Value-Driven Contention in China: Forms, Tactics and State Responses

This research challenges the conventional wisdom that value-driven protests in China are exceedingly rare and face harsh state repression. Drawing on a hand-coded, multi-source dataset of over 3,100 protests in three Chinese megacities from 2014 to 2016, we identify 67 protests that reveal a hitherto unknown underbelly of everyday, value-driven contention. Qualitatively, we identify three main forms of contentious performances. Quantitatively, we show how value-driven protesters combine non-disruptive tactics with ambitious targets and virtually never extract concessions. Surprisingly, we find that such protests are less often policed and repressed than other protests. They are also never met with violence from non-state actors. We provide three interpretations for the counter-intuitive finding on repression. This study shows that the Chinese state coexists with a non-negligible amount of explicitly regime-critical contention. It adopts a containment strategy, tolerating a certain extent of value-driven performances when the risk of spill-over into wider society is limited.

本研究挑战了传统的观点，即在中国，价值驱动的抗议活动极为罕见，且会遭受严厉的镇压。通过对 2014 年至 2016 年三个中国特大城市中超过 3100 起抗议活动的手工编码、多源数据集的分析，我们识别了67起抗议活动，揭示了一个一直被忽略的价值驱动的日常抗议现象。定性方面，我们发现了三种主要的抗议表现形式。定量方面，我们展示了价值驱动的抗议者如何将非破坏性策略与雄心勃勃的目标相结合，并几乎从未获得政府让步。令人惊讶的是，我们发现此类抗议活动不如其他抗议活动受到警方镇压。从非国家行为者那里也从未遭受暴力相向。我们提供了三种对压制结果的解释。本研究表明，中国政府与明确批评政权的抗议活动相互共存。它采取一种遏制策略，在风险不向更广泛的社会蔓延的前提下，容忍一定程度的价值驱动的抗议。