ABSTRACT
After nearly three decades of “reform and opening”, China’s burgeoning economy still shows relentless growth. But economic growth has been uneven, benefiting the elite rather than the workers and farmers, and promoting the development of the cities more than the countryside. Economic development has brought in its wake a host of social and political problems revolving around official corruption and malpractices, ambiguous and unjust property rights, and environmental pollution, which in turn have fuelled grievances. This situation has indeed raised the citizenship consciousness of ordinary citizens who have seen the failure of their expectation for redress of grievances through legal or political institutions. As a result, a baffling array of social protests has appeared. The increasing popular discontent and mass protests signal a new set of state-society relations. These relations appear to be developing into key factors that are challenging regime stability in the near future, and to a certain extent, are becoming primary incentives behind regime transformation.
