Two Bush School of Government and Public Service colleagues at Texas A&M University have teamed up to lead a multidisciplinary and multinational collaborative research survey in China. Dr. Xinsheng Liu (research scientist and assistant director in the Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy, or ISTPP) and Dr. Ren Mu (Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs) have completed three waves of China Governance and Public Policy Surveys (CGPPS). The three waves were carried out in August, October, and December of 2016 and resulted in approximately 8,000 observations. These nationwide, large-scale, and representative surveys cover a wide range of governance and public policy issues facing China today —social-economic-educational inequality, life satisfaction, nationalism and patriotism, pollution and environmental protection, digital media and online activity, public health and e-Health behavior, major issue concerns and policy preferences.
The CGPPS research project involves multidisciplinary efforts across academic researchers in political science, economics, public health, environmental research, and communication studies. It also involves two colleges within Texas A&M University and international collaborations from three countries (United States, United Kingdom, and China). The Bush School’s Transformation of Democracy research fund provided the main financial support for this project. ISTPP, Department of International Affairs, and School of Public Health at Texas A&M University as well as Swansea University in the United Kingdom supplied the balance of the funding. The Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance at the Southwest University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE) staffed the local research team that implemented the surveys.
A number of academic studies using the data from these surveys are underway. Dr. Mu and Dr. Liu will analyze public awareness of environmental issues and examine how the awareness evolved during the 2008-2016 period. Dr. Mu will use the survey experiments embedded in CGPPS to examine the relationship between the public’s awareness of inequality and their policy preferences for redistribution. Dr. Liu and colleagues will investigate several research topics, including Chinese nationalism/patriotism, “the sent-down” experience and political attitudes, and local pollution risk perception and water policy support. Research team members are also examining other topics on digital media use, public health issues, and life satisfaction in China.
