Editorial BoardRiyun Cong (China University of Political Science and Law)

Yawei Liu (The China Research Center)

Mu Qiao (Beijing Foreign Studies University)

Zhe Sun (Tsinghua University)

Xiaojin Zhang (Tsinghua University)

Shukai Zhao(Development Research Center of the State Council)

Editor-in-ChiefYawei Liu

Deputy Editor-in-ChiefJustine Zheng Ren

Executive Editors for this issueYawei Liu, Justine Zheng Ren

Contents

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Editorial Notes

Sino-US DialogueZhe Sun — How Beautiful Is America: An Assessment of China's American Studies

Yawei Liu — The Meaning of China's Exceptionalism: The China Model According to Americans

Mei Wang — Enduring Regrets: Obama's Healthcare Reform

Ben Xu — When Elitism Meets Citizen Consciousness: Liberal Arts Education in the United States

World AffairsKejin Zhao — The Confusion of Seeking Hegemony: The Political Motivations of Obama's Afghanistan Policy Shift

Roberto Foa — From Brussels to Beijing: Toward a Mature EU-China Partnership

Yihua Wang — The Headscarf, Twitter and Students: Iran in 1979 and 2009

Zheping Xie — New Faces and New Ideas: Interpreting China's Efforts to Be Elected to High Offices in UN Agencies

Chinese Labor in the World FactoryZicun Liang — Body Politics of the Chinese Workers: Rapid Economic Growth and Rapidly Deteriorating Bodies

Yuhua Guo — Expert Comments: What Does the Shenzhen Pneumoconiosis-Gate Tell Us?

Xiaomin Yu — Industrial Citizenship for Chinese Workers: Reforming the Migrant Labor System

Yukuan Guo — The Second Generation of Immigrants: A Survey of the Children of Migrant Workers in Beijing and Shanghai

Mass Media and Modern SocietyJiang Zhan — A Law for the Mass Media and China's Quest for Democratization

Yongzheng Wei — International Precedents and China's Micro-Level Law for News Reporters

Lin Wu — Tolerance and Rule of Law: Building a Foundation for Citizens' Freedom of Speech

Democracy and Its MeaningRiyun Cong — Is Democracy Equivalent to the Politics of Commoners

Sitao Song — The More Democratic the Better? Westerners' Reflections on Populist Democracy

Dezhi Tong — Scoring Democracy: Research of the Democracy Index and Its Meaning for Western Scholars

Theory WatchNa Hao — The Theory of “Involution” and its Popularity in China

Justine Zheng Ren — Clientelism and Local Authoritarian Rule

Overseas China StudiesXinsong Wang — From Elections to Governance: Overseas Research of China's Local Politics

Think Tank WatchSean Ding — The Story of the Brookings Institution

Book ReviewFei-Ling Wang — The Rise of China and Its Interpretations

Hsin Wang — What Is the Message from Juan Linz?

English Abstracts

Instructions for Contributors

International

Outlook

East-West

Exchange

China

Observation

2010, Issue.1, No.1

of Liberal art colleges only accounts for a very small percentage of American college students. In this reconfigured education environment, does liberal art education still exist? Will the United States survive without such an elitist education?

Obama campaigned on the promise to end the war in Iraq and to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, too. Months after he moved into the Oval Office, Obama found out that the war mess he has inherited from President Bush could easily devour him. After a marathon deliberation and consulting process, President Obama made the

diplomacy. The author believes that American Studies should come to the forefront in international studies, which will benefit China in better dealing with its relationship with the US and creating an amiable international milieu for China's modernization and unification project.

Americans always believe they are a chosen group of people whose mission is to build a city upon a hill. They also believe it is American exceptionalism that has made the United States a superpower in the world. When Chinese began to declare that China's way of development is also unique and exceptional, Americans are baffled, confused and even angry. This article attempts to examine the American perception of the China model as it is increaslingly becoming a dynamic factor in US-China relationship. It also tries to highlight the belief that it is too early and too premature for Chinese scholar to compete with Americans on who are more exceptional.

The Healthcare Reform Plan under Obama's administration proposed to restructure the US healthcare system via a $1000 billion investment over the next ten year, which aims to extend coverage and reduce cost. The dominance of market in the US healthcare market has caused: (1) a much higher public expenditure on healthcare than other OECD member countries; (2) a healthcare coverage with 45 million people left outside; (3) a heavier financial burden on the government than expenditure on education and military defense; (4) an unfavorable milieu for small and medium enterprises to compete owning to the healthcare system's predominant reliance on employers to pay; (5) unequal distribution of medical welfare under which a few beneficiaries relish most benefits; (6) low operational efficiency resulting in lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than many developed counties. Were Obama's reform to succeed, it would be an historic

achievement that non president since Theodore Roosevelt was able to accomplish. It is interesting to notice that while the American effort to reform its healthcare system is a contest of will, skill and sheer determination filled with suspense, partisan fight and paranoia, China's own reform involves not much debate and very little transparency. Readers certainly will wonder which approach is better: the American way of much debate or the Chinese way of only decision.

Ben Xu is a professor at St. Mary's College in California and he is in a good position to inform Chinese readers what liberal art education means in the United States. As Leo Strauss sees it liberal art education is designed to produce great men who will become pillars of the American civilization. However, many factors have caused this tradition to come to a stop. Social movements have diversified American liberal art education's curriculum. Enrollment

5

The Meaning of China's Exceptionalism: The China Model According to AmericansDr. Yawei Liu, Director of Carter Center China Program

Enduring Regrets: Obama's Healthcare Reform Mei Wang, Assistant Professor, Beijing Administrative College

When Elitism Meets Citizen Consciousness: Liberal Arts Education in the United States Professor Ben Xu, Department of English, St Mary's College

of California

The Confusion of Seeking Hegemony: The Political Motivations of Obama's Afghanistan Policy ShiftDr. Kejin Zhao, Associate Professor, Institute of International

Studies, Tsinghua University

World Affagirs

Sun Zhe studied America in the United States. He returned to China to teach and research America. He wants to examine the status of China's American studies and has found extensive systemic and structural weakness in China's efforts to gain a better understanding of America. His seminal study will be published here in three segments.

This section (the first part of his study) can be regarded as China's American Studies scholars' ambitious research agenda for the next thirty years. The author outlines the agenda from the perspective that an ever changing China poses the biggest challenge to the field of American studies. He proposes three sub-challenges and eight research problems in response. Three sub-challenges are: 1. How to understand American democracy and to what extent recognize and actively learn from American domestic practices of democracy; 2. How to deepen our research on special topics of contemporary American republican regime; and 3. How to correctly assess American diplomatic trend and understand American logic in dealing with other countries. The Eight problems identified by Sun are: 1. Systematically review American scholars' research on American civilization and understand the history and methodological development of American Studies; 2. Deepen our knowledge of the dynamics between US decision-making mechanism and its decision makers, and scientifically analyze a series of important topics including: the expansion of the power of the president, the role of Congress in decision making, dynamics between multi-level agents (the federation, the state, parties, and interest groups), US political reform etc.; 3. Change the status quo that we have little knowledge of changes in US political geography, especially details of its fifty states; 4. Intensely analyze special problems that are highlighted in American domestic debates; 5. Develop research on the relationship between American politics and market, and explore the internal logic of American wealth and democracy; 6. Strengthen study on American election reform and political marketing; 7. Grasp how mass media and public participation influence American politics and diplomacy; 8. Actively study the goals, strategies and measures that the US is advocating for transitional diplomacy and public

International Outlook

How Beautiful Is America: An Assessment of China's American Studies ProgramsProfessor Zhe Sun, Director, Institute of International Studies,

Tsinghua University

Sino-US Dialogue

The rise of China is indeed exhilarating but the backbone of China's rise is in a very sorry state. Chinese workers have deteriorating bodies and no access to political participation. While thye have turned China into the world's manufacturing base, they are suffering from all sorts of occupational diseases. Liang's article describes how workers in Shenzhen are tortured by one particular occupational disease and its physical, emotional and economic toll on the workers themselves and their family members. For the body to be healthy workers must have access to political participation. The absence of political rights makes it impossible for thr workers for force either state or private business entities to respect their body and mind. This is a political issue that has huge health implications to the hgundreds of millions of Chinese workers.

Professor Guo is trying to draw lessons from the tragic story as told by Zicun Liang. In her analysis, at the era of globalization when capital and power cannot be checked, what the labor is forced to sell is not just its productive force but also its rights, including right to life and health. Guo urges readers to pose this question: are the rights to life and health sacred and off the limits for deprevation? If these rights are taken aways, are we one of the robbers? “When we enter an office building, a

Not until 2005 did China start to partake in competition for high offices in UN agencies, though it was readmitted to the UN since 1972. From 2005 to 2009, China made the historic breakthrough in sequentially winning over elections in four UN agencies. Chinese candidates were respectively elected as Chairman of UNESCO's Executive Board, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Deputy Secretary-General at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This paper compares the electoral rules in the four organizations and background information of the four Chinese candidates in order to analyze the strategies China took and the motivations of the Chinese candidates against the backdrop of China's foreign affairs history. One commonality of the four competitions is explicit endorsement of the Chinese Government and utmost support via diplomatic mobilization. Combined with the convening of the China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2006 and the launch of China-US Strategic Dialogue, China's engagement in high office competition signals a significant shift in its foreign and security policy – from “hide our capacities and bide our time; and never claim leadership” in the era of Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin's “new security concept”. Obviously, China has consciously changed its role in international organizations from an adaptive and instrumental actor to a more active speaker and rule maker.

department store, a classroom or our apartment, please think for a second of this question.”

China's unprecendented economic reform has also led to unprecdecented dislocation. There are more uprooted migrant workers in China than in any other nations in the world. Xiaomin Yu has been in the field of social survey and life history and she wants to tell the story of the silent unrooted noncitizens. This is the same category of people who are the main character in Zicun Liang's article. In her descrption of the migrant labor regime, there are two glaring missing parts. First, like their urban counterparts, migrant workers do not have much political rights. Unlike their urban counterparts, migrant workers are not entitled to social benefits such as access to healthcare, education and housing. It will be a daunting challenge for the Chinese government to fix this problem. In a more perfect nation, Chinese migrant workers should be guaranteed the following rights: a more accessible and portable social security net, full representation in trade unions, and minimum wage. These are things most industrial nations have already installed a long time ago but for China there is still a long way to go.

Dr. Guo's article moves beyond the tragic work and life experience of China's migrant workers and tries to shed light on the life of their children. It is a neat and informative analysis of a survey that was conducted in Beijing and Shanghai in 2009. It is interesting for Guo to compare the children of migrant workers in Beijing and Shanghai to those in Paris who rioted n 2005. Guo acknowledges that the living conditions for the

Chinese Labor in the

World Factory

Body Politics of the Chinese Worker: Rapid Economic Growth and Rapidly Deteriorating BodiesZicun Liang, Project Investigator, “The Rights and Welfare of

Rural Migrant Workers in Construction Industry” (sponsored by

Peking University and Tsinghua University students)

New Faces and New Ideas: Interpreting China's Efforts to Be Elected to High Offices in UN Agencies Dr. Zheping Xie, Assistant Professor, Tsinghua University

China Observationdecision to launch a troop surge in Afghanistan to the chagrin of his Party and his supporters. Dr. Zhao's article is an attempt to highlight the political motivations behind the slow but momentous decision. He sees Obama's decision not just as a measure to defeat terrorists but to sustain America's hegemonic control.

The past decade has seen a remarkable blossoming of Sino-European ties, with bilateral trade having grown exponentially, and the European Union surpassing the United States as China's largest trading partner. Yet, over the past year, distrust and disappointment have set in, with Chinese diplomats frustrated by the 'talking shop' nature of their EU meetings, and European diplomats complaining of cynicism from the Chinese. So is this the beginning of the end of the EU-China partnership, or merely the end of the beginning? This article argues for a rapprochement over the coming years, due to the fact that the EU and China have no spheres of geostrategic contestation, and mutually reinforcing economic interests, as China requires European technology transfer and European states require Chinese purchase of sovereign debt. However there remain a number of diplomatic roadblocks, including an escalation of trade disputes, stalled economic reforms in Beijing, and the ongoing EU arms embargo. The coming decade is most likely to see the emergence of a more pragmatic EU-China relationship, with each side rationally evaluating its long-run strategic interest in the other.

In 1979, Iran was headache for the United States. Its revolution led to the overthrow of the Shah, the occupation of the US Embassy in Teheran and the humiliating defeat of Jimmy Carter by Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in the American presidential election in 1980. In 2009, Iran is the headache for the entire world. It suppresses domestic dissent; it defies international outrage against its nuclear program; it racks up huge profits from oil production. When you look at the factors that led to the revolution in 1979, they all seem to be in place in Iran today but the “Green Revolution” has yet to destabilize the government that has been under the control the Mullahs but increasingly being manipulated by the military. Will headscarf, twitter and students accelerate the pace of a downfall of a suppressive regime? Yihua Wang tells this fascinating story with insights and details.

Fom Brussels to Beijing: Toward a Mature EU-China PartnershipRoberto Foa, PhD Student, Department of Government,

Harvard University

The Headscarf, Twitter and Sgtudents: Iran in 1979 and 2009Yihua Wang, a freelancer and editor working for China Election

and Governance

Expert Comments: What Does the Shenzhen Lung-gate Incident Tell Us?Professor Yuhua Guo, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua

University

Industrial Citizenship for Chinese Workers: Reforming the Migrant Labor SystemDr. Xiaomin Yu, Assistant Professor, School of Social

Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University

The Second Generation of Immigrants: A Survey of the Children of Migrant Workers in Beijing and ShanghaiDr. Yukuan Guo, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute of Economics,

Tsinghua University

Chinese children are far worse than that of their French counterparts but they will never pose a serious threat to the stability of the Chinese society. He believes that this second generation of immigrants in China's cities will grow up to be new citizens, responsive, responsible and productive. This is a finding that cannot be fully supported by the survey result but a hope that cannot become reality unless Chinese governments at all levels introduce meaningful reform measures as is suggested by Xiaomin Yu in her paper.

This article introduces basic features of modern mass media law and the status quo of China's mass media legislation. The author outlines three features of modern mass media law according to international consensus: 1. Esteem protecting freedom of speech as the fundamental goal; 2. Set up detailed standards to assess the justification of restraining the right of information dissemination; 3. Carry on elastic assessment of the behavior of disseminating information. China's legislation has made substantial improvement during the course of thirty-year reform. Three stages can be identified in terms of legislative development: the 1st stage (1978-1992 the 14th CCP National Congress) – the restoration and rebuilding of China's legislative system and the establishment of the authority of law; the 2nd stage (1992-2002 the 16th CCP National Congress) – the enactment and promulgation of a series of important laws and regulations in regulating and protecting market economy; the 3rd stage (2002 to now) – the formation of a legal system. Compared to the overall progress in legislation, however, China's mass media laws remain underdeveloped. With relevant regulations dispersing in civil, commercial, economic and administrative laws and regulations, the lack of specially enacted laws has resulted in arbitrary administration that impedes the healthy development of mass media in China. With The UN International Convention for Civil Rights and Political Rights taking effect soon, it is worth paying attention whether legislation on mass media will enter the legislative plan of the National People's Congress.

China General Administration of Press and Publication promulgated its new Measures for the Administration of Press Cards on 24-Aug-2009 which took effect on 15-Oct-2009. Although this document is only a departmental regulation lying at the lowest rank of China's legislative system, the new measures made substantial expansion of regulative power beyond administrating application and issue of press card, including defining qualification of news reporters, the passage to acquire such qualification, the rights and duties of news reporters, the administration of news reporters, and punishment imposed upon violation of the regulation. The key provisions that will have material influence include: (1) Set press card as an explicit necessary condition for being a news reporter; (2) Give exclusive permission to news reporters for news coverage activities and therefore excluding “citizen news reporter”, “independent news reporter” from legal status; (3) Re-categorize news reporters' rights (such as right to interview, right to criticize, right to comment, right to publish) stipulated in the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010) to corporate rights attached to news agencies; (4) Add provisions on legal responsibilities of news reporters. As the enactment of the new measures took place only several months ago, it requires further facts to observe its influences on rule of laws.

Since 2006, the idea of protecting citizens' right of expression has been frequently cited and publicized in official documents. Nevertheless in practice over a dozen of cases have been exposed to public that citizens were accused for free expression. It necessitates effectively protecting citizens' right of expression in order to elevate the quality of citizens' participation in public affairs and reduce frequency of mass incidents. This paper argues that tolerance and rule of law are the dual buttress for protecting right of expression. We can borrow experience and practices in developed countries to handle cases involving free expression, which should be deliberated on such factors as actual malice, public figure, clear and present danger and on the principle that only a legally prescribed punishment can be meted out for a specified crime as well as John Rawls's conception of constitutional crisis. In order to push for democratization in China, restraint on freedom of speech shall be minimized.

Mass Media

and Modern Society

A Law for the Mass Media and China's Quest for DemocratizationProfessor Jiang Zhan, Centre for International Communication

Studies, Beijing Foreign Study University

International Precedents and China's Micro-Level Law for News ReportersProfessor Yongzheng Wei, Department of Journalism and

Communication, Hong Kong Shue Yan University

Tolerance and Rule of Law: Building a Foundation for Citizens' Freedom of SpeechDr. Lin Wu, Assistant Professor, Department of Culture and

Communication, China Institute of Industrial Relations

As one of the most eminent scholars in China on the theory of democracy, Professor Cong tackles two fundmental issues in this article: 1) who are the people? and 2) how do people govern? Through examining the evolution of the meaning of people, he concludes that different interpretation of what constitutes people eventually lead t different system of governance. Unlike many scholars today, Professor Cong does not believe Western democracies are inching toward oligarchy or rule by money laundering finaciers. He sees popularization of democracy as a trend. There is a fragementation of the old representative democracy. Law-making and decision-making are now increasingly being influenced by direct democracy, indirect demoracy, participatory democracy, electronic democracy, deliberative democracy. While it is exhilarating to see new forms of democracy gaining force, the old banlance of elite and commoners are fastly disappearing. When elite loses its independence or govern in accordance with populist impulses, it may lead to a new kind of tyranny.

Sitao Song's article is a follow up to Professor Cong's article in introducing Westerners' view of populist democracy. According to Song, Western scholars use mass psychology as a tool to dissect populist democracy and identify four peculiar characteristics: 1) disappearance of independent pernality, 2) irrational physchological and behavioral acts, 3) double moral

character and 4) subjectivity to charisma and authoritarian rule. There is only a short distance between polulist democracy and tyranny of the majority. At the era when democracy seems to be inevitable, it is extremely important to maintain a clear perspective on populist democracy.

While there were only 5 democratic countries in the world in 1831 when de Tocqueville visited America, today there are only less than 5 countries that officially don't recognize democracy, with more and more countries making the transition to real democracy. What however are the standards to assess democracy? How to compare the degree of democracy and evaluate the differences between democratic countries? How to differentiate the differences between authoritarian countries? This article is an introduction to democracy index developed by Western political scientists. It covers in details Keith Jaggers and Ted R. Gurr's Polity III project, Robert Dahl's procedural democracy, Tatu Venhanan's democracy index, The Economist's democracy distribution and categorization charts. It also dabbles in democracy index of the Freedom House, the Polyarchy Index proposed by Coppedge and Reinicke in 1988 and 1991, Gasiorowski's Political Regime Change Index in 1996, and the 2008 democracy assessment system of Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz studied rice production in

East-West Exchange

Democracy

and Its Meaning

Is Democracy Equivalent to the Politics of Commoners?Professor Riyun Cong, School of Politics and Public

Administration, China University of Political Science and Law Dr. Dezhi Tong, Associate Professor, School of Politics and

Administration, Tianjin Normal University

Scoring Democracy: Research of the Democracy Index and Its Meaning for Western Scholars

The More Democratic the Better? Westerners' Reflections on Populist DemocracySitao Song, PhD Student, School of Politics and Public

Administration, China University of Political Science and Law

Java in the 1950s. He labeled Indonesians' unique way of massisve increase of labor on limited land as “agricultural involution”. Philip C. Huang borrowed it to define China's traditional agricultural production mode characterized by development of no growth. Prasenjit Duara then applied it to the unique governance structure of formal and informal institutions in China. As a result, a new label was invented—“political involution”. It has been used to define China's expansion without revenues. Once introduced into China, it has become a popular tool that has been used almost indiscrimately to interpret all Chinese political and social problems that have delayed China's quest for modernity. While using a Western theory as a master key to unlock China's black box of unending crises is not bad it has also created an unhealthy academic superstition that is prohibiting a productive growth of China's own social science theories.

To nations that are going through democratic transition, to learn as much about developed democracies as possible is as important as accumulating knowledge on nations whose transition toward democracy is less perfect. In those less perfect

transitions, one of the most notorious models is called “clientelism and local authroitrarian rule”. In overlapping political entities, local control is oftentimes seized by a few oligarchies. Many scholars attribute this phenomenon to the fact that Asian cultural is intrisincally anti-democracy. Others say it is because local strong men have kidnapped the state. Both are misleading conclusions. The author tries to argue in her article that 1) clientelism is not unique to Asian culture; 2) monopoly of resources by local strong men has not fully emerged until after strong and centrally controlled nation state has emerged; and 3) clietelism is not only an unequal exchange relationship among individuals but also an exploitation machine that ships resources upwards. Clientelism is a way of social and political control, a mobilization method that uses the strategy of “divide and conquer”. Manipulation of rare resources, use of violence and symbols and forming alliance with the central government are what has made clientelism work.

The author reflects overseas research of China's local politics and outlines the alterations of research agendas in the field over the past three decades. The installation of local elections in rural China in 1987 attracted overseas academics' overwhelming attention and produced many a high-quality papers in late 1990s. The connotation of this academic fever is apparent: Will village elections encourage higher level elections and spur democratization? However, reality often reads in a different way. Seeing local elections in the grip of local governments and party organs, watching rampant vote buying and other forms of electoral injustice, and observing the power and authority of village party secretary rarely declining, more and more scholars turned their eyes from elections to governance in the awareness that the link between elections and democratization in China was too fragile. On the new research agenda has been the relationship between village elections and provision of public goods, between elections and allocation of collective resources. Some scholars even went beyond formal electoral institutions to look at the effects of such informal institutions as clans, temples and communities on the provision of public goods. The reconfiguration of political and social realities again threats the red-hot academic fruits. With the erosion and atomization of rural communities, where are scholars of China's local politics heading for this time?

Clientelism and Local Authoritarian RuleJustine Zheng Ren, PhD Student, Department of Government,

London School of Economics and Political Science

Dr. Xinsong Wang, Assistant Professor, School of Social

Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University

From Elections to Governance: Overseas Research of China's Local Politics

Overseas China Studies

Theory Watch

Na Hao, PhD Student, School of International Relations and

Public Affairs, Fudan University

The Theory of Involution and China