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Abstract
When local bureaucrats in China disagree with their superiors, official channels for achieving a policy revision are limited and generally ineffective. However, if the stakes involved are high, they may turn to the power of the masses and draw on public pressure to enhance their negotiating position. In such informal inter-bureaucratic bargaining, local officials might intentionally facilitate popular protest and lead to a situation we call ‘mobilized instability.’ More commonly, they borrow power from ‘consent instability,’ that is, they discreetly leak insider information and instruct their police forces to be exceptionally tolerant. In this article, we use the redistricting case in Changxing county, Zhejiang province as well as other incidents to show how local officials can strategically exploit public pressure, in the mode of ‘consent instability,’ to extract policy concessions. We introduce the concept of ‘mobilized instability’ through an examination of jurisdictional restructuring conflict in Daye county, Hubei province. This analysis suggests that reckless intermediaries might over-mobilize and radicalize the masses, thereby undermining intentions and leading to serious consequences for the public officials. The article concludes that the power of the masses may serve as a credible bargaining chip during informal elite bargaining, but it can also be risky for those who handle it poorly.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Interview with a vice director of the Bureau of Finance in Huangshi, August 1, 2017.
2 Based on the official report on the Daye Incident by Hubei Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision Department. For details see Zhang, “Dazhi 8.6 qunti shijian zeren ren shou yan cheng [Daye Incident organizers were severely punished]”.
3 For earlier work on the Chinese state’s efforts in maintaining social stability, see, for example, Yan, “Patrolling harmony”; Liu and Ma, “Popular threats and nationalistic propaganda.”
4 See Wasserstrom, “Resistance to the One-child Family”; White, “Domination, resistance, and accommodation.”
5 See Deng and Yang, “Pollution and Protest”; Steinhardt and Wu, “In the Name of the Public.”
6 See Chen, Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China; Li and O’Brien, “Protest Leadership in Rural China”; So, “Peasant Conflict and the Local Predatory State”.
7 See Guo, “Land Expropriation and Rural Conflicts in China”; Ho, “Contesting rural spaces”.
8 See Bernstein and Xiaobo, Taxation without Representation; Li, “Driven to Protest”.
9 See Cai, “The Resistance of Chinese Laid-Off Workers”; Chen, “Subsistence Crises, Managerial Corruption”.
10 See, for example, Truex, Making Autocracy Work; Manion, Information for Autocrats.
11 See, for example, Li and Yang, “What Causes the Local Fiscal Crisis in China”; Pan and Chen, “Concealing Corruption”.
12 See Zhang, “Huangyan jie jie [Resolution to the Huangyan Puzzle].”
13 Personal communication with an expert of China’s bureaucracy, August 24, 2019.
14 See Ma, “Consent to Contend”.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 7.
17 Ibid., 2.
18 For studies on why football fans are easy to become radicalized in mobilization, see Zaimakis, “Football Fan Culture and Politics in Modern Greece”.
19 Yongshun Cai emphasizes the importance of higher-level intervention in determining how the local authorities respond to popular protest. See Cai, “Local Governments and the Suppression”; Cai, Collective Resistance in China. He argues that “a combination of casualties with media exposure or with a large number of participants is very likely to invite intervention from the central government,” and “facing intervention or a threat of intervention from the central government, local governments will have to use concessions or concessions with discipline to stop citizens’ resistance quickly”. See Cai, “Power Structure and Regime Resilience,” 419. Illuminated by Cai’s idea, we argue here that the strategy of borrowing power from the masses will backfire when mass mobilization gets out of hand and triggers investigation from higher-level officials.
20 See Zhang, “Yi ge xian ji shi zhuiqiu 'sheng zhi xia' de minjian suqiu [Citizens in a county appealing for the province-manages-county status].”
21 See Radio Free Asia, “Jiangxi chong hua xingzheng fanwei yinfa guixi minzhong saoluan [Jurisdictional restructuring in Jiangxi province caused popular unrest in Guixi].”
22 See Zhang, “Huangyan jie jie [Resolution to the Huangyan Puzzle].”
23 See Lieberthal and Oksenberg, Policy Making in China; Mertha, “'Fragmented Authoritarianism 2.0'”.
24 See Cai, “Power Structure and Regime Resilience”.
25 See, for example, Zhou and Hong, “Bureaucratic Bargaining in the Chinese Government”; Zhou et al., “A Behavioral Model of 'Muddling Through'”.
26 See Zhou, “Cong guan li fen tu dao cengji fenliu [Between ‘Officials’ and ‘Local Staff’].”
27 Ibid.; Li and Mingxing, “Li shen gongmou [The Collusion Between Government Functionaries and Local Influentials].”
28 See Li and Liu, “Li shen gongmou [The Collusion Between Government Functionaries and Local Influentials].”
29 See Zhou, “Cong guan li fen tu dao cengji fenliu [Between ‘Officials’ and ‘Local Staff’]”; Li and Liu, “Li shen gongmou [The Collusion Between Government Functionaries and Local Influentials].”
30 In fact, the then-party secretary of Daye county was in the process of getting promoted to a municipal city position.
31 See Li and Liu, “Li shen gongmou [The Collusion Between Government Functionaries and Local Influentials].”
32 In 2005, the mining industry accounted for up to 45 percent of gross industrial output value of enterprises above a designated size, while mining and the mine processing industry accounted for 80 percent of gross industrial output value of enterprises above a designated size. See “Daye shi chengshi zhuanxing wenti yanjiu [Research on the urban transformation of Daye county]” by daye she ke lian [Daye Federation of Social Sciences Association].
33 Also reflected in the interviews conducted in Huangshi and Daye, August 1 and August 2, 2017. See Li and Liu, “Li shen gongmou [The Collusion Between Government Functionaries and Local Influentials].”
34 “Zhi daye jiushi wan jumin de gongkai xin” [An open letter to 900,000 Daye residents], 2005.
35 See Liu, “Che xian she qu? Changxing bu gaoxing [Changxing residents unhappy for their county planning to be turned into a district].”
36 Ibid.
37 Interview with an official in Daye Bureau of Finance, August 2, 2017.
38 See Liu, “Che xian she qu? Changxing bu gaoxing [Changxing residents unhappy for their county planning to be turned into a district].”
39 Guo wu yuan [The State Council], “Xingzheng quhua guanli de guiding [Regulations on Administrative Jurisdiction Management],” January 15, 1985. For the detailed formation on application and approval procedures, see Baidu Tieba, “Quhua tiaozheng shenqing de liucheng [Application process of jurisdiction restructuring],” June 28, 2018. https://tieba.baidu.com/p/5771630531?red_tag=0155209489, accessed on Oct. 14, 2019.
40 The boldest move ever taken by local bureaucrats to oppose jurisdictional restructuring occurred in Huangyan, Zhejiang province. For nine years, 1994–2003, some delegates of the county’s PC and PPCC refused to attend the annual meetings in order to press the Taizhou municipal government to acknowledge Huangyan’s semi-county political status. Their demand was met by the Huangyan municipal government in 2003.
41 See Zhang, “Dazhi 8.6 qunti shijian zeren ren shou yan cheng [Daye Incident Organizers were Severely Punished]”; also interview with a Daye resident, September 15, 2013.
42 Interview with officials in Huangshi and Daye, respectively, August 1 and August 2, 2017.
43 See Zhang, “Dazhi 8.6 qunti shijian zeren ren shou yan cheng [Daye Incident organizers were severely punished].”
44 See McAdam, “Recruitment to High-risk Activism”.
45 See Zhou and Ta, “Yecheng qiumi: jiao de xiang de chengshi mingpian [Football fans in Daye].”
46 See Zhang, “Dazhi 8.6 qunti shijian zeren ren shou yan cheng [Daye Incident organizers were severely punished].”
47 Yuan Zhengshe was then a teacher at Dong yue zhongxue [Dongyue Middle School] and also the chairman of Daye Association of Football Fans. Before holding this position, he was a teacher at Cheng bei zhongxue[Chengbei Middle School]. In exchange for accepting a transfer – essentially a promotion – to the prestigious Dongyue Middle School, he agreed to stop acting as a key protester against privatizing the Chengbei Middle School. Interview with a Daye resident, September 13, 2013.
48 Interview with an official of the Bureau of Finance in Daye, January 13, 2018.
49 See Gao, “Liangwan dazhi ren kangyi dangju za shifu duan gonglu [Twenty thousand Daye Residents Protested by Storming the Municipal Government and Blocking the Expressway].”
50 Interview with a Daye resident, September 15, 2013.
51 He was arrested on August 18, 2005 and later sentenced to two years in prison because he was found to be responsible for inciting the August 6 mass incident by posting the demonstration notice on several websites. For details, see Zhongguo fayuan wang [China Court], “Juzhong chongji guojia jiguan da za caiwu qingjie yanzhong, shandong feifa youxing shiwei naoshi fa buneng rong [Those who mass people to storm the government building and vandalize public property and those who incite illegal demonstration should be punished by law],” September 26, 2005, http://hubeigy.chinacourt.org/public/detail.php?id=3692, accessed on Apr 11, 2013.
52 See Yang, “Hubei dazhi shi liang wan minzhong kangyi jingcha cubao [Twenty thousand Daye residents of Hubei province demonstrated against the police brutality].”
53 See Fang, “Hubei liangwan ren weigong shifu [Twenty thousand Hubei residents besieged their municipal government].”
54 Interview with an official of the Bureau of Urban Management in Daye, August 2, 2017.
55 The majority of Daye’s population were rural residents.
56 Interview with a Huangshi resident, April 17, 2013.
57 Interview with a Huangshi resident, May 10, 2013.
58 Interview with a Huangshi resident, July 29, 2013.
59 See Zhang, “Dazhi 8.6 qunti shijian zeren ren shou yan cheng [Daye Incident organizers were severely punished].”
60 Interview with a Huangshi resident, July 29, 2013; also see Li and Liu, “Li shen gongmou [The Collusion Between Government Functionaries and Local Influentials].”
61 See Yang, “Hubei dazhi shi liang wan minzhong kangyi jingcha cubao [Twenty thousand Daye residents of Hubei province demonstrated against the police brutality].”
62 In Chinese culture, being bitten by a dog that someone lets out intentionally is extremely humiliating for the victim.
63 Interview with a Daye resident, September 15, 2013.
64 It is said that he then hid in the military base. Interview with a Huangshi resident, September 15, 2013.
65 See Liu, “Che xian she qu? Changxing bu gaoxing [Changxing residents unhappy for their county planning to be turned into a district].”
66 See Allen-Ebrahimian, “These Chinese people want high-speed rail.”
67 See Ma, “Consent to Contend”.
68 See Yan, “'Gaotie zhengduo zhan' chengxian she yun xin tedian [New characteristics of social movements struggling for high-speed railway stations].”
69 See Yan, “'Gaotie zhengduo zhan' chengxian she yun xin tedian [New characteristics of social movements struggling for high-speed railway stations].”
70 Also see Weiss, Powerful Patriots, on a theoretically thorough discussion on the similar role of permitting nationalistic protests during diplomatic negotiations.
71 See Ma, “Consent to Contend”.
72 See Dickson, The Communist Party’s Embrace; Hou, The Private Sector in Public Office.
73 See, for example, Zhou and Hong, “Bureaucratic Bargaining in the Chinese Government”; Zhou et al., “A Behavioral Model of 'Muddling Through' in the Chinese Bureaucracy”; Liu, “The New Politics of Conflict Processing in China”; Fan, Zhang, and Li, “The Credibility and Bargaining”; Shi and Frenkiel, “Policy Entrepreneurship Under Hierarchy”.
74 See, for example, Gao and Jie, “From Web to Weber”; Gao and Teets, “Civil Society Organizations in China”.
75 See Treisman, After the Deluge.
76 See Radnitz, Weapons of the Wealthy.
77 See Weiss, Powerful Patriots.
78 See Weiss, “Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences”.
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Notes on contributors
Yanhua Deng
Yanhua Deng is a professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, China. Her research centers on contentious politics and political sociology. She has published articles in China Journal, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Peasant Studies, Modern China and Political Studies. She is also the author of Environmental Protest in Rural China (China Social Sciences Press, 2016). Email: [email protected]
Zhenjie Yang
Zhenjie Yang is a lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Macao Polytechnic Institute. His research interests focus on institutional change, intergovernmental relations and local government reform in China. He has published articles in Environment and Urbanization, China Information, Journal of Contemporary China and China Journal of Social Work. Email: [email protected]
Xiao Ma
Xiao Ma is an assistant professor of political science in the School of Government at Peking University, and a research fellow in the Institute of Public Governance at Peking University. His research interests include comparative political institutions, political economy of development and Chinese politics. He has published articles in Political Communication, Security Studies, Journal of East Asian Studies, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, and China Review. He has a forthcoming book with Oxford University Press on the political economy of railway infrastructure in China. Email: [email protected]