Who Protests and Why: Hierarchical Government Trust and Protest Participation in China

Abstract

We present a theory on how trust in the central government to remedy grievances combined with a lack of trust in local government to act motivates people to participate in local protests in China. Low trust in local government combined with high trust in the central government gives people expectation that protest will not be an exercise in futility. People protest to redress injustices when they believe that such protests have a chance of producing a favorable resolution of their grievances. Utilizing individual level data from the Asian Barometer Survey Wave 4, our analysis suggests that, in contemporary China, people who have greater trust in the central government than the local government are more likely than others to report having participated in protests. In a society without meaningful elections, participating in protest is an effective strategy for attracting the attention from the upper-level authorities in hope of redressing unfavorable situations.

To protest or not to protest? Migrant workers’ participation in protests in China

“…Therefore, they need some other mechanism to resolve the unfavorable situation they face in the urban environment. Based on what Chen et al (2021) find, we suggest that if an individual considers society to be fair politically, then this perception might make the individual believe that his/her unfavorable situation will be resolved by national authorities if he/she participates in protests that draw the attention of national authorities to abuses by local authorities. Thus, on the one hand, migrant workers who believe that the society is fair economically might have less incentives to protest.…”

“…This system, also called Chinese Federalism (Jin et al , 2005), leads Chinese people to have more trust in the central government than in their local governments (Li, 2016; Huang, 2018). Based on these findings, Chen et al (2021) further find that in China, people with higher degrees of political trust toward the central government combined with lower degrees of political trust toward local governments are more likely than others to protest. This is because they believe protest actions can draw the attention of the central government authorities to the grievances they have that are largely the responsibility of local government and/or local firms.…”

“…Why is this the case? Here we use the concept of hierarchical political trust and the findings of Chen et al (2021) to give an interpretation of these mixed results.…”