Abstract
Since the Reform started in 1978 China has witnessed a dramatic rise of grassroots resistance. The state has responded with considerable urgency to contain the spread of grassroots protests (General Office of CCP Central Committee & General Office of the State Council 1998). Researchers have explored the scale, social range, and geographic distribution of protest (Diao 1996; Tanner 2001). Scholarship of Chinese grassroots resistance examines the incidence and nature of violent protest and the traditional resources available for collective action (Perry 1984, 2001), the state’s strategies in handling expanding grassroots protests (Tanner 2001), the institutional structure systematically transforming individual behaviors into collective actions (Zhou 1993), the spatial arrangements for urban mobilization (Zhao 2001), and policy-based contentions and rightful resistance in rural area (Rightful resistance is a concept created by O’Brien) (O’Brien and Li 1995; Li and O’Brien 1996; O’Brien 1996). However, scholarship has failed to conduct case studies and to explore the local political environment and internal dynamics of grass root activism. Knowledge of the local political environment is the key to understanding the emergence of activism across China. Important issues must be addressed including the factors shaping the attitudes of local officials toward protest in the 1980s and how the response of officials shaped the goals, strategies, repertoires, and internal organizational structure of grassroots protest organizations.
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- 1.
This paper has benefited greatly from insightful comments from Jeff Broadbent, Ying Xing, Bryan Dill, Li Meng, Ron Aminzade, Sun Liping, Shen Yuan, Li Kang, and Jiangsui He. I also have to thank the editor for the painstakingly editing this paper.
- 2.
Administrative Procedure Law became effective in 1990.
- 3.
There are five levels of government in China top-down: central government, province, prefecture, county, and township. Before the administrative system reform in rural China in the early 1980s, commune was the equivalent of township authority.
- 4.
Ying (2001) implies that central government would welcome grassroots lodging complaints under some circumstances. For example, involvement in a grassroots complaint provides the central government a unique opportunity to penetrate into local politics, especially in Reform era where local authorities become more and more autonomous so that central government has more difficulties to directly intervene into local issues. Kuhn (1990) also discusses how the central government (in his case, the emperor) tried to control local officials more effectively by deliberate balancing routine and exception in the operation of bureaucracy.
- 5.
That is one reason why many protesters always get the similar, unsatisfied results even if they lodge their complaints to central government.
- 6.
Western research indicates that, “the relationship between repression (x-axis) and the extent of political violence (y-axis) corresponds to a reversed U-curve.” (Opp and Roehl 1990, pp. 522)
- 7.
Like many Chinese dams and reservoirs constructed in Cultural Revolution, Dahe Hydroelectric Dam project was not well planed. During the Culture Revolution, many intellectuals, including the experts of hydroelectric dam, were sent down to countryside. The qualified engineers were replaced by the workers of construction projects and inexperienced young students who were studying in colleges or even high school. According to the first director of this construction project, in the beginning of the construction, there even was not a completed blueprint of this project. One popular slogan in that time was “(workers are) constructing while (engineers are) designing as well as (the hydroelectric plant are) operating.” As a result, the design of this project had been modified several times during the 8-year-construction.
- 8.
Some Chinese scholars call this type resettlement as “administrative migration” to distinguish it from the resettlement in 1990’s in which relocatee could get much more compensation. The latter is called “compensation migration” (Cheng 1996).
- 9.
In Maoist administration, two levels of organizations were under commune’s control: production brigade and production team. The leaders of the two organizations are called “cadres.” However, they are not formally officials, but still peasants. The most significant difference between leader of production team and commune official is that the former has no career advancement in general.
- 10.
“Unresolved problems (yiliu wenti)” mean problems that should have been resolved during, not after the settlements. Many “unresolved problems” become the direct or indirect origins of collective protests (Ying 2000; Jin 1998). Resolving “unresolved problems” became a semi-routine approach for government to run the country.
- 11.
Different interviewers confirmed that commune officials had not publicly announced the size of the compensation.
- 12.
We do not know the exact numbers of lodging complaint letters from Puxi and Xunlu. But we did collect around fifties petitions wrote by protesters in Shanyang in our fieldwork.
- 13.
Interview with Wang Xuping on December 14 and 21, 1997.
- 14.
Register of lodging complaint office at Yun County, December 26, 27, 29, 30, 1982.
- 15.
In the fieldwork of Dahe, we found that almost every adult in relevant villages knew the chief leaders and their roles in the protest.
- 16.
At least two protest leaders (one in Shanyang, one in Xunlu) were important activists of Red Guards movement in Cultural Revolution. Another protest leader of Shanyang was born in a rich peasant family and lost his chance to join the CCP and enter college.
- 17.
See interview with Wang Xuping on December 21, 1997. Also see meeting minutes of Shanyang Commune CCP committee on Jan 6, 1984.
- 18.
Teacher Xu’s participation in collective protest seemed relatively by chance. After the flood, there was a rotation of cultivated land in his village. Teacher Xu believed his family should get more land than the village head actually gave him. Then he ploughed the reserve land of the village without any permit18. Many peasants followed him. The village head found the rotation of cultivation impossible under this situation. Therefore, he asked Shanyang commune authority to punish Teacher Xu. When relocatees asked for more compensation for their land loss resulting from Dahe Dam, commune officials told them the real cause of insufficient farmland was not flood but Teacher Xu’s misbehaviors. It was one of the biggest mistakes commune officials had ever made.
- 19.
Jeff Broadbent suggested that I use the two concepts, conspicuous and inconspicuous participation.
- 20.
Doug McAdam (1986) suggests that researchers should distinguish high-risk participation from low-risk participation. The two types of participations have different recruitment model and participants have different incentives. One inference from this theory is that in recruitment of high-risk participation, prior activity and strong and extensive personal ties play the most important role. We could say in the Dahe case, protest leaders were high-risk participants while inconspicuous participants were low-risk ones. We will explore protest leaders’ special incentives in collective actions.
- 21.
Different official documents have different information of the number of Teacher Xu’s children. Teacher Xu admits he has four.
- 22.
See the interview with Teacher Xu and his wife on December 14, 1997.
- 23.
Shanyang Township government and CCP committee, “Emergency Report.” November 23, 1985.
- 24.
Yun County CCP committee office, “Minutes of CCP Standing Meeting,” December 6, 1985.
- 25.
Interview with Miss. Xie on March 11, 1998.
- 26.
Interview with Pan Guiyu on March 13, 1998.
- 27.
Interview with Yu Daoqi on March 12, 1998.
- 28.
That happened in interview with Xie’s wife and interview with Liu Yicheng on March 11, 1998.
- 29.
In collective protest, protest leaders could use the framing process to interpret any negative sanction on themselves as the threats to the whole collective protest. But this framing will be futile once the collective protest ends. Without the context of collective protest, it will be much more difficult for protest leaders to mobilize followers.
- 30.
Interview with Liu Yicheng on March 11, 1998.
- 31.
Interview with Yu Dehui on March 14, 1998.
- 32.
One deputy director of Yun County told relocatees, “You get less because we were criticized by the province authority (for the high compensation standard). If you did not insist on lodging complaints, province officials could not know it and you could get more.”
- 33.
Yun County CCP committee office, “Minutes of CCP Standing Meeting,” August 7, 1987.
- 34.
Interview with Yu Dezheng on December 25, 1997.
- 35.
We do not know the exact date of the first emergence of PDM.
- 36.
Interview with Teacher Xu and Rao Hongshi on December 17, 1997.
- 37.
Interview with Teacher Xu on December 14; with Wan Xueping on December 21, 1997; and with Yu Dehui on March 14, 1998.
- 38.
Interview with Liu Yicheng on March 11, 1998.
- 39.
This village had not participated the collective protest of Shanyang in mid-1980s because its villagers had gotten better compensation than all other relocatees in that time. However, comparing to the final package other relocatees got through collective action, this village’s solution was not juicy anymore. They wanted to follow other resisters’ experience in occupying the dinning hall in Dahe Dam.
- 40.
This accident happened on April 15, 1990. It coincidently was the anniversary of the death of former General secretary Hu Yangban. Yun authority therefore had one more justification for this suppression.
- 41.
Shanyang PDM meeting minutes on October 6, 1988.
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Jin, J. (2011). Institutionalized Official Hostility and Protest Leader Logic: A Long-Term Chinese Peasants Collective Protest at Dahe Dam in the 1980s. In: Broadbent, J., Brockman, V. (eds) East Asian Social Movements. Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09626-1_18
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