Since China began an era of market reform three decades ago, many Westerners believed that, political liberalization and, eventually, democracy would follow. However, contrary to Western expectations, China remains an authoritarian country and the communist party is still in power, even though the country has witnessed rapid economic growth and its people have become richer. In Marketization and Democracy in China, Jianjun Zhang questions whether China's market reforms have created favorable social conditions for democracy, whether the country's emerging entrepreneurial class will serve as the democratic social base, and the role of government in the process of transition. Based upon a careful analysis of two regions--Sunan and Wenzhou --the two prototypical local development patterns in China, Zhang finds that different patterns of economic development have produced distinct local-level social and political configurations, only one of which is likely to foster the growth of democratic practices.
The results suggest that China's political future is largely dependent upon the emerging class structure and offer a warning on China's development: if market reforms and economic development only enrich a few, then democratic transition will be unlikely. Marketization and Democracy in China will be of interest to scholars of Chinese politics, political science and development studies.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
Section I: Foundations
Chapter One: What is research?
Chapter Two: Defining and describing variables
Chapter Three: Designing sound research--variable roles, threats to validity, and research design
Chapter Four: How are research questions formed and what are the parts of well-written research reports?
Chapter Five: What is logical about statistical logic and what purposes does it serve?
Section II: Analyzing Differences Between Two Sets of Data
Chapter Six: The parametric t-test statistics
Chapter Seven: The non-parametric Mann-Whitney U Test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test statistics
Section III: Analyzing Differences Among more than Two Sets of Data
Chapter Eight: Introduction to the parametric between-group analysis of variance statistic (ANOVA)
Chapter Nine: The non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis and Friedman's Test statistics
Section IV: Analyzing Patterns within a Variable and Between Two Variables
Chapter Ten: The parametric Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient statistic
Chapter Eleven: The non-parametric Spearman’s Rho and Kendall's Tau statistics
Chapter Twelve: The non-parametric Chi-Squared statistics
References
About the Author :
Jean L. Turner is Professor, TESOL/TFL Program, Monterey Institute of International Studies, USA.
Review :
'Dr Zhang's book has a very clear thesis, and looks at a further dimension of this issue of partial democratisation and participation in major decision-making in China' - Kerry Brown, Asian Affairs, March 2009
