Chinese Protest Research Articles

Homeschooling among Urban Chinese Protestants: A Descriptive Study

Abstract As individualized education increases in popularity, homeschooling likewise garners more attention from Chinese middle-class families. Over the past decade, the number of families choosing homeschooling has increased annually. However, most homeschooling Chinese Protestants wish to focus on the cultivation of beliefs, character, and values in the education of their children. In their eyes, homeschooling provides the best way to transmit cultural heritage. Homeschooling brings with it many challenges and difficulties in the daily lives of Chinese Protestants: cross-pressure from traditional Chinese culture systems, opposition from parents and other family members, conflicts with mainstream educational institutions, and power struggles with Chinese secular authorities. Moreover, educational resources, guides, and materials for Chinese homeschooling families are scarce, thus leaving homeschooling families to grope in the dark. The biggest deterrent to them is the disqualification of their children from taking college entrance examinations because homeschooled children lack the requisite status to enroll as official students. Thus, the role conflicts among Chinese, Christian, pariah, and legal deviant statuses pose considerable tensions for parents and children. This paper offers insight into these issues through qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with 50 respondents from urban Chinese Protestant families that had previously been screened through a brief survey instrument.

Biopolitical Binaries (or How Not to Read the Chinese Protests)

Biopolitical Binaries (or How Not to Read the Chinese Protests)

Saving the Nation: Chinese Protestant Elites and the Quest to Build a New China, 1922–1952, by Thomas H. Reilly

Thomas Reilly’s book argues that Chinese Protestant elites in institutions such as the National Christian Council, YMCA and YWCA had a disproportionate influence within the class of intellectuals and reformers trying to renew China as a nation. He suggests that Chinese Protestants, though making up only a quarter of 1 per cent of the Chinese population, made significant contributions to Chinese civil society through their institutional efforts in education, social reform, resistance to the Japanese invasion and, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, support for communism. In the introduction, Reilly sets out his argument: ‘More than preaching a message, the Protestant elite also played a social role, through their institutions, in Republican China that was far out of proportion to their numbers. In exercising this role, the Protestant elite often contributed a sense of legitimacy to social movements that might have been suppressed by the regime absent their participation’ (p. 2). He makes a distinction between the Social Gospel in China and the theology of the modernist movement, pointing out that the two are sometimes conflated but that in China the Social Gospel was embraced by many theological conservatives or fundamentalists. He also pointed to the international system of imperialism with which would-be reformers in China constantly contended. The introduction also includes a capsule history of Republican China (p. 5–6) and ends by narrating the fall of the Nationalists and the ascent of the Communists in 1949.

For a New Church in a New China: Yu Guozhen and his Christian Nationalism (1900–1912)

While most English studies of Chinese Christianity recognise the significance of early independent church movements led by indigenous leaders, few have looked in detail at the pioneering example of Yu Guozhen and his China Jesus Independent Church. Indeed, what motivated the early efforts of Chinese Protestants to form independent churches? As probably the first leader of independent churches to achieve national impact, Yu exhibited a clear commitment to harmonising Christianity with the Chinese state, which he deemed as the basis of guaranteeing religious rights. Though it would adopt various forms in the years to come, such synthesis of Christian nationalism has proved to be a recurring theme in the indigenisation of Chinese Christianity in the twentieth century.

Neutrality is Impossible: Nationalism, Unequal Treaties and the National Christian Council of China 1925-1926

"This article takes the National Christian Council of China (NCC) as a ease study. By examining the responses from various stakeholder both mainline Chinese Protestants and western mission within the NCC to the campaigns for the abrogation of the unequal treaties during the period of 1925——1926, it aims to reveal the tension and interaction between Christian missions? Chinese churches and the nationalist discourse. This article argues that although both Protestant missions and Chinese churches were in general the beneficiaries of the utoleration clauses“ of the unequal treaties and were aware of the necessity of drawing a clear borderline with the treaties > the two parties viewed the matter from different standpoints. To the majority of the missionary societies associated with the NCC > it was a diplomatic matter to be solved through formal negotiation between the governments. Whereas to most of the mainline Chinese Protestants> it had developed into a fundamental factor causing not only Christianity's unfavourable position in Chinese society, but also China's backwardness and uhumiliation. Considerably influenced by the nationalist discourse? they ardently engaged themselves in the campaigns to abrogate the unequal treaties > individually or as a group. Specific Chinese socio-political context and the nationalist discourse contributed significantly to the divergence of views. The NCC, incorporating both sides?was obliged to make a prompt response to the treaty issue and struggled to find common ground among the cooperating bodies.

Discursive activism in the age of BBS: revisiting overseas Chinese protests during the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay

The escalation in geopolitical tensions between China and the United States raises the critical issue of revisiting cyber nationalism in various contexts. A topic of critical inquiry, recent scholarship addresses the changing face of Chinese cyber nationalism since the 2010s, focussing on its connection with fan communities, cosmopolitan visions and the interplay of multifarious stakeholders. However, the ways in which emerging forms of cyber nationalism connect with its predecessors remain to be studied. To explore the historical connections of cyber nationalism across media platforms, this article investigates the role that MIT BBS, one of the most influential forums among overseas Chinese communities, played in organising pro-China protests during the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay. An examination of online political expressions not only unravels the multifaceted dimensions of nationalism, but it also deepens scholarly understanding of discursive activism, which emerged from text-based platforms prior to the dominance of mobile communication applications.

Does Greater Coercive Capacity Increase Overt Repression? Evidence from China

ABSTRACT Drawing on an original dataset of Chinese protests, this article documents an evolving relationship between state coercive capacity and overt repression across administrations. Specifically, it finds that under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao (2003–2012) protests in provinces with higher coercive capacity were less likely to meet with a crackdown, whereas the relationship between capacity and repression reversed during the first three years of Xi Jinping’s rule (2013–2015). Although the study demonstrates that the two periods were on average very different, change-point analysis reveals that the inflection point toward a harder line came already in the late Hu-Wen era. The Xi administration’s policies should therefore perhaps be understood more as a manifestation than a cause of shifts in the country’s social control.

The Diffusion of Christian Mysticism: From the Medieval Rhineland to Contemporary China

The Diffusion of Christian Mysticism: From the Medieval Rhineland to Contemporary China Glen G. Scorgie (bio) It was 1938, between the two great World Wars. China was in upheaval, and the Middle Kingdom’s first experiment with Western-style democracy was in tatters. The Communists under Chairman Mao would not be able to consolidate their hold on the nation for another decade. But meanwhile, Japan was encroaching, and local gangs and militias roamed the country. Regional conflicts ebbed and flowed. Against this volatile backdrop, a new, growing, fiercely independent and theologically conservative network of Protestant churches known as the Little Flock decided to prepare and publish the first-ever Chinese translation of the autobiography of the seventeenth century French mystic Madame Guyon. The title of this abridged translation was Sweet Smelling Myrrh.1 Observing this is rather like wandering through some farmer’s pasture and discovering an asteroid. How on earth did this get here? By what sequence of events, what chain of relationships and baton relays did Madame Guyon and her Quietist mysticism show up in China, and to such a surprisingly warm welcome from earnest Chinese Protestants? Not so long ago Jonah Berger published for a wide readership a book entitled Contagious: Why Things Catch On.2 A lot of people found it quite fascinating. For a time, it enjoyed the spotlight as a New York Times bestseller. And in a more scholarly format, Everett M. Rogers has pioneered the sociological study of the diffusion of innovations.3 How do things catch on? Scholars of Christian spirituality should begin searching for answers to this question, which is so critical to the future of Christian spirituality itself. We need more studies of how various spiritual themes, practices, and experiences have traveled through time, diffused across geographic regions, and taken root in new settings. Such studies will also surely confirm that elements of Christian spirituality inevitably morph as they adapt to new traditions and contexts, and embrace local wisdom. As a small contribution to this recommended genre of inquiry, this essay explores (admittedly, from a very high-altitude vantage point) the journey of Christian mysticism from the medieval Rhineland to parts of modern-day China via rather unexpected carriers—populist Protestant preachers, Holiness [End Page 1] evangelists, and missionaries shaped by the Keswick Movement. It is a narrative that would have been difficult to predict, and one in which, incidentally, thin little books play pivotal roles. THE NATURE OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM In order to trace any historical pathway of Christian mysticism, we must first penetrate “the cloud of unknowing” that too often surrounds the term itself. If at all possible, we should try to put the mystification of mysticism behind us. Built into the very word mysticism is an acknowledgment of the ultimately ineffable nature of this experience. But the mystery in the experience does not justify murkiness in its definition. I think it is best (and in our circles, probably safest) to align with Bernard McGinn’s generously inclusive depiction of mysticism as direct and immediate apprehension of the divine presence.4 The consciousness of which he speaks goes beyond, or moves deeper than, the more familiar and more objective experiences of sensing, knowing and loving.5 Karl Rahner has helpfully tagged at least a couple of important additional features of the mystical experience when he described it as “a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence.”6 In the language of the biblical Psalmist, deep calleth unto deep. The function of mystical theology is to provide seekers with an interpretive orientation to such a quest, and to guide them into proven pathways toward its realization. Typically, the term mystic is reserved for those who are “all in” in their yearning for, and their relentless pursuit of, such experience of the divine. Nevertheless, it must also be acknowledged that there is at least a mystical dimension to the experiences of most Christians, and it is difficult to imagine how a religious commitment can be sustained in the long haul without it. A strain of the mystical has been present in the Christian tradition from the very beginning.7 Its earliest phase was catalyzed...

The Old Testament Also Needs Annotations: The National Bible Society of Scotland's Annotated Edition of the Book of Proverbs in the MandarinUnion Version

AbstractThis article explores the path of the National Bible Society of Scotland (NBSS) to publishing its annotated edition of Proverbs in the MandarinUnion Versionin China during the Republican era. After providing an overview of how the NBSS became the first Bible society to publish annotated Chinese Gospels and Acts in the 1890s, this article examines why it took more than three decades thereafter for the NBSS to publish an annotated edition of another biblical book. It argues that one of the main reasons was that the NBSS had difficulty securing reputable scholarly Protestant missionaries’ services to prepare the necessary annotations. Moreover, this article suggests that the familiarity of the Chinese people with short and pithy sayings was a condition favourable for the reception of Proverbs in China. This, together with the status of the MandarinUnion Versionas the standard biblical text for Chinese Protestants, helps explain why the NBSS eventually published an annotated edition of Proverbs in the MandarinUnion Version. Annotations in that edition of Proverbs are analysed to understand how they could help bridge the gaps between Proverbs and its Chinese readers, so as to shed light on why such an edition of Proverbs was well-received as an evangelistic tool.

Qiuwen(Bibliomancy): Enlivening the Chinese Union Bible

AbstractThe production of the Union Bible was designed to provide Chinese Protestants with a standardised sacred text to better understand and approach the Christian faith in their native language. While believers regard the translated Scripture as a moral compass that gives spiritual references to everyday challenges, the methods of acquiring these references point to individual creativity and improvisation. When the Union Bible was banned from circulation in the public domain during the Maoist period (1949–1976), Chinese church leaders were jailed and reading the Bible was deemed to be subversive, how did ordinary Protestants draw on their reading of the Union Bible to sustain their religious commitment beyond initial conversion? How did they construct a biblically-centered faith against the socialist indoctrination? This study investigates the centrality of the Union Bible among Chinese Seventh-day Adventists in Wenzhou from the 1950s to 1970s. In particular, it explores how two female Adventists enmeshed the Chinese mode of divination with their daily Bible reading for spiritual insights as they confronted personal and congregational crises in the Maoist era. It argues that this indigenous mode of Bible reading sheds light on the ways in which Chinese Adventists asserted and empowered their scriptural-textual authority, interpretive agency, and personal piety against the state's relentless atheistic propaganda.

WHEN PARIS WAS “À L’HEURE CHINOISE” OR GEORGES POMPIDOU IN CHINA AND JEAN YANNE’S (1974) LES CHINOIS À PARIS

This article looks at two seemingly disparate events: Georges Pompidou’s 1973 presidential visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the filming and release of Jean Yanne’s blockbuster comedy Les Chinois à Paris (1974). Both produced flawed visions of Franco-Chinese relations. During Pompidou’s visit, officials and the press attempted to demonstrate that France enjoyed warmer relations with the PRC than any other Western nation. Yanne’s film parodied the French fad for Maoism by imagining the People’s Liberation Army invading and occupying Paris. His film caused an uproar in the press and sparked official Chinese protest. The article ultimately argues that the two events were deeply related, part of a wave of popular and official interest in China in the early 1970s that extended well beyond the well-known stories of student and intellectual Maoists. This interest paved the way for Franco-Chinese relations as we know them today.

Produire et consommer le sang du Christ. Matérialité et christianisme en Chine contemporaine

Producing and Consuming the Blood of Christ among Chinese Protestants Today. This article explores the ways in which five Chinese Christian denominations produce and consume the liquid presented as the ‘ blood of Christ’ in Nanping City (Fujian). It presents the various means of production and concerns about proper use that inform the Chinese Christians’ practices and discourses. The study shows that while the spread of Christianity in China relies on material objects, it operates not so much by promoting claims about the Christian God as by questioning the nature of things and beings.

How “Power–Interest Networks” Have Shaped Anti-Demolition Protests in Grassroots China

Based on intensive fieldwork in a district in China, this article illustrates that “power–interest networks” (quanli liyi wangluo) work as pre-existing tools for social control, specifically to govern residents’ behaviour when they engage in any protest against the state. The networks originated from an institutional setting in which local authorities have been the largest resource grabber and where personal ties have mainly determined resource allocation decisions. Residents who are capable of using networks to operate via the back door thus get rich, but their dependence on networks also poses constraints on their anti-demolition protests. By contrast, residents who are incapable of using networks tend to lag behind, but their marginalised status unexpectedly offers them greater autonomy to negotiate a better bargain with local authorities. The differences reveal a “half-open” state control through resources allocation, which seems to work for residents who have intensive interactions with local authorities but not for others who are self-sufficient. The existence of networks sheds light on the importance of local politics in determining Chinese protests and has not been amply discussed in recent years. Networks also reinforce the operational rationale of “relational repression”, shaped not only by sanctions and sentiments but also by benefits.

The contention of nail residents

Demolition in China is normally described as a tired story of the confrontation between a muscular state and undercompensated residents. Based on detailed case studies conducted in a district in China, this article presents a different picture of demolition by clarifying how nail residents maximize their economic interests through unapproved constructions, procrastination, protests, and compensations. This study enriches our understanding of the contention of nail residents by setting out the whole range of their protest tactics. At the same time it casts further light on the characteristics of Chinese protests, which are often simplified by local authorities’ malpractice and protesters’ “rightful resistance.”

Religious Heterogamy in Xiamen

Many young Protestants in the Chinese city of Xiamen marry a non-Christian spouse. How does religious heterogamy illuminate the social and ritual boundaries created by Protestants in Xiamen? Considering the function and permeability of these metaphoric boundaries, how should we visualize them? This article draws on data collected between August 2014 and February 2016. Intermarriage with non-Christians is condemned by most ministers in Xiamen, but it is an essential option for young women who far outnumber marriageable men in most church communities. The resulting weddings are marked by a search for compromises among the bride and groom, their parents, and the social communities for whom their parents host the wedding. It is argued that in terms of function and permeability, the social and ritual boundaries of Protestantism in Xiamen are less like barbed-wire fences than like the gates of a subway system, or the emergency exit of a shopping mall. Since a central aim of Chinese Protestants is to recruit more people to the faith, there is room for women to briefly exit the community and to re-enter with a converted husband. This focus on boundaries as metaphors may contribute to the field of interreligious studies, where boundaries are a key concept.

抗争治理:一个剖析抗争中国家作用的理论框架

While the study of contention in China has become a “rapid-growth industry,” existing explanations cannot convincingly account for the positive outcome of numerous Chinese protests, many of which lack the social strength required to succeed. Based on a systematic review of these studies, this article finds that an important reason for the weakness of these studies is that they focus on the protesters advocating change rather than the officials handling them. Accordingly, they pay too much attention to the factors increasing social strength, and ignore far more interesting clues about how the state can also influence contention. The article redirects our attention away from protesters and toward officials, and provides a framework for analyzing the handling of Chinese protests based on six analytical dimensions: changes in state capacity, tensions between different dimensions of state legitimacy, contradictions in thexinfangsystem, divisions among elites, state-society links, and state strategies in response to protests. This more meticulous examination of the state’s position thus supplements the previously informative but incomplete understanding of the Chinese state and sheds further light on the dynamics and outcomes of Chinese protests.基于对海内外近20年来有关中国社会抗争研究的述评,本文指出了现有文献中的一个不足,即“国家”视角的缺失,并据此提出了一个“抗争治理”的理论框架。这一框架包括“多元合法性的张力”、“国家能力的变化”、“信访体系的矛盾”、“官僚机构间的分歧”、“官民权力利益关系的强弱”和“抗争治理的策略”六个方面,从“政府官员”的视角更细腻地剖析了国家与社会在抗争中的互动,对我国加强和创新社会管理能力具有积极的价值。 (This article is in English.)

Disorderly conduct: Feminist nudity in Chinese protest movements

The essay contributes to Cultural Studies as an evaluation of changing practices of media and social activism while highlighting theories of feminism and dialogic aesthetics. More specifically, it discusses women’s use of online self-photography as a protest medium and a platform for feminist activism within two distinctive protest movements, the Umbrella Movement of Fall 2014 and the mainland Chinese feminist movement of 2012–2013. Forerunners of these movements in mainland China can be found in the work of performance artists and sex bloggers such as Ye Haiyan and Muzimei, who have used bulletin board systems and blogs to lay bare their sex lives and the cultural mechanisms of misogyny. Their performances in public spaces and their online postings have also elicited public brawls and significant responses within governmental agencies (Farrer, 2007; Tong, 2011).The article posits that these discourses also have a historical lineage in the ‘light’ or ‘fleeting’ dissident writings of the Cultural Revolution that generated large-scale responses but did not aim at becoming earnest or solidified works of art (Voci, 2010). In this vein, nudity is employed to titillate and stir fellow netizens rather than offering a coherent and embodied stance. It offers flippant gestures and statements that come to signify ideology within online social movements.

Chinese protest petrochemical plan

Chinese protest petrochemical plan

Faith in China: religious belief and national narratives amongst young, urban Chinese Protestants

AbstractThis paper investigates the national narratives of young, urban Protestants in contemporary China. Based on 100 interviews conducted in Beijing and Shenzhen, it argues that in constructing their national narratives, Chinese Protestants display critical selectivity in adopting the values of official party‐state nationalism. They display affection towards China, a sense of responsibility for improving the country and a concern for society's morality, all of which echo official nationalist priorities. However, they are critical of China's political arrangements, dispute the primacy of economic growth and are less hawkish on international and territorial issues. They see no contradiction between their Protestant and Chinese identities, but generally prioritise the former. This selectivity is explained by the fact that Protestantism generally attracts those less satisfied by the social and political status quo, and because of, in Carlson's terms, the ‘boundary‐spanning’ nature of the Protestant identity and morality to which these converts then subscribe.

Burning for a Cause: Four Factors in Successful Political (and Religious) Self-Immolation Examined in Relation to Alleged Falun Gong “Fanatics” in Tiananmen Square

AbstractThis article theorizes the self-immolation of alleged Falun Gong practitioners in Tiananmen Square in 2001 in relation to literature on martyrdom, self-immolation, and political protest. It explores the cultural context in relation to Buddhist traditions of self-immolation, Chinese political protest, and other uses of self-immolation as political protest. It will seek to expand the analysis of why these self-immolations may be said to have “failed” as a form of protest, and present a set of four key factors. Issues of legitimation and authority in the events and their representation will be raised, especially the contested nature of whether the self-immolations were “religious,” looking at the different meanings of this term in Chinese and Western contexts. It is argued that both secular and religious self-immolation can be seen as legitimate in the public sphere.