Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:08:22.492Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Popular Contention and Progressive Legal Repression in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2022

Huan He Open the ORCID record for Huan He [Opens in a new window]
Huan He*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Email: hehuan@link.cuhk.edu.hk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do state authorities cope with popular contention under authoritarian legality? Based on ethnographic fieldwork and legal repression cases in China, this article highlights that conflicting rules and signals regarding contention management can impose considerable pressure on governments and motivate them to respond cautiously, even though the prevailing rhetoric of law-based governance provides a convenient basis on which authorities can legitimize their coercive actions. This study further theorizes a discreet pattern of government reaction under authoritarian legality – progressive legal repression – that rests on bureaucratic processing to overcome political uncertainty and lower potential risks before formally employing criminal sanctions to achieve domination. Instead of directly using criminal penalties to deter unruly protesters and potential dissenters, the preferred state action is to induce them to engage in available legal-bureaucratic procedures. By reconceptualizing protesters’ claims and behaviour as unreasonable and signalling fulfilment of responsibilities, bureaucratic practices help officials to reduce the risks of damaging their political image and receiving disciplinary action, encouraging them to deploy legal repression. This study reveals more complicated dynamics of state repression under authoritarian legality and emphasizes the important effects of procedural practices on governmental responses and the regime's stability.

摘要

摘要

本文探讨中国地方政府在依法治国背景下如何处置非法的社会抗议。本研究基于田野调查、公开的裁判文书以及政府文件等多种资料发现，虽然盛行的法治修辞为地方政府合法化其压制行为提供了便利，但是国家在社会冲突治理方面相互冲突的话语、规则和信号也给地方政府带来了明显的压力，进而导致地方政府对于非法抗议活动的谨慎应对。相比于直接采取刑事手段去威慑抗议者，地方政府更通常的策略是引导抗议者遵循即有的解决社会冲突的官僚程序。通过借助官僚程序重新构建抗议者的诉求和行为和展示政府责任的完成，地方政府在降低损害其政治形象和遭受问责的风险之后再转向刑事惩罚。本研究揭示了依法治国背景下更为复杂的国家压制图景和强调了程序性实践对于政府应对行为和社会稳定的重要影响。

Keywords

petitionpopular contentionpolitical ambiguitybureaucratic processinglegal repressionauthoritarian legality上访社会抗议政治不确定性官僚程序法律压制
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 252 , December 2022 , pp. 1117 - 1139
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balbus, Isaac. 1973. The Dialectics of Legal Repression: Black Rebels before the American Criminal Courts. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2008a. “Local governments and the suppression of popular resistance in China.” The China Quarterly 193, 24–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2008b. “Power structure and regime resilience: contentious politics in China.” British Journal of Political Science 38(3), 411–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2010. Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Chen, Xi. 2009. “The power of troublemaking: protest tactics and their efficacy in China.” Comparative Politics 41(4), 451–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Xi. 2012. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Deng, Yanhua, and O'Brien, Kevin. 2013. “Relational repression in China: using social ties to demobilize protesters.” The China Quarterly 215, 533–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earl, Jennifer. 2006. “Introduction: repression and the social control of protest.” Mobilization 11(2), 129–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franceschini, Ivan, and Nesossi, Elisa. 2018. “State repression of Chinese labor NGOs: a chilling effect?” The China Journal 80, 111–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fu, Diana. 2017. “Fragmented control: governing contentious labor organizations in China.” Governance 30(3), 445–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fu, Diana, and Distelhorst, Greg. 2018. “Grassroots participation and repression under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping.” The China Journal 79, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginsburg, Tom, and Tamir, Moustafa (eds.). 2008. Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstone, Jack, and Tilly, Charles. 2001. “Threat (and opportunity): popular action and state response in the dynamics of contentious action.” In Aminzade, Ronald R., Goldstone, Jack A., McAdam, Doug, Perry, Elizabeth J., Sewell, William H., Tarrow, Sidney and Tilley, Charles, Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 179–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hou, Rui. 2020. “Maintaining social stability without solving problems: emotional repression in the Chinese petition system.” The China Quarterly 243, 635–654.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, Pan, Jennifer and Roberts, Margaret E.. 2013. “How censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression.” American Political Science Review 107(2), 326–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan, and Zhang, Yonghong. 2013. “The power of instability: unraveling the microfoundations of bargained authoritarianism in China.” American Journal of Sociology 118(6), 1475–1508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Lianjiang, Liu, Mingxing and O'Brien, Kevin. 2012. “Petitioning Beijing: the high tide of 2003–2006.” The China Quarterly 210, 313–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebman, Benjamin L. 2014. “Legal reform: China's law-stability paradox.” Daedalus 143(2), 96–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorentzen, Peter. 2013. “Regularizing rioting: permitting public protest in an authoritarian regime.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 8(2), 127–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mertha, Andrew. 2008. China's Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Minzner, Carl. 2011. “China's turn against law.” American Journal of Comparative Law 59(4), 935–984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, and Deng, Yanhua. 2017. “Preventing protest one person at a time: psychological coercion and relational repression in China.” China Review 17(2), 179–201.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, and Li, Lianjiang. 2006. Rightful Resistance in Rural China. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Lynette H. 2018. “Thugs and outsourcing of state repression in China.” The China Journal 80, 94–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
She, Caiming, and Du, Lijun. 2015. “Jiceng xinfang dui chanfang naofang wenti de duice jianyi” (Measures and suggestions on the problems of persistent and disruptive petitions at grassroots level). Lingdao kexue luntan 8, 50–51.Google Scholar
Shen-Bayh, Fiona. 2018. “Strategies of repression: judicial and extrajudicial methods of autocratic survival.” World Politics 70(3), 321–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shi, Fayong, and Cai, Yongshun. 2006. “Disaggregating the state: networks and collective resistance in Shanghai.” The China Quarterly 186, 314–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spires, Anthony. 2011. “Contingent symbiosis and civil society in an authoritarian state: understanding the survival of China's grassroots NGOs.” American Journal of Sociology 117(1), 1–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Rachel, and O'Brien, Kevin. 2012. “Politics at the boundary: mixed signals and the Chinese state.” Modern China 38(2), 174–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Yujeong, and Chen, Wei. 2019. “Different demands, varying responses: local government responses to workers’ collective actions in south China.” The China Quarterly 243, 839–854.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

He supplementary material

Appendix

Download He supplementary material(File)
File 37.4 KB