Protest In China Research Articles

Dual mediation and success of environmental protests in China: a qualitative comparative analysis of 10 cases

ABSTRACT Existing studies of protest outcomes have focused on the effects of organizational characteristics, disruptive tactics, and political opportunity structures. However, most studies, especially those situated in Western democracies, fail to adequately account for the paths to successful protests in authoritarian regimes like China because of the structural differences between the two types of regimes. By incorporating insights from studies of protests in China and communication studies, this article extends the political mediation model and argues that the success of protests is shaped by the tripartite relations among protest forcefulness, favorable political contexts, and media exposure. In face of joint occurrence of elite support and media exposure, large size of protest is sufficient, whilst large size and disruptive actions are required when media exposure is present but elite support is absent. This result shows that the effectiveness of protest characteristics is dually mediated by political and media conditions. This study not only enhances our understandings of protest outcomes in China but also brings scholarly dialogue between social movement studies and communication studies so as to enrich the literature of protest outcomes.

The Nature of Popular Protest and the Employment of Repressive State Capacity in China

While China’s economic reforms have produced undeniably positive outcomes, a rapid increase in popular protests has become most striking in recent years. As protests grow steadily in both scale and frequency, the government continues to tout social stability as the chief concern of China today. These mounting tensions reflect a direct clash of horns between the maintenance of stability and the public’s desire to exercise their rights, frequently culminating in acts of repression by the Chinese state in order to quell the unrest. This raises an important question: how can the relationship between repression and popular protest in China be characterized? More specifically, which precise circumstances of popular protest elicit the employment of China’s repressive state capacity? Taking into account both theoretical perspectives and empirical analysis, this paper attempts to elucidate the issue by first collating a large body of data to clarify the precise characteristics of popular protest, then undertaking quantitative analysis to identify which factors trigger the mobilization of China’s machinery of repression. Furthermore, this study identifies that in recent years, the use of state repression has risen in parallel with an increasing emphasis on the principle of “maintaining social stability” in China.

Engaging truthiness and obfuscation in a political ecology analysis of a protest against the Pengzhou Petroleum Refinery

<p>This article draws from an empirical case study of the use of truthiness and obfuscation during an environmental protest in China, to help highlight the complex issues that political ecology faces in the Post-Truth Era. By drawing on empirical data from social media and local interviews, this article documents rising social tensions associated with air pollution and the recent construction of a petroleum refinery outside of Chengdu. The article notes how historical precedent and the obfuscating of environmental information by government officials provided the conditions that led to residents presenting a selection of facts or even false information to support truth-claims that in turn supported their protest against the refinery. While this tactic of using truthiness to support an environmental protest may have sent the relevant information viral across the internet, the article also documents how the Chinese state in the end was able to de-legitimize the protestors by labeling their behavior as "anti-science." The article draws on this case study to encourage political ecologists to critically evaluate and contextualize the limits of utilizing alternative facts to challenge authoritarian control over the environment.</p><p><strong>Key words:</strong> Post-Truth, environmental protest, social media, China, environmentality, necropolitics</p>

Authoritarian cooptation of urban protests in China: normative, cognitive, and regulatory controls through the media

The Chinese government’s practice in tackling large-scale urban protests in recent years indicates a new trend in political cooptation, which differs from its traditional handling of contentious politics. This study explores the mechanisms of authoritarian cooptation by analyzing the government’s handling of the anti-incineration protests in Guangzhou in 2011–2012. The results of the textual analysis and the data collected in in-depth interviews suggest that the government strategically applied normative, cognitive, and regulatory controls as mechanisms of authoritarian cooptation. Specifically, the government promoted public trust through the normative cooptation of the media, thereby fostering the image of a responsive government. It also used the strategy of cognitive cooptation to divert the issue from waste incineration to waste sorting, thus convincing journalists and the public of the safety and scientificity of the incineration technology based on endorsements by expert advice. The strategy of regulatory cooptation was applied when the government made compulsory the enforcement of projects and regulated media content. Consequently, the protest was fragmented and dispersed, and the mobilization of the movement was undermined.

The Political and Economic Consequences of Nationalist Protest in China: The 2012 Anti-Japanese Demonstrations

AbstractWhat are the consequences of nationalist unrest? This paper utilizes two original datasets, which cover 377 city-level anti-Japanese protests during the 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyu Island crisis and the careers of municipal leaders, to analyse the downstream effects of nationalist unrest at the subnational level. We find both political and economic consequences of China's 2012 protest demonstrations against Japan. Specifically, top Party leaders in cities that saw relatively spontaneous, early protests were less likely to be promoted to higher office, a finding that is consistent with the widely held but rarely tested expectation that social instability is punished in the Chinese Communist Party's cadre evaluation system. We also see a negative effect of nationalist protest on foreign direct investment (FDI) growth at the city level. However, the lower promotion rates associated with relatively spontaneous protests appear to arise through political rather than economic channels. By taking into account data on social unrest in addition to economic performance, these results add to existing evidence that systematic evaluation of leaders’ performance plays a major role in the Chinese political system. These findings also illuminate the dilemma that local leaders face in managing popular nationalism amid shifting national priorities.

Mass Protests in China (I): Provincial and Local Reports

Mass Protests in China (I): Provincial and Local Reports

Young Feminist Activists in Present-Day China: A New Feminist Generation?

This article studies post-2000 Chinese feminist activism from a generational perspective. It operationalises three notions of generation— generation as an age cohort, generation as a historical cohort, and “political generation”—to shed light on the question of generation and generational change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. The study shows how the younger generation of women have come to the forefront of feminist protest in China and how the historical conditions they live in have shaped their feminist outlook. In parallel, it examines how a “political generation” emerges when feminists of different ages are drawn together by a shared political awakening and collaborate across age.

Labour protest in China’s private sector: responses to Chinese communism with capitalist characteristics

Building on existing studies of worker activism in formerly communist states, this paper examines the context, nature and consequences of labour protest in China’s private sector – highlighting the specific features that have emerged from China’s unique ‘communist’ political regime and partially privatized economy. As private enterprises have grown in China, private sector worker protests have been common. Three key factors have shaped this activism: (i) a disjuncture between benevolent and protective national laws and the lived experience of workers; (ii) fluctuations in the labour market; and (iii) generational shifts and learning among workers, employers and political authorities. The interplay of these factors has led protesting private sector workers to focus their ire on their employers and on occasion local political authorities, while viewing national political leaders as sources of worker support. These dynamics have had both positive and negative consequences for private sector workers and political authorities. Making comparisons with other authoritarian and communist states, this study adds to current understandings of how specific economic and political configurations engender particular characteristics of labour activism – and how these change over time.

The Diffusion of Contention in Contemporary China: An investigation of the 2014–15 wave of teacher strikes

AbstractThe article examines a wave of teachers’ strikes that spread across China during the autumn, winter, and spring of 2014–15. Looking at event data and social media coverage of the wave, it discusses how social media enabled protesters to carry out media-savvy campaigns that involved both online and offline tactics, draw inspiration from claimants in faraway protest sites, and emulate tactics, slogans, and symbols from other locations. The episode indicates that claimants in contemporary China are utilizing social media to break the geographic bounds of localized protests and, while falling short of nationally coordinated protest movements, are able to generate widespread, cross-regional protest waves that place greater pressure on subnational authorities to give in to protester demands. These cross-regional protest waves present a third category of ‘widespread’ protests in China that are distinct from parochial/localized protests and national protest movements.

“Project Battle” or “Policy War”?: Protest, Advocacy, and the Outcomes of Environmental Contention in China

Over the past decade, several environmental protests against hazardous projects have been mounted across China. Though extensive scholarship has been devoted to the outcomes of environmental contention, a significant distinction between local government's one-off decision change regarding the specific project and long-term, locked-in policy change towards better governance has largely been overlooked. Meanwhile, environmental contention in authoritarian China has largely been studied in terms of disparate episodes, making systematic observation and effective comparison difficult. Using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), this article investigates the effect of social contention on shaping environmental governance, analysing 20 influential cases of environmental protests in China from 2007 to 2014. It demonstrates that environmental contention efforts often yield different fruits in their “project battles” than in their “policy wars.” Moreover, this study argues that environmental protests necessitate ample effort of public policy from a variety of social agents with multifaceted mechanisms and strategies, highlighting the significance of the protest–advocacy linkage in extracting better governance from local states in authoritarian settings.

Fighting the Prairie Fire: Why do Local Party-States in China Respond to Contentious Challengers Differently?

Why do local officials across China respond differently to societal challengers? In this article, the authors analysed six recent and influential social protests in China—the Dongyang protest (2005), Xiamen protest (2007), Weng’an protest (2008), Shanghai Anti-MagLev Railway Project protest (2008), Shenzhen protest (2008) and Shishou protest (2009). The article demonstrates that disparities in state capacity noticeably affect the trajectories of contentious collective actions and shape government responses in China. Local states in China respond to social protests by dynamically and vigorously assessing their capacity as the social protest develops, and by weighing the probable effectiveness of control measures designated for the locale.

A Zero-Sum Game? Repression and Protest in China

Most scholarship on contentious politics in authoritarian regimes focuses on severe repression and transgressive protest (e.g. revolt), suggesting a zero-sum game played by the state and challengers. However, a burgeoning literature suggests that less brutal forms of authoritarian states have emerged in recent decades and that protesters in these countries tend to limit their challenges, avoiding direct confrontation with the authorities. If so, can the notion of the zero-sum game truly capture the nuances and complexities of contentious politics in authoritarian regimes? Taking the case of China, this article offers a systematic analysis of the pattern of repression and protest in a strong authoritarian state. Drawing on an original data set of 1,418 protest events in China, this article shows that the Chinese state permits some (albeit limited) space for protest and that most protesters confine themselves to this space. These findings thus provide quantitative evidence that popular contention in China is featured by a non-zero-sum game. Overall, this study contributes to a more comprehensive and complex understanding of popular contention in authoritarian settings.

The institutional causes of environmental protests in China: a perspective from common pool resource management

This article approaches environmental protest in China as a failure in cooperative common pool resource management and engages with the institutional design principles developed by Elinor Ostrom to identify underlying institutional causes. The results show that, at the constitutional choice level, the fundamental ideology, and political institutions of China do not support a nested environmental governance system that involves non-governmental powers. At the collective-choice level, the monitoring and graduated sanctions systems suffer from unaccountable local officials, opaque information, lax law enforcement, and the rising but still restricted role of non-governmental organizations and media. At the operational level, low-quality and even fraudulent environmental impact assessments do not clearly define boundaries for resources and users, which prevents the evolution of congruent rules and neglects the stakes the public may have in a project. The options to reform the existing institutions are then considered in light of China’s constitutional and institutional tradition.

Out of the Barracks: The Role of the Military in Democratic Revolutions

Why some democratic revolutions succeed while others fail? The scholarly community has sought to address this issue from various perspectives, from rational choice approaches to collective action theories. Too little attention, however, has been paid to analyzing the role of the military. By discussing the different types of interactions played by the military in five cases of successful democratic revolutions—the 1910 Portuguese Republican Revolution, the 1958 Venezuelan Revolution, the 1960 April Revolution in South Korea, the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the 2000 Bulldozer Revolution in Yugoslavia—and three cases of failed revolutions, the 1905 bourgeois-liberal revolution in Russia, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests in China, and the 2016 Turkey’s coup attempt, this study finds out that the key factor in determining their outcome is the army’s response and that the military backing is a necessary condition for a democratic revolution to succeed.

Protecting Business from Politics: Explaining Variation in Nationalist Protests in China

Why do Chinese leaders, despite valuing economic ties to Japan, take actions – such as permitting anti-Japanese street demonstrations – that risk antagonizing the Japanese business community? In order to adequately explain the puzzling divergence of economic interests and political behavior, I propose a subnational approach. I argue that leaders of Chinese cities that are economically dependent on Japan are more likely to take measures to protect the local business environment, and thus are more likely to repress or contain anti-Japanese street demonstrations. I test this argument by analyzing the variation in city government responses to anti-Japanese protests in two pairs of comparative case studies featuring Dalian and Qingdao, and Shanghai and Guangzhou. A key implication of my argument is that the expectation that certain subnational actors will preserve economic relations with Japan may give rise to a moral hazard problem in which leaders at the national level engage in riskier international behavior.

Mobilizing Bystanders into Popular Protests in China: A Case Study of the Shishou Unrest

Bystanders who were not stakeholders had often been mobilized into popular protests in China. Why did these bystanders step in to some protests and choose not to participate in other protests? What were the motivations and mobilizing mechanisms that brought the bystanders into the protests? Based on the case study of the Shishou Unrest in which about 70,000 bystanders were effectively mobilized to step into protests, this article reveals a two-stage mobilization strategy that the stakeholders started by turning a small number of bystanders into activists and then to mobilize more, other bystanders into protests. During the first mobilization stage, the stakeholders provided material incentives to the bystanders. During the second stage, activists appealed to the bystanders’ perception of extraordinary injustice related to the triggering event and the local society as a whole. The two-stage mobilization strategy successfully led a large number of bystanders step into the Shishou Unrest.

Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations, by Jessica Chen Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. xii+341 pp. £20.99 (paper).

<i>Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations</i>, by Jessica Chen Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. xii+341 pp. £20.99 (paper).

Worker unrest and institutional change: Perceptions of local trade union leaders in China

Worker protests in China are increasing in frequency, and workers are making more ambitious demands. However, it is unclear whether this activism is, on the whole, drawing a reformist or conservative response from officials. Using a 2014 survey of city-level leaders from China’s official trade union federation, we find that an acknowledgement of the seriousness of today’s labour disputes and of how the country’s industrial relations are changing is positively correlated with respondents’ optimism regarding the likelihood of changes to China’s political system. To determine exactly what this means ideologically, we further compare reform optimists and pessimists with regard to their support for a range of more specific policies, finding that those who believe systemic changes are close at hand have different views from their peers regarding the importance of engagement with global civil society and a tripartite (government, union, employer) approach to managing workplaces. This provides tentative support for the idea that reform optimists are reform supporters and that interest in change among Chinese officials, at least at the level studied here, is growing alongside workplace conflict.

Multi-channelled forceful intervention, frames and protest success—a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative study of 40 anti-demolition protests in China

Having incorporated the characteristics of Chinese politics, this article puts forward an exploratory analytic framework for understanding protest success and points out how political opportunities and protest frames can explain protest success. Political opportunities not only include direct intervention by the central government but also support from state-sponsored media and favourable policies and laws. This article uses the method of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to compare 40 socially influential cases of anti-demolition protests in China. The results show that the co-presence of central government intervention and supportive reports from central state-sponsored media—which this study calls “multi-channelled forceful intervention”—is a sufficient condition for protest success. Further, “multi-channelled forceful intervention” depends on a favourable institutional environment and protestors’ strategic use of multiple frames. This article not only enriches the studies on protest results but also expands on the theory of political opportunity structures and the study of protest frames.

Dynamic preference revelation and expression of personal frames: how Weibo is used in an anti-nuclear protest in China

This study explores the use of Weibo in a protest against a nuclear fuel processing plant in China. This study argues that social media play an important role in the development of protests in non-democratic societies through the mechanism of preference revelation, which blurs the boundary between offline protests and the individualized expression of preferences on social media. Of Weibo tweets which were posted prior to the occurrence of the offline protest, 11,788 protest-related were examined with the aid of a supervised machine learning technique. The results showed that the revelation of personal preferences in the form of individualized expressions of opposition were more common than mobilization and coordination, and such preferences were legitimized by the personal frames of risk and the distrust in government. The use of Weibo to mobilize potential opponents to the project, primarily by calling for the expression of opposition, was less frequent than the use of Weibo to express personal frames. Furthermore, the prevalence of Weibo usage changed dramatically. In the first few days of the protest, the revelation of personal preferences and personal frames of risk were prominent, whereas personal frames of distrust in government were common in the days leading to the street protest.