Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T03:04:59.779Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sustaining Collective Action in Urbanizing China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

Xianwen Kuang
Affiliation:
University of Southern Denmark. Email: [email protected].
Christian Göbel*
Affiliation:
University of Vienna.
*
Email: [email protected] (corresponding author).

Abstract

In recent years there has been a proliferation of scholarship on protests and other forms of collective action in China. Important insights have been gained into how conflicts between social groups and local governments begin, which strategies and instruments protesters apply, and under which circumstances protests are likely to succeed or fail. However, comparatively little is known about the mobilizing structures and how such collective action can be sustained over a long period of time, in some instances over several years. Such perseverance would be remarkable even in a democracy, but it is more so in an authoritarian system where the risks of participating in collective action are higher and the chances to succeed much smaller. This article compares the development of public protests in two research locations and identifies four factors instrumental to overcoming the formidable challenges of sustaining collective action in China: the continuing existence of substantial grievances; the re-activation of strong social ties; the presence of unifying frames; and an adaptive protest leadership. The comparison shows that the last factor is particularly crucial: while the two villages were similar in all other respects, leadership in village B was far more adaptive than in village A, which goes a long way towards explaining why collective action could be sustained twice as long in village B.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We are very grateful to Lianjiang Li and Kevin O'Brien for their excellent comments on a previous draft of this article.

References

Adams, Paul C. 1996. “Protest and the scale politics of telecommunications.” Political Geography 15(5), 419441.Google Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2003. “Collective ownership or cadres’ ownership? The non-agricultural use of farmland in China.” The China Quarterly 175, 662680.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2008. “Power structure and regime resilience: contentious politics in China.” British Journal of Political Science 38(3), 411432.Google Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2009. “Local governments and the supression of popular resistance in China.” The China Quarterly 193, 2442.Google Scholar
Chase, Michael, and Mulvenon, James C.. 2002. You've Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of the Internet and Beijing's Counter-strategies. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, National Security Research Division Center for Asia Pacific Policy.Google Scholar
Chen, Feng. 2008. “Worker leaders and framing factory-based resistance.” In O'Brien, Kevin (ed.), Popular Protest in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 88107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chung, Jae-ho, Lai, Hongyi and Xia, Ming. 2006. “Mounting challenges to governance in China: surveying collective protestors, religious sects and criminal organizations.” The China Journal 56, 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, Yanhua, and O'Brien, Kevin. 2013. “Relational repression in China. Using social ties to demobilize protestors.” The China Quarterly 215, 533552.Google Scholar
Diani, Mario, and McAdam, Doug. 2003. Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esherick, Joseph W., and Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N.. 1990. “Acting out democracy: political theater in modern China.” The Journal of Asian Studies 49(4), 835865.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Göbel, Christian. 2012. “The innovation dilemma and the consolidation of autocratic regimes.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, 30 August–2 September 2012.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The strength of weak ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78(6), 1360–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granovetter, Mark S. 1983. “The strength of weak ties: a network theory revisited.” Sociological Theory 1, 201233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsing, You-Tien. 2010a. “Urban housing mobilizations.” In Hsing, You-Tien and Lee, Ching Kwan (eds.), Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. New York: Routledge, 1739.Google Scholar
Hsing, You-Tien. 2010b. The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 158–59.Google Scholar
Hurst, William, and O'Brien, Kevin. 2002. “China's contentious pensioners.” The China Quarterly 170, 345360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Hank, and Noakes, John A.. 2005. Frames of Protest: Social Movements and the Framing Perspective. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Kitts, James. 2000. “Mobilizing in black boxes: social networks and participation in social movement organizations.” Mobilization 5(2), 241257.Google Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 2002. “From the specter of Mao to the spirit of the law: labor insurgency in China.” Theory and Society 31(2), 189228.Google Scholar
Li, Lianjiang. 2006. “Driven to protest: China's rural unrest.” Current History 105(692), 250–54.Google Scholar
Li, Lianjiang, and O'Brien, Kevin. 2008. “Protest leadership in rural China.” The China Quarterly 193, 123.Google Scholar
Li, Lianjiang, Liu, Minxing and O'Brien, Kevin. 2012. “Petitioning Beijing: the high tide of 2003–2006.” The China Quarterly 210, 313334.Google Scholar
Li, Tian. 2008. “The chengzhongcun land market in China: boon or bane? A perspective on property rights.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32(2), 282304.Google Scholar
Lichbach, Mark. 1994. “What makes rational peasants revolutionary? Dilemma, paradox, and irony in peasant collective action.” World Politics 46(4), 388–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, and Li, Lianjiang. 1999. “Campaign nostalgia in the Chinese countryside.” Asian Survey 39(3), 375393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, and Li, Lianjiang. 2005. “Popular contention and its impact in rural China.” Comparative Political Studies 38(3), 235259.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, and Li, Lianjiang. 2006. Rightful Resistance in Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor, and Ahn, Toh-Kyeong. 2001. “A social science perspective on social capital: social capital and collective action.” Paper presented at the European Research Conference on “Social Capital: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” Exeter, 15–20 September 2001.Google Scholar
Papic, Marco, and Noonan, Sean. 2011. “Social media as a tool for protest,” STRATFOR Security Weekly, 3 February, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110202-social-media-tool-protest. Accessed 19 May 2012.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Shi, Fayong, and Cai, Yongshun. 2006. “Disaggregating the state: networks and collective resistance in Shanghai.” The China Quarterly 186, 314332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsai, Lily L. 2007. Accountability Without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. 1991. Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Whyte, Lynn T. 2010. The Myth of the Social Volcano: Perceptions of Inequality and Distributive Injustice in Contemporary China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Yang, Guobin. 2005. “Environmental NGOs and institutional dynamics in China.” The China Quarterly 181, 4666.Google Scholar
Yang, Guobin. 2008. “Contention in cyberspace.” In O'Brien, Kevin (ed.), Popular Protest in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 126143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ying, Xing. 2011. “Qi” yu kangzheng zhengzhi. Dangdai Zhongguo xiangcun shehui wending wenti yanjiu (Emotions and Contentious Politics. Social Stability Issues in Contemporary Rural China). Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press.Google Scholar
Yu, Jianrong. 2003a. “Nongcun heie shili he jiceng zhengquan tuihua – Xiangnan diaocha” (Black and evil forces and the retreat of grassroots political power – an investigation in southern Hunan). Zhanlüe yu guanli 5, 114.Google Scholar
Yu, Jianrong. 2003b. “Nongmin youzuzhi kangzheng jiqi zhengzhi fengxian – Hunan sheng H xian diaocha” (Organized peasant resistance and its political risks – an investigation in H county, Hunan province). Zhanlüe yu guanli 3, 116.Google Scholar
Zheng, Yongnian, and Wu, Guoguang. 2005. “Information technology, public space, and collective action in China.” Comparative Political Studies 38(5), 507536.Google Scholar
Zhou, Xueguang. 1993. “Unorganized interests and collective action in communist China.” American Sociological Review 58(1), 5473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuo, Jiping, and Benford, Robert D.. 1995. “Mobilization processes and the 1989 Chinese democracy movement.” The Sociological Quarterly 36, 131156.Google Scholar