Are Chinese Citizens becoming more Assertive? Perspectives from the (Limited) Data

Memo #307

By Sophia Woodman – Sophia.Woodman [at] ed.ac.uk

The last decade has seen an explosion of academic and media reporting about protests in China. Chinese citizens’ access to social media makes it harder for the authorities to suppress information about unrest. Even when mainstream media reporting is censored, often the news of an event has already made it outside the Great Firewall, and reports then circulate through the transnational Chinese language internet.

But does more reporting mean that Chinese citizens are actually becoming more assertive? What strategies are most popular in pursuing claims? Hard data is difficult to obtain, especially on forms of claims-making the authorities want to discourage.

China specialists have tended to focus on one area of claims-making and contention, either based on the type of action taken or on the subject matter involved. Analysis of claims pursued through the courts is rarely compared with extra-legal protest actions, while labour unrest and contention related to land and environment are considered separately.

Going beyond this segmented approach, our interactive visualization draws together available data to compare different forms of contention and claims-making. The data shows most types of claims-making rising over time, but with the traditional mechanism of petitioning far outstripping the use of newer strategies like litigation in terms of absolute numbers. It also shows that contention may be reaching a plateau after a rapid rise in the 2000s. One explanation for this could be reduced reporting due to pressure on local officials to “resolve complaints” by manipulating data. Another could be that the disruptions caused by restructuring are past their peak, and contention is settling down into more routine patterns.

Recent regional and thematic case studies show that people pursuing a claim may combine legal and extra-legal strategies to press their case. This makes sense, since local officials are given wide discretion to strike bargains with protesters to quickly resolve incidents of unrest and thus avoid contagion effects. Despite the limitations of this data, read in conjunction with the case studies, it suggests that some citizens are more assertive, but that this might not point to the “social volcano” some reporting on events in China implies.

About the Author:

Sophia Woodman is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Sociology in the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on citizenship and social movements in contemporary China.

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