Reassessing Public Support for China's Leadership: Social Desirability and Misreporting

Chih-Jou Jay Chen will present preliminary findings from ongoing surveys conducted in China, focusing on the extent of public support for the country's national leaders and the Communist Party. He will analyze data collected through both direct questioning and indirect methods, specifically employing list experiments to measure the depth of this support. Additionally, he will examine the social bases of this support, identifying which social groups tend to be more supportive. Unlike the widespread belief that China's strong one-man rule and centralized governance command high levels of public support, his research suggests that the actual level of support is not as high as commonly believed.

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Chih-Jou Jay Chen is the Director and Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. He also holds joint appointments as a Professor at both National Tsing-Hua University and National Taiwan University. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association. Previously, he served as the President of the Taiwanese Sociological Association from 2018 to 2019, the Director of the Center for Contemporary China at National Tsing-Hua University from 2007 to 2012, and a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute during the 2014-2015 academic year. His contributions to scholarship have been recognized by several awards, including the 2021 Outstanding Research Award from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Taiwanese government and the 2022 Outstanding Scholar Awards from Taiwan's Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship.

This event has been co-organized with the UBC Centre for Chinese Research.

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This interdisciplinary series examines the future of global sustainability, economy and security through the many images and understandings of China, a compelling and sometimes puzzling place. If understanding China constitutes a rational, emotional or symbolic anchor from which one’s ideas, actions and strategies are derived, then there is a need to capitalize on the rich amount of evidence that allows us to examine “China Logics” across time, space and interactions.

Series Conveners: Timothy Cheek, History; Qiang Fu, Sociology; Julia Harten, Community and Regional Planning; Juliet Lu, Forest Resources Management | Public Policy and Global Affairs; Renren Yang, Asian Studies