DOCSLIB.ORG

CFPS China Family Panel Studies

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
CFPS China Family Panel Studies China Family Panel Studies CFPS China Family Panel Studies User‘s Manual (3rd edition) Yu Xie, Xiaobo Zhang, Ping Tu, Qiang Ren, Yan Sun, Ping Lv, Hua Ding, Jingwei Hu, Qiong Wu 7/30/2017 CONTENTS FOREWORD ........................................................................................................................................ 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................................... 3 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 5 1.1 BACKGROUND .................................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 DESIGN ............................................................................................................................................. 6 1.3 INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON ............................................................................................................. 13 1.4. SURVEY TECHNOLOGIES ..................................................................................................................... 15 2. SAMPLING .................................................................................................................................... 17 2.1 SAMPLING DESIGN ............................................................................................................................ 17 2.2 TERMINAL SAMPLING FRAME .............................................................................................................. 19 3. QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN.............................................................................................................. 21 3.1 OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................................... 21 3.2 COMMUNITY QUESTIONNAIRE ............................................................................................................. 25 3.3. RESIDENCE SCREENING ...................................................................................................................... 26 3.4 HOUSEHOLD SCREENING QUESTIONNAIRE ............................................................................................. 27 3.5 FAMILY ROSTER QUESTIONNAIRE .......................................................................................................... 28 3.6 FAMILY QUESTIONNAIRE .................................................................................................................... 35 3.7 INDIVIDUAL QUESTIONNAIRE .............................................................................................................. 44 4. FIELD OPERATION ......................................................................................................................... 61 4.1 PILOT STUDIES .................................................................................................................................. 61 4.2 CFPS 2010 BASELINE INTERVIEWERS ................................................................................................... 61 4.3 OVERVIEW OF 2010 SURVEY IMPLEMENTATION ..................................................................................... 62 4.4 REFUSAL AND SOLUTIONS IN 2010 BASELINE SURVEY .............................................................................. 64 4.5 BASELINE SURVEY FINAL CONTACT RESULT OF CFPS 2010 ........................................................................ 64 4.6 BASELINE SAMPLE MAINTENANCE......................................................................................................... 68 4.7 FOLLOW-UP STRATEGIES ..................................................................................................................... 68 4.8 FIELD OPERATION OF FOLLOW-UP SURVEY .............................................................................................. 69 4.9 INTERVIEW RESULTS AT THE HOUSEHOLD LEVEL ....................................................................................... 72 4.10 INTERVIEW RESULTS AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL ...................................................................................... 74 5. QUALITY CONTROL ....................................................................................................................... 77 5.1 QUALITY CONTROL MEASURES AND TECHNOLOGIES ................................................................................ 77 5.2 QUALITY CONTROL STRATEGIES ........................................................................................................... 78 5.3 PROPORTIONS AND RESULTS OF QUALITY CHECK .................................................................................... 79 6. DATA SETS AND DATA PROCESSING .............................................................................................. 82 6.1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO DATA SETS ................................................................................................ 82 6.2 DATA CLEANING ................................................................................................................................ 83 7. COMPOSITE VARIABLES ................................................................................................................ 90 7.1 EDUCATIONAL LEVEL (2010) ............................................................................................................... 90 7.2 DEPRESSION (2010) ......................................................................................................................... 93 7.3 COGNITIVE ABILITY ............................................................................................................................ 94 7.4 INCOME........................................................................................................................................... 96 7.5 FAMILY EXPENDITURE ...................................................................................................................... 101 7.6 FAMILY ASSETS ............................................................................................................................... 105 7.7 OCCUPATION CODES ........................................................................................................................ 106 7.8 CONVERSION OF OCCUPATIONAL CODES.............................................................................................. 109 7.9 DIALECT CODE ................................................................................................................................ 110 7.10 BEST VARIABLES ........................................................................................................................... 113 7.11 CONFIDENTIALITY ISSUES ................................................................................................................ 115 7.12 MISCELLANEOUS ........................................................................................................................... 115 8. CFPS 2010 BASELINE SURVEY PRELIMINARY FINDINGS AND EVALUATIONS ................................ 119 8.1 AGE-SEX DISTRIBUTIONS .................................................................................................................. 119 8.2 FAMILY SIZE AND HOUSEHOLD TYPES ................................................................................................. 122 8.3 FAMILY INCOME .............................................................................................................................. 124 8.4 URBAN-RURAL DISTRIBUTION ........................................................................................................... 127 8.5 EDUCATIONAL LEVEL ........................................................................................................................ 128 8.6 MARITAL STATUS ............................................................................................................................ 129 9. WEIGHTS CALCULATIONS ........................................................................................................... 131 9.2 WEIGHTS IN FOLLOW-UP SURVEY ....................................................................................................... 133 10. TECHNICAL REPORTS ................................................................................................................ 136 11. REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 138 Foreword After several years of preparation and two pilot studies in 2008 and 2009, China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) implemented its baseline survey in 2010 and three waves of full sample follow-up surveys in 2012, 2014, and 2016. In addition, a small- scale sample maintenance survey was conducted in 2011. Large-scale surveys are known to be complicated and involve multiple details in the initial conceptual design, survey technologies, interviewing processes, quality control, and data processing. Each individual aspect influences the academic value of the data. The CFPS baseline sample covers 25 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions, representing 95% of the Chinese population. The 2010 baseline survey interviewed a total of 14,960 households and 42,590 individuals, and it is China‘s first large-scale academically- oriented longitudinal survey project. It aims
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Attitudes Towards Multilingualism: a Comparison Between Shanghai And
    Attitudes towards multilingualism: A comparison between Shanghai and Ningbo China, especially its urban areas, has become more and more multilingual in the 21st century. Younger generations born around and after the turn of century – roughly two decades after the 1978 Economic Reform – are often multilingual with Putonghua (China’s standard language), regional dialects (often mutually unintelligible with Putonghua), and English (amongst other foreign languages). Existing studies on language attitudes in China, possibly influenced by the country’s strong monolingual ideology, tend to focus on the contrast between ‘standard’ and ‘non-standard’ where Putonghua is seen as more ‘superior’ than all other languages [1-3]. Another gap in the literature is that many of these studies rely solely on either self-reported questionnaire data or implicit attitudes elicited from matched-guised experiments [3-6] while a combination of the two methods can potentially offer a more comprehensive picture. This paper combines implicit and explicit data to discuss how these different languages/varieties are perceived by young adults in Ningbo and Shanghai. Data was collected from 66 university students from Ningbo (44 with 24 women) and Shanghai (22 with 12 women). Data analysed includes questionnaires on language attitudes and usage, a matched-guise experiment on the perception of two ‘non-standard’ phonetic features in Putonghua, and sociolinguistic interviews on language use and attitudes in general. The two cities differ in that Shanghai is more international with more English presence, and the local Shanghainese dialect is suggested to have more covert prestige [7]. Results from quantitative analysis on the questionnaires and experiments and qualitative analysis on interview extracts confirm patterns noticed by previous studies on English and Putonghua, suggesting both are valued by students.
    [Show full text]
  • Siwei Cheng Updated May 2017
    Siwei Cheng Updated May 2017 Department of Sociology Email: [email protected] New York University Homepage: http://siweicheng.weebly.com/ Puck Building 4th floor 295 Lafayette Street New York, NY 10012 Employment Assistant Professor of Sociology, New York University. 2016 - Faculty affiliate, Institute of Human Development and Social Change Non-resident faculty affiliate, California Center for Population Research Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles. 2015 - 2016 Education Ph.D. Public Policy and Sociology, University of Michigan, 2015. Dissertation: “Unequal Origins, Unequal Trajectories: Social Stratification over the Life Course.” Yu Xie (Co-chair), Mary Corcoran (Co-chair), Jennifer Barber, Jeffrey Smith. M.A. Statistics, University of Michigan, 2012. B.A. Economics, Peking University, 2009. B.Sc. Mathematical Statistics, Peking University, 2009. Areas of Research Stratification, mobility and inequality; life course; work and family; demography; quantitative methodology. Publications Emma Björkenstam, Siwei Cheng, Bo Burström, Anne Pebley, Charlotte Björkenstam, & Kyriaki Kosidou. (2017) Association between income trajectories in childhood and psychiatric disorder - a Swedish population-based study. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. Cheng, Siwei (2016). The Accumulation of (Dis)advantage: The Intersection of Gender and Race in the Long-term Wage Effect of Marriage. American Sociological Review 81(1): 29-56. (Lead Article) Yu Xie, Siwei Cheng & Xiang Zhou (2015). Assortative Mating without Assortative Preference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(19): 5974-5978. Cheng, Siwei (2014). A Life Course Trajectory Framework for Understanding the Intracohort Pattern of Wage Inequality. American Journal of Sociology 120(3): 633-700. (Lead Article) Siwei Cheng Clifford C. Clogg Award, ASA Methodology Section.
    [Show full text]
  • De Sousa Sinitic MSEA
    THE FAR SOUTHERN SINITIC LANGUAGES AS PART OF MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA (DRAFT: for MPI MSEA workshop. 21st November 2012 version.) Hilário de Sousa ERC project SINOTYPE — École des hautes études en sciences sociales [email protected]; [email protected] Within the Mainland Southeast Asian (MSEA) linguistic area (e.g. Matisoff 2003; Bisang 2006; Enfield 2005, 2011), some languages are said to be in the core of the language area, while others are said to be periphery. In the core are Mon-Khmer languages like Vietnamese and Khmer, and Kra-Dai languages like Lao and Thai. The core languages generally have: – Lexical tonal and/or phonational contrasts (except that most Khmer dialects lost their phonational contrasts; languages which are primarily tonal often have five or more tonemes); – Analytic morphological profile with many sesquisyllabic or monosyllabic words; – Strong left-headedness, including prepositions and SVO word order. The Sino-Tibetan languages, like Burmese and Mandarin, are said to be periphery to the MSEA linguistic area. The periphery languages have fewer traits that are typical to MSEA. For instance, Burmese is SOV and right-headed in general, but it has some left-headed traits like post-nominal adjectives (‘stative verbs’) and numerals. Mandarin is SVO and has prepositions, but it is otherwise strongly right-headed. These two languages also have fewer lexical tones. This paper aims at discussing some of the phonological and word order typological traits amongst the Sinitic languages, and comparing them with the MSEA typological canon. While none of the Sinitic languages could be considered to be in the core of the MSEA language area, the Far Southern Sinitic languages, namely Yuè, Pínghuà, the Sinitic dialects of Hǎinán and Léizhōu, and perhaps also Hakka in Guǎngdōng (largely corresponding to Chappell (2012, in press)’s ‘Southern Zone’) are less ‘fringe’ than the other Sinitic languages from the point of view of the MSEA linguistic area.
    [Show full text]
  • Gěi ’Give’ in Beijing and Beyond Ekaterina Chirkova
    Gěi ’give’ in Beijing and beyond Ekaterina Chirkova To cite this version: Ekaterina Chirkova. Gěi ’give’ in Beijing and beyond. Cahiers de linguistique - Asie Orientale, CRLAO, 2008, 37 (1), pp.3-42. hal-00336148 HAL Id: hal-00336148 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00336148 Submitted on 2 Nov 2008 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Gěi ‘give’ in Beijing and beyond1 Katia Chirkova (CRLAO, CNRS) This article focuses on the various uses of gěi ‘give’, as attested in a corpus of spoken Beijing Mandarin collected by the author. These uses are compared to those in earlier attestations of Beijing Mandarin and to those in Greater Beijing Mandarin and in Jì-Lǔ Mandarin dialects. The uses of gěi in the corpus are demonstrated to be consistent with the latter pattern, where the primary function of gěi is that of indirect object marking and where, unlike Standard Mandarin, gěi is not additionally used as an agent marker or a direct object marker. Exceptions to this pattern in the corpus are explained as a recent development arisen through reanalysis. Key words : gěi, direct object marker, indirect object marker, agent marker, Beijing Mandarin, Northern Mandarin, typology.
    [Show full text]
  • Household Wealth in China
    This article was downloaded by: [141.211.200.142] On: 26 July 2015, At: 12:02 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG Chinese Sociological Review Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mcsa20 Household Wealth in China Yu Xieab & Yongai Jinc a University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI b Peking University, Beijing, China c Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Published online: 29 May 2015. Click for updates To cite this article: Yu Xie & Yongai Jin (2015) Household Wealth in China, Chinese Sociological Review, 47:3, 203-229, DOI: 10.1080/21620555.2015.1032158 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21620555.2015.1032158 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
    [Show full text]
  • Language Variation and Social Identity in Beijing
    Language Variation and Social Identity in Beijing Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Hui Zhao May 2017 School of Languages, Linguistics and Film Queen Mary University of London Declaration I, Hui Zhao, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my con- tribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party's copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Date: Abstract This thesis investigates language variation among a group of young adults in Beijing, China, with an aim to advance our understanding of social meaning in a language and a society where the topic is understudied. In this thesis, I examine the use of Beijing Mandarin among Beijing- born university students in Beijing in relation to social factors including gender, social class, career plan, and future aspiration.
    [Show full text]
  • VITA-Yuxie- 2019March
    CURRICULUM VITA YU XIE April 17, 2019 Mail Addresses 186 Wallace Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 Email: [email protected] Phone : 609-258-7080 Home Page www.yuxie.com Education B.S. Shanghai University of Technology. Metallurgical Engineering (January 1982). M.S. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sociology (December 1984). M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison. The History of Science (December 1984). Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sociology (August 1989). Doctoral Dissertation: “The Process of Becoming a Scientist.” Areas of Interest Social Stratification, Methods and Statistics, Demography, Sociology of Science, Chinese Studies. Professional Affiliations American Sociological Association, American Statistical Association, Population Association of America, and Sociological Research Association, American Economic Association. Academic Positions Held Assistant Professor (1989-1994), Associate Professor (1994-1996), and Professor (1996-2015), Department of Sociology, University of Michigan. Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Michigan (2000-2015). Faculty Associate (1989-2001), Research Professor (2001-2015), Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. Yu Xie, Page !2 Research Professor (1996-2015), Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. John Stephenson Perrin Professorship, University of Michigan (1996-1999). Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professorship, University of Michigan (1999-2004). Faculty Associate, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan (2003-2015). Otis Dudley Duncan Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan (2004-2007). Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor, University of Michigan (2007-2015). Changjiang Scholar Visiting Chair Professor of Peking University, Beijing, China (2009-2011). Qianren Visiting Chair Professor of Peking University, Beijing, China (2011-present). Honorary Adjunct Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong(2009- present).
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae
    QING LAI Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies SIPA 313, Florida International University 11200 SW 8th Street Miami, FL 33199 [email protected] EDUCATION 2014 Ph.D. in Sociology, University of Michigan 2007 M.A. in Sociology, Temple University 2002 B.A. in English, Anhui University, Hefei, China AREAS OF INTEREST Chinese Muslims, development, demography, social stratification ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT 2014-present Assistant Professor Florida International University PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES Fallon, Kathleen M., Qing Lai, and Stephen P. Leatherman. (forthcoming). “Rip Current Literacy of Beachgoers at Miami Beach, Florida.” Natural Hazards DOI 10.1007/s11069-017- 3060-7 Lai, Qing and Zheng Mu. 2016. “Universal, yet Local: The Religious Factor in Chinese Muslim’s Perception of World Developmental Hierarchy.” Chinese Journal of Sociology 2: 524-546. Mu, Zheng and Qing Lai. 2016. “Micro-Macro Interactions in Ethno-Religious Homogamy among Hui Muslims in Contemporary China: The Roles of Residential Concentration and Aging.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 36: 88-105. Lai, Qing and Arland Thornton. 2015. “The Making of Family Values: Developmental Idealism in Gansu, China.” Social Science Research 51: 174-188. Lai, Qing. 2014. “Chinese Adulthood Higher Education: Life-Course Dynamics under State Socialism.” Chinese Sociological Review 46:55-79. Xie, Yu, Chunni Zhang, and Qing Lai. 2014. “China’s Rise as a Major Contributor to Science and Technology.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111:9437-9442. 1 Xie, Yu, Arland Thornton, Guangzhou Wang, and Qing Lai. 2012. “Societal Projection: Beliefs Concerning the Relationship between Development and Inequality in China.” Social Science Research 41:1069-1084.
    [Show full text]
  • Unified Language, Labor and Ideology*
    Unified Language, Labor and Ideology* Yang You Harvard University Last Updated: Feb. 2018 Abstract Exploring an instance of nationwide language educational reform, the Chinese Pinyin Act Reform of 1958-1960, we estimate the effects of language unification using a difference-in-difference approach by interacting a birth cohort exposure dummy with the linguistic distances between local languages and Putonghua, modern standardized Mandarin. This paper presents five main findings: (1) Putonghua learning exhibits modest short-run negative but long-run positive effects on educational attainment; (2) Putonghua learning increases rural households’ non-agricultural employment; (3) Common language empowers workers to migrate across provinces and language regions; (4) Language unification fosters patriotism, a stronger national identity and a more positive subjective evaluation of China. One plausible channel is that the common language builds national identity by expanding exposure to vocal-based media, namely radio, cell phone and internet; and (5) The post-reform population shows more skepticism of democracy, better subjective evaluation of governance and more support for government intervention over economic liberalism. These changes in ideology and social preference are consistent with the political doctrine of the Communist Party of China. Keywords: Language, Education, Labor market, Ideology, Social Preference JEL Code: I25, I26, L82, N45, O15, Z13 * We thank Michael Kremer for outstanding guidance and support. We are grateful Alberto Alesina, Philipp Ager, Richard Freeman, Edward Glaeser, Lawrence Katz, Andrei Shleifer, Stefanie Stantcheva and seminar participants at the Harvard Development Economics lunch seminar, the Economic History lunch seminar, the Public/Labor lunch seminar, the China Economy Seminar and The Econometric Society Asian Meeting 2017, for their comments and helpful discussions.
    [Show full text]
  • Review Article
    Review article Language and dialect in China Norbert Francis Northern Arizona University In the study of language learning, researchers sometimes ask how languages in contact are related. They compare the linguistic features of the languages, how the mental grammars of each language sub‑system are represented, put to use in performance, and how they interact. Within a linguistic family, languages can be closely related or distantly related, an interesting factor, for example, in understanding bilingualism and second language development. Dialects, on the other hand, are considered to be variants of the same language. While there is no way to always draw a sharp line between the categories of language and dialect, it is necessary to distinguish between the two kinds of language variation by the application of uniform criteria. The distinction between dialect and language is important for designing bilingual instructional programs, both for students who already speak two languages and for beginning second language learners. Keywords: dialect, language contact, language policy, minority languages, biliteracy, Chinese Introduction Researchers of language learning do not often delve into questions about how lan‑ guages and their varieties are related. One topic of debate however, due in part to widespread commentary outside of the field, often presents itself for explanation: the distinction between the categories of language and dialect. Sociolinguists for their part have contributed most notably to the task of distinguishing in a prin‑ cipled way between these categories; and a clear understanding is important for the study of language learning and for the broader discipline of applied linguistics. This article will present the case for continuing to uphold the traditional concep‑ tion underlying this distinction.
    [Show full text]
  • The Far Southern Sinitic Languages As Part of Mainland Southeast Asia
    Hilário de Sousa The far southern Sinitic languages as part of Mainland Southeast Asia 1 Introduction Within the Mainland Southeast Asian (MSEA) linguistic area (e.g. Matisoff 2003; Bisang 2006; Enfield 2005, 2011, Comrie 2007), some languages are said to be in the core of the language area, while others are said to be in the periphery. In the core are the Mon-Khmer and Kra-Dai languages. The core languages generally have: Analytic morphological profile with many sesquisyllabic or monosyllabic words Strong syntactic left-headedness, including prepositions and SVO word order Phonemic tonal contrasts and/or phonational contrasts The Chamic languages (Austronesian) and the Hmong-Mien languages are also in the region, and are typologically relatively similar to the Mon- Khmer and Kra-Dai languages. On the other hand, there are the Sino-Tibetan languages in the northern and western periphery; their linguistic properties are somewhat less MSEA-like. For instance, in contrast to the strong syntactic left-headedness that is typical of MSEA languages, Burmese is OV and right- headed in general.1 On the other hand, Mandarin has the left-headed traits of VO word order and preposition. However, Mandarin is otherwise strongly right-headed (e.g. right-headed noun phrases, adjunct-verb order). These two languages also have fewer lexical tones than most tonal languages in MSEA. The aim of this paper is to discuss some of the phonological and word order typological traits amongst the Sinitic languages, and to compare them with the typological profiles of some MSEA languages. While none of the Sinitic languages could be considered to be in the core of the MSEA language 1 Nonetheless, Burmese still has some left-headed traits like post-nominal adjectives (‘sta- tive verbs’) and numerals.
    [Show full text]
  • Popular Music and Local Youth Identity in the Age of the Internet*
    CHAPTER SIX POPULAR MUSIC AND LOCAL YOUTH IDENTITY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET* In the previous four chapters, I have discussed the burgeoning use of local languages in the field of television production. While most TV shows ren- dered in local languages appeal to the local audience, the younger and comparatively better educated segment of that audience has migrated to a new medium—the Internet. Ever since its introduction to China in the early 1990s, the Internet has been passionately embraced by Chinese youth. As of January 2010, according to a state-sponsored study by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), more than 70 per- cent of Internet users (384 million total) were young people under 35 years of age, and the age group between 18 and 24 years old consis- tently accounted for a much higher portion (usually 35–42 percent) of users than any other age group. Regarding their level of education, approximately half of the users had a college or associate degree. Roughly one-third of China’s netizens were students, and the incidence of Internet use in urban areas was 6.5 times greater than in rural areas. As part of a distinct urban youth culture in China, the Internet plays an increasingly prominent role in promoting and disseminating the use of local languages among urban, educated Chinese youth: through local-language texts paro- dying Chinese characters and the writing system; through standard tests of local-language competence that mimic the format of official English exams; through downloadable cell-phone ringtones
    [Show full text]