ABSTRACT
In recent years, China has seen a sharp increase in confrontations between the state and various social actors. The upswing is apparent in key relevant metrics: the number of incidents, the number of participants and the degree of violence (Tanner 2006).1 But, as alarming as the numbers are for a state fixated on the goal of nurturing a “harmonious society,” do these metrics comprise the whole story of resistance in contemporary China? Two cultural events that took place in Beijing between 1995 and 2006 should give us pause, not because they disprove the significance of overt state-society contentious politics, but because they bring into question the concept of resistance in its dichotomizing state-society form. The first is a decade-long graffiti project carried out by the contemporary artist Zhang Dali (b. 1964). The second is a spate of online discussion over the redevelopment of the Qianmen neighborhood in the center of Beijing. On the surface, these episodes have little in common. But in the space below, I attempt to draw attention to their commonalities as parts of the ideological, economic, and political struggle over the physical reconstitution of the city in the context of the deepening penetration of market forces in China. Binding the two is a shared role in the popular expressions of deep ambivalence about the pattern of Beijing’s urban development, which began in earnest in the 1990s and remains ongoing. Both exhibit novel forms of participation in a cultural politics that embodies and exemplifies specifically urban modes of interaction with the state and society that have emerged in tandem with the deepening relevance of the market and new technologies in people’s daily lives. At the ground level, they are also linked by the citywide experience of demolition and construction uprooting one Beijing to build another suited to the new “new China.” By pointing to the substantive similarities and differences contained in these subtle forms of resistance, I hope to expand the scope of inquiry into resistance in China while sharpening the analytical tools currently at our disposal.
