ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the weiquan movements in the uneven landscape of social inequality created by China's urban and land reform policies and examines how the state's handling of social opposition has led to a weiquan paradox. That is, although weiquan participants actively engage in a discourse of expansion of rights, their power to define rights has been significantly reduced, and these have only been realized in narrow legal and economic terms. Weiquan movements have recently become a distinctive characteristic of rapid urbanization in China. Large-scale land development has led to massive residential relocation, changes to everyday life and livelihood, and a redefinition of citizenship and the entitlements established under socialism. As a result, Chinese citizens have asked for greater procedural rights and substantive rights from the Chinese state. The increasing number and intensity of weiquan movements have caused the central Chinese state to closely monitor mass incidents in an attempt to discourage social mobilization and to maintain social stability.
