Yongshun Cai - Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail

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THE WALTER H. SHORENSTEIN ASIA-PACIFIC RESEARCH CENTER

Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

Andrew G. Walder, General Editor

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University sponsors interdisciplinary research on the politics, economies, and societies of contemporary Asia. This monograph series features academic and policy-oriented research by Stanford faculty and other scholars associated with the Center.

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Collective Resistance in China

Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail

Yongshun Cai

Stanford University Press
Stanford, California

2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cai, Yongshun.

Collective resistance in China : why popular protests succeed or fail / Yongshun Cai.

p. cm.(Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center) Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780804773737

ISBN 978-0-8047-6340-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Social movementsChina. 2. Protest movementsChina. 3. Political
participationChina. 4. ChinaPolitics and government19762002.
5. ChinaPolitics and government2002I. Title. II. Series: Studies of the
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

HN733.5.C365 2010

303.6095109045dc22

2009019445

Typeset by Thompson Type in 11/14 Adobe Garamond

For Wang Chen and Xinyu

Table of Contents

Table of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

I received help from many people during the process of writing this book. Over the years, Jean Oi has never hesitated to give me intellectual support and encouragement, and she has continued to be a patient reader of my manuscripts and to offer comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Andrew Walder for his suggestions on the manuscript and for his encouragement. Ever since I became interested in contentious politics in China, I have benefited from, among many others, the works by Kevin OBrien and Lianjiang Li and from my communications with them. When the book manuscript was under review at the Stanford University Press, Kevin OBrien was one of the two anonymous reviewers. His comments and suggestions helped me to place the case of China in a broader theoretical context. I also wish to thank the other anonymous reviewer whose insightful suggestions helped me to clarify issues about my framework as well as the process of interactions among the different parties involved in collective resistance in China.

I would like to thank Shi Fayong, Guo Jiguang, and Li Siliang for their assistance in collecting the data for this book. I also wish to thank Virginia Unkefer and Margaret Pinette for their editorial assistance. Research for this book was partly financed by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (640108) and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (RG008-P-07).

At Stanford University Press, I wish to thank Stacy Wagner and Jessica Walsh for their patience and their support for the book.

Part of Chapter Five originally appeared in Disaggregating the State: Networks and Collective Resistance in Shanghai (by Fayong Shi and Yongshun Cai), The China Quarterly (published by Cambridge University Press), volume 186: pp. 314332 (2006). I wish to thank Cambridge University Press and Fayong Shi for allowing me to include this article in Chapter Five.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support for my research over the years. My wife, Wang Chen, has been the source of support and encouragement ever since I began my academic life. I also wish to thank my daughter, Xinyu, for the joyful moments she has given me. Although she believed that I should write interesting books for kids, she tolerated my spending much time on the research for this project. This book is dedicated to them.

ONE

Introduction

Popular resistance has become an important mode of political participation in China since the early 1990s. Various groups of people, including workers, peasants, and homeowners, have resorted to this mode of action to protect or pursue their interests. and, more importantly, their resistance has also led or contributed to changes in some unfavorable policies.

On the other hand, popular contention is by no means an easy or safe undertaking in China. In recent years, many participants in non-regime-threatening collective resistance have been detained, arrested, or imprisoned. The limitations to popular resistance also lie in the fact that the government may refuse to adjust policies that disadvantage certain groups despite their grievances and resistance.

That authoritarian governments should use suppression to deal with disobedient citizens is not surprising: In democracies, politicians face the pressure of (re)election and therefore have to be cautious when using repressive tactics. They are, thus, more tolerant of nonviolent dissident behavior and may use a mix of concessions and repression to suppress such actions when necessary. In contrast, political leaders in authoritarian regimes, who are less concerned with election, rely more on repression to demonstrate the states power and determination to protect the political system.

This mixed picture of the outcome of popular resistance in China raises two important questions. Why do some instances of resistance succeed while others fail in this nondemocratic regime? When is popular resistance more likely to contribute to policy changes? This study aims to answer these questions and promote an understanding of the operation of the Chinese political system and of contentious politics in a nondemocratic setting. To explain why some actions succeed while others fail, we need to examine the mechanisms through which people staging resistance exercise influence or the factors that affect the outcomes of their actions. This study shows that both the government, which is responsible for dealing with popular resistance, and the resisters face constraints in their interactions with each other. The resisters chance of success lies in their ability to exploit the constraints facing the government or to (re)shape the latters cost-benefit calculations in a way that suppressing or ignoring an act of resistance is not a feasible or desirable option.

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