ABSTRACT
The protracted struggle between the CCP and the civil society has taken a dramatic turn in the wake of the “new Cold War” unleashed between the U.S. and China in 2018. The Donald Trump administration and its allies have attacked the CCP’s tight control of the economy, its ultra-ambitious high-tech game plan, its territorial ambitions, as well as other aspects of the “China model.” President Xi Jinping’s perceived failure to tackle Trump’s fusillades – in addition to his apparent abandonment of Deng Xiaoping-style reform in favor of a Maoist restoration – has alienated powerful CCP constituencies ranging from pro-reformist princelings to officials in favor of a more thorough-going open-door policy. The burgeoning power struggle within the party has provided an opportunity for intellectuals, rights attorneys, house church worshippers and other NGO participants to give a big push to economic, political and ideological reforms. While laboring under the whiplash of Xi’s police state, civil-society combatants have resorted to an array of mechanisms including fostering an “organized state of disorganization” among activists and plotting “atomized actions” against the authorities so as to press their demands for political change. Evidence is also mounting that cross-provincial networks of NGOs representing disadvantaged sectors such as underground Christians, demobilized soldiers and victims of Ponzi schemes are being formed – and that pioneers in the public sphere who believe in global values are working together to provide alternatives to Xi’s “one-voice chamber.”
