The “wealthy-gentry politics” for capitalists in China

Choosing individual private entrepreneurs to be a member of the People’s Congress (PC) or the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which are usually roughly compared as the Chinese “House of Lords” and “House of Commons” respectively, is one of the most important mechanisms for practicing “cooperative capitalism” in China. By using the “Chinese Private Entrepreneur Survey 2008”, this paper aims to answer two questions: first, what are the differences between factors for winning a seat at the PC and the CPPCC systems, respectively; second, for factors that have significant impact on winning a seat in the “county-township level” and the “prefecture-above level” PC/CPPCC is there any difference. Based on empirical findings, a term “wealthy-gentry politic” (cai-shen zhengzhi)  is coined to conceptualize the fact that behaving as a socially responsible “gentry” is playing an increasingly significant role on the higher level and in the PC vis-à-vis the lower level and the CPPCC, while economic wealth is just a threshold and party membership is not a guarantee. The paper also discusses the impact of wealthy politics on democratization in China.