Ronggui Huang

Impact of Community on Personal Well-Being in Urban China

ABSTRACT As the work-unit system fell after economic reform in China, neighborhoods replaced work units as the primary provider of vital social services for the urban population and became a new social space for enhancing the quality of peoples well-being. This study examined the neighborhood characteristics that influenced personal well-being of residents. Drawn by multistage sampling and administered by face-to-face interviews, the survey included a sample of 976 participants from 31 neighborhoods in urban Shanghai. Results indicate that neighboring behaviors enhanced subjective well-being of the young and middle-aged residents but had no impact on older people. Sense of community, on the other hand, was found to contribute to well-being of all age groups and was particularly strong among older people in more deprived neighborhoods. Findings inform development of community practice strategies for vitalizing community efficacy and fostering individual well-being in urban China. Recommendations for future research are made using the results of this study.

Dynamic preference revelation and expression of personal frames: how Weibo is used in an anti-nuclear protest in China

This study explores the use of Weibo in a protest against a nuclear fuel processing plant in China. This study argues that social media play an important role in the development of protests in non-democratic societies through the mechanism of preference revelation, which blurs the boundary between offline protests and the individualized expression of preferences on social media. Of Weibo tweets which were posted prior to the occurrence of the offline protest, 11,788 protest-related were examined with the aid of a supervised machine learning technique. The results showed that the revelation of personal preferences in the form of individualized expressions of opposition were more common than mobilization and coordination, and such preferences were legitimized by the personal frames of risk and the distrust in government. The use of Weibo to mobilize potential opponents to the project, primarily by calling for the expression of opposition, was less frequent than the use of Weibo to express personal frames. Furthermore, the prevalence of Weibo usage changed dramatically. In the first few days of the protest, the revelation of personal preferences and personal frames of risk were prominent, whereas personal frames of distrust in government were common in the days leading to the street protest.

Inter-organizational network structure and formation mechanisms in Weibo space: A study of environmental NGOs

This study explores the structures of follower/identification networks among non-government environmental organizations on Sina Weibo by using social network analysis techniques, and unpacks the formation mechanisms of these networks by integrating the literature of inter-organizational networks, social movement coalitions, Internet studies and the institutions of social organization management in China. In particular, this study proposes an ‘appropriateness principle’ to explain the effect of registration status on network structure. Descriptive network analyses show that close virtual relations exist among environmental NGOs, and reciprocal relations are prevalent. The findings highlight the importance of legitimacy and lend support to the appropriateness principle. Non-governmental organizations which have offline collaborations or reside in the same province are more likely to form follower/identification relations, and those with similar focus areas are more likely to form identification relations. Weibo activity also has a positive impact on the formation of inter-organizational relations. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that ‘low cost of Internet use’ alone does not provide a sufficient explanation of inter-organizational relations on the cyberspace. The authors argue that on a highly interactive social media platform like Weibo, the trustworthiness of an organization and its capacity to earn recognition from peer organizations play a crucial role in the formation of inter-organizational networks.

Dynamic Political Opportunities and Environmental Forces Linking up: A Case Study of Anti-PX Contention in Kunming

Abstract While the literature on Chinese environmental politics tends to examine NGO actions and popular protests as two separate facets of environmental activism, such a tendency runs the risk of missing the linkages that have begun to emerge among environmental forces. This new phenomenon is highlighted with a case study of local opposition against the siting of an oil refining plant in Kunming through the lens of political opportunity theory. Two forms of linkages are identified, namely the linkages between local communities and local NGOs and the linkages between local and supra-local NGOs. These linkages emerged and developed through dynamic interactions between political opportunities and contentious actions. Citizen-initiated protests in Kunming pressured the local government to adopt a receptive attitude for the purpose of maintaining social stability, which paradoxically expanded political opportunities for NGO participation. The structural political environment of the locality indirectly facilitated collaboration between local and supra-local environmental NGOs by activating prior social networks among key NGO members. The analysis of the dynamic linkages among environmental forces reflects the prospects of a broader environmental movement and its relation to political contexts.

Issues and place: the hyperlink network of homeowner forums and implications for collective action

This paper explores the structure and the mechanisms involved in the formation of a hyperlink network of Guangzhou citys 118 homeowner forums in the context of a collective action by the homeowners. It develops a contextual analytical framework contending that the structure of the hyperlink network is influenced by utility values and utilization capability, as well as the media and social environments that shape these values, respectively. The results of the exponential random graph models support this framework. Specifically, hyperlinks are more likely to be created among neighborhood homeowner forums when the neighborhoods are located in the same administrative district, built by the same developers, and managed by the same property management companies. Unfavorable contexts that are prone to violent confrontation hamper the creation of cross-forum hyperlinks, but media visibility increases the odds of other forums hyperlinking to homeowner forums. In addition, high levels of online engagement are positively correlated with hyperlink formation. These findings suggest that although online platforms, such as homeowner forums, play a contributory role in collective action, they have limited power in fostering cross-neighborhood coalitions in urban China.

Extension of State-Led Growth Coalition and Grassroots Management A Case Study of Shanghai

This study intends to enrich the literature of comparative studies on growth machine and urban regime through contextualized analyses of growth politics in Shanghai, China. An analytical framework is developed to advance our understanding of the variation of growth politics in a different urban setting. In particular, this study contends that local government’s dual goals of promoting economic growth and managing development-related conflicts are the key to making sense of growth politics in Shanghai. This specific configuration of institutions suggests that growth coalition has to extend itself spatially into neighborhood level and temporally into postdevelopment phase to sustain urban growth. This extension requires pro-growth players to exploit infrastructural power to contain homeowners’ activism. This research calls for attention to the nexus between economic and political dimensions of urban growth, a refined conceptualization of local states, and the interaction between pro-growth and antigrowth forces which shapes the forms and dynamics of urban regime.

Spatial meaning-making and urban activism: Two tales of anti-PX protests in urban China

ABSTRACT Urban space plays an important role in shaping the meaning-making process in relation to urban activism, especially for disorganized, spontaneous, and short-lived protests occurring in authoritarian regimes. Taking protests against locally unwanted land use (LULU) projects as an example, this article examines how urban space shapes the meaning-making process in relation to 2 anti-paraxylene (PX) protests in Kunming and Maoming. Particular attention is paid to how residents’ interpretations of the hazards of PX shaped the meaning-making process on social media. In the case of Kunming, a city with a long history of natural environmental conservation, the primary frame employed by residents was environment and health risks. In the case of Maoming, a large petrochemical industrial center with severe air pollution, residents expressed their opposition toward the PX project by emphasizing strong distrust in local government. Participants’ differentiated meaning-making processes were shaped by the dual space of cities, namely physical conditions and associated meanings and place-bounded historical memories of daily life. This article contributes to the scholarship on cities and social movements by integrating the theories of space/place and the theory of framing to analyze the spatial meaning-making process in relation to urban activism in China and in transitional economies in general.

Spontaneous cognitive liberation in the context of rights-defending actions: A case study of the evolution of homeowner activists’ rights consciousness

Empirical studies on Chinese homeowners’ activism regarding defending their rights focus mostly on either political opportunities or resource mobilization and often neglect the cognitive process of homeowner activists in developing their rights consciousness. This study attempts to use the perspective of framing and cognitive liberation to gain a nuanced understanding of activists’ subjective cognition in their actions aimed at defending their rights. An analytic framework is proposed which examines two aspects of homeowners’ rights consciousness: the referent of rights (property rights versus rights to self-governance) and the nature of rights (reactive versus proactive). Data were collected from Sina Weibo tweets posted by homeowner activists in the period 2011 to 2015. The results show that activists are universally aware of property rights and are increasingly proactive in seeking self-governance. Subsequent interviews of a group of activists revealed a spontaneous and interactive process of cognitive liberation that derives from both the first-hand experiences and the online discussions with fellow activists. Social media provide platforms upon which activists can exchange information, form networks, and learn from each other about common issues and obstacles and, thus, they promote collective consciousness and facilitate cognitive liberation. This suggests that future studies of activism regarding homeowners’ defence of rights should shift from an event-centered case study approach to an issue-centered analysis of the grass-roots rights movement as a whole.