Chinese Journal of Sociology

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Cohort and Gender Disparities in Childbearing Motivation: Evidence from the China Family Panel Studies in 2020

SHENG He, LI Jianxin

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 187-212.

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The current low fertility rate in China has become a recognized fact, and the change in childbearing attitude is one of the key reasons. Childbearing motivation is an important component of childbearing attitude and is at the forefront of the sequence from childbearing attitude to behavior. This article examines cohort and gender differences in childbearing motivation by asking respondents why they should have children. Based on data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2020, this study uses cluster analysis to classify people's childbearing motivation into four categories: "low intention and negative", "individual-oriented", "dual-oriented emotional" and "family-oriented". The result shows that more than half of Chinese residents still have family-oriented motivation of childbearing while individual-oriented and dual-oriented emotional motivation account for 23% and 15% respectively. Only 9% of the residents have low intention and negative childbearing motivation. Moreover, there are significant inter-cohort differences in childbearing motivations. Earlier birth cohorts are more likely to have dual-oriented emotional, family-oriented motivations; while younger birth cohorts are more likely to have low intention and negative, individual-oriented motivations. Among the post-80s and post-90s groups, family-oriented motivations of childbearing gradually lose their dominance, while individual-oriented motivations increase significantly. In terms of gender differences, men's childbearing motivations are more traditional than women's, and the extent of inter-cohort change is smaller for men. The differences in childbearing motivation between men and women tend to widen among later generations. The study suggests changes in educational attainment as a possible explanation.

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Rights and Power: The Law Problem in Foucault's Discourse on Governmentality

XIAO Ying

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 1-53.

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The relationship between rights and power is one of the fundamental issues in Western political thought. An "orthodox consensus" has been reached in Western political theories that state sovereignty and individual rights stipulated by laws or regulations are the legitimate source not only of power practice but also of its goal and boundary. However, in a series of lectures in the College de France, Michel Foucault took governmentality as his main theme and made an in-depth analysis of the relationship between knowledge and power from different perspectives. He showed the intricate historical relationship between rights and power, governance and law, and subverted this "orthodox consensus." By combing through the history of European social governance since the Middle Ages, he demonstrated on the one hand that state sovereignty and individual sovereign rights were formed in specific power mechanisms, and, on the other hand, he emphasized that the formation and change of governance techniques—from police to disciplinary power and then to bio-power—was a process of colonizing rights and laws in different ways. And, because of the collusion of knowledge and power, these colonial mechanisms were all the more concealed by the mask of knowledge. In the face of such an awkward situation, Foucault neither opposed governance, rather opposed excessive governance, nor advocated the return of orthodox individual rights and state sovereignty, but emphasized the construction of "new rights". These "new rights" are "critiques", that is, to reveal how power and knowledge conspire and how reason has become the governing mechanism of man in a specific historical context. In the depth of Foucault's soul flickers the light of positive "nostalgia, " and at its source are the Stoic "self-governance" before and after the AD and the German neo-liberalism governance after the World War Ⅱ.

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The Limits of Care: An Ethnographic Study of Dementia Care in Nursing Homes

WU Xinyue

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 162-186.

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This ethnographic study offers insights into the lifeworld and multiple experiences of individuals with dementia residing in nursing homes. Firstly, from the perspective of phenomenological sociology, the study delves into the "disruption of experiences" resulting from dementia, which fundamentally alters the existential situation of patients. This disruption manifests as a fracture of self-coherence and a dissociation of intersubjectivity. When entering a nursing home, patients are further detached from their previous social relationships and world of meaning. Secondly, the article explores how specific ensembles of knowledge and practice in nursing homes shape the dementia experience. Under the current care management system with ADL as its core classification framework, the operational significance of dementia as a category is to a large extent dismantled. However, the stigmatizing label "laonian chidai" (senile dementia) often appears in the daily symbolic interaction process, causing all kinds of discrimination and conflicts. The dilemma of cognitive impairment classification of nursing homes reveals the dialectic relationship between "normal" and "abnormal" in definition and operation. This in turn affects the personhood and living situation of people with dementia. Finally, this article focuses on the daily ethics of dementia care, selecting two typical care scenarios of demand response and physical restraint, to examine how caregivers respond to daily crises and adopt expedient practices. The study suggests that the special care relationship of dementia care provides us with a new perspective on personhood and intersubjectivity.

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The Changing Course of Chinese Sense of Social Fairness in the Transitional Period and Its Explanatory Factors

XU Yanhui, KONG Yizhou

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 213-242.

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The perception of social fairness is an individual's overall perception or judgment of the state of social equity. Based on the repeated cross-sectional data of the China General Social Survey from 2010 to 2018, this study provides a holistic analysis of the shifting trends of social fairness perception and their explanatory factors during the two major transition periods of China, namely, the past transition period of reform and opening up and the current transition period of diversified development. With the help of mathematical models such as log-linear models and multilevel age-period-cohort models, the following three major findings are observed. First, in the current transition period, the total social mobility rate and the upward mobility ratio have been rising, and people's perceptions on social equity show a upward trend of volatility; while in the historical transition period, with the establishment and continuous improvement of markets, the perceptions of fairness experienced a rapid decline, and then a rapid improvement. Second, the three factors of social structure, social psychology and cultural norms are neither mutually exclusive nor competitive in the changing process of social equity perceptions, but are intertwined and function in different ways. Among them, social structural factors such as intergenerational mobility are foundational to the changes in the perception of social equity, while subjective class mobility perceptions are the direct source of people's perceptions and cultural norms constitute a stable potential factor. Third, this study examines the status of social equity from the perspective of social stratification and mobility, and takes the occurrence of intergenerational mobility, and its direction and distance as key indicators to measure the objective equity status. It is found that social equity status and the sense of fairness are linked, but the moral concept on which the perception of fairness is based has changed with the transformation of society in specific historical periods. This study extends the research on social equity perceptions to the macro-process and dynamic analysis of social structural transformation and people's mentality transformation. It overcomes the relatively crude measurement of intergenerational mobility distance as well as the treatment of social equity perceptions as a static factor in previous studies. In this regard, it offers an important direction for future research to investigate deeper into the tension between subjective and objective equity and explore a new model of social stratification.

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Fluid Boundaries of Responsibility: The Business and Politics of Grassroots Government

PAN Tong

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 135-161.

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This article takes an "abnormal petition" incident as a case study to explore the changes in the responsibility boundary of grassroots governments and the emergence of relevant action strategies. The research finds that grassroots governments have a dual role orientation of "business department" and "political unit", and their respective behavioral logics are also different. The former suits for a rational bureaucracy, and its design of clear task boundaries causes the ambiguity of the responsibility boundaries of grassroots governments in practice, leaving institutional space for their risk avoidance strategies. The latter applies to the political integration, and its blurred task boundary design in fact forces grassroots governments to re-clarify their responsibility boundaries and enforce their sense of responsibility. Affected by the logic of the two systems, the responsibility boundary of grassroots governments exhibits the characteristic of "fluidity", and governments' behaviors have also shifted from "risk avoidance" to "risk taking". Rational bureaucracy and political integration determine the dual role orientation of "business-politics" of grassroots governments, which in turn affects the fluidity of the responsibility boundary. Therefore, changes of events in the governance context become the trigger mechanism. In this case study, the incident was initially just a homestead dispute. However, according to the logic of rational bureaucracy, the local government avoided the responsibility to resolve the dispute by diverting the case to the Bureau of Justice and the Bureau of Health. When the petitioner's appeal to the Bureaus failed, her journey of petitioning began. Since the incident has now transformed from an administrative incident to a petition case, the responsibility boundary of the local government has changed, and the political integration system began to play a major role. As a result, the local government takes on the responsibility of dealing with petition cases using tactics of appeasement, strict pressure, and downward responsibility transfer. This article constructed the phrase of "fluid responsibility boundary" and used it as an analytical framework, emphasizing the dual roles of grassroots governments and situational change in shaping their behavior. The study contributes to the dialogues and development of research on grassroots government responsibility.

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Homeless Orphan and Science as a Vocation: Ethos of Science in Max Weber's Thoughts

SUN Feiyu

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 54-83.

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Starting from the famous opinion of Leo Strauss on Weber, and based on works in the tradition of general Phenomenological Sociology, this paper tries to analyze Max Weber's thoughts on Science and Homelessness. Through an analysis of Weber's texts, this paper finds that, contrary to Strauss's assertion, in his sober analysis of the protestant in terms of the historical analysis of rationalization, Weber describes Calvinist Puritans as an image of homeless orphan. The meaningful structure within this image is similar to "schizophrenia", but it is understood by Weber as a relationship of innere Verwandtschaft. This image and its corresponding structure are further clarified in Weber's later comparative study on civilization between China and European civilization. Similarly, this homeless orphan image of protestant and the corresponding structure are also in his works on the methodology of social science, and become the required ethos of science, especially for sociology as he understood it. This "understanding" resonates with modern society, modern university system and the production of modern knowledge. It has its origin in its own civilization. Finally, this paper argues that Weber's understanding of science and vocation, reflected in his lecture on Science as a Vocation, has this image of homeless orphan and structure of affinity as its essential inner substance.From the comparative perspective of home and homeless, this paper argues that, in Weber's thoughts, there is an intrinsic affinity between the image of homeless orphan and science as a vocation. Studies on this affinity offer an important clue for us to understand Weber's thoughts and to reflect the subjectivity building of China's social science.

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Collective System and Household Production: A Re-Examination of Production Practice in the Period of Agricultural Collectivization

YAN Yanhua

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 111-134.

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This paper re-examines the production practices and their industrial consequences during the period of agricultural collectivization through the case study of a tea-producing village in Anxi. It is found that the social transformation during the collectivization period, on the one hand, led to the widespread "de-skilling" of traditional tea merchant families, that is, through the state's agribusiness transformation and redistribution of skills, the collective system broke the monopoly of production skills inherited within the core family and the family specialization. On the other hand, it brought about the "re-skilling" for the majority of community members, that is, through the "paternalistic" production arrangements of the production team leader, tea production skills were disseminated to a wider range of households. The positive impact of the collectivization system on the local tea industry was the result of the interaction between the logic of state governance and local traditions. As a part of the formal state power structure, the production team leaders in the collectivization period were able to use the power endowed by the state to transform the traditional way of family work, so that the corresponding production arrangements were in line with the interests of the collective to the greatest extent, and it ultimately enabled the smooth development of tea garden production. However, although the family production organization was formally abolished during the collectivization period, the logic of the family organization had continued to a certain extent in the actual production organization. The production team, especially the production team leaders' balancing role between the "public family" and the "small family" played the traditional role of family authority. The study points out that it is these important features of collectivization period-the "paternalistic" style leadership of the production team leaders and the household-based production and marketing arrangements spreading production and marketing skills to the majority of households in the community-that ultimately facilitated the development of the family industry and the local tea economy in the post-collectivization period.

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Rhetorical Duality in Western Democracy: Taking Weber and Arendt as Examples

SHEN Yao

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (3): 84-110.

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In discussing the rhetoric of democratic politics, both Weber and Arendt support their respective diagnoses of modern problems in comparison to ancient Western political thought. They each represent two typical positions in the face of rhetoric, and at the same time propose answers to the democratic dilemma in the West based on the context of their respective times. Weber's contribution lies in his identification of the relationship between political rhetoric and the comprehensive crisis of modern society, namely, political apathy and the absence of popular participation under a democratic bureaucracy. The two sides of rhetoric are revealed in Weber's discussion. On the one hand, rhetoric can operate in a top-down manner through leaders' incitement to the masses, and on the other hand rhetoric can also operate from the bottom up, serving as the basis for public discussion and dialogue. However, Weber's treatment of rhetoric as a means fails to connect it with legitimacy. Arendt, on the other hand, argues that modern capitalist society has obscured mankind exists as words and action since ancient Greece. Based on her reflection on Nazi politics, Arendt selected public opinion as her addition to the other side of rhetoric, that is, the formation of consensus. Arendt pays more attention to rhetoric as a bottom-up form of political organization, as well as to the revelation of the concrete subject by speech and its relation to the power of legitimacy. Both Weber's and Arendt's positions in the face of rhetoric have their own contemporary contexts and limitations, but both have made outstanding contributions to the subject. The last section of this paper aims to exhibit, using Habermas, a comprehensive stance that upholds Arendt's fundamental rhetorical standpoint, while also considering Weber's overarching analysis of contemporary society.

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Long-Term Employment Trajectories of Chinese Women after Their First Childbirth: A Sequence Analysis

YANG Yichun, YU Jia, XIE Yu

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 167-203.

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Women's post-maternal employment status is an important factor contributing to gender inequality in labor market. Previous research mainly considered employment as a static and single event, lacking a dynamic life course perspective. Using the 2014 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) data, this study applies sequence analysis for the first time to depict a period of twenty-one years of non-agricultural working women's employment trajectories before and after their first childbirth. We divide the sample born between 1940s to 1970s into different birth cohorts to cover three stages of labor market transformations in China:the early days of the PRC, the early stage of market reform and the mature stage of market reform. Results show six typical trajectories of women's post-maternal employment in China. They are:long-term regular employment (55.06%), early return to employment (8.69%), late return to employment (3.98%), self-employment or from employment to self-employment (19.78%), long-term unemployed (8.07%), and long-term informal employment (4.42%). Different employment trajectories reflect clearly the heterogeneity of female group characteristics. Our results also show that with the social changes, the complexity and diversity of Chinese women's employment trajectories have increased significantly, showing that more women frequently switch between multiple employment status. It can be seen from the trajectories of different cohorts that the proportion of women who are able to maintain full-time employment has significantly decreased, while the proportion of self-employed, part-time and non-employment trajectories have increased noticeably. In addition, human capital, institutional patronage, and shared childcare responsibility have significant positive effect on women's full-time employment. Nevertheless, with China's marketization, the protection provided by these factors have substantially weakened over cohorts.

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Post-Materialistic Values and Political Participation of Chinese Residents: Based on the Analysis of Generational Differences

CHI Shangxin, SHI Yaodong, HUANG Jizhao

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 204-234.

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Previous studies have shown that post-materialistic values have an important impact on public political participation of the public in Western countries, but there is a lack of research on its role on public political participation in China. Based on Chinese data from the World Values Survey(WVS2018), this paper investigates the impact of post-materialistic values on Chinese residents' political participation from the perspective of generational differences. The selected measurement options of post-materialistic values are assigned different weights and aggregated according to the priority order of goals. Political participation is operationalized into three main types:intra-system, extra-institutional, and online political participation. The generational differences are divided into four generational cohorts:initial construction, reform and opening-up, marketization, and the new century. The study found that:firstly, the score of the current post-materialistic values of Chinese residents is generally not high, but there is a clear generational difference-significantly higher for those who grew up after the reform and opening up, as well as an increasing trend as the generations move forward. Secondly, the generational effect of political participation varies in different aspects. The generations growing up after the reform and opening-up show a generational increasing trend in the political participation outside the system and online, but it is opposite in grassroots elections. Thirdly, post-materialistic values have no significant impact on grassroots election participation but have a significant contributing effect on online political participation and extra-institutional participation which shows an increasing trend with each generation. These findings hold true after robustness testing. Therefore, the study confirms that the changes in public values brought about by social development can be used as cultural variables to explain the extra-institutional and online political participation of contemporary Chinese residents. It also suggests that more attention should be paid to the younger generation in the guidance of values and orderly political participation of citizens.

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Wufu and Sandai: Gender and Family Name in the Light of Changes of Marriage Prohibition in China's Marriage Laws

ZHAO Xiaoli

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 87-111.

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Since the late Qing Dynasty, the scope of prohibited marriage in China's marriage law has undergone a change from wufu (five grades of mourning) to sandai(three generations). Since the Zhou Dynasty, traditional Chinese society had adhered to the Zhou etiquette of "no marriage between members of the same clan". Marriage between cousins(except paternal parallel cousins) had been left to the discretion of the family and not prohibited by law. In 1930, in accordance with the principle of equality between men and women, the kinship section of the Republic of China Civil Code changed the classification of traditional Chinese kinships of internal relatives and extermal relatives to Western-style blood relatives and in-laws, thus introduced a problem of whether or not clan members outside of the wufu circle and cousins within three generations could marry each other. This paper points out these contradictions and conflicts by examining the contradiction between the principle of freedom of marriage under the 1950 Marriage Law and the common practice of "no marriage between members of the same clan", and the conflict between eugenic policy and freedom of marriage in the 1980 Marriage Law. The root of these contradictions is the fact that Chinese kinship and Western kingship classifications are incompatible. Chinese kinship categorization is based on the social "clan surnames" system rather than the biological "sex" system, and the traditional social practice of no marriage within the same clan and marriage between cousins (except paternal parallel cousins) is due to the kinship system's emphasis on internal relations over external ones rather than on male over female preference. Nowadays, with the abolition of change of surnames for women after marriage, the traditionally external (e.g. maternal) relatives can now be regarded as internal relatives, the "no marriage within the same clan" can be applied to both clans. The eugenic reason for prohibiting marriage of collateral relatives within three generations and the etiquette reason for the no-marriage within the same clans can go hand in hand now because eugenics serves the continuation of the clan.

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A New Interpretation of Lenin's What Is To Be Done?: From the Perspective of Comparative Historical Sociology

YING Xing

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 56-86.

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Based on the perspective of comparative historical sociology and organizational sociology, this paper provides a new interpretation of Lenin's classic work on party building theory What Is To Be Done? by comparing the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party with the Russian revolutionary populists, and the Second International social democrats with the Chinese Communist Party. The paper first outlines the intellectual and political background of What Is To Be Done?, and then analyzes the similarities and differences of the "indoctrination" mechanism in Europe, Russia, and China, especially emphasizing the difference between "propaganda", "agitation", and "appeal". The discussion continues with a focus on three core organizational issues discussed in chapter four of What Is To Be Done? Through comparison with Weber's analysis of professional politicians, the paper explains Lenin's understanding of the importance of the organisation of professional revolutionaries, especially distinguishing the two meanings of "making revolution a profession". Through comparison with the CCP's work in the white areas, the author highlights the significance of Lenin's proposal to combine a solid organizational core with differentiated organizational circles, illustrated in a diagram outlining the differentiated organizational chart of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. Through comparison with the Russian revolutionary populists and the Second International, the paper shows the origin and evolution of Lenin's thoughts on the conspiratorial and centralized nature of party organizations, with a focus on the connection between Lenin and Peter Tkachev on this idea. The author also analyzes the relationship between local and central authorities discussed by Lenin in his book. The author finally proposes some directions for further comparative extension, and points out the significance of moving from technical analysis to root cause political analysis in organization research in Chinese sociology.

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The Constitution of Nomos-Harmonia Civilization: A Preliminary Exploration of a Social Theory of Nature-Culture

WU Fei

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 1-21.

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In this paper, the author argues that, in contrast to the city-state civilization of ancient Greece and the social civilization of the modern West, traditional China has formed a kind of nomos-harmonia civilization, and it is constituted through the theory of nature-culture(wenzhi lun). Zhi is nature and Wen is civilization. It sees culture as internal to nature, an expression of intrinsic essence of nature. Hence civilization origins from nature and cannot transcend, change or destroy nature. Whether it is nature-oriented or culture-oriented, it is fundamentally a kind of culture. How could such a theory constitute nomos-harmonia civilization? The author first discusses about ritual and ceremony, which are used to formulate human feelings. Then comes the nomos system referring to a variety of systems at the social and political level, and nevertheless its constituent principle is the same as ritual and ceremony. On this level of nomos, affection is nature, and order is culture. The collective life of human society is not artificial constitution, but has its foundation in nature. Some basic human relationships are natural, especially that of parents and offspring. Order is found in such a relationship, upon which human civilizations are established. Hence the state is not a necessary evil, or a social contract, or a violent machine, but a cultural transformation of a natural community. Like Western social theories, wenzhi lun (nature-culture theory) does not regard the state as the highest human institute, and hence it should be treated as a social theory. Also similar to the Greek political philosophy, wenzhi lun origins from and returns back to nature.

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The Psychological Construction of “Stability”: A Historical Narrative of the Collective Identity and Mobility Trend of Middle-aged and Elderly Teachers in Rural Areas

LI Caihong, ZHU Zhiyong

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 139-166.

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This paper takes Wu Primary School, a former state-owned farm school in eastern Inner Mon golia, as a case study to explore the mobility trend of rural middle-aged and elderly teachers, its characteristics and causes during the time of rapid urbanization. The study attempts to gain a deep understanding of the life choices of this generation of teachers under multiple situations from the perspective of historical changes and regional development. The study found that after many years of hardship, middle-aged and elderly teachers on state-owned farms had derived a collective identity that included three elements:survival security identity, emotional identity and attachment, and professional efficacy and self-identity. This triadic identity was based on the cross-construction of institutional identity, legal identity, and professional identity, emerged in the historical process of market reform of farming, farming units, and education system of state-owned farms. Such a collective identity reflected the value tendency and emotional belonging of members in a close social community, with collective status as the carrier, integrating collective interest, consciousness and emotional connection. In the end, in a paradoxical way the triadic collective identity promoted the construction of a psychological mechanism with "stability" as the core for this group of middle-aged and elderly teachers, forming a collective preference of remaining in the countryside and characteristics of attachment, and therefore revealing another side of abnormality that has received little attention in the field of rural teacher mobility. With the ongoing urbanisation in China, this"stable" psychological mechanism has great significance in promoting and improving the professional development of rural teachers and the quality of rural education.

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Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 235-240.

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“Pricing” Injuries: Practice of Commensuration in Medical Injury Disputes

ZHANG Long

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 112-138.

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Existing studies on medical injury compensation often focus on institutional arrangement or financial outcomes. They are lack of sufficient attention to the micro-social processes that determine compensations, especially the tension between the different kinds of losses and the quantitative outcomes of resolution. Based on the fieldwork in a dispute resolution department of a public city hospital in northern China, this study presents the comprehensive medical injury compensation "pricing" processes under different channels. The paper argues that the crucial parts in medical injury disputes inevitably involve commensuration, a social process by which different factors are being quantified onto the same scale. By introducing the concept of commensurative practice, this study depicts the formation of compensation amounts as an accumulative process of multiple micro-based commensurative practices. The study finds that the commensurative practices in medical injury disputes are usually unfolded in three dimensions:value (integration of values), cognitive (simplification of information) and technical (accuracy of measurement). There are two factors affecting specific ways of commensuration that can cause dimensional shifts. On one hand, the less institutionalized the interaction context, the more prominent the value dimension in the commensurative practice, while the more institutionalized interaction context most likely results in more cognitive and technical commensuraition. On the other hand, the more directly commensurative practices target the "incommensurable" or "not easily commensurable" attributes, the more prominent the dimension of value commensuration, while the attributes of what is considered "commensurable" or "easily commensurable" are more often accompanied by cognitive and technical commensuration. The main focus of this study is to present as well as compare commensurative practices of "incommensurables" under the channels of different institutionalisation.

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Centralized State yet Decentralized Governance: On Gu Yanwu's Mixed System Theory

CAO Zhenghan

Chinese Journal of Sociology 2023, 43 (5): 22-55.

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In his book Discourse on Junxian, Gu Yanwu proposed a famous reform theory that introduced the principle of feudal autonomy within the framework of a centralized state, forming a hybrid system of "embedding the spirit of feudalism (fengjian) in the structure of prefectures and counties (junxian)". Contemporary scholars generally view this mixed system theory as a theory of the relationship between central and local governments or as a theory of local decentralization or "local autonomy", with the aim of achieving a balance between centralization and decentralization. However, there has been insufficient discussion on the meaning of centralization and decentralization in this mixed system theory, as well as the ways and conditions to achieve a balance between the two.
This article argues that Gu Yanwu's mixed system theory is not only a theory of the relationship between central and local governments, nor is it just a theory of local decentralization, it is also a theory that deals with the relationship between "centralized state" and "governance", especially the contradiction between the two. The core idea of this theory can be summarized as "centralized state yet decentralized governance". The purpose of this article is to demonstrate this viewpoint and further explore the underlying meaning and source of the principle of "centralized state yet decentralized governance", as well as its implementation mechanisms and institutional conditions.
This article points out that the principle of "centralized state yet decentralized governance" is reflected to some extent in the traditional governance system and practices in Chinese history, and is also implicitly presented in the reform thoughts in the 1980s in China. This means that the development of historical China and the modernization transformation of contemporary China are, to some extent, unfolding in the process of exploring and dealing with the contradiction between "centralized state" and "governance". Therefore, Gu Yanwu's mixed system theory and its underlying principle still have theoretical significance for China's exploration of the path to modernization.

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