## 4 Results and Discussion
### Analysis of Negative Sentiment Posts from 2021 to 2023  
The discourse on common prosperity is predominantly shaped by official media, which tends to focus on positive comments. This can obscure the voices expressing negative sentiments and, consequently, obscure the underlying issues that spark such responses. To address this, we specifically extracted posts with negative sentiments for further analysis. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Year**} & \multicolumn{4}{c}{**Number of Posts**} & \multicolumn{4}{c}{**Percentage of Posts**} \\ \cline{2-9}  & **Positive** & **Negative** & **Neutral** & **Total** & **Positive** & **Negative** & **Neutral** \\ \hline
2021 & 74,064 & 4654 & 2866 & 81,584 & 90.8\% & 5.7\% & 3.5\% \\
2022 & 61,790 & 2921 & 2024 & 66,735 & 92.6\% & 4.4\% & 3.0\% \\
2023 & 39,038 & 2167 & 1216 & 42,421 & 92.0\% & 5.1\% & 2.9\% \\
2021-2023 & 174,892 & 9742 & 6106 & 190,740 & 91.7\% & 5.1\% & 3.2\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 7: Sentiment analysis from 2021 to 2023. Our objective was to uncover the root causes of these negative perceptions and provide a clearer picture of public dissent. Using the LDA method detailed in Section 3.3, we conducted a topic analysis for the period from 2021 to 2023. The optimal number of topics for these posts is determined as five by the perplexity score and the coherence score (Figure 9). The intertopic distance map of topic modeling also shows that the modeling performs well (Figure 9). After testing various values of \(\lambda\), we ultimately selected \(\lambda\) = 0.5. With \(\lambda\) = 0.5, the keywords for each topic were extracted (detailed in Appendix B) to identify the main causes behind the public's negative sentiments towards common prosperity. By analyzing these keywords and examining their relationship with the current state of China's economic and social development, we can find that the dissatisfaction of the Chinese public comes from five primary sources (Table 8). The first source is dissatisfaction with finance and real estate. The public expressed significant displeasure with the financial markets due to abnormal fluctuations, particularly the prolonged bear markets, and the illegal activities of some listed companies. This dissatisfaction extended to the real estate sector, where high nationwide housing prices have particularly affected the homeless and young people without homes. Recent downturns in the real estate market, exacerbated by debt crises and unfinished projects by companies like Evergrande Group, have also fueled public discontent. The second source is dissatisfaction with the wealth gap. Negative sentiments were frequently associated with keywords indicative of social antagonism due to wealth disparities, such as \"capitalists\", \"bosses\", \"rich people\", \"workers\", \"farmers\", and \"poor people\". The third source is dissatisfaction with capital. Public discontent often views the wealth gap through the lens of capital, attributing the disparity to capital exploitation and monopolistic practices. High-frequency terms include \"capital\", \"capitalism\", \"public ownership\", and \"oligarchy\". Additional dissatisfaction arises from the perception that \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline  & **2021–2023** \\ \hline Topic 1 & Dissatisfaction with finance and real estate \\ Topic 2 & Dissatisfaction with the wealth gap \\ Topic 3 & Dissatisfaction with capital \\ Topic 4 & Dissatisfaction with unreasonably high incomes \\ Topic 5 & Dissatisfaction with regional development imbalances \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 8: Topics with negative sentiment from 2021 to 2023. Figure 9: Perplexity and coherence score changes with the number of topics and the intertopic distance map of topic modeling of the negative sentiment posts from 2021 to 2023.  
digital and technological advancements are being leveraged to consolidate wealth among a few, exacerbating the wealth gap. The fourth source is dissatisfaction with unreasonably high incomes.