The authors treat the interactive process between the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as a convenient organising framework to describe the economic, social, and communicative intercourse between the "core" Chinese entities -- mainly the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong -- as well as the Chinese communities in other countries. The interactions between various Chinese entities are defined here as an informal, spontaneous, and interactive process incorporating a deeper cultural cohesion and a complex relationship across formal political boundaries, and sometimes well beyond official anticipation and regulation.

Tianjian Shi shows how cultural norms affect political attitudes and behavior through two causal pathways, one at the individual level and one at the community level. Focusing on two key norms - definition of self-interest and orientation to authority - he tests the theory with multiple surveys conducted in mainland China and Taiwan. Shi employs multi-level statistical analysis to show how, in these two very different political systems, similar norms exert similar kinds of influence on political trust, understanding of democracy, forms of political participation, and tolerance for protest. The approach helps to explain the resilience of authoritarian politics in China and the dissatisfaction of many Taiwan residents with democratic institutions. Aiming to place the study of political culture on a new theoretical and methodological foundation, Shi argues that a truly comparative social science must understand how culturally embedded norms influence decision making.

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. China’s relation to Taiwan has been in constant contention since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October 1949 and the creation of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) exile regime on the island two months later. The island’s autonomous sovereignty has continually been challenged, initially because of the KMT’s insistence that it continue to represent not just Taiwan but all of China—and later because Taiwan refused to cede sovereignty to the then-dominant power that had arisen on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. One thing that makes Taiwan so politically difficult and yet so intellectually fascinating is that it ­­is not merely a security problem, but a ganglion of interrelated puzzles. The optimistic hope of the Ma Ying-jeou administration for a new era of peace and cooperation foundered on a landslide victory by the Democratic Progressive Party, which has made clear its intent to distance Taiwan from China’s political embrace. The Taiwanese are now waiting with bated breath as the relationship tautens. Why did détente fail, and what chance does Taiwan have without it? Contributors to this volume focus on three aspects of the evolving quandary: nationalistic identity, social economy, and political strategy.

How might China become a democracy? And what lessons, if any, might Taiwan's experience of democratization hold for China's future? The authors of this volume consider these questions, both through comparisons of Taiwan's historical experience with the current period of economic and social change in the PRC, and through more focused analysis of China's current, and possible future, politics.