Protest and Policing in China (original) (raw)

Social Unrest in China (Book chapter in China and EU in Context, 2014)

Palgrave MacMillan, 2014

Social unrest is on the rise in China. Few incidents of public demonstrations, disruptive action or riots occurred in the 1980s, but the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square marked a turning point. In 1993, there were already 8,700 ‘mass inci- dents’ recorded. By 2005, the number had grown tenfold to 87,000. Unofficial data estimated by a researcher at Tsinghua University suggests that there were 180,000 incidents in 2010.1 These figures could easily be interpreted as signs that the days of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule are numbered. However, the number of media outlets has proliferated since the 1990s; and with that, the incentive to report on eye-catching stories has increased. In comparing these incidents with the protests that toppled several authoritarian regimes during the Arab Spring of 2011, a number of significant differences emerge. The scale of most protests in China is much smaller. Protestors are usually a homogenous group, such as peasants, taxi driv- ers, migrant workers or homeowners. Mobilisation across social groups, an important precondition for system-threatening col- lective action, is therefore largely absent. Further, despite rising unrest, the death toll in such activities remains low. Most important, few of these protests are aimed at toppling the regime, even though popular uprisings can do so, as evi- denced in the Arab Spring. Interestingly, rising incidents of social unrest do not correlate with a decrease in the legitimacy of the CCP’s one-party rule.2 Although local officials are heavily criticised for their incompetence and corruption, few people are in favour of regime change. If it is not a sign of an impending regime change or even of a major legitimacy crisis, what does social unrest in China signify? In this chapter, we argue that social unrest should be seen as a form of participation – as a means to communicate specific griev- ances in the hope that local government or the central authorities will address them. Two issues are at stake here: grievances and participation. Although scholars and politicians tend to focus on the former, the latter deserves equal attention. In fact, rising inci- dents of unrest might not be the result of mounting grievances but of changing forms of participation. The growth of informa- tion and communication technology (ICT) in China has brought about improved availability of information on issues at the heart of people’s well-being, such as food quality and environmental pollution. It has also improved the ability of protestors to learn from the success or failure of previous initiatives, and to com- municate their grievances and strategies. In simple terms, the increase in occurrences of social unrest is likely the result of exploitation of material interests of disadvan- taged groups, the inadequacy of formal channels of communica- tion combined with greater opportunities for and falling costs of instigating or participating in social unrest. As we will also show, this does not make social unrest innocu- ous. If the number of protests continues to rise, the perception that grievances are not being adequately addressed may translate into opposition to the regime. Even more likely is a scenario in which security forces overreact, protests spiral out of control, isolated protests link up with each other and large-scale riots are answered with massive repression. Realising these dangers, the Chinese government has begun to address the grievances underlying social unrest. It is also investing considerable resources in improving its ability to control, repress and prevent unrest, while some formal channels for communicating grievances are being improved. This report sheds light on the forms, manifestations and root causes of social unrest and its role in the political system. It also analyses various strategies of the Chinese government for mitigating and countering protests. The section ‘The Changing Nature of Social Unrest’ examines definition, forms, distribu- tion and development of social unrest in China. The next sec- tion ‘Issues Leading to Grievances’ analyses the root causes of rising unrest. The study is based on English- and Chinese-language sources comprising official documents, newspaper reports, sta- tistical yearbooks and scholarly publications as well as data and observations gathered in several weeks of fieldwork in Guangzhou (in February 2010), Shenzhen, Shenyang, Chongqing (in 2003 and 2004), Hefei (in December 2011) and Beijing.

A Tough Challenge For Beijing: Hong Kong Demonstrations

Hong Kong Demonstrations, 2019

Harsh demonstrations in the following months in Hong Kong are still indicating high stakes for Beijing administration. Despite Hong Kong Government's withdrawal of extradition bill, massive protests has been taking place in the streets of the city. On the other hand, there are numerous national and international reflections of the protests and possible intervention of China toward Hong Kong and the consequences should be taken in the hand comprehensively.

Defending Stability under Threat: Sensitive Periods and the Repression of Protest in Urban China

Journal of Contemporary China, 2021

How does the elevated threat of protests during sensitive periods affect state repression in a high-capacity authoritarian regime? Drawing on a dataset of over 3,100 protests in three Chinese megacities, this study provides three key findings: first, the frequency of protests before and during national-level focal events and subsequent to national-level disruptive events is depressed, suggesting preemptive repression is taking place. Second, the likelihood of responsive repression is marginally reduced before and during local-level focal events and slightly elevated after national-level disruptive events. Third, contention is intensified when local political elites meet. Sensitive periods do not bring contention to a standstill and costly bursts of responsive repression were not observed. Stability maintenance during times of increased regime-vulnerability was thus less rigid than often assumed.

China’s Cosmopolitan Nationalists: “Heroes” and “Traitors” of the 2008 Olympics

2010

In the spring of 2008, Chinese students worldwide staged demonstrations to "protect" the relay of the Olympic torch from protesters and to condemn Western media coverage of the violence in Tibet. Hundreds of thousands of mostly young Chinese then posted and discussed images and accounts of these events online, creating a transnational "proto-public space" that projected the imagery of fashionable and self-confident Chinese students marching through San Francisco and Sydney back onto the streets of Wuhan and Hefei, demonstrating the role of young Chinese outside China in shaping nationalist discourse inside the country. Based on ethnographic observation of demonstrations in Sydney and Canberra and on the analysis of the online discussion that surrounded the worldwide events on the Chinese Internet, this article explores the mobilization that led to them, the meanings of the demonstrations for participants, and the public personalities ("heroes" and "traitors") that emerged from them. Unlike constructivist and primordialist analyses of Chinese nationalism that explain its growth by referring to the role of the state or to historical memory, we interpret the displays of nationalism by Chinese youth across the globe not only as an emotional experience of identifying with the nation but simultaneously as a show of middle-class sophistication, creativity and, paradoxically, cosmopolitanism.