Delia Lin - Civilising Citizens in Post-Mao China: Understanding the Rhetoric of Suzhi

First published 2017

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2017 Delia Lin

The right of Delia Lin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lin, Delia, author.

Title: Civilising citizens in post-Mao China : understanding the rhetoric of

suzhi / Delia Lin.

Other titles: Civilizing citizens in post-Mao China

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series:

Routledge contemporary China series ; 169 | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017002078 | ISBN 9781138218673 (hardback) |

ISBN 9781315437170 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Political cultureChina. | Political socialization

China. | Discourse analysisPolitical aspectsChina. | ChinaPolitics

and government19762002. | ChinaPolitics and government2002

Classification: LCC JQ1516 .L5197 2017 | DDC 306.20951dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002078

ISBN: 978-1-138-21867-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-43717-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

My interest in understanding how, in China, ordinary yet culturally rooted language gradually turns into vehicles for state ideology developed after suzhi became more and more widely used in the 1990s. The taken for granted governing principles and technology embedded in the transmission of these keywords have fascinated me ever since. I have pondered if a description of such principles and technology requires a set of vocabulary different from what has been provided by the readily existing theories developed from observation of Western societies. This book therefore represents a dialogical encounter between past and present, West and China, self and society.

I owe a great debt to my mentors and colleagues including Susan Trevaskes, Mark Finnane, Brge Bakken, Michael Dutton and Andrew Kipnis whose mentoring and guidance were invaluable to the completion of this study.

I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of my book proposal whose thoughtful comments have helped me shape the book in a better way.

I am thankful to my colleagues here in the School of Social Sciences of the University of Adelaide, particularly to Margaret Allen, Carol Johnson, Purnendra Jain, Shoko Yoneyama, Gerry Groot, Hong Cai and Xiaoxiao Xie, for their unfailing support and insightful discussions.

This book is dedicated to my late grandmother, Zeng Yuqiu, who, throughout her life, had never been able to speak out. It was her amazing capacity to forgive, her humility, eloquence, wisdom, strength and stubborn faith in kindness in humanity that had made me understand that the silence of the oppressed is not due to a lack of their suzhi .

Routledge Contemporary China Series

160 Intangible Cultural Heritage in Contemporary China

The participation of local communities

Edited by Kuah Khun Eng and Liu Zhaohui

161 Intellectual Discourse in Reform Era China

The Debate on the Spirit of the Humanities in the 1990s

Giorgio Strafella

162 Globalization and Welfare Restructuring in China

The Authoritarianism That Listens?

Huisheng Shou

163 Reconfiguring Class, Gender, Ethnicity and Ethics in Chinese Internet Culture

Haomin Gong and Xin Yang

164 Gender and Employment in Rural China

Jing Song

165 Migration in Post-Colonial Hong Kong

Edited by Susanne Y P Choi and Eric Fong

166 Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China

Susanne Brandtstdter and Hans Steinmller

167 Cyberdualism in China

The Political Implications of Internet Exposure of Educated Youth

Shiru Wang

168 Political Mobility of Chinese Regional Leaders

Performance, Preference, Promotion

Liang Qiao

Contents

Guide

Appendix
Research design for Chapter 4

In this section, I give a brief review of methodologies that combine qualitative and quantitative strategies to explain some key concepts used for this study, followed by a detailed account of methodology chosen for the purpose of this study and research design.

Methodologies that combine qualitative and quantitative methods

After a several-decade-long debate about the correct methodology for social research with the proponents of qualitative and quantitative approaches, an integration of qualitative and quantitative methods has resulted in illuminating insights about the investigated social phenomena. illustrates.

Mixed methodology

Besides the simple mixed methodology, triangulation, two other approaches to qualitative and quantitative method combination can be distinguished: sequencing and hybrids.

Common structure of sequencing methodology

Hybrid method is very similar to sequencing method. It constitutes a combination of qualitative and quantitative elements, which include the qualitative coding of texts and the quantitative calculation of coefficients. Hybrid method differs sequencing method in the sense that hybrids require precisely one and only one specific combination of qualitative and quantitative phases, whereas in sequencing any kind of combination is possible. More often, hybrid approaches comprise a number of phases, some of which are qualitative, others quantitative; all, however, are equally necessary for achieving the objective of the approach.

Selection of methodology in this study

In conventional studies in humanities and social sciences, where human behaviours are major concerns, the subjects of research are commonly people and experiments often refer to cohort (group of subjects) studies in which the investigator manipulates the predictor variable otherwise called the treatment, program or intervention and then observes the outcome. Research subjects, in most cases, are a small subset of population, as it is often infeasible to collect/generate data on the whole set of population.

The subjects of this study, however, differing from conventional quantitative studies, are suzhi and suzhi jiaoyu , which are words heavily loaded with complex political, social and ideological connotations. Consequently, the procedure of research design, data collection and analysis of this study diverges from commonprocedures of conventional studies. This study, that is, the study of suzhi and suzhi jiaoyu , does not have any explicit population, which creates obstacles between first and second steps in .