5. Application & Software

*Network Builder ver.1 is released

<Please contact at jonglee@ucsd.edu to request the program >

- The Network Builder is an automated adjacency matrix generator that incorporates many options of which China researchers would take into consideration.

- Prerequisites: .Net 4.0 or above and Microsoft Excel 2010 or above (Note that this program only works with Windows OS)

- Citation: Jonghyuk Lee (2016), Network Builder Ver.1 [Computer software], Retrieved from http://www.jonghyuklee.com/database/software

- Network Builder ver.1 has a built-in database.

- The database includes all the Central Committee and Alternate Central Committee members from 14th to 18th Party Congress.

- Citation: Shih, Victor C., David A. Meyer, and Jonghyuk Lee, CCP Elite Database, 2016

*User Guide

In the network builder, there are three main sections: Description Section (leftest red box), Display Section (middle red box), and Network-building Section (rightest red box).

I. Description Section

② You can search for the basic information of CCP elites. You can use either English pinyin or Chinese name of CCP elites in this section. By clicking "Search" or simply putting enter, the information will be displayed in the text-boxes below.

③ The text-boxes in the Description Section can also be used to find the list of CCP elites that meet specific conditions. For example, if you insert "0" in Gender and 1953 ~ 1960 in Birth Year, and then, click "Export List", the program will produce the list of female officials who were born between 1953 and 1960. You are required to insert the same number twice if you want one year. For example, If you need the list of the 18th full CC members who born in 1953, you should insert 18 ~ 18 for Full and 1953 ~ 1953 for Birth Year. Only numeric values can be accepted in this section. The text-boxes with "(ID Code)" mean that you should put the id codes of the locations or the institutions. ID Code can be found in the Display Section. By clicking "clear", you can reset the values in the text-boxes.

Ex) the list of female CC members who were born between 1953 and 1960 (used the built-in database)

II. Display Section

④ This section is designed to search for ID codes for the database. Every CCP elite in the database has his/her unique ID code. In network analysis, the Network Builder will use individual ID codes instead of their names. If you want to find the name of a certain ID, inserting ID and clicking "Show" or putting enter key will show the name matched with the ID. "PSC" or "Politburo" displays the list of PSC or Politburo members with their IDs and names. You can use "Bplace" or "Univ" to find ID codes for locations or universities. You don't have to type the full name of locations or universities. The program will show all the relevant candidates that match with your input. Note that only Chinese can be used for universities.

III. Network-Building Section

Our basic definition of political connection is "whether two officials worked in the same ministerial level unit at the same time for over one year" (Note: each provincial government is also considered as a ministerial level). This definition entails many sub-categorical specifications. In this section, we provide options and selections where you can specify your own preferences on network measurements.

⑤ "Open Assumptions" and "Open Options" will display additional pop-up windows where you can change our default settings on network definitions.

Assumptions: 1) If we cannot track down the ministerial affiliation of a central official, he/she is assigned as other cadre in state council. In the analysis, other cadres in state council are considered to have a work tie with State Council Head office (ministerial-level). You can disable this assumption by clicking the check-box.

2) Deng Xiaoping almost always sit in the top positions that are mostly excluded from the analysis. In this setting, Deng Xiaoping does not have any connection with relatively younger cadres (including Xi Jinping). We presume that Deng Xiaoping has a connection with officials in head offices of PLA, central party, and state council, when he holds the top positions.

3) If we are not sure of the start year or the end year of someone's job, we assume that the official stayed in the same job at least for three years. If checked, all the jobs without the complete year-set will be excluded from the analysis.

4) Xi Jinping worked in Shanghai for a short time period in 2007. We exclude his Shanghai connection. By checked, you include Xi Jinping's Shanghai experience.

5) The default setting is only recording connection prior to the Politburo (Early Work Ties in Meyer, Shih, and Lee, (2016) JEAS article). By checked, patron's Politburo jobs are also included in the analysis (Complete Work Ties in Meyer, Shih, and Lee, (2016) JEAS article).

6) We do not think that the supreme leaders are tied with every official in the departments of each institution (Party Secretary General and PSC members, Premier and Vice Premier of state council, Chairman and Vice Chairman of PLA).

Options: You can exclude some of the job specifications from the analysis.

⑥ In this section, you can specify your network measurements. You can only choose one check-box for a time. By NOT checking any, you accept the default setting: "whether two officials worked in the same ministerial level unit at the same time for over one year" + "only records connection prior to the Politburo".

1) Weighted Measure: The default is a dummy variable, 0 or 1. By checked, the program will produce the number of years that two officials share together in the same ministerial level unit.

2) Direct Measure: The default is a symmetric matrix indicating that it only cares whether two officials were in the same ministerial level unit or not. It doesn't count the ranks of two officials. By checked, the program will only identify the connections in the same rank or lower rank officials, and thus, the network adjacency matrix is no longer symmetric. In this setting, the row index means the patrons (higher ranks) and the column means the followers (lower ranks).

3) Restrictive Measure: The restrictive measure specifies the patron-client relationship in more details in order to identify the true followers of the patrons. Note that restrictive measures only use "Direct Measure: Connected with lower rank", since it only considers the followers. "Follower rotation in or out" indicates that the follower was rotated into the patron's ministerial unit or out of the patron's ministerial unit while the patron is staying in the same ministerial level unit. "Follower promotion in the same unit" is the most restrictive measure where we only count the connection when the follower is promoted or transferred to more promising position in the same ministerial level unit while working with the patron in the same ministerial level unit. The rationale behind this is that the lower-ranking officials promoted during the high-ranking patron's tenure can be considered as the true followers because the high-ranking patron showed his/her favoritism to them.

⑦ In order to retrieve the network adjacency matrix, you need to check one or more boxes in this section. "Export entire adjacency network matrix" makes a N by N matrix that records all the political connections (dummy or number of years) in the database. "Export PSC Network Matrix" or "Export Politburo Network Matrix" will display only PSC or Politburo connections in columns. The IDs of PSC or Politburo members are shown in parentheses. #IMPORTANT: Note that in "Export PSC Network Matrix" or "Export Politburo Network Matrix" option, the columns (PSC or Politburo members) indicate patrons and the rows refer to followers. On the contrary, in "Export entire adjacency network matrix" option, the rows are patrons and the columns are followers. You can retrieve the network adjacency matrix with your choices by clicking "Export Network" in section ⑧.

Ex) PSC Network Adjacency Matrix

⑨ In this section, you can see individual's political connections through the entire careers of the official. First, you insert the name (English pinyin or Chinese) in section ② , and then click "Open Individual Network Viewer". The program will create a new excel spreadsheet with the list of CCP elites who are connected with the targeted official in each year. The first column is year, the second is job-code, and the rest columns indicate the connected officials in the same ministerial level unit and in the same year. You can highlight CC or ACC members with gray color by checking "Highlight Party Congress" boxes. Checking "Output ID" makes the program show IDs instead of their Chinese names.

Ex) Xi Jinping's Connections throughout his entire career trajectories (Provincial Standing Committee members and above)

IV. Future Update

Online Version will equip a graphic interface and will automatically calculate the rankings of each individual Central and Provincial leader's predicted probability of political advancement by using a Ensemble Model stacked with a variety of machine learning algorithms (Please refer to "Predicting Authoritarian Selection: Theoretical and Machine Learning Predictions of Politburo Promotions for the 19th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party” (with Victor C. Shih) for further details).

Ex) Chen Min'er (the current party secretary of Guizhou Province; One of the Xi Jinping's loyal followers) Network maps and his rankings of the likelihood to be Politburo members