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Xi Chen explores the question of why there has been a dramatic rise in and routinization of social protests in China since the early 1990s. Drawing on case studies, in-depth interviews and a unique data set of about 1,000 government records of collective petitions, this book examines how the political structure in Reform China has encouraged Chinese farmers, workers, pensioners, disabled people and demobilized soldiers to pursue their interests and claim their rights by staging collective protests. Chen suggests that routinized contentious bargaining between the government and ordinary people has remedied the weaknesses of the Chinese political system and contributed to the regime's resilience. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China challenges the conventional wisdom that authoritarian regimes always repress popular collective protest and that popular collective action tends to destabilize authoritarian regimes.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2009! In its quarter-century-long shift from communism to capitalism, China has transformed itself from a desperately poor nation into a country with one of the fastest-growing and largest economies in the world. Doug Guthrie examines the reforms driving the economic genesis in this compact and highly readable introduction to contemporary China. He highlights the social, cultural and political factors fostering this revolutionary change and interweaves a broad structural analysis with a consideration of social changes at the micro and macro levels. In this new, revised edition author Guthrie updates his story on modern China and provides the latest authoritative data and examples from current events to chart where this dynamically changing society is headed and what the likely consequences for the rest of the world will be.

\"This book argues that democracy is the inevitable product of China's industrialization and modernization, and is necessary for the development of China's current society. It provides a political guarantee for China's industrialization and modernization. There are both similarities and differences between China's version of democracy and those versions of other countries. In this book, the author discusses the country's important experiences in constructing democracy with Chinese characteristics, which it has gathered during the long struggle for national independence, prosperity and social development. The democracy system embodies basic values and universal principles of democracy with uniquely Chinese characteristics.\" -- Back cover.

The 1989 pro-democracy movement in China constituted a huge challenge to the survival of the Chinese communist state, and the efforts of the Chinese Communist party to erase the memory of the massacre testify to its importance. This consisted of six weeks of massive pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing and over 300 other cities, led by students, who in Beijing engaged in a hunger strike which drew wide public support. Their actions provoked repression from the regime, which - after internal debate - decided to suppress the movement with force, leading to a still-unknown number of deaths in Beijing and a period of heightened repression throughout the country. This book assesses the impact of the movement, and of the ensuing repression, on the political evolution of the People’s Republic of China. The book discusses what lessons the leadership learned from the events of 1989, in particular whether these events consolidated authoritarian government or facilitated its adaptation towards a new flexibility which may, in time, lead to the transformation of the regime. It also examines the impact of 1989 on the pro-democracy movement, assessing whether its change of strategy since has consolidated the movement, or if, given it success in achieving economic growth and raising living standards, it has become increasingly irrelevant. It also examines how the repression of the movement has affected the economic policy of the Party, favoring the development of large State Enterprises and provoking an impressive social polarisation. Finally, Jean-Philippe Béja discusses how the events of 1989 are remembered and have affected China’s international relations and diplomacy; how human rights, law enforcement, policing, and liberal thought have developed over two decades. Jean-Philippe Béja is a Senior Researcher at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), and CERI-Sciences-Po (Centre for international Studies and Research), Paris, France. He is currently conducting research at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Introduction: June 4th 1989: A Watershed in Chinese Contemporary History 1. June Fourth: Memory and Ethics 2. The Chinese Communist Party and 4 June 1989 —Or how to get out of it and get away with it 3. The Impact of the June 4th Massacre on the pro-Democracy Movement 4. The Chinese Liberal Camp in Post-June 4th China 5. Wang Xiaobo and the No Longer Silent majority 6. The Seeds of Tiananmen: Reflections on a Growing Chinese Civil Rights Movement 7. The practice of law as conscientious resistance: Chinese weiquan lawyers’ experience 8. The Politicisation of China's Law-Enforcement and Judicial Apparatus 9. The Enduring Importance of Police Repression: Laojiao, the Rule of Law and Taiwan’s Alternative Evolution 10. The Impact of the Tiananmen Crisis on China’s Economic Transition 11. The Tiananmen Incident and the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong 12. How China managed to de-isolate itself on the international stage and re-engage the world after Tiananmen 13. China and International Human Rights: Tiananmen’s Paradoxical Impact 14. A Shadow over Western Democracies: China’s Political Use of Economic Power

\"Through decades of direct experience of the People's Republic combined with extraordinary access to hundreds of hitherto unseen documents in communist party archives, the author of The People's Trilogy offers a riveting account of China's rise from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He takes us inside the country's unprecedented four-decade economic transformation--from rural villages to industrial metropoles and elite party conclaves--that vaulted the nation from 126th largest economy in the world to second largest. A historian at the pinnacle of his field, Dikötter challenges much of what we think we know about how this happened. Casting aside the image of a society marching unwaveringly toward growth, in lockstep to the beat of the party drum, he recounts instead a fascinating tale of contradictions, illusions, and palace intrigue, of disasters narrowly averted, shadow banking, anti-corruption purges, and extreme state wealth existing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China's navigation of the 2008 financial crash, its increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference, and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. As this magisterial book makes clear, the communist party's goal was never to join the democratic world, but to resist it--and ultimately defeat it\"-- Provided by Amazon.

It has become a truism that continued economic reform in China will contribute to political change. Policy makers as well as many scholars expect that formation of a private sector will lead, directly or indirectly through the emergence of a civil society, to political change and ultimately democratization. The rapidly growing numbers of private entrepreneurs, the formation of business associations, and the cooperative relationships between entrepreneurs and local officials are seen as initial indicators of a transition from China's still nominally communist political system. This book, first published in 2003, focuses on two related issues: whether the Chinese Communist Party is willing and able to adapt to the economic environment its reforms are bringing about, and whether China's 'red capitalists', private entrepreneurs who also belong to the communist party, are likely to be agents of political change.

The theme of the second volume of History of Contemporary China is agricultural reform and rural development. Featured articles offer both empirical account and theoretical analysis of a broad range of historical events and issues in this area. These studies shed light on the historical origins of some of the agricultural and rural problems in China today.