A Study Of Political Participation Of Chinese Private Entrepreneur

With the huge development of privately-owned economy since 1978, private entrepreneur have won great attention in political participation, as a representative of personification of this economy and a abrupt-rising class. After President Jiang Zemin made the "July 1 Speech" and the 16th Conference of China Communist Party took place in 2002, the political participation of private entrepreneur have been active. In January, 2003, Yin Mingshan, the chairman of the board in Lifan Group Chongqing, and Xu Guanju, the chairman of Transfar Group in Zhejiang were selected respectively as the vice president of the Political Consultative Conference of Chongqing and Zhejiang, which plays a great influence among the privately-owned entrepreneur. Meanwhile, the political participation of them brings many problems, for example, distemperedness of participation system and the narrowness of its means lead to the great existence of informal political forces, hence political corruption. Some collusion between officials and businessmen seriously violates the interests of the local citizens and the weak. People become worried about the mixed role of private entrepreneur. Therefore, under such circumstances, a study of the political participation of private entrepreneur by means of literature analysis and historical analysis is of great value.The origin of private entrepreneur and how it came into being are divided into two stages. The first one is the early stage of reform and opening-up, when the owner of private companies was born in the social organism, mainly in the form of self-employed laborers who come from villages and cities. The second stage is in process of development of market economy, when the class of private entrepreneur was born, including the members and cadres of state-owned enterprise, government officials, intellectuals, special technique man and people coming from the reform of collective enterprises. The growing of private economy acts as an economic base of their political participation.The change of foundation in their political participation is the change of policies in private economy. By means of literature and historic analysis, the thesis finds that the party in power formulates the policies of private economy step by step, the government undergoes a change of attitude from nonsupport to encouragement, and the owner of private companies experiences a change from political indifference to active participation. Their motives of participation consist of three kinds, promoting social development, maintaining its class interest, and seeking political protection. Their participation can be divided into various types from different angles, such as passive participation and self-determined one, direct and indirect participation, formal and informal participation, and individual and group participation. All of these must bring some influence on political and social life. The positive influences are advancement of democratic politics as a result of the joining of these economic elite and growth of folk forces because of the development of their joining. Their adverse effects will go as follows. Firstly the cahoots of capital and power in political participation damage the public interest. Secondly, some behaviors of informal political participation make the clientlism worse.There are three dilemmas of their political participation and they are system dilemma, participant dilemma and culture dilemma. The major display of participant dilemma is low quality of some private entrepreneurs and lack of independence in the self-rule of their organization. Culture dilemma is in the form of lack of culture in political participation, a reliance on social contact net in a society filled with favors, and influence of bureaucratism. The thesis put forward solutions to the three dilemma. Firstly, the system of participation should be constructed under the guidance of the theory of deliberative democracy. Secondly, the building of self-rule organization of private entrepreneur ought to locate the middle-layer politics. Thirdly, the public awareness of private entrepreneur should be cultivated. Finally, participant political culture should be built, which is a solution to their participant dilemmas from the perspective of system, organization, individual and culture.