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…

Introducing CES: A research team on Chinese Elite Studies

The team is co-chaired by Peng LU from the Institute of Sociology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Xiaoguang FAN from the Department of Sociology of Zhejiang University (ZJU). The team also conducts various collaborative researches with scholars from other institutions in China and abroad…

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…

China’s Super Rich Persons (CSRP)

By fundamentally recoding information of people on the Hurun Rich List, we built a new database named China’s Super Rich Persons (CSRP). Hurun Rich List is the major annual list of China’s wealthiest corporate elite…

Handbook on Class and Social Stratification in China – Chapter 13 & 14

There is no standard conception of ‘ruling class’ or ‘political elite’ in China studies. Even cadres in the villages have labeled as (political) ‘elite’ (O’Brien and Li 2000; Oi and Rozelle 2000; Manion 2009). Similarly, researchers use different criteria to divide cadres into ‘rankings’ for theoretical or practical purposes (Zhou 2000; Nee and Cao 2002)…