A Bird’s-Eye View

Abstract

Judged by protest frequency estimates, China is a country where protests have become routine. In 2011, a study published by Landesa survey claimed that, according to “Chinese researchers,” in 2010 China saw “180,000 mass incidents . . . 65 percent of them related to land disputes.”1 Drawing on this figure, a headline in The Atlantic made the misleading claim that “500 protests [occurred] every day.” Despite the fact that little is known about how the unnamed “Chinese researchers” cited in the Landesa survey arrived at this figure, most publications, including that of the author, refer to it.2 However, these figures contribute little to a better understanding of social unrest in China. Instead, they conjure up the powerful image of a China in serious turmoil. If we take the results of a Google Images search as a representation of how the public mind might imagine “protests” or “social unrest” in China, we see hundreds of angry people holding up banners, raising their fists, and shouting slogans. Some photos show combat-ready riot police, and more extreme images feature overturned cars and the use of teargas canisters. While such scenes certainly occur, it is unclear whether or not they are representative of most instances of social unrest in China. Our knowledge about protests in China is sketchy: the media tends to cover large-scale events, which, as will be shown, are very infrequent; and academic research is mainly based on small-N case studies of protesters3 and of local officials.4 Fewer attempts have been made to understand how protests influence governance in China at large;5 and only a handful of studies provide insights into the spatial and temporal distribution of protests in China, which grievances they address, how many people they involve, and how likely protests are to meet with repression.6 A macro-perspective of social unrest in China is needed to judge the impact of social unrest on the stability of China’s one-party authoritarian regime. For example, while a violent protest that draws a large crowd is a major challenge to the regime, a gathering joined by only a handful of people is not. Low attendance signals a lack of public interest and assures the authorities that a grievance can be safely ignored.7 Also, demands for financial compensation are relatively easy to defuse by, for example, “buying stability,” whereas civil rights protesters cannot be bought off so easily.8 Finally, protests can be an indicator of specific local problems; but they can also highlight systemic deficiencies, for example when grievances are not confined to a particular locality or region.9 Drawing on a dataset of 74,452 protests that occurred in China between 2 June 2013 and 13 June 2016, this chapter provides a bird’s-eye view of social unrest in China by addressing the issues just outlined. The results show that most protests are nothing like the image evoked above would suggest: protests in China are widespread but tend to occur seasonally and involve fewer than 30 participants. Most protests are recorded in the days before Chinese New Year, when factories close their accounts and migrant workers return home. Financial compensation, not substantive rights, are at the heart of