The willingness of ordinary Chinese to take extraordinary risks to challenge their state is widely known. Just what kind of people they are, and what wellsprings of personality and events drive them to do so, is harder to fathom. Ian Johnson's Wild Grass provides three fascinating cases that illuminate the question. Moreover, it implicitly points to the power of law not just to shape protest, but to bring it about in the first place. It's also a great read.

His first protagonist is Ma Wenlin, the “peasant champion.” A pretty ordinary 1962 Xi'an university graduate who worked quietly in local government for decades, in the early 1990s he taught himself the law and became a “legal worker,” concentrating mainly on contract and civil cases. In 1997, during a visit to his ancestral home, local farmers, inspired by a successful case nearby, prevailed on him to file a class-action suit against their township government for excessive levies. He demurred, but the farmers pressured him backhandedly by starting rumours that he was bribed by local officials to stay out of the matter. Rather than turning against them, he felt he had to clear his good name. He took the case. The failure of his legal filing, combined with his stubborn personality, his moral sensibility, and the inoculation against authority provided by the Cultural Revolution, emboldened him to participate in a political fight for his beleaguered clients. He helped the farmers organize local demonstrations, all citing the law, and eventually found his way to the Petition and Appeals Office of the State Council in Beijing.