Repression Backfires: tactical radicalization and protest spectacle in rural China

Abstract

In spring 2005, villagers in Dongyang County, Zhejiang were unhappy. For four years, they had been complaining about pollution emitted by 13 factories located in the Zhuxi Chemical Park. But nothing had been done. So they set up a tent encampment to block delivery of supplies to the factories. At first, they employed restrained tactics, including going about daily life in the tents, badgering cadres sent to demobilize them, and kowtowing. After a harsh repression produced hundreds of injuries and left dozens of damaged vehicles and other evidence of police action strewn about, the tent-sitters switched to more aggressive tactics, including denouncing local leaders, carrying out mock funerals, interrogating factory owners, and ransacking homes of 'traitors'. The authorities' ill-considered and poorly-timed repression led to tactical escalation, helped draw thousands of people to the scene, and ultimately resulted in the chemical park being closed. This episode speaks to the 'dissent-repression nexus' and suggests that repression can be counterproductive when it encourages protesters to ratchet up their tactics and a 'protest spectacle' ensues. In today's China, striking displays and theatrical performances, especially in the wake of a crackdown, can attract an audience, bring in financial support and create a carnival-like atmosphere in which popular acclaim, the breakdown of social order and the inversion of power hierarchies grants protesters leverage and induces the authorities to make concessions. Repression Backfires： Tactical Radicalization and Protest Spectacle in Rural China * Students of contentious politics have long examined the 'dissent-repression nexus', 1 but their findings are all over the map. Some show that police suppression dampens protest, 2 while others argue it inspires dissent. 3 Still others observe a more complicated pattern, with repression leading to more or less protest, depending on circumstances and timing. 4 No matter what they find, researchers tend to agree that using force to break up

Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

“…Such practices are particularly prominent in repressive contexts—when detained activists sing songs to combat the individual isolation of separate cells (Leitner et al :168), farmers rush land into production to subvert the forceful expropriation of vacant parcels (Kenney‐Lazar et al :1301), or demonstrators march with nonsense slogans to highlight limits on public speech (Fröhlich and Jacobsson :1159–1161). In China, meanwhile, protestors sometimes locate funerary rites at demolition sites or on the property of officials responsible for relocation, both highlighting the trauma of demolition and ambiguously threatening those responsible with death (O’Brien and Deng :462). These disparate practices offer a potentially powerful counter‐hegemonic toolset, poetically destabilising those qualities of space that are represented as so essential and self‐evident that they are beyond the reach of politics.…”

“…The enormous windfalls won by developers and local governments, combined with the disastrous wipeouts faced by the displaced, often lead residents to resist development in order to secure more compensation, better resettlement options, or even the preservation of their homes (Hsing ). In the context of Chinese authoritarianism, where open defiance of government‐led development risks an asymmetrical response, up to and including physical violence (Hsing ; O’Brien and Deng ), the expression of such resistance follows historically rooted repertoires of loyal supplication (Perry ), the most common of which involves petitioning the government either in writing ( xinfang 信访) or in person ( shangfang 上访) (Cai ; Chen ). In what is characterised as “rightful resistance”, Chinese citizens often use the party‐state’s own rhetoric, mitigating the risks of dissent by proclaiming their allegiance to the party‐state (O’Brien and Li :4).…”

From ‘the effect of repression’ toward ‘the response to repression’

“…Shifting from one tactic or form of protest to another can be one strategy to continue political activities under repression ( Almeida, 2008 ; DeNardo, 1985 ; Francisco, 1995 , 1996 ; Lichbach, 1987 ). Evidence for shifting from non-violent to violent tactics as a result of repression is found in different contexts, such as the former GDR and Czechoslovakia ( Francisco, 1995 ), Northern Ireland ( White, 1993 , 1989 ), El Salvador ( Almeida, 2008 ), Peru and Sri Lanka ( Moore, 1998 ), South Asia ( Boudreau, 2002 ), the Palestinian Intifada/Palestinian–Israeli conflict ( Araj, 2008 ; Longo et al, 2014 ) and China ( O’Brien and Deng, 2015 ). These findings are in line with Goldstein’s (1983 : 340) proposition that ‘those countries that were consistently the most repressive, brutal, and obstinate in dealing with consequences of modernization and developing working class dissidence reaped the harvest by producing oppositions that were just as rigid, brutal, and obstinate’.…”

“…Yet others have argued that repression generally has a curvilinear effect ( Brockett, 2005 ; Khawaja, 1993 ; Opp, 1994 ) or leads to alternative forms of expressing political discontent (i.e. tactical shift; Francisco, 1995 , 1996 ; Lichbach, 1987 ; Moore, 1998 ; O’Brien and Deng, 2015 ). While these studies enhance our knowledge about the possible consequences of repression on social movements, political protests and political participation, they provide a limited account of the variations in the effects of repression.…”

“Stressing Out”: Cadre Calibration and Affective Proximity to the CCP in Reform-era China

“…They also trace the reversal of this process: citizen activists use such ideologically based shaming and moral blackmail against officials , which bears more than a passing resemblance to the psychological operations of more advanced state organizations. See O'Brien and Deng 2015, 460–61.…”