Taiwanese politics is often characterized as being dominated by two camps: the “blue” camp, which supports the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the “green” camp, which supports the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). However, a substantial portion of the electorate identifies as independent, representing one of the largest but least studied groups in Taiwan’s political landscape. This study examines how independent voters differed from partisan voters in their responses to one of the most defining political moments in recent years, the legislative reform, and the subsequent Bluebird movement, one of the largest social protests in Taiwan since 2014. Drawing on two waves of original survey data, we find that independents were more likely to adopt the KMT’s framing of the protests and related legislative reforms. However, independent voters had greater support than blue camp supporters for democratic practices, despite their alignment over the Bluebird movement. These findings advance understanding of Taiwan’s electoral blocs, the dynamics of movement–party relations and the contours of democratic support among its citizens.

Since 2012, China has steadily advanced its anti-corruption efforts through the dual strategies of “hunting tigers” and “swatting flies.” However, the distinct impact of information about these two approaches on public perceptions of corruption across government levels remains underexplored. Drawing on a randomized survey experiment with 1,596 respondents in H province, this study reveals a phenomenon we term “hierarchical corruption perception.” Our findings indicate that information about grassroots-focused “swatting flies” efforts significantly reduces public perceptions of corruption at lower levels of government while producing mixed effects for perceived corruption at higher levels. In contrast, information about high-profile “hunting tigers” cases has limited average effects but significantly impacts individuals with lower corruption tolerance. By demonstrating that the effects of anti-corruption information depend on both the level of government involved and individual predispositions, these findings challenge conventional views on “corruption scandal fatigue” and provide important insights for designing effective, grassroots-oriented anti-corruption communication strategies.

This study deploys netnography to investigate online reaction to suzhi jiaoyu, China’s national curriculum. Few papers have attempted to gauge popular opinion on the curriculum, despite state rhetoric that, once universally implemented, it will revolutionize China’s development. I analyse 1,644 posts of netizens’ judgements of ongoing suzhi jiaoyu reforms, uploaded to China’s most popular “question-and-answer” site, Zhihu. Deploying grounded theory to gauge the levels and nature of consensus/dissent across opinions, my study details the unpopularity of suzhi jiaoyu among users of Zhihu. Most appropriate suzhi jiaoyu discourse to criticize China’s unequal distribution of resources and, implicitly, the failure of state initiatives to address these inequalities. Users perceive the previous national curriculum to be fairer, noting the absence of sufficient state intervention in this area. I conclude by examining the broader implications of Zhihu users’ engagement with social problems in China.

The “innovation championship” model has been instrumental in explaining policy innovations in China’s local governments, particularly at the provincial level. However, discrepancies between this model and real-world cases raise questions about its broader applicability. To address this, we employ a dichotomous framework (innovation generation/borrowing) and conduct multi-level quantitative analyses of government work reports. Our analysis suggests that between 2003 and 2022, most provincial innovations were driven by the championship model, which relies on central government recognition, while others were shaped by peer recognition mechanisms. Together, these form a “central and peer” (CP) model that prioritizes innovation generation while incorporating a degree of innovation borrowing. This CP model differentiates the innovation functions among provincial governments, which have formed a collective innovation network: pioneering provinces generate model policies, while others capitalize on these opportunities. Moreover, the extent of the central authority’s influence determines the relative importance of these two mechanisms.

How do Chinese courts punish corruption? This paper demonstrates how China strategically leverages its court system to signal anti-corruption resolve by transferring high-level corruption cases to local courts in distant jurisdictions. Assigning cases to distant courts insulates the judiciary from local political interference through geographic recusal and prevents the formation of a focal point for elite coordination by creating uncertainty about which court will be designated. Using an original dataset of high-ranking officials convicted of corruption since the 18th Party Congress, this paper finds that: 1) during the court designation stage, the more severe the case, the more distant the court, and the specific location of the court cannot be easily inferred from previous assignment records or case profiles; and 2) at the conviction stage, given the same case severity, courts that are farther away tend to impose longer sentences. These findings suggest that despite the prevalence of local judicial capture and protectionism, the local court system can still be strategically employed as an institutional tool for punishing corruption.

Mao’s violent collectivization and forced labour campaigns during China’s Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) led to as many as 45 million deaths in what is widely regarded as the worst famine in human history. Drawing on a corpus of over 300 interviews with famine survivors, I apply a mixed-methods approach to examine the impact of mass state repression on how such survivors speak about a repressive regime that remains in power. Exploiting variation in county-level mortality rates, I find that interviewees exposed to more intense state violence do not publicly voice more explicitly negative attitudes towards the state, but they do possess more latent negative sentiments. Furthermore, I use the establishment and subsequent dissolution of communal canteens – a key repressive institution through which the state functioned as the sole food distributor during a time of extreme scarcity – as an analytical lever to show that although some survivors may be unwilling to express grievances directly against an enduring regime that perpetrated mass violence, they readily express negativity towards a long-dead institution.

Does increasing descriptive representation enhance substantive representation? While ethnic minorities are generally underrepresented in legislatures worldwide, they are overrepresented in China’s National People’s Congress. We show that overrepresentation of ethnic legislators does not result in greater substantive representation. Compared to their Han counterparts, ethnic minority legislators are less likely to sponsor bills, show no significant difference in submitting policy suggestions, and are reticent to propose legislation on ethnic issues. They face challenges in mobilizing sufficient signatures for bill sponsorship within delegations and in building cross-delegation policy coalitions. Ethnic fragmentation may hinder their ability to advance the policy agenda. Our findings suggest that institutional constraints and collective action problems may hinder ethnic legislators from achieving substantive representation.

Rural schools in China have long been in a state of underdevelopment. Studies have mainly addressed this issue from the perspective of rural–urban structural inequality, while neglecting the cultural processes that lead to inequality reproduction. Through the lens of cultural production, this study analyses qualitative data gathered in Gongshui county in central China, revealing how rural teachers and parents construct a negative perception of rural schools, evoked by devalued meanings associated with schools’ physical appearance, teaching staff characteristics and academic performance. Influenced by the discourse on rural inferiority, teachers and parents have cultivated a collective identity of becoming “less” rural and adopt strategies to disassociate themselves from rural education and community. Their cultural production of “bad” rural schools perpetuates and reinforces the underdevelopment of rural schools. This study draws attention to the cultural misconceptions surrounding rurality and the cultural processes by which educational inequalities are produced and reproduced in rural areas, both in China and globally.