Monolithic Chinese political culture?: A cross‐regional exploration

Abstract Objective This article explores whether authoritarian China has a monolithic political culture, or rather a set of somewhat different political cultures across a number of regions. Method On the basis of several criteria we deem particularly important for identifying regions within which development, communication, and socialization of political attitudes are likely to be internally common but distinguishable from those of other regions, we divide China into six such regions. We then employ a combination of eight attitudinal measures from The China Survey of 2008 which are directly relevant to discerning political culture. Results We find that there are indeed substantively different cultures across regions, some of which are more consistent with elite preferences than others. Conclusion From our initial foray into possible explanation, we conclude that politico‐historical legacy—sometimes in interaction with certain aspects of geographic, demographic, and economic characteristics—may go furthest in explaining the cross‐region cultural differences.