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Chinese Politics Mini-Conference: Dimensions of Dissent: Protest in Contemporary China

Sat, October 2, 10:00 to 11:30am PDT (10:00 to 11:30am PDT), TBA

Session Submission Type: In-Person Created Panel

Part of Mini-Conference

Session Description

This panel explores the several dimensions of protest in contemporary China from central government strategies and distance to administrative centers to personal experience and religious influences on the propensity to oppose the party-state. The first paper considers the central leadership turnover from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping and how this influences the central party-government approach to local protest. Author Han Zhang finds that the intensity and size of protests has decreased, while the party-government has found ways to govern protests through soft preventive strategies, instead of hardline repression. The second paper investigates the geographic and economic conditions that influence citizens’ decision to participate in protests. Using the 2017 Public Satisfaction Survey, Juan Wang discovers that the distance from Beijing and provincial capitals increases the likelihood of protest. In the third paper, Scott Desposato, Gang Wang and Jason Wu show that individuals who began their undergraduate education in Beijing just before and just after the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations and government crackdown are more likely to protest and engage in political action. The implication is that exposure to a social movement and state repression can continue to shape patterns of political participation long after the events. The final paper examines religion and public dissent in China. Brett Carter and Erin Baggott Carter find that religious citizens are far more likely to express their opposition to the CCP than the non-religious. The results help understand why the religious are so often persecuted in China and other authoritarian regimes.

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