Repression Backfires: tactical radicalization and protest spectacle in rural China

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 24, Issue 93, 2015, Pages 457-470

  O’Brien, Kevin J ^a   Deng, Yanhua ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMICS   (China)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

POPULAR PROTEST; POWER RELATIONS; RURAL AREA;

CHINA; DONGYANG; ZHEJIANG;

EID: 84926516278     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: 14699400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2014.953849     Document Type: Article

References (126)

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41. Interview P3 with a protest leader, 11 June 2007. Choosing restrained tactics had a history. When the chemical park opened in 2001, villagers were concerned about the pollution it would produce. They sought a ‘dialogue’ (duihua) with the town party secretary, which ultimately led to the secretary being cursed, beaten and dragged to the site, where villagers made him walk a lap around the park barefoot. Windows and doors of three plants were smashed, and phones and computers in factory offices were vandalized or stolen. Following this incident, 12 villagers were tried for disturbing social order and ten spent between one and three years behind bars.
42. On the local authorities’ efforts to demobilize the protest, Yanhua Deng and Kevin J. O’Brien, ‘Relational repression in China: using social ties to demobilize protesters’, The China Quarterly 215, (2013), pp. 533-552. On drawing thought workers from work units and using family ties to apply pressure on homeowners who are fighting eviction
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45. Interview C17 with a police officer, 21 June 2007.
46. Interview V4 with a village cadre, 13 April 2007.
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48. For kowtowing as a protest tactic, Michael Wines, ‘Police fire tear gas at protesters in Chinese city’, New York Times, (23 December 2011), available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/24/world/asia/china-jailsrights-activist-chen-wei-for-9-years.html?ref=china&_r=0 (accessed 8 September 2013). On the symbolic meaning of wearing white and kneeling in supplication
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50. Interview P15 with a villager, 24 May 2007;
51. interview V4 with a village cadre, 13 April 2007.
52. On ‘polyseminous’ rituals open to many interpretations, David I. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988);
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55. Interview V1 with a village cadre, 3 June 2007.
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57. Interview C20 with a town cadre, 20 June 2007.
58. Huashui Town Government, ‘3 yue 24 ri yilai huashui zhen huaxi cun bufen cunmin zai zhuxi gongye gongnengqu lanlu qingkuang de chuli huibao’.
59. Interview P8 with a villager, 27 May 2007.
60. Interview P11with a villager, 27 May 2007.
61. Interview C7 with a town cadre, 17 June 2007.
62. Interview P9 with a villager, 27 May 2007;
63. interview P11 with a villager, 10 June 2007.
64. Interview V8 with a protest leader, 17 April 2007.
65. Interview C7 with a town cadre, 17 July 2007.
66. Interview C7 with a town cadre, 17 July 2007.
67. Interview C16 with a town cadre, 20 June 2007.
68. Yanhua Deng and Kevin J. O’Brien, ‘Societies of senior citizens and popular protest in rural Zhejiang’, The China Journal 71, (2014), pp. 172-188.
69. Interview V8 with a protest leader, 17 April 2007.
70. Interview V14 with a retired town cadre, 31 May 2007.
71. From a government informant’s daily report, which is on file with the second author.
72. Interview C5 with a county official, 30 April 2008;
73. interview C7 with a town cadre, 17 July 2007;
74. interview P23 with a villager, 2 June 2007.
75. Interview P23 with a villager, 2 June 2007.
76. Interview C17 with a police officer, 21 June 2007.
77. Huashui Town Government, ‘“Huashui Shijian” dashiji’ [‘Chronicle of events during the “Huashui Incident”’], (2005), unpublished document;
78. Huashui Town Government, ‘Dongyang shi Huashui zhen “4.10 shijian” gongzuo jinzhan qingkuang’ [‘The “April 10th Incident” in Huashui Town, Dongyang City’], (2005), unpublished document. Both documents are on file with the second author.
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81. Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 105.
82. Interview P6 with a villager, 15 June 2007.
83. Huashui Town Government, ‘“Huashui Shijian” dashiji’.
84. On attracting onlookers through ‘suicide shows’, Fu, ‘Disguised collective action’.
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86. Interview V12 with a villager, 27 May 2007.
87. Francis Markus, ‘China riot village draws tourists’, BBC News, (15 April 2005), available at: http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4448131.stm (accessed 26 January 2010)
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91. Interview C7 with a town cadre, 17 July 2007.
92. On the media and dramatic protests, Doug McAdam, ‘Movement strategy and dramaturgic framing in democratic states: the case of the American Civil Rights Movement’, in Simone Chambers and Anne Costain, eds, Deliberation, Democracy and the Media (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp. 117-134.
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98. The New York Times, The Guardian, The BBC, The Times (London), and especially The South China Morning Post all picked up the story, but these reports could only be read by bilingual readers and thus did little to alert the public in China.
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107. Lu, ‘Dongyang Huashui shijian xianchang baodao’.
108. Huashui Town Government, ‘Dongyang shi Huashui zhen “4.10 shijian” gongzuo jinzhan qingkuang’.
109. Interview P1 with a protest leader, 8 June 2007.
110. Interview C17 with a police officer, 21 June 2007.
111. Deputy Party Secretary of Dongyang County, ‘Zai Huashui zhen cun ganbu huiyi shang de jianghua’ [‘Speech at a meeting of Huashui village cadres’], radio broadcast delivered in Huashui town, 1 May 2005.
112. Interview C17 with a police officer, 21 June 2007.
113. On intervention elsewhere in China, O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China;
114. Yongshun Cai, ‘Disruptive collective action in the reform era’, in Kevin J. O’Brien, ed., Popular Protest in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008);
115. Yongshun Cai, ‘Power structure and regime resilience: contentious politics in China’, British Journal of Political Science 38(3), (2008), pp. 411-432.
116. Interview C2 with a county official, 25 June 2007.
117. Hess and Martin, ‘Repression, backfire, and the theory of transformative events’, p. 251.
118. Sharon Erickson Nepstad and Clifford Bob, ‘When do leaders matter? Hypotheses on leadership dynamics in social movements’, Mobilization 11(1), (2006), pp. 1-22.
119. Opp and Roehl, ‘Repression, micromobilization, and political protest’, p. 524.
120. O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China, pp. 71, 80-81.
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122. Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O’Brien, ‘Protest leadership in rural China’, The China Quarterly 193, (2008), pp. 1-23.
123. Cai, ‘Disruptive collective action in the reform era’, p. 164;
124. Yongshun Cai, Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010)
125. Xi Chen, Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 182, 184
126. Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, ‘The politics of lodging complaints in rural China’, The China Quarterly 143, (1995), pp. 756-783.