In recent years, Chinese society has been rocked by some signi cant cases of ethnic unrest, in Tibet in 2008 and in Xinjiang in 2009. Clashes and friction with groups of religious believers-most notably Falun Gong practitioners in 1999-are less well-known but important nevertheless. Although each of these cases have their own causes and characteristics, the fact that they have arisen at all can be at least partially attributed to the limitations of the corporatist institutional forms that have been created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as part of its United Front work to reach out, represent and even in uence religious believers and minorities. These limitations reduce the capacity of representatives to gauge the feelings and problems of the groups they represent and inhibit the upward transmission of accurate information.