Political Participation, Unofficial—China
When individuals or groups become active in the family, at work, and in clubs, the economy, or politics in order to achieve or influence certain aims in public life, such actions can be called political participation. China's traditional political culture allowed the vast majority of the population only a small degree of formal participation. Confucianism defined duties (to the ruler, to the state, to the family), but no rights. Independent political institutions and parallel power structures were always suppressed. One exception was the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which permitted people to rebel in order to depose an incompetent ruler, should the state be in political, economic, and social decline. Locally, self-governing villages and communities enjoyed a relatively large degree of autonomy. Clans, kinship groups, secret societies, temple organizations, guilds, and regional groupings organized their own social spheres. Also, the assertion of interests against those of state and bureaucracy happened informally through connections, corruption, negotiation, and strategy.
Political Participation Before 1949
Toward the end of the empire (1912) and during the republic (1912–1927), the basis for a legal system with laws and law courts began to develop, and political parties, professional organizations, literary and artistic circles, and mass media emerged.
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