Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Public Opinion Reform In China, David S. Mason, Ken Colburn

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

As the People's Republic of China shifts toward a more market-oriented economic system, it has also begun exploring another Western institution: scientific public opinion polling. As Yang Guansan, one of China's leading pollsters, said recently in the Beijing Review: "Only five or six years ago, the public opinion poll was considered to be a 'bourgeois' or 'capitalist' method of social survey ... Now the taboo has been swept away in the strong tide of reform, which is challenging all of China's traditions, stereotypes and prejudices."