Books by Joshua Zhang

Based on a large-scale survey, it is found that during the Cultural Revolution masses took part in the movements to either improve their social status or maintain their social positions. In the provinces immersed in class based struggles, there was strong relationship between faction alignment and family background. Nevertheless, in the provinces involved in non-class based sectarian struggles, the association between the two was nil. The social conflict school failed to notice the sectarian internecine fights among rebels while the political process school failed to pay attention to the fundamental social conflicts in China. The book summarizes the lessons learned from the self-destruction of the mass movements and points out pitfalls for the future social movements in China.

This book recounts the elections in 2012 from different perspectives, one from an ordinary voter, one from an election researcher and one from a redistricting insider. Many officials, representatives and senators are elected from their districts. "One person one vote principle" dictates that the election districts should be redrawn every ten years after the census. During the redistricting, in order to win an upper hand over the opponents, partisan gerrymandering is quite popular with packing and cracking tricks. Whoever wins in redistricting wins the elections for the next ten years. In many cases, the election outcomes are decided before the election starts. Redistricting transforms the ideal of "people electing their representatives" to the reality of "representatives choosing their constituents".