Abstract
Public preferences for redistribution are important for research and policy-making in authoritarian countries such as China, where political legitimacy has relied heavily on improving the people’s well-being and is likely to be impaired by growing social inequality. What are ordinary Chinese preferences for government redistribution? Do they differ from the public preferences in advanced industrialized economies, or do they share similar preferences with citizens of other developing or post-communist countries? Drawing on the World Values Survey in China from 1990 to 2012 and multilevel data analysis, I find that Chinese preferences for redistribution vary significantly with income, occupation, and place of residence, as the existing studies of advanced industrialized democracies and other developing countries predict. Moreover, the Chinese preferences notably fall along state-private sectoral and labor market insider-outsider cleavages generated by the state socialist legacy and the newly developed market economy. These findings suggest that in contemporary China, multiple social cleavages coexist and interweave in such a way as to fragment society without breaking it along a single and deep class line. This study helps advance the understanding of the societal foundation of redistributive policies and politics in China and in transitional societies with newly developed market economies in general.