Social Justice with Chinese Characteristics: A Qualitative Exploration of Chinese People’s Cultural Resources for Evaluations of Social Justice

In this thesis, I have explored the cultural resources which Chinese people have for their evaluations of social justice in China today, that is, the ideas and beliefs they use to interpret phenomena related to the distribution of resources, opportunities, welfare entitlements, work, and income among members of society. Based on 76 qualitative open-ended interviews with Chinese people working in Beijing, I find that even though Chinese people have been exposed to and known very different distributive orders in a not-too-distant past, the cultural resources that many interviewees deployed in their evaluations of social justice enabled them to justify, rather than problematize, the inequalities of the current distributive order in China. However, the findings also suggests that there are cultural resources which potentially can be used to criticize certain aspects of the distributive order. It is therefore essential for researchers to continue to pay attention to Chinese people’s evaluations of social justice in China.