China's Social Class Status On Political Participation

In the process of China's economic transition, class structure of Chinese society has undergone tremendous changes. These changes must cause redrawing interests among the class, and political participation is an important way to gain interests for an individual or a class. Meanwhile, China's political system experienced the democratization, the environment of citizen's political participation has also changed, China's basic National People's Congress election become the main form of citizen's political participation. So, how about China's political participation of every social stratum at present? What factors affect Chinese citizens' political participation?Referring to political participation in foreign countries, there are very abundant research achievements in related fields. One classic research conclusion, which attracted scholars'attention from the early studies, and had been repeatedly proven with data from different countries, is that the citizen who is in higher socioeconomic status, can more widely and more deeply involved in political activities in the conventional society. Later scholars put forward correction scheme to the classic conclusion. Darl argued, that the possibility of vote practiced by the social stratum in good economic condition, is lower than the possibility of non-exercise activity. Verba holded, that different element of social economic status influenced political participation differently, and the impact of education is bigger than that of income.Concerning Chinese citizens' political participation, the scholars at home and abroad usually interview the citizen of one community about their political attitudes or political tendency, but for political behavior there lacks a large-scale social investigation. In the study of Chinese professional reputation, the researchers found, that the explain level of Duncan's socio-economic status on Chinese professional reputation, is below that on America's the occupational prestige. Scholars put forward different modification scheme to Duncan's socio-economic status index.This research will examine the influence of different social stratum status on political participation, the differences of the same class on political participation, and the influence of the different element of social stratum status on political participation. This research focus on the grass-roots deputies' election, and its main ways including the vote, recommend candidates and encourage others to vote. In this research, the division of social stratum mainly refers to Lu XueYi's division of five social economic statuses and ten social strata framework, and Li ChunLing's five social economic statuses. And the division of the components of the social status mainly refers to LiChunLing's social economic status index.This study found that social stratum status of Chinese citizens indeed influence their political participation, but only the level of upper class'political participation is significantly higher than the middle and lower class. There exists no significant difference between the level of the middle class'political participation and that of lower class'political participation. Secondly, the vote is the main political participation mode of Chinese citizen. Finally, components of Chinese social stratum have different influence on citizen's political participation. For the degree of Chinese citizen politics participation, the organization resources'influence is the most important, followed by cultural resources, then economic resources.