The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS; simplified Chinese: 中国社会科学院; traditional Chinese: 中國社會科學院; pinyin: Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxuéyuàn), established in 1977, is the premier and highest academic research organization in the fields of philosophy and social sciences as well as a national center for comprehensive studies in the People's Republic of China. It was described by Foreign Policy magazine as the top think tank in Asia.^[1] It is affiliated with the PRC's State Council.

History[link]

The CASS was established in May 1977 with the aim of promoting the development of social sciences, which had been almost totally destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. It was formed by separating 14 research units of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The first president was Hu Qiaomu, who held his position until his death. The present president is Professor Chen Kuiyuan.

Structure[link]

The CASS comprises five academic divisions:

• Philosophy, Literature and History
• Economics
• Law, Social studies and Political studies
• International Studies
• Marxist studies

New research units were later established; CASS is now made up of 35 research institutes, more than 90 research centers, and one graduate school (Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), CASS is also in charge of 105 national academic communities throughout China.

CASS currently has over 3,200 resident scholars.^[2] CASS membership and honorary membership are both conferred for life and are the highest academic titles of the academy. There are 47 members and 95 honorary members now.^[when?]

Publishing house[link]

The China Social Sciences Press (Chinese: 中国社会科学出版社; pinyin: Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxué Chūbǎnshè) was established in June 1978 under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and has published over 8,000 books since its inception.^[3]

List of presidents[link]

1. Hu Qiaomu (胡乔木): 1977-1982
2. Ma Hong (马洪): 1982-1985
3. Hu Qiaomu: 1985-1988
4. Hu Sheng (胡绳): 1988-1998
5. Li Tieying (李铁映): 1998-2003
6. Chen Kuiyuan (陈奎元): 2003–present

See also[link]

• Scientific publishing in China

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website (CHINESE)
• CASS - Bureau of International Cooperation (ENGLISH)
• Fengbo Zhang: Cherishing the memory of Ma Hong

This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (July 2011)

The Academy of Social Sciences (named Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences until July 2007^[1]) is a research body in the UK. As of February 2007^[update], the Academy was composed of over 450 Academicians and 32 Learned Societies. Academicians are distinguished scholars and practitioners from academia and the public and private sectors. Most of the learned societies in the Social Sciences in the United Kingdom are represented within the Academy. Academicians are elected through peer review in an annual competition on the nomination either of constituent societies or of existing academicians; they may use the letters "AcSS" (Academician of the Social Sciences) after their name. The Academy's ambition is that the status of AcSS should confer the same kind of prestige as fellowship of the Royal Society or the British Academy; while it is some distance from reaching this goal, many of the most prominent academic social scientists in the UK are now academicians.

The Academy responds to Government and other consultations on behalf of the social science community, organises meetings about social science for practitioners and seminars on topics that span social science disciplines, and sponsors a number of schemes that promote social science and enhance its value to society. Member learned societies include organisations such as the Regional Studies Association, the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Royal Geographical Society.

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Blunkett, David (4 February 2000). "Influence or irrelevance?". Times Higher Education. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=150012&sectioncode=26. Retrieved 2008-07-10. 
• Richards, Huw (24 December 1999). "Beyond the Tweed: where social scientists can raise their voices". Times Higher Education. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=149494&sectioncode=26. Retrieved 2008-07-10. 
• MacLeod, Donald (January 29, 2003). "Russell group applauds higher white paper". The Guardian. http://education.guardian.co.uk/specialreports/tuitionfees/story/0,,884690,00.html. Retrieved 2008-07-10. 

External links[link]

• Academy Homepage

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Social science is the field of study concerned with society and human behaviours. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences. These include: anthropology, archaeology, criminology, economics, history, linguistics, political science and international relations, sociology, geography, law, and psychology.^[1][2]

The term may however be used in the specific context of referring to the original science of society established in 19th century sociology (Latin: socius, "companion"; -ology, "the study of", and Greek λόγος, lógos, "word", "knowledge"). Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber are typically cited as the principal architects of modern social science by this definition.^[3] Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (for instance, by combining the quantitative and qualitative techniques). The term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods.

Social science history[link]

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this section if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (August 2011)

The history of the social sciences begins in the roots of ancient philosophy. In Ancient history, there was no difference between mathematics and the study of history, poetry or politics. This unity of science formed according to a deductive reasoning from axioms created a scientific framework.

The Age of Enlightenment saw a revolution within natural philosophy, changing the basic framework by which individuals understood what was "scientific". In some quarters, the accelerating trend of mathematical studies presumed a reality independent of the observer and worked by its own rules. Social sciences came forth from the moral philosophy of the time and was influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial revolution and the French revolution.^[4] The social sciences developed from the sciences (experimental and applied), or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, relating to the social improvement of a .^[5][6]

The beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in various grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Rousseau and other pioneers. The growth of the social sciences is also reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The modern period saw "social science" first used as a distinct conceptual field.^[7] Social science was influenced by positivism,^[4] focusing on knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative; metaphysical speculation was avoided. Auguste Comte used the term "science social" to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier; Comte also referred to the field as social physics.^[4][8]

Following this period, there were five paths of development that sprang forth in the Social Sciences, influenced by Comte on other fields.^[4] One route that was taken was the rise of social research. Large statistical surveys were undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was initiated by Émile Durkheim, studying "social facts", and Vilfredo Pareto, opening metatheoretical ideas and individual theories. A third means developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which the social phenomena was identified with and understood; this was championed by figures such as Max Weber. The fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard science. The last path was the correlation of knowledge and social values; the antipositivism and verstehen sociology of Max Weber firmly demanded on this distinction. In this route, theory (description) and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. After the use of classical theories since the end of the scientific revolution, various fields substituted mathematics studies for experimental studies and examining equations to build a theoretical structure. The development of social science subfields became very quantitative in methodology. The interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary nature of scientific inquiry into human behaviour, social and environmental factors affecting it, made many of the natural sciences interested in some aspects of social science methodology.^[9] Examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, sociobiology, neuropsychology, bioeconomics and the history and sociology of science. Increasingly, quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of human action and its implications and consequences. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a free-standing discipline of applied mathematics. Statistical methods were used confidently.

In the contemporary period, Karl Popper and Talcott Parsons influenced the furtherance of the social sciences.^[4] Researchers continue to search for a unified consensus on what methodology might have the power and refinement to connect a proposed "grand theory" with the various midrange theories which, with considerable success, continue to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks; for more, see consilience. At present though, the various realms of social science progress in a myriad of ways, increasing the overall knowledge of society. The social sciences will for the foreseeable future be composed of different zones in the research of, and sometime distinct in approach toward, the field.^[4]

The term "social science" may refer either to the specific sciences of society established by thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, or more generally to all disciplines outside of "noble science" and arts. By the late 19th century, the academic social sciences were constituted of five fields: jurisprudence and amendment of the law, education, health, economy and trade, and art.^[5]

At the turn of the 21st century, the expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.^[10]

Branches of social science[link]

The Social Science disciplines are branches of knowledge which are taught and researched at the college or university level. Social Science disciplines are defined and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned Social Science societies and academic departments or faculties to which their practitioners belong. Social Science fields of study usually have several sub-disciplines or branches, and the distinguishing lines between these are often both arbitrary and ambiguous.

Anthropology[link]

Anthropology is the holistic "science of man," - a science of the totality of human existence. The discipline deals with the integration of different aspects of the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Human Biology. In the twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally divided into three broad domains. The natural sciences seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments. The humanities generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, music, and arts, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras. The social sciences have generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in a generalizable way, though usually with methods distinct from those of the natural sciences.

The anthropological social sciences often develop nuanced descriptions rather than the general laws derived in physics or chemistry, or they may explain individual cases through more general principles, as in many fields of psychology. Anthropology (like some fields of history) does not easily fit into one of these categories, and different branches of anthropology draw on one or more of these domains.^[11] Within the United States, Anthropology is divided into four sub-fields:Archaeology, Physical or Biological Anthropology, Anthropological Linguistics, and Cultural Anthropology. It is an area that is offered at most undergraduate institutions. The word anthropos (άνθρωπος) is from the Greek for "human being" or "person." Eric Wolf described sociocultural anthropology as "the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences."

The goal of anthropology is to provide a holistic account of humans and human nature. This means that, though anthropologists generally specialize in only one sub-field, they always keep in mind the biological, linguistic, historic and cultural aspects of any problem. Since anthropology arose as a science in Western societies that were complex and industrial, a major trend within anthropology has been a methodological drive to study peoples in societies with more simple social organization, sometimes called "primitive" in anthropological literature, but without any connotation of "inferior."^[12] Today, anthropologists use terms such as "less complex" societies or refer to specific modes of subsistence or production, such as "pastoralist" or "forager" or "horticulturalist" to refer to humans living in non-industrial, non-Western cultures, such people or folk (ethnos) remaining of great interest within anthropology.

The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a people in detail, using biogenetic, archaeological, and linguistic data alongside direct observation of contemporary customs.^[13] In the 1990s and 2000s, calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. It is possible to view all human cultures as part of one large, evolving global culture. These dynamic relationships, between what can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be observed by compiling many local observations remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic or archaeological.^[14]

Economics[link]

Economics is a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.^[15] The word "economics" is from the Greek οἶκος [oikos], "family, household, estate," and νόμος [nomos], "custom, law," and hence means "household management" or "management of the state." An economist is a person using economic concepts and data in the course of employment, or someone who has earned a university degree in the subject. The classic brief definition of economics, set out by Lionel Robbins in 1932, is "the science which studies human behavior as a relation between scarce means having alternative uses." Without scarcity and alternative uses, there is no economic problem. Briefer yet is "the study of how people seek to satisfy needs and wants" and "the study of the financial aspects of human behavior."

Buyers bargain for good prices while sellers put forth their best front in Chichicastenango Market, Guatemala.

Economics has two broad branches: microeconomics, where the unit of analysis is the individual agent, such as a household or firm, and macroeconomics, where the unit of analysis is an economy as a whole. Another division of the subject distinguishes positive economics, which seeks to predict and explain economic phenomena, from normative economics, which orders choices and actions by some criterion; such orderings necessarily involve subjective value judgments. Since the early part of the 20th century, economics has focused largely on measurable quantities, employing both theoretical models and empirical analysis. Quantitative models, however, can be traced as far back as the physiocratic school. Economic reasoning has been increasingly applied in recent decades to other social situations such as politics, law, psychology, history, religion, marriage and family life, and other social interactions. This paradigm crucially assumes (1) that resources are scarce because they are not sufficient to satisfy all wants, and (2) that "economic value" is willingness to pay as revealed for instance by market (arms' length) transactions. Rival heterodox schools of thought, such as institutional economics, green economics, Marxist economics, and economic sociology, make other grounding assumptions. For example, Marxist economics assumes that economics primarily deals with the exchange of value, and that labor (human effort) is the source of all value.

The expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.^[10][16]

Education[link]

A depiction of Europe's oldest university, the University of Bologna, Italy

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgement and well-developed wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization). To educate means 'to draw out', from the Latin educare, or to facilitate the realization of an individual's potential and talents. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology and anthropology.^[17]

The education of an individual human begins at birth and continues throughout life. (Some believe that education begins even before birth, as evidenced by some parents' playing music or reading to the baby in the womb in the hope it will influence the child's development.) For some, the struggles and triumphs of daily life provide far more instruction than does formal schooling (thus Mark Twain's admonition to "never let school interfere with your education"). Family members may have a profound educational effect — often more profound than they realize — though family teaching may function very informally.

Human Geography[link]

Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main sub fields: human geography and physical geography. The former focuses largely on the built environment and how space is created, viewed and managed by humans as well as the influence humans have on the space they occupy. The latter examines the natural environment and how the climate, vegetation & life, soil, water and landforms are produced and interact.^[18] As a result of the two subfields using different approaches a third field has emerged, which is environmental geography. Environmental geography combines physical and human geography and looks at the interactions between the environment and humans.^[19]

Geographers attempt to understand the earth in terms of physical and spatial relationships. The first geographers focused on the science of mapmaking and finding ways to precisely project the surface of the earth. In this sense, geography bridges some gaps between the natural sciences and social sciences. Historical geography is often taught in a college in a unified Department of Geography.

Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline, closely related to GISc, that seeks to understand humanity and its natural environment. The fields of Urban Planning, Regional Science, and Planetology are closely related to geography. Practitioners of geography use many technologies and methods to collect data such as GIS, remote sensing, aerial photography, statistics, and global positioning systems (GPS).

The field of geography is generally split into two distinct branches: physical and human. Physical geography examines phenomena related to climate, oceans, soils, and the measurement of earth. Human geography focuses on fields as diverse as Cultural geography, transportation, health, military operations, and cities. Other branches of geography include Social geography, regional geography, geomatics, and environmental geography.

History[link]

History is the continuous, systematic narrative and research into past human events as interpreted through historiographical paradigms or theories, such as the Turner Thesis about the American frontier.

History has a base in both the social sciences and the humanities. In the United States the National Endowment for the Humanities includes history in its definition of a Humanities (as it does for applied Linguistics).^[20] However, the National Research Council classifies History as a Social science.^[21] The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history. The Social Science History Association, formed in 1976, brings together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history.^[22]

Law[link]

A trial at a criminal court, the Old Bailey in London

Law in common parlance, means a rule which (unlike a rule of ethics) is capable of enforcement through institutions.^[23] The study of law crosses the boundaries between the social sciences and humanities, depending on one's view of research into its objectives and effects. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. It has been defined as a "system of rules",^[24] as an "interpretive concept"^[25] to achieve justice, as an "authority"^[26] to mediate people's interests, and even as "the command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction".^[27] However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy incorporates the practical manifestation of thinking from almost every social sciences and humanity. Laws are politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. And law is economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law, labour law, company law and many more can have long lasting effects on the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the late Old English lagu, meaning something laid down or fixed^[28] and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word lex.^[29]

Linguistics[link]

Ferdinand de Saussure, recognized as the father of modern linguistics

Linguistics investigates the cognitive and social aspects of human language. The field is divided into areas that focus on aspects of the linguistic signal, such as syntax (the study of the rules that govern the structure of sentences), semantics (the study of meaning), morphology (the study of the structure of words), phonetics (the study of speech sounds) and phonology (the study of the abstract sound system of a particular language); however, work in areas like evolutionary linguistics (the study of the origins and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) cut across these divisions.

The overwhelming majority of modern research in linguistics takes a predominantly synchronic perspective (focusing on language at a particular point in time), and a great deal of it—partly owing to the influence of Noam Chomsky—aims at formulating theories of the cognitive processing of language. However, language does not exist in a vacuum, or only in the brain, and approaches like contact linguistics, creole studies, discourse analysis, social interactional linguistics, and sociolinguistics explore language in its social context. Sociolinguistics often makes use of traditional quantitative analysis and statistics in investigating the frequency of features, while some disciplines, like contact linguistics, focus on qualitative analysis. While certain areas of linguistics can thus be understood as clearly falling within the social sciences, other areas, like acoustic phonetics and neurolinguistics, draw on the natural sciences. Linguistics draws only secondarily on the humanities, which played a rather greater role in linguistic inquiry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ferdinand Saussure is considered the father of modern linguistics.

Political science[link]

Aristotle asserted that man is a political animal in his Politics

Political science is an academic and research discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. Fields and subfields of political science include positive political economy, political theory and philosophy, civics and comparative politics, theory of direct democracy, apolitical governance, participatory direct democracy, national systems, cross-national political analysis, political development, international relations, foreign policy, international law, politics, public administration, administrative behavior, public law, judicial behavior, and public policy. Political science also studies power in international relations and the theory of Great powers and Superpowers.

Political science is methodologically diverse, although recent years have witnessed an upsurge in the use of the scientific method [2]. That is the proliferation of formal-deductive model building and quantitative hypothesis testing. Approaches to the discipline include rational choice, classical political philosophy, interpretivism, structuralism, and behavioralism, realism, pluralism, and institutionalism. Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources such as historical documents, interviews, and official records, as well as secondary sources such as scholarly journal articles are used in building and testing theories. Empirical methods include survey research, statistical analysis/econometrics, case studies, experiments, and model building. Herbert Baxter Adams is credited with coining the phrase "political science" while teaching history at Johns Hopkins University.

Public administration[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

One of the main branches of political science, public administration can be broadly described as the development, implementation and study of branches of government policy. The pursuit of the public good by enhancing civil society and social justice is the ultimate goal of the field. Though public administration has historically referred to as government management, it increasingly encompasses non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that also operate with a similar, primary dedication to the betterment of humanity. It´s the government protocol to solve a public problem. According to Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram, policies constitute the discourses, text, regulations and laws. Also the making of public policies include the enforcement of such and the tools given to the institutions to do so.[3]

Differentiating public administration from business administration, a closely related field, has become a popular method for defining the discipline by contrasting the two. First, the goals of public administration are more closely related to those often cited as goals of the American founders and democratic people in general.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]} That is, public employees work to improve equality, justice, security, efficiency, effectiveness, and, at times, the profit.^{[citation needed]} These values help to both differentiate the field from business administration, primarily concerned with profit, and define the discipline. Second, public administration is a relatively new, multidisciplinary field. Woodrow Wilson's The Study of Administration is frequently cited as the seminal work. Wilson advocated a more professional operation of public officials' daily activities. Further, the future president identified the necessity in the United States of a separation between party politics and good bureaucracy, which has also been a lasting theme.

The multidisciplinary nature of public administration is related to a third defining feature: administrative duties. Public administrators work in public agencies, at all levels of government, and perform a wide range of tasks. Public administrators collect and analyze data (statistics), monitor fiscal operations (budgets, accounts, and cash flow), organize large events and meetings, draft legislation, develop policy, and frequently execute legally mandated, government activities. Regarding this final facet, public administrators find themselves serving as parole officers, secretaries, note takers, paperwork processors, record keepers, notaries of the public, cashiers, and managers. Indeed, the discipline couples well with many vocational fields such as information technology, finance, law, and engineering. When it comes to the delivery and evaluation of public services, a public administrator is undoubtedly involved.

Psychology[link]

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was the founder of experimental psychology

Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior and mental processes. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness.

Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology in seeking to capture explanatory generalizations about the mental function and overt behaviour of individuals, while the other disciplines focus on creating descriptive generalizations about the functioning of social groups or situation-specific human behavior. In practice, however, there is quite a lot of cross-fertilization that takes place among the various fields. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it is primarily concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behavior, and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themselves, though the subfield of neuropsychology combines the study of the actual neural processes with the study of the mental effects they have subjectively produced. Many people associate Psychology with Clinical Psychology which focuses on assessment and treatment of problems in living and psychopathology. In reality, Psychology has myriad specialties including: Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Mathematical psychology, Neuropsychology, and Quantitative Analysis of Behaviour to name only a few. The word psychology comes from the ancient Greek ψυχή, psyche ("soul", "mind") and logy, study).

Psychology is a very broad science that is rarely tackled as a whole, major block. Although some subfields encompass a natural science base and a social science application, others can be clearly distinguished as having little to do with the social sciences or having a lot to do with the social sciences. For example, biological psychology is considered a natural science with a social scientific application (as is clinical medicine), social and occupational psychology are, generally speaking, purely social sciences, whereas neuropsychology is a natural science that lacks application out of the scientific tradition entirely. In British universities, emphasis on what tenet of psychology a student has studied and/or concentrated is communicated through the degree conferred: B.Psy. indicates a balance between natural and social sciences, B.Sc. indicates a strong (or entire) scientific concentration, whereas a B.A. underlines a majority of social science credits. This is not always necessarily the case however, and in many UK institutions students studying the B.Psy, B.Sc, and B.A. follow the same curriculum as outlined by The British Psychological Society and have the same options of specialism open to them regardless of whether they choose a balance, a heavy science basis, or heavy social science basis to their degree. If they applied to read the B.A. for example, but specialised in heavily science based modules, then they will still generally be awarded the B.A.

Sociology[link]

Émile Durkheim is considered one of the founding fathers of sociology.

Sociology is the systematic study of society and human social action. The meaning of the word comes from the suffix "-ology" which means "study of," derived from Greek, and the stem "soci-" which is from the Latin word socius, meaning "companion", or society in general.

Sociology was originally established by Auguste Comte (1798–1857) in 1838.^[30] Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the descriptive understanding of the social realm. He proposed that social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach outlined in The Course in Positive Philosophy [1830–1842] and A General View of Positivism (1844). Though Comte is generally regarded as the "Father of Sociology", the discipline was formally established by another French thinker, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who developed positivism as a foundation to practical social research. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method. In 1896, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy.^[31]

Karl Marx rejected Comtean positivism but nevertheless aimed to establish a science of society based on historical materialism, becoming recognised as a founding figure of sociology posthumously as the term gained broader meaning. At the turn of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, developed sociological antipositivism. The field may be broadly recognised as an amalgam of three modes of social thought in particular: Durkheimian positivism and structural functionalism; Marxist historical materialism and conflict theory; Weberian antipositivism and verstehen analysis. American sociology broadly arose on a separate trajectory, with little Marxist influence, an emphasis on rigorous experimental methodology, and a closer association with pragmatism and social psychology. In the 1920s, the Chicago school developed symbolic interactionism. Meanwhile in the 1930s, the Frankfurt School pioneered the idea of critical theory, an interdisciplinary form of Marxist sociology drawing upon thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Critical theory would take on something of a life of its own after World War II, influencing literary criticism and the Birmingham School establishment of cultural studies.

Sociology evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity, such as industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and a perceived process of enveloping rationalization.^[32] Because sociology is such a broad discipline, it can be difficult to define, even for professional sociologists. The field generally concerns the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, communities and institutions, and includes the examination of the organization and development of human social life. The sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes. In the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists seek an understanding of the Social Construction of Reality. Most sociologists work in one or more subfields. One useful way to describe the discipline is as a cluster of sub-fields that examine different dimensions of society. For example, social stratification studies inequality and class structure; demography studies changes in a population size or type; criminology examines criminal behavior and deviance; and political sociology studies the interaction between society and state.

Since its inception, sociological epistemologies, methods, and frames of enquiry, have significantly expanded and diverged.^[33] Sociologists use a diversity of research methods, drawing upon either empirical techniques or critical theory. Common modern methods include case studies, historical research, interviewing, participant observation, social network analysis, survey research, statistical analysis, and model building, among other approaches. Since the late 1970s, many sociologists have tried to make the discipline useful for non-academic purposes. The results of sociological research aid educators, lawmakers, administrators, developers, and others interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy, through subdisciplinary areas such as evaluation research, methodological assessment, and public sociology. New sociological sub-fields continue to appear - such as community studies, computational sociology, environmental sociology, network analysis, actor-network theory and a growing list, many of which are cross-disciplinary in nature.

Further fields[link]

Additional Social Science disciplines and fields of study include:

Methodology and theory[link]

Social research[link]

The origin of the survey can be traced back at least early as the Domesday Book in 1086,^[34][35] whilst some scholars pinpoint the origin of demography to 1663 with the publication of John Graunt's Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality.^[36] Social research began most intentionally, however, with the positivist philosophy of science in the 19th century.

In contemporary usage, "social research" is a relatively autonomous term, encompassing the work of practitioners from various disciplines which share in its aims and methods. Social scientists employ a range of methods in order to analyse a vast breadth of social phenomena; from census survey data derived from millions of individuals, to the in-depth analysis of a single agent's social experiences; from monitoring what is happening on contemporary streets, to the investigation of ancient historical documents. The methods originally rooted in classical sociology and statistical mathematics have formed the basis for research in other disciplines, such as political science, media studies, and market research.

Social research methods may be divided into two broad schools:

• Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analysis of many cases (or across intentionally designed treatments in an experiment) to create valid and reliable general claims.

• Qualitative designs emphasize understanding of social phenomena through direct observation, communication with participants, or analysis of texts, and may stress contextual and subjective accuracy over generality

Social scientists will commonly combine quantitative and qualitative approaches as part of a multi-strategy design. Questionnaires, field-based data collection, archival database information and laboratory-based data collections are some of the measurement techniques used. It is noted the importance of measurement and analysis, focusing on the (difficult to achieve) goal of objective research or statistical hypothesis testing. A mathematical model uses mathematical language to describe a system. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed 'mathematical modelling' (also modeling). Eykhoff (1974) defined a mathematical model as 'a representation of the essential aspects of an existing system (or a system to be constructed) which presents knowledge of that system in usable form'.^[37] Mathematical models can take many forms, including but not limited to dynamical systems, statistical models, differential equations, or game theoretic models.

These and other types of models can overlap, with a given model involving a variety of abstract structures. The system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole. The concept of an integrated whole can also be stated in terms of a system embodying a set of relationships which are differentiated from relationships of the set to other elements, and from relationships between an element of the set and elements not a part of the relational regime. Dynamical system modeled as a mathematical formalization has fixed "rule" which describes the time dependence of a point's position in its ambient space. Small changes in the state of the system correspond to small changes in the numbers. The evolution rule of the dynamical system is a fixed rule that describes what future states follow from the current state. The rule is deterministic: for a given time interval only one future state follows from the current state.

Theory[link]

Other social scientists emphasize the subjective nature of research. These writers share social theory perspectives that include various types of the following:

Other fringe social scientists delve in alternative nature of research. These writers share social theory perspectives that include various types of the following:

Education and degrees[link]

Most universities offer degrees in social science fields.^[38] The Bachelor of Social Science is a degree targeted at the social sciences in particular. It is often more flexible and in-depth than other degrees which include social science subjects.^[39]

In the United States, a university may offer a student who studies a social sciences field a Bachelor of Arts degree, particularly if the field is within one of the traditional liberal arts such as history, or a BSc: Bachelor of Science degree such as those given by the London School of Economics, as the social sciences constitute one of the two main branches of science (the other being the natural sciences). In addition, some institutions have degrees for a particular social science, such as the Bachelor of Economics degree, though such specialized degrees are relatively rare in the United States.

See also[link]

	Book: Social science
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

	Sociology portal
	Science portal

General

Society · Culture · Structure and agency · Humanities (human science)

Methods

Historical method · Empiricism · Representation theory · Scientific method · Statistical hypothesis testing · Regression · Correlation

Areas

Political sciences · Natural sciences · Behavioral sciences · Geographic information science

History 

History of science · History of technology

Lists

Fields of science · Academic disciplines

People

Emile Durkheim · Max Weber · Karl Marx · Herbert Spencer · Sir John Lubbock · Alfred Schutz

Other

Behavior · Ethology and Ethnology · Game theory · Gulbenkian commission · Labelling · "Periodic table of human sciences" (Tinbergen's four questions) · Social action · Philosophy of social sciences

Fields

Further reading[link]

Wikibooks

• Wikibooks: Introduction to sociology

General sources

Academic resources

Opponents and critics

References[link]

20th and 21st century sources

19th century sources

Footnotes

• Thomas A. Birkland, An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making, London 2011

External links[link]

Find more about Social science on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Centre for Social Work Research
• Family Therapy and Systemic Research Centre
• International Conference on Social Sciences
• International Social Science Council
• Introduction to Hutchinson et al., There's No Such Thing as a Social Science
• Intute: Social Sciences (UK)
• Social Science Research Society
• Social Science Virtual Library
• Social Science Virtual Library: Canaktanweb (Turkish)
• Social Sciences And Humanities
• UC Berkeley Experimental Social Science Laboratory
• The Dialectic of Social Science by Paul A. Baran

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2007)

The Crisis

First Issue of The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, November 1910. New York: NAACP, 1910
Editor	W.E.B. Du Bois
Staff writers	Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean
Monthly[1]
Publisher	NAACP
First issue	November 1910 (1910-November)
Company	The Crisis Publishing Company
Country	United States
Based in	New York, NY
Language	English
Website	www.thecrisismagazine.com
ISSN	1559-1573

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.^[2]

The original title of the journal was The Crisis: A Record of The Darker Races. From 1997 to 2003, it appeared as The New Crisis: The Magazine of Opportunities and Ideas, but the title has since reverted to The Crisis. The title derives from the poem "The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell.^[1] Published monthly, by 1920 its circulation had reached 100,000 copies. Du Bois proclaimed his intentions in his first editorial:

The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men. …Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals.^[3]

Predominantly a current-affairs journal, The Crisis also included poems, reviews, and essays on culture and history. Du Bois' initial position as editor was in line with the NAACP's liberal programme of social reform and racial equality, but by the 1930s Du Bois was advocating a form of black separatism. This led to disputes between Du Bois and the NAACP resulting in his resignation as editor in 1934. He was replaced by Roy Wilkins.

Although The Crisis was officially an organ of the NAACP, Du Bois had a large degree of control over the periodicals expressed opinion. Du Bois wrote in Dusk of Dawn that he intended for The Crisis to represent his personal opinions:

I determine to make the opinion of the Crisis a personal opinion; because, as I argued, no organization can express definite and clear cut opinions… the Crisis would state openly the opinion of its editor, so long, of course, as that opinion was in general agreement with that of the organization.

Du Bois contends that the periodical suffered during the Great Depression as the "circulation dropped steadily until by 1933 it was scarcely more than ten thousand paid subscriptions." Du Bois left the magazine for both financial and ideological reasons.

Throughout the Du Bois years The Crisis published the work of many young African American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Its greatest era as a literary journal was between 1919 and 1926, when Jessie Redmon Fauset was literary editor. Fauset encouraged such writers as Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean Toomer.

Following the departure of Fauset and Du Bois, the influence of The Crisis declined. The magazine was unable to sustain the high literary standards it had achieved under Fauset, but it continued to have a powerful political voice.

References[link]

A 1911 copy of The Crisis depicting "Ra-Maat-Neb, one of the black kings of the Upper Nile", a copy of the relief of Nebmaatre I on Meroe pyramid 17.

Du Bois, WEB (1940), Dusk of Dawn, Library of America, ISBN [[Special:BookSources/97809400450332|97809400450332]] .

Partington, Paul, The Moon Illustrated Weekly: Black America's First Weekly Magazine, ISBN 978-0-9602538-2-1 .

External links[link]

• The Crisis, http://www.thecrisismagazine.com/ .
• History, NAACP, http://www.naacp.org/about/history/ .
• The Crisis, Footnote, January 1918, http://www.footnote.com/browsemore/179488128_Boom%20and%20Bust:%201920-1935/ .
• The Crisis, Books, Google, http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks%3A1&tbo=1&q=The+Crisis+Magazine&btnG=Search+Books#q=The+Crisis+Magazine&hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1,bkt:m&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=TrrMTILMLJG4sQPMn9CPDg&ved=0CBMQpwU&fp=fd2e97bdff999388 .
• The Crisis, 1, 10–23, The Modernist Journals Project, Nov. 1910 – Apr. 1911, May 1915 – Apr. 1922, http://www.modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=crisiscollection .

Xi Jinping 习近平
First Secretary of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of China
Incumbent
Assumed office 22 October 2007
General Secretary	Hu Jintao
Preceded by	Zeng Qinghong
Vice President of the People's Republic of China
Incumbent
Assumed office 15 March 2008
President	Hu Jintao
Preceded by	Zeng Qinghong
Member of the 17th CPC Politburo Standing Committee
Incumbent
Assumed office 22 October 2007
General Secretary	Hu Jintao
Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission
Incumbent
Assumed office 18 October 2010 Serving with Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou
Leader	Hu Jintao
President of the CPC Central Party School
Incumbent
Assumed office 22 December 2007
Deputy	Li Jingtian
Preceded by	Zeng Qinghong
Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai
In office 15 March 2007 – 27 October 2007
Deputy	Han Zheng
Preceded by	Han Zheng (Acting)
Succeeded by	Yu Zhengsheng
Personal details
Born	(1953-06-01) 1 June 1953 (age 59) Beijing, China
Political party	Communist Party
Spouse(s)	Peng Liyuan
Children	Mingze
Alma mater	Tsinghua University
Signature

Xi Jinping (pronounced [ɕǐ tɕînpʰǐŋ] English approx.:SHEE JIN PING; born 1 June 1953) is a high-ranking politician of the People's Republic of China. He currently serves as the top-ranked member of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of China, ^[1]the country's Vice President, Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission, President of the Central Party School and the 6th ranked member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's de facto top power organ.

Son of communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping served mostly in Fujian province in his early career. He was later appointed party chief of the neighboring Zhejiang province, and then was appointed as Shanghai's party chief following the dismissal of Chen Liangyu. Known for his tough stance on corruption and a frank openness about political and market economy reforms,^[2] Xi's combination of positions makes him the presumptive heir to current General Secretary and President Hu Jintao and the Paramount leader of the Communist Party of China's fifth generation of leadership.^[3]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Xi Jinping was born on June 1st, 1953 in Beijing and is, by Chinese convention, a native of Fuping County, Shaanxi. His ancestral home is at Xiying, Dengzhou of Henan.^[4] He is the second son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the founders of the Communist guerrilla movement in Shaanxi Province in northern China and former Vice-Premier. At the time his father served as the head of the Communist Party's propaganda department and later Vice-Chairman of the National People's Congress. When Xi was 10, his father was purged and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang.^[5] Xi was 15 when his father was jailed in 1968, during the Cultural Revolution. Without the protection of his father, Xi went to work in Yanchuan County, Yan'an, Shaanxi, in 1969 in Mao Zedong's Down to the Countryside Movement. He later became the Party branch secretary of the production team. When he left in 1975, he was only 22 years old. When asked about this experience later by state television, Xi recalled it saying, "It was emotional. It was a mood. And when the ideals of the Cultural Revolution could not be realised, it proved an illusion."^[6]

From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. From 1979 to 1982 he served as secretary for his father's former subordinate Geng Biao, the then vice premier and Secretary-General of the Central Military Commission. This gained Xi some military background. In 1985 he visited the town of Muscatine, Iowa as a part of a Chinese delegation to study American agriculture.^[7]

Ascent[link]

Xi joined the Communist Youth League in 1971 and the Communist Party of China in 1974.^[8] In 1982 he was sent to Zhengding County in Hebei as Deputy Secretary to the CPC Zhengding County Committee, and was promoted in 1983 to Secretary of the CPC Zhengding County Committee.^[9] Xi subsequently served in four provinces during his political career: Shaanxi, Hebei, Fujian and Zhejiang.

Xi held Party positions in the CPC Fuzhou Municipal Committee, and became the president of the Party School in Fuzhou in 1990. In 1999 he was promoted to the Deputy Governor of Fujian province, then became Governor a year later. While there he made efforts to attract investment from Taiwan and to boost free market economy. In February 2000 he and provincial Party Secretary Chen Mingyi were called before the top four members of the Party Central Politburo Standing Committee – General Secretary, President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji, Vice-President Hu Jintao and Discipline Inspection head Wei Jianxing to explain aspects of the Yuanhua scandal.^[10]

In 2002 Xi took up senior government and Party positions in Zhejiang Province, and eventually took over as party chief after several months as acting Governor, becoming the first-in-charge in the economically successful coastal province. Xi was then made an alternate member of the 15th CPC Central Committee and holds the membership of the 16th CPC Central Committee, marking his ascension to the national stage. While in Zhejiang, one of China's most affluent provinces and a center of China's successful economic development, Xi provided the economic environment which secured growth rates averaging 14% per year. His career in Zhejiang was marked by tough and straightforward stance against corrupt officials, which earned him a name on the national media and drew the attention of China's top leaders.

Following the dismissal of Shanghai Party Chief Chen Liangyu in September 2006 due to a social security fund scandal, Xi was transferred to Shanghai in March 2007 to become the new Party Chief of Shanghai. Xi's appointment to one of the most important regional posts in China was clearly a sign of confidence from the Central Government. While in Shanghai he was careful not to touch any controversial issues while largely echoing the line of the central leadership. Xi's career is notable in that during his regional tenures, he was never implicated in any serious scandals, nor did he face serious political opposition.

Joining the Standing Committee and Vice-Presidency[link]

Xi Jinping greeting U.S. President George W. Bush in August 2008.

Xi Jinping with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in September 2010.

Xi's appointment to the Party Secretary post in Shanghai was seen as a stepping stone for him to become an emerging member of the fifth generation of Chinese leadership. This was solidified by his appointment as a member of the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee at the 17th Party Congress in October 2007. Xi was ranked above Li Keqiang, which made him the most likely candidate for China's next core figure – the paramount leader. In addition, Xi also held the top-ranking membership of the Communist Party's Central Secretariat. This assessment was further supported at the 11th National People's Congress, Xi was elected as Vice-President of the People's Republic of China on 15 March 2008.^[11] Some suggest this was because Xi had kept friendly relations with both Hu Jintao and the other power figure in the central leadership, Zeng Qinghong.

Since his elevation Xi has held a broad range of portfolios. He was put in charge of the comprehensive preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, as well as being the central government's leading figure in Hong Kong and Macau affairs. In addition, he also became the new President of the Central Party School, the cadre-training and ideological education wing of the Communist Party. In the wake of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, Xi visited disaster areas in Shaanxi and Gansu. Xi made his first foreign visit after his vice presidency to visit North Korea, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Yemen from 17 to 25 June 2008.^[12] After the Olympics, Xi was assigned the post of Committee Chair for the preparations of the 60th Anniversary Celebrations of the founding of the People's Republic of China. He was also reportedly at the helm of a top-level Communist Party committee dubbed the 6521 Project, which was charged with ensuring social stability during a series of political sensitive anniversaries in 2009.^[13]

Xi is considered to be one of the most successful members of the Crown Prince Party, a quasi-clique of politicians who are descendants of early Chinese revolutionaries. Senior leaders consider Xi to be an emerging figure that is open to serious dialogue about deep-seated market economic reforms and even political reform, although Xi's personal political views are relatively murky.^{[clarification needed]} He is generally popular with foreign dignitaries, who are intrigued by his openness and pragmatism. Former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, when asked about Xi, said he felt he was "a thoughtful man who has gone through many trials and tribulations."^[2] Lee also commented: "I would put him in the Nelson Mandela class of persons. A person with enormous emotional stability who does not allow his personal misfortunes or sufferings affect his judgment. In other words, he is impressive".^[14] Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson described Xi as "the kind of guy who knows how to get things over the goal line."^[15]

Tours as Vice President[link]

In February 2009, in his capacity as Vice-President, Xi Jinping embarked on a Latin American foreign trip to Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil to promote Chinese ties in the region and boost the country's reputation in the wake of the global financial crisis. Xi met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

On 11 February, while visiting Mexico, Xi spoke in front of a group of overseas Chinese and explained China's contributions to the financial crisis, saying that it was "the greatest contribution towards the whole of human race, made by China, to prevent its 1.3 billion people from hunger".^[16] He followed with a rather direct accusation for "foreigners" trying to interfere in Chinese affairs, a subject that has always been sensitive in Chinese political circles. In Chinese, Xi remarked: "There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us [China]. First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches, what more is there to be said?"^[17][18]

The story was reported on some local television stations. The news led to a flood of discussions on Chinese internet forums. It was reported that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was caught off-guard by Xi's non-diplomatic remarks, as the actual video was shot by some accompanying Hong Kong reporters and broadcast on Hong Kong TV, which then turned up in various internet video websites.^[19]

Xi has since gone on a series of foreign visits, some say to burnish his foreign affairs credentials before he takes the helm of China's leadership. Xi visited Belgium, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania from 7 to 21 October 2009.^[20] Xi visited Japan, South Korea, Cambodia and Myanmar on his Asian trip from 14 to 22 December 2009.^[21]

Xi visited the United States, Ireland and Turkey in February 2012. The visit included meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House^[22] and Vice President Joe Biden, with whom he had met extensively in China in August, 2011; and stops in California and Iowa, where he met with the family which previously hosted him during his 1985 tour as a Hebei provincial official.^[23] Noted as absent was a visit with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner,^[24] who has spoken critically about Chinese currency policy.^[25]

Political future[link]

Xi was named as one of the most influential people in the world in the 2009, 2011 and 2012 Time 100 lists.^[26] The British magazine New Statesman listed Xi Jinping at number 4 in their annual survey of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".^[27] In September 2009, at the Fourth Plenum of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping was not selected as the Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) as expected, raising some questions about his succession. Political analyst Cheng Li believed that Xi's failure to secure the CMC promotion was evidence that the Communist Party was developing internal checks and balances, giving way to more sophisticated mechanisms for leadership succession.^[28] Xi was officially appointed to the vice-chairmanship on 18 October 2010, a position Hu Jintao once held back in 1999 before taking over the secretaryship and the presidency years later.^{[29][30][31][32]} By 2010, it became clear that Xi would succeed Hu as General Secretary and President in 2012 and 2013 separately.^[33][34]

Personal life[link]

Xi married Ke Lingling in the early 1980s. After about 3 years, they were divorced, due to personality clashes. Xi married the famous Chinese folk singer Peng Liyuan (彭丽媛) in 1987, his second marriage.^[35] Peng Liyuan, a household name in China, was much better known to the public than Xi until his political elevation. The couple frequently live apart due to their largely separate lives. They are sometimes considered China's emerging star political couple. They have a daughter named Xi Mingze (习明泽),^[36] who enrolled as a freshman at Harvard University in the autumn of 2010 under a pseudonym.^[37]

Xi holds doctorates in chemical engineering and political science.^[38]

Peng has described Xi as frugal, hardworking and down to earth. "When he comes home, I've never thought of it as though there's some leader in the house. In my eyes, he's just my husband."^[39]

Xi was described in a 2011 Washington Post article by those who know him as "pragmatic, serious, cautious, hard-working, down to earth and low-key. They also say he is a problem-solver and a leader seemingly uninterested in the trappings of high office."^[40] He is also known to love Hollywood films like Saving Private Ryan^[41] and The Departed.^{[citation needed]} The Guardian noted that "perhaps more surprisingly" he has also praised the independent film maker, Jia Zhangke.^[42]

See also[link]

• Crown Prince Party
• Xi-Li Administration

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Xi Jinping

• News about Xi Jinping on the China Digital Times
• Biography at www.chinavitae.com
• U.S. Embassy Beijing, Portrait of Xi Jinping, via United States diplomatic cables leak
• Osnos, Evan, "China’s Valentine’s Day in Washington", The New Yorker, 14 February 2012. Review of comment accompanying Xi's visit.

v t e Members of the 17th Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China General Secretary 1. Hu Jintao Other members 2. Wu Bangguo 3. Wen Jiabao 4. Jia Qinglin 5. Li Changchun 6. Xi Jinping 7. Li Keqiang 8. He Guoqiang 9. Zhou Yongkang

v t e Members of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of China 12th CPC Central Committee Wan Li, Xi Zhongxun, Deng Liqun, Yang Yong, Yu Qiuli, Gu Mu, Chen Pixian, Hu Qili, Yao Yilin Alternate secretaries: Qiao Shi, Hao Jianxiu 13th CPC Central Committee Hu Qili, Qiao Shi, Rui Xingwen, Yan Mingfu Alternate secretaries: Wen Jiabao 14th CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao, Ding Guangen, Wei Jianxing, Wen Jiabao, Ren Jianxin 15th CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao, Wei Jianxing, Ding Guangen, Ding Guangen, Luo Gan, Wen Jiabao, Zeng Qinghong 16th CPC Central Committee Zeng Qinghong, Liu Yunshan, Zhou Yongkang, He Guoqiang, Wang Gang, Xu Caihou, He Yong 17th CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping, Liu Yunshan, Li Yuanchao, He Yong, Ling Jihua, Wang Huning

v t e Vice President of the People's Republic of China Common Program (1949–1954) Vice Chairmen of the Central People's Government: Zhu, Liu, Song, Zhang, Li, Gao 1954 Constitution (1954–1975) Vice Chairman: Zhu · Song and Dong  · Dong 1975 Constitution (1975–1978) Post abolished see NPCSC 1st vice-chairperson (Dong · Song) 1978 Constitution (1978–1982) Post abolished see NPCSC 1st vice-chairperson (Song · Nie) 1982 Constitution (1982–present) Vice President: Ulanhu · Wang · Rong · Hu · Zeng · Xi List of Vice Presidents of the People's Republic of China