Lecturer:Xing Chunbing
Discussants:Liu Haibo Sun Wenkai Liu Duo Xu Yiqing
 
 
Economic Transition, Political Intervention and Urban Residents Interest Expression Mechanism and Settlement
 
Doctor Xing Chunbing introduced the empirical research, done by him and his colleague Luo Chuliang, on the interest expression of urban residents based on the urban investigation data, which was discussed in detail in the articles “the transition of economy and the interest expression mechanism of urban residents” and “the social credit and the political intervention: the voting behavior on the election NPC deputy in urban area”
 
In the former treatise, doctor Xing Chunbing summarized the collected data and deemed that the inadequate interest expression of residents. Through econometric analysis, Xing concluded that individual traits, such as age, education level, political identity and income level, had certain impact on the expression mechanism settlement; the involvement in common activities helped the formation of social capital and the expression of welfare; the individual experiences and the respective cognition of government reputation will pose different influence on the interest expression settlement. The conclusion reflected the significant effects of information, credits and systematization level on the interest expression of urban residents.
 
In the latter treatise, doctor Xing examined the effects of credits on certain political event of the household participating in the election of NPC deputy. Xing indicated a relatively low primary voting rate of NPC deputy. And the significant correlation between the voting rate and the voters’ age, education level, income level and political identity certainly violated the stand of the voting rights as is prescribed in the Constitution that “the right to vote and stand to election… regardless of ethnic groups, races, gender…”. As is illustrated in the treatise, there’s robust positive correlation between credits and the residents participation in voting, regardless of the controlled experiments on other explanatory factors. Through assessment of the way credits influence voting, Doctor Xing concluded that as a kind of social capital, credits raised residents’ willingness to vote, which is of great importance to improve the conference system of NPC.
 
Doctor Liu Haibo argue that the study on relationship of credits and democratic participation was based on the “democratic social foundation”, whose applicability to Chinese society should based on meticulous analysis of Chinese society. However, as is revealed in the treatise, the correlation between personal traits and voting may be attributed to the fact that most people in possession of such traits worked in the state-owned companies, institutions and organizations, whose voting was organized by the government. And the relationship between credits and voting may need further evaluation.
 
Doctor Sun Wenkai deemed that in China credits may not be the intrinsic reason for voting. For the first treatise he suggested reinforcement on mature theory review and sorted regressions in respect to respective political intervene from respective identity. As for the second treatise, he commented that the correlation between credits and voting doesn’t necessarily ensure causality and, as a result, the explanation for the reasons for voting may not be reasonable.