Abstract
As it is discussed above, regardless of the morally shocking incidents, the import of external resources or the rise of grassroots leaders, there is a certain contingency and randomness in the initial release of vigor. In particular, the role of grassroots leaders seems to be both critical and ambiguous. No matter the base of moral courage, interest consideration, or life grievances, their rise has a certain degree of randomness. However, in the cases under study, in the period as short as 4 or 5 ;years, or as long as a decade, the contentious activities are both tortuous and hard to advance; they are both unpredictable and well organized. Though grassroots participants suffer from the activities, and are even thrown into jail, they are still as firm and persistent as ever. Obviously, those factors of contingency, randomness, and anger are not enough to support these long-lasting contentions.
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Notes
- 1.
Xiao Shu, Why don’t stability Maintenance Price Fall down? Oriental Morning Post, June 29, 2009.
- 2.
Since the petition problems received high national attention in 2002, governments at all levels have invested a lot of energy to solve the problems, yet the situation is still very serious (Zhao, Face the Serious Petition Situation Directly, Southern Weekend, April 5, 2007). This is sufficient to prove the assertion of “80 % of the petitions should be solved at the grassroots level” is a little too rash (Zhou 2001b).
- 3.
- 4.
Lubman (1967) also notices the mass mobilization nature of mediation in his analysis of the mediation system during the Mao era. In his opinion, “the Communist Party allows the mediation’s political function to penetrate everywhere through the mediator concept and the guidance of dispute, covering the mediation functions in resolving disputes. The intervention of politics replaced the negativity of mediation. In short, the Communist Party has included mediation in the re-arrangement of the Chinese society and mobilized people to support the party’s policies.”
- 5.
But this does not mean that a high cost will increase the chance of getting relief because there are still many other complicated factors. For example, though repeated petitions are more likely to obtain relief than one-time petitions, if repeated petitions are identified as “pestering petitions” (which is a petition after the government has appropriately dealt with the problems or has determined that the requirements put forward by the petitioners are unreasonable), then no matter how many times the petition is conducted, the chance for the petitioners to gain support will not increase.
- 6.
Progressive petitions were only implemented in some provinces in 1998. The real premise for its implementation is that local governments can solve practical problems in time and satisfy people’s needs (Diao 1996: p. 325). However, most problems are impossible to solve at the grassroots level. Thus progressive petitions are hard to popularize and strictly enforce. This was the situation prior to the Petition Regulations. According to the 16th rule from the Petition Regulations implemented in May 2005: “petitioners should report to authorities of the same level or higher that have the legal right to deal with petitions; when the petitions are being dealt with or are completed, petitioners’ repeated petitions to a higher authority in a restricted period of time are not to be considered.” This means that level skipping petitions were banned.
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Ying, X. (2013). The Intensification of Vigor and the Grassroots Participants’ Organizational Strategies. In: A Study of the Stability of Contemporary Rural Chinese Society. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36400-6_6
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