Obstacles of Recruitment in an Authoritarian State: Student Participation in Shenzhen Jasic Incident

• In Event: 2323 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 5. Interrogating Social Action and Political Leadership II

Abstract

Participation is a critical process in social movements, and enormous research focuses on the resources mobilisation; while the obstacles generated by the interactions among public, challengers and authority are somewhat ignored. The paper selects Jasic Incident in Shenzhen, China as a case study to investigate the obstacles of recruitment in social movements in an authoritarian state. Based on the in-depth interviews with fifteen university students or graduate in Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, two police officers, and supplemented by achieved documents, the paper will explore the obstacles of recruitment protest participation among college students with the employment of the interaction model. The research examines the questions that what are obstacles are generated by the interactions among challengers, targets and public and how these obstacles function to obstruct the recruitment of student participants in social movements in China. The major interaction has shifted from the workers and the company to the student participants and the government. With regard of the interaction between target and public, the media plays a significant role of communication and resources mobilisation while the censorship imposed by targets deters the diffusion of information to the public; meanwhile, the actions of students are significantly constrained by relational repression since families and universities are taken advantages by targets. Concerning the interaction between challengers and public, the manipulation of Marxism and class struggle prevent more students participating in the protest due to the ideological exclusion, and the short-surviving information of repression generates a deterrent force in the cost-effect evaluation. As a result, these obstacles of the recruitment are created to discourage prospective participants.

Author

• Zheng Zhou, The Chinese University of Hong Kong