you are and then inferring political (and all sorts of other, social, religious and etc.) leanings.
Nearly all of that work though has been conducted in Western democracies and Xiaoxiao Shen, a doctoral student at Princeton University, wondered if something similar could be attempted in China to explain support for the CCP? I.e. could a ‘Chinese character’ be examined to draw out the links between that and political support for the incumbent regime?
[I thought this work especially pertinent in light of China’s COVID response which, as best I can tell, is being carried out with the widespread support of its citizenry but is baffling many. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m a bit queasy about fingering any sort of ‘National Character’ anywhere so what follows is a brief summary of the paper and in no way reflects personal views. Well, the bit at the end does.]
The work concludes, after a large survey:
- Survey respondents [All] exhibited strong social-adjustive and ego-defensive needs (the need to fit-in and and a desire to maintain ‘face’).
- The social-adjustive needs seemed to correlate with regime support. Which, it’s noted, is how you’d expect an autocracy to work.
- Party Members stood out in particular as being less interested in self expression, having a stronger need for social approval and higher self esteem than other survey takers. That seems to be because Party Members get the most of out the system.
Where the work comes up short in my opinion is in not addressing the chicken/egg issue of whether ‘character’ attitudes have helped shaped China’s system of government or China’s current system of government, a relatively new experiment, has largely shaped societal attitudes?
At this point academics like to sign off with a short homily about a need for further study and that’s how this paper concludes.
I think there’s something here in terms of how different societies respond to certain arrangements but the work glances off the target, IMHO, in terms of leaving the cause-effect nexus issue so vaguely addressed.
If you’d like to read the work in full you’ll find it via this link Explaining Government Support in China.
Happy Sunday.