Research On Democratic Conception Of Contemporary Chinese College Students

The Eighteenth National Congress of the CCP emphasized that " socialism can not livewithout People’s Democracy" once again, which fully demonstrates that the CCP attachesgreat significance to democracy and expresses its determination to build socialist democraticpolitics with Chinese characteristics. To construct this, it is essential that citizens accept ademocratic political culture through political socialization, giving strong support for theconcept, values, and practices of democracy.College students is the most important group of the young in society, which is not yetdifferentiated to social people and is the backbone of social citizen in the future. To constructa democratic political system, we must attach importance to the cultivation of studentsconception of democracy.This article analyzed the democracy attitude as well as democracy perception in studentsand influential theories using document research and quantitative analysis.By literature research method, especially the writings of classical democratic theories,we understand the history and current status of the democracy’s development, master thesystem of democratic theory and the comparative information of theory and practice, so as tograsp the overall picture of the democratic concept among students.With quantitative methods, cluster sampling, we collected a sample of150students inUniversity A, including seven majors, and used SPSS to do cross-table analysis, ANOVA andfactor analysis, exploring the characteristics of students’ democratical concept and its relationwith the existing democratic theories, analyzing the factors that affect College Students’conception of democracy.Thus we propose principally three hypotheses: Hypothesis1: Students’ attitudes ondemocracy are complex and diverse, variously affected by the entity democracy, proceduredemocracy and people-oriented doctrine. Hypothesis2: students’ understanding of democracyis still at the conceptual level, not mastering the significant democratic principles. Hypothesis3: Students’ professions, family income, urban-rural status, gender and so forth have certain impacts on democratic conception.This study includes the following independent variables: personal factors like gender,age, political affiliation, profession, religion, fashion of secondary school and family factorssuch as parental occupation, household income, family size, family location, and therelationships of family and society.This study operationalized Democratic Concept into three dimensions: the policy leveldemocratic conception，the process level democratic conception，the system level democraticconception，utilizing approximately110specific indicators to measure students’ conception ofdemocracy.Through research, this article assessed the current situation of college students’Democratic Concept from five aspects: general political assessment, democratic emotion,theoretical sources of democratic concept, understanding of democracy and characteristics ofdemocratic conception. After all, we concluded that the overall democratic attitudes amongstudents are positive, but the social transformation have affected the political awareness ofcollege students. Meanwhile, students have a strong sense of democracy, cherishingdemocratic aspiration. The understanding of democracy is totally uneven, or preciselyrelatively weak for its idealization and conceptualization. Students are not fully equipped withthe ability of democratic action. Finally, the result in political tolerance and trust, which arethe foundation of political democracy, is mixed.Their conception of democracy is affected by multiple sources ranging from the socialistpeople’s democratic theory, China’s traditional culture, to Athenian democracy as the entityand procedure democracy. Their conception of democracy is affected by three media factors.The political and ideological education which are taken in schools and media are so strikingthat students’ democratic view is highly consistent with the mainstream view of democracyconcept.The environment where college students live in causes the universitystudents‘democratic faith shaken and confused. College students’ lacking of political practiceis not conducive to the cultivation of College Students’ democratic conception.We found that students’ democratic conception has three characteristics: it is still a tooconceptualized, idealized concept lacking of practice and consciousness of rules; it attaches importance to economic interests, while ignoring political participation achievement;.itdemands to be taken care of, while neglecting dominating power.We concluded that the people’s democratic theory occupy an absolutely mainstreamposition in college students’ democratic conception and college students hold this mainstreamopinion firmly. Meanwhile, other democratic values’influences cannot be ignored，with theirvarious sides of influence and their challenge to the people’s democratic theory’s position incollege students’democratic attitude, however, their influences on college students are quitelimited.Focusing on these above, this paper proposes suggestions on political practice,educational theories, social environment and so on to promote the construction of democraticconception.