This thesis tests two theories about the relationship between economic development and change in political attitudes based on subnational data from China’s General Social Survey in 2010 and 2012. It finds a negative relationship between income level and support for “emancipative values”. Therefore, this paper contends that modernization theory is not yet applicable in the case of contemporary China, while the “contingent democrats” thesis can partly explain why Chinese citizens have not been going through an attitudinal transition toward developed emancipative values in favor of democratization. The findings also observe that both objective measures and subjective awareness of local inequality has a positive effect on lower middle class support for individual liberty, which reveals the...[ Read more ]

This thesis tests two theories about the relationship between economic development and change in political attitudes based on subnational data from China’s General Social Survey in 2010 and 2012. It finds a negative relationship between income level and support for “emancipative values”. Therefore, this paper contends that modernization theory is not yet applicable in the case of contemporary China, while the “contingent democrats” thesis can partly explain why Chinese citizens have not been going through an attitudinal transition toward developed emancipative values in favor of democratization. The findings also observe that both objective measures and subjective awareness of local inequality has a positive effect on lower middle class support for individual liberty, which reveals the importance of combining both regional variation and individual characteristics in understanding the formation of political preferences.