ABSTRACT
Some readers may be surprised at there being only 548 large-scale social protests from 2003 to 2010 in China. With media coverage of social unrest all over China in recent years, the number of large-scale social protests was expected to be significantly higher. The sensationalist media coverage of selected cases gives the public the impression that there are protests everywhere, all the time, hence the conclusion that China is sitting on the mouth of a social volcano. Our research shows, first, that large-scale social protests are not as frequent as some pundits tend to believe. Second, as far as the regime is able to be responsible for the subsistence of people, there is no active social volcano in sight. In this concluding chapter, we would like to extend our discussion a little further to the scenarios of future social protests, the prospects of democracy and the implications for regime legitimacy.
