Public trust in the Chinese police: The impact of ethnicity, class, and Hukou

Published date01 June 2016
Date01 June 2016
DOI10.1177/0004865814554309
AuthorIvan Y Sun,Rong Hu,Yuning Wu
Subject MatterArticles
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2016, Vol. 49(2) 179–197
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865814554309
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Article
Public trust in the Chinese
police: The impact of ethnicity,
class, and Hukou
Yuning Wu
Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA
Ivan Y Sun
Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware,
Newark, USA
Rong Hu
Department of Sociology and Social Work, Xiamen University,
Xiamen, China
Abstract
Under the shiny surface of continued rapid economic growth, China has become a country
rife with discontent over social inequalities, providing a unique social laboratory for studying
social divisions and public perceptions of the police. We extended the conflict perspectives
developed in the West to Chinaand became the first to simultaneously examine the effects of
three most vital social stratification variables in China—ethnicity, social status, and hukou—on
trust in the police. Using nationwide data, we found that ethnic minorities showed the same
or higher levels of trust than the Hans, rural registers held more favorable views than urban
registers, and self-identified social status emerged as the most important concept associated
with conflict theory in explaining Chinese trust in the police. Findings provided important
theoretical and policy implications of social stratification and policing in a country of rapid
modernization.
Keywords
Chinese police, ethnicity, hukou, social status, trust in police
Introduction
Public trust in the police can inf‌luence the amount and type of interaction people have
with the police, the level of support they show to the police, the degree of legitimacy they
perceive about the police, and the extent of cooperation they render to the police. This
important topic, although extensively examined in Western nations, particularly in the
Corresponding author:
Ivan Sun, University of Delaware, Smith 331, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
Email: isun@udel.edu
U.S. and UK, is understudied in non-Western, developing nations. Limiting research on
criminal justice issues to Western developed nations, unfortunately, ignores the majority
of people on the planet, leading to a myopic worldview of insularity and ethnocentrism
(Lambert, Wu, Elechi, & Jiang, 2012). To address the concern, this study examines
public evaluations of the police in China. We are particularly interested at testing
whether conf‌lict theory can be generalized to the Chinese criminal justice context and
the implications of social stratif‌ications for policing and police–community relations in a
country of rapid modernization.
This study focuses on the impact of social divisions on Chinese trust in the police.
When the Chinese Communist Party established the ‘‘new China’’ in 1949, one of the
regime’s primary goals was to eliminate completely the antagonistic class relations that
exist in capitalist societies. Decades later, however, not only has a classless society never
been accomplished, but also social divisions have grown exponentially deeper since the
1980s. Under the shiny surface of continued rapid economic growth, China has become a
country rife with discontent over the many inequalities related to social stratif‌ication,
resulting in scattered riots and protests every day (Sun et al., 2013a). The public
security apparatus, including both civil and militarized police forces, are frequently dis-
patched to the frontline to dispel rallies and quell riots, causing numerous confrontations
between the police and the public (Sun & Wu, 2010; Wu, 2010).
Amid increasing tensions among broad swathes of society, today’s China provides a
unique social laboratory for studying the relationship between social divisions and
public perceptions of the police. In this study, we extend the conf‌lict perspectives devel-
oped in the West to the Chinese context. We assess the inf‌luences of deepened social
divisions not only along common social stratif‌ication factors of ethnicity and social
status, but also by key China-specif‌ic conf‌lict factors such as hukou (i.e. household
registration).
Compared to past research on Chinese opinions on the police, this study represents
several methodological and conceptual improvements. First, we analyze data from the
most recent 2010 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), which generated a large-scale,
random-sample dataset that includes survey responses from urban and rural areas in all
Chinese provinces. This is one of the few nationwide research projects conducted using
rigorous scientif‌ic methods by social scientists in China. This study’s sample thus is more
representative and f‌indings more generalizable, compared to previous research that
depended primarily upon samples from a single or a few cities (e.g. Sun et al.,
2012, 2013a, 2013b; Wu & Sun, 2009; Cao & Hou, 2001) or nonrandom student samples
(Wu & Sun, 2010).
Second, the CGSS data allow us to examine simultaneously the ef‌fects of ethnicity,
social status, and hukou, arguably three of the pivotal social-hierarchy variables that
shape the experience of all Chinese. Race/ethnicity has been one of the most consistent
predictors of public evaluations of the police in Western societies, with racial minorities
displaying less favorable attitudes toward the police than their majority counterparts.
Ethnicity, however, has rarely been investigated in studies on public perceptions of the
police in China. Similarly, the ef‌fect of hukou has been largely missing in prior research.
Including these vital social stratif‌ication variables in a model ref‌lects the value of analyz-
ing social identities around the notion of multiple positioning that the critical racial
theory in Western literature has underscored (Fenton & Harriet, 2002).
180 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 49(2)

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