ABSTRACT
A frequent topic of debate among scholars of Chinese society concerns the level of social dissatisfaction and the stability of authoritarian rule in the PRC. Underlying this debate is a key question: are state-society relations in China inherently conflictual (and thus likely to provoke political instability) or cooperative (and thus likely to promote political stability)? This question is difficult to answer because there are multitudinous examples of both conflict and cooperation between social groups and the Chinese party-state. Depending on which examples are highlighted, a compelling argument can be made in either direction. Rather than focusing on the seemingly irresolvable question posed above, this paper seeks to explain how state-society relations can be simultaneously conflictual and cooperative, and under what circumstances a particular interaction between a social group and ruling authorities is likely to be more or less harmonious. To investigate these questions, this paper focuses on unregistered Protestant churches in China’s reform era.
