Overstepping the Boundary: The State and Political Protests in Urban China

Christoph H. STEINHARDT (Presenter), Kai YANG

Research output: Other Conference ContributionsPresentation

Abstract

China has been the most productive supplier of research on popular contention under authoritarianism. One of the key underlying puzzles driving this research agenda has been if, when and how protesters will openly challenge the one-party regime. The answers to these questions have almost always been negative. Evidence on explicitly political protests in China has been few and far between. In this study we draw on a unique hand-coded dataset of over 3,100 protests in three Chinese megacities between 2014 and 2016 that is arguably the most resource-diverse and densest available collection of protests in China. It allows us to examine a sample of political protests from a population approximating a full population of events, with a mix of typological, statistical and network analysis. We show that although political protests are comparatively rare, they do occupy a distinct place in the landscape of urban contention. We then carve out different types and reveal that political protests are surprisingly rarely repressed. Finally, we examine the network of key activists and trace how the state targets its repressive apparatus on them, instead of facing off political protesters in attention-generating street confrontations. This helps us to understand how the Chinese one-party regime manages to coexist even with a substantial amount of explicitly political resistance by committed activist. Its containment strategy helps to prevent that political contention spills over into the myriad of livelihood protests that have become routine in state-society bargaining.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 17 Mar 2023
EventThe 2023 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference - Sheraton Boston and Hynes Convention Center, Boston, United States
Duration: 17 Feb 202319 Mar 2023
https://asianstudies.confex.com/asianstudies/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Home/0

Conference

ConferenceThe 2023 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference
Abbreviated titleAAS 2023
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoston
Period17/02/2319/03/23
Internet address

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