Conceptions of Democracy in China: New Evidence from the Structural Topic Model

• In Event: Attitudes towards, and Support for, Democracy: Global Perspectives

Abstract

This article investigates popular conceptions of democracy and its underlying factors in China. Democratic conceptions among Chinese citizens have been long debated by comparativists, regarding which most conclude that economic welfare and government performance dominate how the Chinese view democracy. This article offers a different picture, with new evidence drawn from text data. By employing the structural topic model to analyze the responses to open-ended questions from three waves of Asian Barometer Surveys conducted between 2008 and 2015, this article identifies four conceptions of democracy among Chinese, including “Political Participation”, “Freedom & Equality”, “Collective Decision-making”, and “Serving the People”. The results show that political participation has become the most popular conception, followed by freedom and equality. Unlike most previous studies, this article reveals that Chinese citizens expect more changes that empower society, such as freedom, equality, and participation. Empirically, such changes indicate that the Chinese understanding of democracy has become similar to the commonly shared ideas in more developed countries. In practical terms, they also place higher pressure on how the government responds to public opinion, as China is promoting its new mode of the whole-process people’s democracy.

Authors

• Yu Yan, Beijing Normal University

• Tianguang Meng, Tsinghua University