Platform governance and sociological participation

The positive and negative efects of the participation of digital platform companies in governance are a major issue of the times. Starting from the three subfelds of internal governance, external governance, and co-governance, we construct an analytical framework for digital platform governance to understand the four-sided relationship among digital platform companies, the state, the market, and society. From the perspective of enterprise autonomy, we should view the efectiveness of platform company participation in social governance dialectically. The key of promoting good platform governance is to improve the external structural pressure from the state, promote the reform of the endogenous governance of enterprises, and build a sustainable architecture for co-governance. The mission of sociologists includes not only explanation but also intervention.

Cadre parents and their entrepreneur children?The dual-track intergenerational reproduction of elites in China:1978–2010

This article documents and conceptualizes a mode of reproduction of elites in a society in transition from state domination to market orientation. By focusing on China’ marketization, we explore how parents’ advantageous backgrounds have influenced the chance of their children’s attainment of certain elite positions (administrative, technocratic, or market) and whether these patterns have varied across three periods (1978–1992, 1993–2002, and 2003–2010)…

Profile of the Super Rich in China: A Social Space Analysis

Various “rich lists” indicate that China now has one of the highest percentages of super rich people worldwide. However, very little is known about their sociopolitical profiles. Based on the annual Hurun China Rich Lists from 2000 to 2018, we created a new dataset of China’s super rich that combines information from various sources…

The Short‑Run Effect of a Local Fiscal Squeeze on Pollution Abatement Expenditures: Evidence from China’s VAT Pilot Program

Introduced in 2012, China’s value-added tax (VAT) pilot program gradually replaced business tax (BT) with VAT. It has created a large fiscal squeeze for the local government since 75% of VAT revenue goes to the central government. Employing a diference-in-diferences estimator with continuous treatment intensity, we find that this fiscal squeeze has a negative effect on pollution abatement expenditures…

The Horatio Alger Myth in China: Origins of the First Generation of Visibly Richest Chinese Private Entrepreneurs

This article traces the socioeconomic origins of the first generation of the visibly richest private entrepreneurs in China by analysing the roles of political background, family connections and culture capital. Based on a data set essentially reconstructed from two leading Chinese rich lists from 2003 to 2012, the author finds no clear evidence to support the hypothesis of “strong political capitalism”…

The End of Post-communism? The Beginning of a Super-communism?

Some scholars think that the term post-communism is now useless, because the outcomes of transition are consolidated in those former state socialist European countries. But ongoing economic, social, and political transformations in China negate the theory of “end of postcommunism”…