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This paper proposes a new framework to analyze social contentions in China from the perspectives of contention motives and mobilization channels, explains why traditional forms of contention do not undermine the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule, and identifies anti-system contention as a distinctive form of contention that poses the greatest challenge to the CCP’s rule. Through analysis of political opportunity structures and mobilization mechanisms that allowed anti-system contentions to rise, this paper argues that since such contentions mainly consist of value-oriented social actors mobilized via informal channels, it would require the Chinese regime to adapt to a more targeted and coordinated model of repression to address the new challenges. The paper further provides empirical case studies to show the effectiveness of the regime’s adaptive repression and shows that anti-system contentions in China face their own hurdle to develop into more prominent contentions.

This paper argues that despite the considerable resilience demonstrated by the Chinese authoritarian regime, its power experiences continuous atrophy. With the weakening of the totalitarian control imposed on Chinese society, the current stability maintenance system has been decreasing in its effectiveness. Meanwhile, contentious activities within the civil society gain momentum, and grow in both frequency and complexity. Movements such as human rights advocacy and political pluralism are traversing down a path towards a multilaterally coalesced resistance of authoritarian authority. The final part of this paper proposes and analyzes three possible trends of the development of social contentions in Chinese civil society.

Existing studies have traced China’s high political trust to three sources: traditional culture, the state’s success in fostering economic growth, and ideological propaganda. We identify a fourth source: perceived social mobility. We argue that when people perceive a reasonable chance for upward mobility based on personal initiatives and efforts, the status quo becomes more justifiable because individuals are responsible for their own successes and failures. Perceived social mobility thus instills a sense of optimism and fairness and exonerates the regime from many blames, thereby enhancing political trust. Regression analysis of the China portion of the 2007 World Values Survey data shows that respondents who saw themselves as having choices and control in life were indeed more likely to trust the ruling communist party. The respondents’ overall level of perceived social mobility is also high, which is consistent with the massive shake-up of the preexisting social order in China’s reform era.