Contentious Politics in China: Causes, Dynamics, and Consequences

China has become a land of social protests. Yet the Chinese state possesses considerable capacity and is rising on the world stage day by day. Why and how do Chinese people take to the streets? Where does their activism lead? This paper draws on a rich body of existing literature to provide an overview of the broad landscape of Chinese contentious politics and to dig deeper into a few common or emerging forms of social conflict. It then explores the various structural and political opportunity-based explanations for why protest occurs in China, before describing the ways in which different organizations and different framings of issues by citizens affect how protests play out. Shifting to where protests lead, the paper briefly surveys a variety of coercive and conciliatory institutions China possesses for social control and then documents distinct patterns in the state’s handling of different types of resistance—repressive, tolerant, concessionary, and mixed approaches—followed by an examination of the multifaceted impact of unrest. The conclusion offers suggestions for future researchers. Reviewing major concepts, debates, perspectives, and emerging research directions in studies of contentious politics in the world’s most populous country, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of authoritarian politics and authoritarian resilience more generally.

The Chinese Communist Party since 1949: Organization, Ideology, and Prospect for Change

Research on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the world’s largest political party, has seen a revival in recent years. Today, studies of the CCP are a key part of any attempt to understand China’s development trajectory in the post-1949 era. This review takes a new and closer look at how the study of the CCP has evolved in terms of themes, concepts, and areas of research. In the following we explore nine topics: Party organization, cadre management, cadre advancement and training, Party ideology, Party reform and adaptation, local Party work, the Party and business, the Party and corruption, and the Party and the law. Combining the pieces of the puzzle provides the picture of a political machine and organization of amazing durability.

Procedural Justice and the Fair Trial in Contemporary Chinese Criminal Justice

This review examines the literature on procedural justice and the fair trial over the past two decades in the People’s Republic of China. Part 1 gives a wide-angle view of the key political events and developments that have shaped the experience of procedural justice and the fair trial in contemporary China. It provides a storyline that explains the political environment in which these concepts have developed over time. Part 2 examines how scholars understand the legal structures of the criminal process in relation to China’s political culture. Part 3 presents scholarly views on three enduring problems relating to the fair trial: the presumption of innocence, interrogational torture, and the role of lawyers in the criminal trial process.Procedural justice is a particularly pertinent issue today in China, because Xi Jinping’s yifa zhiguo 依法治国 (governing the nation in accordance with the law) governance platform seeks to embed a greater appreciation for procedural justice in criminal justice decision-making, to correct a politicolegal tradition overwhelmingly focused on substantive justice. Overall, the literature reviewed in this article points to the serious limitations in overcoming the politicolegal barriers to justice reforms that remain intact in the system, despite nearly four decades of constant reform.