Yanhua Deng

Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters

Chinese local officials frequently employ relational repression to demobilize protesters. When popular action occurs, they investigate activists’ social ties, locate individuals who might be willing to help stop the protest, assemble a work team, and dispatch it to conduct thought work. Work team members are then expected to use their personal influence to persuade relatives, friends and fellow townspeople to stand down. Those who fail are subject to punishment, including suspension of salary, removal from office, and prosecution. Relational repression sometimes works. When local authorities have considerable say over work team members and bonds with protesters are strong, relational repression can help demobilize protesters and halt popular action. Even if relational repression does not end a protest entirely, it can limit its length and scope by reducing tension at times of high strain and providing a channel for negotiation. Often, however, as in a 2005 environmental protest in Zhejiang, insufficiently tight ties and limited concern about consequences creates a commitment deficit, partly because thought workers recognize their ineffectiveness with many protesters and partly because they anticipate little or no punishment for failing to demobilize anyone other than a close relative. The practice and effectiveness of relational, “soft” repression in China casts light on how social ties can demobilize as well as mobilize contention and ways in which state and social power can be combined to serve state ends.

Pollution and Protest in China: Environmental Mobilization in Context

This article focuses on environmental controversy in a Chinese rural community. It shows that Chinese villagers may protest against anticipated pollution if the environmental threat is effectively framed. In the face of real and serious pollution, villagers may seek to redress environmental grievances by piggybacking on politically favourable issues. However, when the pollution is caused by fellow villagers, environmentally concerned villagers may remain silent owing to the constraints of community relations and economic dependency. These findings suggest that the relationship between pollution and protest is context-dependent.

Societies of Senior Citizens and Popular Protest in Rural Zhejiang

Societies of Senior Citizens (SSCs) are often thought to be non-political organizations focused on community traditions and services for the elderly. In Huashui Town, Zhejiang, however, SSCs took the lead in mobilizing protest and caused 11 factories to be closed. From 2004 to 2005, SSCs helped to fund a lawsuit, engineered a petition drive and organized tent-sitting at a chemical park notorious for its pollution. Huashui’s SSCs were effective mobilizing structures owing to their strong finances, organizational autonomy, effective leadership and the presence of biographically available, unafraid older villagers. Skillful mobilization led to efforts to rein in village SSCs and a reorganization which, however, had only a limited effect. SSC experiences in Huashui suggest that organized protest in China is more feasible than often thought and that understandings of protest outcomes should go beyond the success or failure of an episode to explore long-term consequences for the organizations involved.

The Reach of the State: Work Units, Family Ties and 'Harmonious Demolition'

When faced with homeowners who refuse to accept appropriation of their property, local authorities often use family ties to extend the state’s reach. To complete urban renewal, municipal demolition offices turn to resisters’ relatives who work for government bureaus, state-owned factories, schools and hospitals. Under pressure and the threat of sanctions, many work-unit members agree to pressure their relatives into signing demolition agreements, often by tapping into “feelings of affection” and emotional blackmail. Beyond emptying a neighborhood, “harmonious demolition” has many consequences: it can turn relatives against each other, lead to divorce, and produce disillusionment and anger. Although “demolition by implicating family members” was banned in 2010, it continues. Using vertical ties to pressure unit members and horizontal ties to influence relatives does not herald a softer authoritarianism, but instead alienates homeowners and work-unit members alike.

'Autonomous Redevelopment': Moving the Masses to Remove the Nail Households

Autonomous redevelopment is a new approach to demolishing shantytowns in China. It draws on the desire for urban renewal on the part of most residents and encourages dingzihu, or “nail households,” to vacate their property. This is accomplished by formulating rules that link jumpstarting community redevelopment to submission by nail households. Additionally, an ad hoc grassroots organization, the Autonomous Redevelopment Committee (ARC), is often established to facilitate “demolition and relocation” 拆迁. To persuade recalcitrant homeowners, ARC activists rely on emotion work, marginalizing strategies, and collective harassment. Many homeowners, who are initially determined to resist such appeals, ultimately succumb to the power of the masses. Autonomous redevelopment is officially acclaimed as an innovative mass-line approach, relying on a majority of the masses to work on the minority. It suggests a more sophisticated style of authoritarian governance, whereby local authorities use rules, social ties, and grassroots organizations to control popular resistance and to facilitate policy implementation.

Selective use of political opportunity:: A case of environmental protest in rural China

Abstract This paper explores the selective and instrumental use of political opportunity in Chinese contentious politics through the study of a rural environmental protest. By considering the transmission of political opportunity through different levels of government, it also analyses the phenomenon of leakage of political opportunity. We argue that political opportunities can be divided into soft and hard types, which are weighted differently by activists. In the protest we examine, the villagers had various political opportunities at their disposal. They used them selectively, preferring the opportunities arising from changes to land policy, which were relatively hard and had a higher level of operability than environmental political opportunities—despite their grievances being largely connected with environmental damage. The hard, land-oriented opportunities, however, went through a process of leakage and then became merely symbolic, due to the local government’s manipulation of policy implementation. However, although they were well aware that the symbolic political opportunities were not genuine, the protesters still acted as if they were real and exploited them instrumentally.