ABSTRACT

This chapter highlights a trend, however—one toward the gradual maturation of an intellectual community centred on Chinese contentious politics, occupying its own set, intersecting both the China field and the study of contention and social movements further afield. Within China's distinctive context, it identifies a variety of subtypes of contention, based on the participants, grievances, tactics, usual state responses and outcomes. Social protest in China is best conceived of as a series of contentious episodes, rather than a set of social movements. The very nature of authoritarian political systems may make it difficult for social actors engaging in contentious politics to have their claims accommodated completely or consistently. There are reasons to believe that the political opportunity structure approach is relevant to explain the absence of collective action in Chinese society during particular tense political cycles. Most studies of the outcomes of political mobilization have used democratic political systems as empirical terrain for research.