Value-Driven Contention in China: Forms, Tactics and State Responses

H. Christoph Steinhardt, Kai Yang (Corresponding author)

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed

Abstract

This research challenges the conventional wisdom that value-driven protests in China are exceedingly rare and face harsh state repression. Drawing on a hand-coded, multi-source dataset of over 3,100 protests in three Chinese megacities from 2014 to 2016, we identify 67 protests that reveal a hitherto unknown underbelly of everyday, value-driven contention. Qualitatively, we identify three main forms of contentious performances. Quantitatively, we show how value-driven protesters combine non-disruptive tactics with ambitious targets and virtually never extract concessions. Surprisingly, we find that such protests are less often policed and repressed than other protests. They are also never met with violence from non-state actors. We provide three interpretations for the counter-intuitive finding on repression. This study shows that the Chinese state coexists with a non-negligible amount of explicitly regime-critical contention. It adopts a containment strategy, tolerating a certain extent of value-driven performances when the risk of spill-over into wider society is limited.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-18
JournalChina Quarterly: an international journal for the study of China
Early online date4 Nov 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 4 Nov 2024

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 506014 Comparative politics
  • 506006 Peace studies
  • 504023 Political sociology
  • 602045 Sinology

Keywords

  • value-driven activism
  • protest control
  • protest event analysis
  • stability maintenance
  • Chinese politics

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