Post on 29-Mar-2015
Popular Protest in the Reform Era: Change, Continuity, Impact
Guobin Yang
July 4, 2013East-West Center
I. Introduction
II. Major protests in PRC history
III. Contemporary forms
IV. Causes of contemporary protest
V. Continuity and change
VI. Impact
I. Introduction
Some misconceptions about popular protests in China
- all about democracy
- all anti-government
- people are unhappy but cannot/dare not protest because of repression
A political culture that legitimated rebellion
When asked about rulership, Mencius said:
“Protect the people.”
“An intelligent ruler will regulate the livelihood of the people, so as to make sure that . . . in good years they shall always be abundantly satisfied, and that in bad years they shall escape the danger of perishing.”
“The people are the most important element . . . Therefore to gain the support of the ordinary people is to become emperor.”
“Those who abide by Heaven endure, while those who defy Heaven perish.”
- Mencius/Mengzi (372 – 289 BCE)
Revolution is not a crime; rebellion is justified
A popular culture of rebel heroes
Water Margins/Outlaws of the March
Monkey King
II. Major protests before reform
Hundred Flowers, 1956
Cultural Revolution, 1966-76
April Fifth incident, 1976
Protests during first decade of reform
Democracy Wall, 1978-79
Sent-down youth protest, 1978-79
Campus elections, 1980
Student protest, 1986
Student protest, 1989
Varieties of protest since the 1990s
Environmental“Rights defense”Online activismHome-ownersDemolition
Anti-discrimination (HIV/AIDs, Hepatitis-B carriers)Human rightsAnimal rights Consumer activismPopular nationalism
• In the 1980s protests for change / modernization
"We want to sing a song for the future. We want to light the torch of enlightenment with our own lives."
-- Enlightenment, 1978
Fellow students, fellow countrymen, the future and fate of the Chinese nation are intimately linked to each of our hearts. This student movement has but one goal, that is, to facilitate the process of modernization by raising high the banners of democracy and science, by liberating people from the constraints of feudal ideology, and by promoting freedom, human rights, and rule of law.
- “New May Fourth Manifesto,” 1989
• Since the 1990s, protests in response to consequences of change.
III. Contemporary forms
Rising frequency and pluralization of forms & issues since the 1990s
Forms of protest
Collective
Individual
Rural riotsWorker strikesMinority protests
Disruptive/ Violent / Subversive
Non-disruptive
Political dissidence
Suicides
Urban NYMBYismNGO activismOnline activism
Issue multiplication
Traditional types persist:
Labor (but new types of workers)
Rural
Student/intellectual
Three faces of environmental activism in China
Xinchang, Zhejiang, 2005
Ningbo, 2012
NIMBY-style, middle-class environmental protest:
2007: Xiamen (Paraxylene)
2008: Chengdu (PX)
2011: Dalian (PX)
2011: Haimen, Guangdong (power plant)
2012: Ningbo (petrochemical)
2012: Shanghai (trash incinerator)
2012: Shifang, Sichuan (copper plant)
Citizens’ legal private property must not be violated
IV. Why? And why these forms of protest?
1)Economic development and social change:
-- consequences of development and marketization (ecological degradation, forced relocation)
-- social polarization and pluralization (new social groups, new identity concerns)
-- corruption
2)Institutional channels do not work well
Rights to "four bigs“ protected in 1978 constitution but removed from 1982 constitution: to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write big-character posters.
-- formal legal system
--State Bureau for Letters and Calls (vice ministerial level) http://www.gjxfj.gov.cn/
Article 1 These Regulations are formulated for the purposes of enhancing relations between the people's governments at all levels and the people, protecting the lawful rights and interests of letterwriters and visitors, and maintaining a good order in letter-writing and visiting.
Article 2 The term "letters and visits" in these Regulations means that citizens, legal persons or other organizations give information, make comments or suggestions or lodge complaints to the people's governments at all levels and the relevant departments of the people's governments at or above the county level through correspondence, E-mails, faxes, phone calls, visits, and so on, which are dealt with by the relevant administrative departments according to law.
State Council Regulations on Letters and Visits (2005)
Letters and visits to Party and government xinfang bureaus at the county level and higher totaled 8,640,040 for the first nine months of 2002, corresponding with an annual rate of 11.5 million per year.
In comparison, the entire Chinese judiciary handles six million legal cases annually
--Minzer (2006)
3) Political opportunities
• “fragmented authoritarianism”
gaps between central government policies and local implementation
Predatory local state as target of rural protest
High tide of petitioning to Beijing 2003-2006 coincided with Hu-Wen leadership efforts to distinguish itself from earlier Jiang Zemin leadership
--Li, Liu, O’Brien (2006)
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Political context of environmental activism:Greening of the state
1989: Environmental Protection Law
2003: Environmental Impact Assessment Law
2004: Cleaner Production Promotion Act
2008: Environmental Information Disclosure Provisional Regulation came into effect
2008 State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) upgraded to Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP)
The “stability maintenance” system
- a new bureaucracy on all levels with large budgets
- took shape after 1989
“The people demand stability. Stability overrides everything. This is the consensus after experiencing last year’s political disturbance. We must preserve the country’s stability as we would safeguard our own life. We simply cannot do anything detrimental to stability (People’s Daily1990).”
Source: Feng (2013)
Xie (2013)
Xie (2013)
4). Growth of civic associations and citizen consciousness
• New civic organizational basis
Registered Civic Organizations
1989 200,0001991 110,0002003 142,0002006 360,000
Grassroots Groups Number
College Student Groups 20,700
High School Student Groups 95,000
Community‐based Recreational Groups 50,000
Philately 41,000
Other Hobby Groups 130,000
Senior Citizens’ Schools 17,000
The Elderly Associations 70,000
Home‐owners’ Associations 15,000
Religious Groups 170,000
Friendship Groups 50,000
BBS and Virtual Associations 100,000
Sub‐total 758,700
Grassroots Groups without registration
Source: Wang and He (2004)
Official
Formal
Government-organizedNGOs
Quasi-NGOs(Research centers, Business entities)
Registered NGOs
Web groups
Non-web groups
Informal
Non-official
College students associations
Flexible and diverse organizational forms
2005 2008
Total: 2,768 3,539
GONGOs: 1,382 (50%) 1309 (37%)
Grassroots: 202 (7.3%) 508 (14%)
Student groups: 1,116 (40.3%) 1382 (39%)
INGOs in China: 68 (2.5%) 90 (2.5%)
Source: All-China Environmental Federation surveys, 2005, 2008
5). Diverse forms of action, primarily non-confrontational
• Non-confrontational
• NGO-led media campaigns
• Litigation
• Internet activism
6) Protest leadership
Protest leaders emerge in two main ways.Long-standing public figures initiate popular action on their own or in response to requests from other villagers; and ordinary villagers evolve into protest leaders when efforts to seek redress for a personal grievance fail.
Rural officials sometimes attempt to co-opt or buy off protest leaders, but more often turn to repression. Although cracking down may inhibit further contention, at other times it firms up the determination of protest leaders and makes them more prone to adopt confrontational tactics. (Li and O’Brien 2008)
Protest leaders were articulate and public-spiritedpeasants who had received political training from the local party-state.
Protests led by less educated veteran Communist Party cadres tended to be milder and smaller than those led by better-educated peasants more distant from the local party-state. (Zhang 2013)
Other factors
International influences (e.g ENGOs, Ai Weiwei)
New communication technologies
V. Continuity and change
1) Influence of CR on repertoire and mentality
--e.g. worker protests invoking Mao slogans and rhetoric
--the rebel “mentality”/culture
2). Each major movement produced its own veterans who would continue to be politically engaged
• Former activists from 1980s continue with their cause: Liu Xiaobo, Tiananmen Mothers Movement
• c.f. 60s activists in the West
3) What has changed?
• New forms
• New issues
• New actors
• New grievances
• new demands
Style and rhetoric of collective action in 1980s
• Demonstrations
• Rallies
• Hunger strikes
• Petitions
• Wall-posters
• Sit-ins
• Occupation of public spaces
Democracy Wall 1978-79
"We want to sing a song for the future. We want to light the torch of enlightenment with our own lives."
-- Enlightenment, 1978
"We have launched this journal in the hope that it will air the voice of the people, raise the ideological level of the people, promote social modernization and speed up the process of the four modernizations."
-- Democracy and Times, 1978.
1989
Our ancient, thousand-year civilization is waiting, our great people, one billion strong, are watching. What qualms can we possibly have? What is there to fear? Fellow students, fellow countrymen, here at richly symbolic Tiananmen, let us once again search together and struggle together for democracy, for science, for freedom, for human rights, and for rule by law. Let our cries awaken our young Republic!
-- “New May Fourth Manifesto,” May 4, 1989.
A new style: prosaic or playful
2005
We have been informed that the Central Government’s planning and environmental departments have reviewed the hydropower development plans for the Nujiang. We think that the EIA for a project such as this that affects the interests of this and future generations, that has attracted worldwide attention, and that carries potentially huge impacts should be publicly disclosed and decided with sufficient prior informed consent and evaluation, following the requirements of the relevant law and the guiding principles of the State Council.
-- “Call for public disclosure of Nujiang hydropower development’s EIA report in accordance with the law,” 31 August 2005. Signed by 61 NGOs and 99 individuals
The commercial real estate prices in Shenzhen are surging at astonishing speed…. Is this because the developers’ costs are rising? Let us calculate their costs. For low-level apartments, the costs are land price + construction costs at 2,000 yuan / square meter. For high-rise apartments, the costs are land price + construction costs at 2,500 yuan / square meter. Suppose here is a plot. The land price is 3,000 yuan / square meter. For constructing a high-rise apartment building, the developers’ costs are 3,000 yuan / square meter + 2,500 yuan/square meter = 5,500 yuan/square meter. In reality, I discovered in the sales offices of the new buildings in Futian and Luohu that the price exceeds 9,000 yuan per square meter and some exceed 10,000 yuan. If developers sell them at 10,000 per square meter, their profits are obvious. The money we make with our blood and sweat is robbed from us just like that.
-- A blogger’s open letter calling for a movement to “boycott home-buying,” 2006.
Song of Grass-mud Horse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKx1aenJK08
VI. Impact
• Concrete gains (wages, pension, etc)
• Policy changes
• New issues and forms of struggle
• Changes in attitudes toward authority
• State responses to protest
• “limited in size, scale, and scope”
• “the least revolutionary and most rebellious nation on earth”
• Yet, as long as party-state retains capacity to fragment society, likelihood of a serious
revolutionary challenge is slim (Perry, p. 214)