Repression and Protest in Contemporary China

The struggle between state agents and grassroots activists is central to politics everywhere. Is this dynamic any different in China? How have state repression and grassroots activism evolved and varied across localities in China, the world’s most powerful authoritarian state? Dan Mattingly (Yale) on his new book, “The Art of Political Control in China” and Juan Wang (McGill) on environmental protestors in China.  Sida Liu (Toronto) provided commentary on the “cat and mouse” game between repressive agents and protestors.

 

 

Daniel Mattingly is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. His current research looks at how the military, protest, and nationalism shape Chinese politics. His first book, The Art of Political Control in China, was published by Cambridge in 2020.  

 

Juan Wang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University. Her research interests include contentious politics, and law and politics, with a country focus of China. Her works have appeared in a number of academic journals, including the China Quarterly, Modern China, the Journal of Contemporary China, Asian Journal of Law and Society, Problems of Post Communism, and Crime, Law, and Social Change. Her first book, entitled The Sinews of State Power: The Rise and Demise of the Cohesive Local State in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), focuses on the intergovernmental relationship among China's county, township, and village levels of government in explaining the persistence of collective resistance in rural areas.  

 

Sida Liu is Associate Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Toronto. His research interests include the sociology of law, organizations and professions, criminal justice, globalization, and social theory, with a geographical focus on the Greater China Region. Professor Liu has conducted extensive empirical research on China’s legal reform and legal profession, including the globalization of corporate law firms, the political mobilization of criminal defense lawyers, the feminization of judges, and the career mobility of law practitioners. One of his current research projects examines influence of colonialism and authoritarianism on the professions in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Liu is the author of three books in Chinese and English, most recently, Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work (with Terence C. Halliday, Cambridge University Press, 2016).