When China was defeated by Britain in the first and second Opium Wars, Hong Kong was placed under British colonial rule. By the time China was independent again Hong Kong had become one of the world’s leading cities. The first Chief Executive, Yung Chee-hwa lunched the Hong Kong Special  Administrative Region (HKSAR) that set up grand development plans for the city and commitment to these plans. The plans ranged from housing needs to a Cybersport science park to Chinese Medicine Centre. Shortly after the handover, China suffers from Asian financial crisis that started in Thailand. The unemployment rate rose, social inequalities appear and increase, income inequality increases, and people had become more unhappy. Politically t was believed the political space in HK was greatly constricted. After the Sino- Japanese Joint Declaration they came up with the Basic Law that established high autonomy” and  “one country, two systems” model for ruling Hong Kong. The general framework of governance laid down by the  basic law was similar to the colonial government’s. The CPG of the PRC planned to maintain stability and continuity in China until Chris Patten came along as HK’s governor and started to make democratic moves. China became very concerned and elected a Provisional LegCo that reversed all proto-democratic reforms. China has been highly self-controlled in ruling HK and there has been very little complaints from CPG or HK citizens, except the pro-Beijing elites in HK. In General China and the HK relationship has been a mutual testing of limits and mutual accommodations. The Global relations are very important in relation to Taiwan who are supposed to be a model of the “one country, two systems” model for Taiwan , however, this has failed due to Taiwan’s mistrust of the PRC and the series of economic, social, and political problems that have taken place in HK since the handover in 1997. “In 2003,…Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui commented that Hong Kong’s plight ‘should serve as a warning to Taiwan that freedom and democracy can never coexist under China’s authoritarian regime.” And I think that I completely agree with this statement, knowing what I know now about China, China’s government has very little intentions of making any strides towards democracy and the government will do whatever it has to to prevent those around then and inside China form making any strides towards Democracy because it will cause problems  in their government system. I feel like this can be seen with the heavy censorship in China, it’s China’s way of being able to prevent a anti-communist or anti-government uprising that would hurt the Communist party. I think that I might be on Taiwan’s side that I am not sure an one country, two-system policy can work. It seems like a recipe for disaster just because no one  is ever on the same page and working in harmony, which i believe is needed for a country to run smoothly.

First off, the fact that hall monitor elections are taken so seriously in China is a very foreign concept. In this documentary the three students chose to run for hall monitor all have very different personalities and would handle the authority of hall monitor very differently. Luo Lei, who was the current class monitor, was very strict and got the other students to obey him by beating them. Xu interpretation was a very nice, reserved girl who would work hard to  keep her classmates happy. Lastly, Cheng Cheng who was more of the mischievous, bully type, who just wanted to be class monitor for the power. The elections consisted of a talent show, a debate, and speeches.  During the talent show the Cheng Cheng gets everyone to yell mean things at Xiofei before she even starts her presentation and so she starts to cry before she plays the flute. This gives Xiaofei the reputation of a crybaby and really pulls her out  of the running for the rest of the election. Cheng Cheng gets the rest of the students to boo Luo Lei and tell him he is out of tune during his presentation. During Cheng Cheng’s performance everyone was singing along and no one had anything bad to say.

When the three students went home you were able to get a good  insight on their lives at home and what that was like. Xiaofei’s mother was a single mom and she was the least involved in the process, she did tell Xiaofei she need to be strong but she believed she ha to figure things out for herself. It was because Xiaofei comes from a single-mom home that her mom did not think she had a chance of winning. Luo Lei’s father who works for the police department helped Luo Lei to bribe and buy the students votes. Luo Lei was the wealthiest amongst  the three and you could see that from his living arrangement he had the biggest house and stuff. Cheng Cheng on the other hand comes from a rinky dinky little home and he often practiced in his underwear and stuff at home and his parents were very involved  in trying to help him win the elections, by writing his speeches for him and constantly making him practice. Because these families were only allowed to have one kid you were able to see how the parents were very involved and attentive to their kids.

In the end, the students end up picking Luo Lei for class monitor again. Personally, I would have voted for Xiaofei, but she did not have strong leadership qualities so it is understandable why  she was not elected. Cheng Cheng was manipulative, but Luo Lei beat the other students, which you would think would be a  deal breaker, but I guess the other students liked that. At the end of the documentary I asked myself, so did democracy work in China? and I honestly do not know if I can answer that question. The students picked the  same class monitor that the teacher had previously picked who was the most strict and beat them and I am not sure that I understand why. I question whether or not they realize they really had the opportunity to make a change and elect a class monitor that they all could like, for instance Xiaofei who did not have any enemies. On the other hand you see all of the same elements that make this test just like democratic elections that take  place in America and throughout the world. There are a lot of politics taking places: false promises being made, holding each other accountable for all their actions, and criticizing each other for their flaws. These are all elements that were heavily prevalent  in the elections between Clinton and Trump.  So even though it seems like the kids did not learn anything about democracy. It appears that it might be the exact opposite the third grade students mocked a real word democratic election perfectly, without even trying. Watching this documentary makes me question if the democratic election process is the best government system that there is, because it is clearly marked by a lot of corruption.

Also, just a side note someone’s parents said that democracy is people being their own masters. This is a very interesting interpretation of democracy and almost seems the opposite. Yes, you do get to collectively decide what decisions are made, which I guess makes people in charge of their own destiny, but on the other hand because is it a collective decision the majority will get what they want, or mostly what they want and then there are a lot of people that will be unhappy with the decision. I guess you could look at that as the price of democracy. Anyways, describing democracy as people being their own masters just really caught my attention because that is not how I would describe it all.

This video was very interesting, it was hard to catch a lot of the names and stuff in the video though so it is hard to speak greatly on it. One thing that just really stuck out to me about this video though, is that from what I have read the Chinese people have generally just tried to erase the Tiananmen Square incident from history and it is not something that people want to talk about, or that you will even really stumble across in history books. I am strong believer that learning about historical events such as this is important, so that it does not happen again and we can learn form the past. As embarrassed as China is about the event, they basically  let it happen again identically in this latest Student organized uprising. I do not know why that particular aspect of the video stood out to me, but it did. It kind of just seems China appears to be taking a lot of steps backwards when it comes to social and political aspects of society. Again, this could just be from an outsider perspective though.

My first thought about this article is that I am glad Deng Yujiao was saved by the internet, because had they convicted her of murder it would have provided more evidence to my scrapbook of how China is corrupt. The crazy thing about this article is that wrongful convictions and situations such as these occur in the U.S. all the time. The only difference is I think the court and legal/justice system is more stable. I do not think media too often plays a “fairness” role in a trial. I do not think our legal system is perfect, but when I think of this alternate and the fact that the media is a check and balance to the Chinese legal system seems quite odd. However, this article argues that  this is not odd, but the evolution of “competitive supervision”. It says that the court and media interaction is actually strengthening the the party-state by increasing responsiveness and accountability without deeper political reforms – called horizontal accountability. I think that I agree with this statement, China is better off for this relationship. The government, still fighting corruption, is trying to do better, but corruption still finds its way in. The media publicly displaying this corruption and putting the government on display  is probably the perfect way for the government to change. Especially with the internet now, it is a game changer. Like stated in the case about Sun Zhigang in 2003 the government was going to try and ban the media display of the case, but because it was put on multiple websites on the internet it was too late by the time they got to it, so it could  not be erased. It was the people’s discontent with the appellate’s court decision that got the Supreme People’s Court to intervene in the case and the proper punishment to be rendered.

This concept is very interesting considering we are on the opposite spectrum in the U.S. During a trial the media should not have too many details about a case, jury members should not be watching news about a case, and the media plays very little role in the actual legal part of a case. This is in order to protect rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Although the system might not always be just and fair the U.S. judicial system seems like it is a good one to me. However, in China I am 100% on board with the Competitive Supervision because I think it keeps the Courts more honest and fair.

This article breaks up political trust into two cognitively distinct, but related categories: competence versus intention evaluations. This was tested using valid methods and the empirical evidence showed that (1) the surveyed Chinese  urban residents effectively differentiated between their central government’s competence to deliver good governance; (2) the Chinese urbanites did consult different sources of information and heuristics when evaluating their government’s competence and intention, respectively. I think this article is kind of hard to follow, but basically the article starts off by saying  it  is hard to be able  to truly measure  trust, competence, and intentions. It establishes that although it might be hard to define and research these, what has almost been found certain is that these two traits are very different. You can be competent and not have ill intentions, just the as you be incompetent, but have good intentions. In order for people to trust their government there must be a certain level of confidence that their government is competent and has good intentions. People’s opinions of their government’s competence is best measured by evaluating the performance of the policy output. Also, people’e opinion of their governments intentions are best measured by evaluating  information like political scandals and corruption that falls  outside the normal values for corruption and scandal in a government.

In China’s case despite the authoritarian nature the Chinese government has been widely trusted by its people. Scholars have not  been able to pin point an exact reason for why the trust is so high, but just attributes it to a multitude if things. I tried to put myself in the shoes of the Chinese people, which is hard. From the outside looking in it does not appear that China has a working and thriving government, and it seems like there is a lot  of  political unrest. However, for the Chinese people who have not had a stable and thriving government for 60 years I guess it is just normal. The government appears to be doing stable. The CCP  and government continues to make reforms every once in a while to make  it appear as though it is working to make  improvements and to keep the CCP in power and this give off the impression of competence. I do not think that the Chinese government  has bad intentions I believe they believe that they are doing the best thing for China and the Chinese people. So I guess if I lived  in China I might have a high trust in our government, but the United State’s system being so different it is really  hard to stay objective and see China’s government in a high light.

My first thoughts on this article are: this has to be a joke. I understand two explosions took place in Tianjin and the G20 summit was being highly censored, but you have to think if the first lady Peng Liyuan’s blurbs about fashion could not even make the media and were being censored, that no media, news, or events were being published at all. This connects to what I was discussing earlier with the “keywords search”, by making keywords so general as; “summit”, “country”, “airport”, and “Hangzhou” you are not allowing for anything to pass through the censor. This makes me question the collective action theory. What about  the first lady’s fashion has anything to do with collective action, or critiquing the state for that matter of fact confuses me. So this tells me the government is not doing a good job processing the censorship program and it is looking  to do more then just prevent collective action. I do believe that this is a very serious problem. As times goes on the amount being censored seems to be increasing which is only repressing the Chinese people more. I do not know if China is looking  to head in a direction of democracy, or if Democracy would even be the best thing for China, but this is moving in the opposite direction of democracy and I feel like any direction that China would actually want to go.

This article was extremely interesting, I feel like I say that often when it comes to these readings, but every article brings something new to the table, or a different perspective. What I found most interesting about this piece is that I really did not agree with it at all. The assertion this article makes is that contrary to many other people’s research and commentary, the purpose of the censorship program is not to suppress the criticism of the state or the Communist Party. The purpose of the censorship program is actually to reduce the probability of collective action by clipping social ties whenever any collective movements are in evidence or expected. My feelings about this statement in itself is that don’t the two often go hand in hand. Someone who is criticizing the state or Communist Party is more then likely the same someone’s who would be looking to start a collective movement.

In the beginning it acknowledges that it is hard to distinguish between the state critique model and the collective action model, but it clearly states it believes the collective action model is accurate and then tries to back it up with a lot  of evidence. It claims”The Great Wall of China” mainly effects foreigners and those that interact with foreigners, but otherwise it does not  really affect  the Chinese people, but I feel like this is being underplayed a lot. I feel that the government and  Communist Party does not want the Chinese to be using anything that they cannot completely control. Then they say “keyword blocking” only has a limited effect on freedom of speech. However, I do not understand how a government prevent news, media, text messages, E-mails, or anything that it chooses not to send to be considered limited. Yes you can come up with codes for the censored words and such, but it seems that this form of censorship is a huge violation of freedom of speech. The study that they did on the censoring of websites and information in times of a crisis, it basically seems like they would  over censor because they wanted to make sure they covered all areas of the varieties of different manners of spreading information. I understand that back in the day the U.S. would do this during times of war as to make sure everyone was on board or it was not publicly displayed that the U.S. did not all agree on war time efforts, however, this level  of censorship and limiting of speech I do not think would ever take place in this day and age. Especially, when the government is censoring information just to make sure they are not looked at badly. When an event takes place in China today especially, regarding collective action, you can almost guarantee that majority of people’s information is being blocked. The article provides evidence of times that writers and bloggers did Critique the government and  get away with it, but I feel like these few examples do not convince me. Also, I could  be wrong, but with Xi Jinping as president the censors on the critique of government have increased.

Anyways, this article makes for a good argument and it has a lot of facts and evidence to support its hypothesis, but for some reason I just feel like its biased and I do not want to trust it. The weirdest part is that I do not even necessarily disagree with the article, because I do think that one of China’s main goals  is probably to prevent collective action movements.

Without  having read Rightful Resistance in Rural China I feel like I missing some key arguments that this article presents. From my understanding the difference between regular resistance and rightful resistance is rightful resistors challenge problems head on like: illegal extractions, rigged elections or corrupt dealers, villagers deploying the policies, and laws and commitments. In order for something to be considered a rightful resistance protest it must have four attributes: it must be operated near the boundary of authorized channels, employ the rhetoric and commitment of the powerful to the curb to exercise power, be hinged on locating and exploiting divisions within the state, and rely on mobilizing support from the community.  However, rightful resistors in China have been criticized for lacking peasantness, shortchanging history and culture, focusing on elite allies and one pattern of protests, and being overly rationalist, state centric, and caught  in the developmental thinking.

It seems like most of the criticisms  of the rightful resistors can be evaluated from two different angles that  makes it hard to determine a correct answer, depending on who you ask, or what the study is will depend on the result. Personally it seems like  the  rightful resistors does lack peasantness, the reason I say this is because many of the issues being protested against, or not being protests against, but should be affect the peasants the most. If the peasants are not the main ones protesting and apart of this group I am not sure that I understand who composes the majority of this group. On the issue of state centeredness and the Chinese State I agree that in China it appears officials and those in power are able to make the change that are needed and others will be willing to follow, but at the same  time i see the point that protestors do push the boundaries in order to create opportunities. I feel like this is challenging unless it  is a mass movement though, just because the Chinese government has such a low tolerance for anything anti-Communist party and anti-central Chinese government. It does not seem like the questions being asked: sincere or strategic?, reactive or proactive?, developmental thinking?, and rights consciousness or rules consciousness? are good questions to ask or make for arguments on either side because there is evidence to make the case for both and it seems like rightful resistors are made up of a little of all of things. The universal framework aspect of the article was interesting, whether of not all the elements are true I am not positive, but  it all sounds good.

China did not used to think of NGO’s highly and their definition of civil society would not have been correct almost no matter who you talked you. I question if the UN’s Fourth World Conference was not held in Beijing would China ever have developed in the realm of NGOs. This whole article is written on the premise that civil society is developed on the social phenomenon that comprises connotation, essence and extension . That civil societies are an associational life style that will lead to the pursuit of good society and citizens and become a major advocate for democracy and public rights. The contradictory part as mentioned by Marry Gallagher is that not everyone has the same definition of civil society and what the comprises.

Marry also brings up what I believe to be a very good point that it seems like too much emphasis is being placed on the development of NGOs and how it going to produce this euphoric civil society. There are still problems with the development of Civil Society in China, yet he only paints a picture of three different positive paths forward. I would hope that whatever changes in China will be positive and lead towards democracy and the ideal Civil society, but I feel it it very plausible that could end up on the opposite end like Weimar Germany that turned into the Nazi Party. The only reason I see this as an option is because it stemmed from weak political institutionalization and not trusting their government. Well, these are issues that China has as well, so I think she  is right when that if NGOs and civil society has any chance of a healthy development in China the expectations need to be lowered.

The way the chapter started off  with the “Anticorruption Since the Reform and Opening Up” I got  the sense that the campaign has been going on for a long time (60 years), but it had made  a lot of  head way, reform, and change in China. In those 60 years eduction, institutionalization, supervision, reform, rectification, and punishment were all key focuses of this movement and a lot of resources were being implemented  to work on these things. It named a lot of different organizations that were dedicated to specific areas of reform. For example, the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention that worked towards the professionalization of China’s corruption prevention and punishment efforts. It talks about the treaties it has entered with different countries for their cooperation in their fight against cooperation. It refers to the more then 2.9 million cases registered and “being investigated or prosecuted for corruption”. So  all of this put the the idea in my head China was/is ay better off, but this is not true. In the  “Effectiveness of China’s Existing Clean-Government System” we see that not  only is there still mass amount of corruption, but there is corruption within the campaign to fight corruption. The checks on corruption of leading a party and government are weak, the judiciary system is corrupt, unhealthy government extravagances have gone unchecked, legalizing exclusive privileges to civil servants, not punishing those found to be corrupt, and the punishments being taken care of inside the party instead of the legal system are all problems that are occurring, or worsening. Then he gives a long list of things that need to change in order for there to be organizational effectiveness and rule effectiveness.  The National Integrity System that supposedly has made great transformation and is a representation of transition and hybridization still faces many barriers itself: excessive concentration of power, lack of an effective administration system, no checks and balances, lack of protection of the press, and the law and democracy is still underdeveloped.

Melanie Manion agreed with He Zengke’s analysis . She emphasized the unevenness of enforcement priorities and substitution of party penalties for criminal punishment as two of her main focuses of the problem. In my opinion, it seems very unlikely they would  be able to solve any of these problems anytime soon. It is very mind blowing at how many different problems lie in the heart of China’s government and yet it is still somewhat functioning. With as many problems as it appears to have I would think that China would perform way worse. I feel like Zengke offers an over simplistic solution. I agree the problem is within the institution, and he states we need to restructure governance which I also agree with, but the  manner in which he proposes to do this does not seem like  it would completely fix the institutional problem. My thing  is, is it possible to restructure the China’s government and get rid of the corruption? I question this so heavily because they have been trying for 60 years and even though there is progress there has also been added corruption through the campaign.