Research and Science Today No. 2(4)/2012

The main purpose of this study is to shed light on the nature of social unrest in China, the grievances that are at the heart of social unrest and the counterpolicies launched by the Chinese government and to discuss the implications for EU policy. The study is based on English- and Chinese-language sources comprising official documents, newspaper reports, statistical yearbooks and scholarly publications as well as data and observations gathered in several weeks of fieldwork. The findings indicate that the rise of social unrest in China is not a sign of imminent regime collapse. Nevertheless, it bears risks that could severely disrupt China’s social stability and thereby the interests of the European Union. The EU should pay close attention to three phenomena: acts of repression undermining human rights in China, decreasing legitimacy at home that may prompt China to overreact in regional and international disputes, and surveillance technologies produced in Europe that might be applied to suppress dissent in China.

Policy, Organisation and Society, 1990

ECRAN, 2012

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.

Comparative Sociology, 2021

The current article investigates societal indicators associated with economic development that may account for the strong positive correlation between GDP per capita and protest intensity. The authors’ tests reveal that the expansion of democratization, education, and urbanization are one of the main influences accounting for this positive relationship between GDP per capita growth and anti-government protest intensity. Moreover, when controlling for these factors, the relationship between GDP per capita and anti-state protests becomes negative indicating that the forces associated with economic development at a certain point play a larger role than economic growth itself. The results of this study, thus, have implications for both Resource Mobilization and Cultural Theorists due to the fact that further GDP per capita growth becomes an inhibitor of protests in the high-income countries instead of a promoter.

2011

1999

Past studies have documented that different explanations exist to account for the rise and fall of popular protest in times of social change of a historical scale. Of those explanations, economic and political accounts are most dted arguments relating historical changes and the occurrence of popular contention. Economic change, usually associated with national development, has probably been the most widely claimed source of rebellions. It has been claimed that sudden change in economic conditions and the resultant degradation of the life conditions create mounting dissatisfaction and anxiety, which in turn leads to the rise of popular rebellions (Gurr 1970; Huntington 1968; Moore 1966). In a context of premodern society, market fluctuations and natural disasters constitute the sources of sudden alterations in economic conditions. Development of a market economy brings about an increased number of people basing their lives on a daily exchange of commodities. Under this circumstance, a sudden large price hike of important daily-57 commodities pushes them into financial difficulties, and thus creates a confusion in the lives of the populace (Chirot and Ragin 1975). Also sudden catastrophic hardship, such as famine, earthquakes, and contagious diseases, disrupts the lives of people by destroying the cycles of economic activities (Oka 1970). Drained food reserves and price hikes resulting from a bad harvest, for example, bring sudden hunger and poverty among peasants. Financial difficulties, disturbed economic production, hunger, and poverty, all these contribute to the occurrence of popular protest, according to the economic explanation. Quite apart from economic explanations, some scholars emphasize political factors as more directly related to popular rebellions. They claim that large political upheaval, such as domestic wars, change in power relations and resultant political confusions, incite popular rebellions (Snyder and Tilly 1972; Tilly et al. 1975; Oberschall 1973). This perspective, with mounting concern with political opportunity structure in recent research, has become popular and widespread. Scholars in this bent claim that the extent of "0penness" of political opportunity structure determines the occurrence and nonoccurrence of protest. Theyemphasize severe political control and repression lessening the opportunity for rebellion, and political instability and power collapse contributing to its increase. The idea behind this perspective is that it is not the mobilization capacity of the organization per but the structural opportunities and constraints surrounding people carrying out protest activities that leads to the occurrence of protest activities (Tarrow 1989). Both economic and political explanations of popular protest in times of large social change appear convincing as theoretical speculations. However, they remain only conjectures if untested for their validity. It is possible to believe that either economic or political explanation is valid; at the same time, it is also possible to think that both

2009

Studies on protests, demonstrations, strikes and other forms of social unrest in China overwhelmingly study the phenomenon from a micro perspective. Little is known about how protests in China are distributed temporally and spatially, which grievances they address, how many people they involve and how likely they are to meet with repression. Drawing on a dataset of 74.452 protests distributed all over China, this paper provides insights into to these issues. The results show that as a tendency, protests in China are widespread, staged by (migrant) workers, and occur in waves that peak at Chinese New Year, when migrants return home. Another noteworthy phenomenon is a steep increase in protests by home buyers, which now form the second largest category of social unrest in China. This means that protests by members of the middle class are on the rise, which has important implications for regime stability in China. The number of protests against land grabs and evictions has remained constant, yet such protests are less frequent than the literature on these issues suggests. Environmental protests are also few and far between. Most protests aim for financial compensation, but not for substantive rights, and involve less than 30 persons. Repression is especially likely where small, homogeneous groups of people are involved, examples in case being the victims of medical mistreatment or their family members, farmers, and hawkers.