Where popular contention in China is concerned, third parties are not merely supporters of protesters but also allies of the state. Through quantitative and qualitative methods, this article uses an actor-centred perspective to explore the dual role of Chinese lawyers in state dispute resolution projects. When providing legal counselling services to the public, lawyers adopt selective strategies and channel non-political cases into legal channels while keeping political cases within the political arena. When handling social disputes for the government, however, they apply professional diagnoses and legal persuasion, and intervene through mediation and negotiation. Three factors constrain the effectiveness of Chinese lawyers during dispute resolution. These are the limited access to cases, the dilemmas inherent in acting simultaneously both as a third party and as a state agent, and the restricted influence of lawyers over the final resolution of social disputes. This article argues that the selective responses of Chinese lawyers during legal counselling and strategic defence of state power in dispute resolution make them a governance tool for stability maintenance. Their participation contributes more to legal repression than to legal development in contemporary China.

Faced with the countless problems of rural society, in 2008 Suning County began to ponder and explore ways to solve these rural problems right at the root. Suning spent time and effort putting thought into the practicalities of working in the countryside, and combined this with the frame of reference gleaned through useful experiences of solving the ‘Three Rurals’ (the state’s term for three major issues troubling rural China). On this basis, Suning County devised the 4Project – a four-fold approach – to bring rural people back together, encouraging them once again to organize. Through development of grassroots Party organizations, grassroots democracy organizations, comprehensive stability maintenance organizations, and economic cooperatives, the local people, who had been scattered and lacking unity, were brought into these organizations.

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