ABSTRACT
Mass actions can alter state behaviors through undermining the authoritarian regime’s economic goals and legitimacy, straining the control apparatus, and providing support to dissident intellectuals. In China since 1978, when the reform era began, peasants and workers have engaged in intermittent protest activity. To a limited extent, industrial laborers have joined democratic movements. However, while mass groups have influenced state policies, they have not yet spearheaded democratic movements nor seriously undermined the Communist Party’s dominance over society. In this chapter I describe the plights of Chinese peasants and workers during the 1980s and 1990s. I discuss social, political, and cultural obstacles to effective collective action and the building of intermediary associations that unify peasants and workers as classes, facilitate cooperation with other groups, and enable them to bargain with central state actors. Though more tightly controlled, industrial laborers pose a greater challenge to the regime in the short term, since they are better organized, closer to urban democratic movements, and have suffered more abrupt economic losses. Nonetheless, peasants present significant problems for the regime in the long run. Social stability in vast areas of the country and the Party’s capacity to control urban groups depend upon the acquiescence of the peasantry.
