Understanding Chinese rural protests through a social movement lens: a study of the Wukan protest

Abstract

Rapid urbanisation in China has led to large scale land acquisition to support urban growth. As Chinese rural land is owned collectively and administered by the Villagers' Committee (VC) of each village, rural residents are sometimes excluded from bargaining while governments forcefully acquire land, often with low compensation, compulsory acquisition and corruption among village leaders. These disadvantages have generated discontent in some villages in recent years. With land issues prompting 65 per cent of Chinese rural protests, as well as a host of similar protests around the world, the incidence and forms of rural protest have been a topic of considerable interest among scholars internationally. However, the distinct mechanisms of rural protest induced by land acquisition in China have not been studied thoroughly, as this research aims to do.The Wukan protest is a typical case of a rural protest linked to the transfer of village land to urban land. The village is located in Lufeng City at the Southern coastline of China. Resistance against land acquisition emerged there from 2009 and turned to protest on 21st September 2011 when villagers launched a demonstration. The protest ended three months later, on 21st December 2011.Due to the duration of the protest activities and the large number of people involved, the protest shares some similarities with a social movement. Using the Wukan protest as a case study, this thesis addresses three principal questions: How does local protest in rural China develop and evolve?How effective is local protest in bringing about socio-political change in rural areas? To what extent can local protests be understood as forming part of a broader rural social movement in China? By answering these questions, the causes, process of development and outcomes of rural protest in China will be better understood. Also, connections between rural protest and broader social movements will be explored.Social movement theory is applied to answer the research questions. It is argued that political opportunities, resources and strategies determine the trajectory of collective oppositional actions.The Political Process model of McAdam (1982), which incorporates these elements to analyse social movements, offers a framework for explaining the Wukan protest. McAdam regards conditions such as changing political opportunities that expand protesters' power; well organised ii indigenous organisational strength; and a process of cognitive liberation as three requisites for raising a social movement. This thesis borrows these concepts to explain the outburst of the Wukan protest. Moreover, conceptions of social movements proposed by theorists such as Tilly (2005) By analyzing these data and using social movement theory as my analytical lens, I find three crucial elements for the emergence of collective action in Wukan. To begin with, people became angry about their current situation because they felt they had been deprived of their land -which the former village cadres sold without their conse...