ABSTRACT
Chinese public opinion emerges and is made politically significant through state-society encounters and the people’s ways of coping with the demands and challenges of the state. Similar to the study of ethnicity, the analysis of public opinion in China entails a focus on dynamics rattier than statics. One might then ask how Chinese public opinion is transformed into political culture. First of all, the dividing line between public opinion and political culture is very narrow. Both are bom of everyday interaction with the state. One may include Gemeinschaft groups in a civil society, as T. H. Rigby does. But the real function of a civil society—subjecting the state to the purview of public opinion—is to be carried out by Gesellschaft organizations. Based on the European and North American historical experience, the foundations of a civil society are urbanization, literacy, a middle class, independent associations, and an institutionalized public opinion.
