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Rigid Stability: An Explanatory Framework for China’s Social Situation
By Yu Jianrong
May 20, 2009 - 1:10:22 PM

Rigid Stability: An Explanatory Framework for China’s Social Situation
by Yu Jianrong

Yu Jianrong is an agricultural economist by training, but as Director, Centre for Social Issues, Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, speaks equally as sociologist and political scientist.

The following is a translation of roughly half of Yu Jianrong's address to the Yanshan Forum.

Time: May 9, 2009
Location: China University of Administration and Law (Jimen Campus)

Moderator: Today is the 31st “Yanshan Lecture.” We invited well-known scholar Yu Jianrong. His areas of concern, from peasant rights to worker rights, have adhered always to an academic position of standing at and speaking for the baseline, his research on social conflict and household churches are new and revelatory.

Today's topic: "Rigid stability - an explanatory framework for China’s social situation"; I invite the Professor.

Yu Jianrong: Good afternoon, everyone.

My topic today is work I began earlier this year; I gave a presentation on it at Waseda University, in Japan. [1] Today I want to provide a theoretical framework, adding some theoretical analysis.

Among scholars there are two completely different points of view about China’s current social situation: the first is that Chinese society is in turmoil, and many would argue that since 2008, with the financial crisis, Chinese society is full of problems.

Meanwhile, a completely different theory is that while there are many problems with China’s stability, there will be no turbulence; Chinese society is on the whole the world’s most stable and most active system of government, which shows precisely the superiority of the Chinese socialist system. There are mainstream scholars of late who may often be heard saying that China is a model late developing country. What is the actual state of Chinese society now? I would like today to make an analysis of China's political and social stability.

My view is: a number of social conflicts are going on in China today, but there has been no change in its overall political unity or effectiveness of social control; this stability of Chinese society is a rigid one, bearing very great social risks. To prevent greater social turmoil occurring in China, a series of changes needs to be made.

I want to discuss three issues related to this: (1) what is actually taking place; (2) how to understand China's current rigid stability; (3) what is to be done?

First, I would argue that Chinese society is on the whole stable. In it, rights defence activities triggered by conflicts of interest, and incidents of social venting arising from social psychological imbalances, have a certain impact on the social order, but these events do not fundamentally undermine China’s political unity or the effectiveness of its social governance.

The term “social stability” is generally used with reference to mass incidents. These are generally thought of as illegal and liable to lead to changes in the social order. According to relevant state agency provisions, mass incidents involving less than 1,000 people are deemed large; during the course of last year, group incidents significantly increased in number. Let’s start with a simple analysis.

Group incidents in Chinese society include rights defence by workers and peasants, social anger-venting events, and riots.

The main demand of these groups’ rights defence, on analysis, will be found that, in the peasant group, the issues are mainly about land, land issues are the focus of rural rights defence protests, a large number of studies have found that issue of Chinese peasant land accounts for more than 60% of rural issues; different to the demands of peasants right defence, wages are the main demands of workers rights defence conflicts; for urban residents, the main topic of rights defence is homeowner rights.

There are several characteristics of these rights defence struggles. First, they are over interests, not power.

In other words, the current peasant problem in China is mainly a matter of interests, rather than power. I have mentioned in many places Guangdong Party Secretary Zhang Dejiang’s judgment regarding the rights defence issue at present. Zhang said in a report to the national leadership on 8 May 2007 that a lot of problems had occurred in Guangdong, but they were all contradictions among the people. What are contradictions among the people? They are ones that can be resolved using money. This may not sound nice, but he was right, the rights defence struggles of workers, peasants, and townspeople are at present struggles about interests, not power struggles. They are not trying to gain the power of the ruling party, but want you to give him interests.

Second, awareness of rules [guize 规则 -- trans.] outweighs awareness of rights. This point of view was not proposed by me but by Elizabeth Perry, a professor at Harvard. In 2007 she wrote a very influential article saying that we have for many years formed a view that China would collapse: why then hasn't it done so? [2] Is because we don’t understand China, don’t know what the people of China are doing. Many problems found in China are different from the West, because Western people are on about the law, while Asians are on about rules; in the eyes of  ordinary Chinese people awareness of the rules outweighs awareness of rights.

Let me give you an example. What does the Chinese man in the street want to go tell the Government about? He would say, “You said you’d give me 10 yuan, how can you only give me 5, your government has no principles [guize], what you say can’t be counted on.” A Westerner would not talk like this, but would say, “How can you give me only 10 money, according to human rights, you should give me 100 yuan.” These are two completely different ways of thinking, one is based on existing principles of law, on ideology and innate human rights. Professor Perry’s view changes the whole Western judgment of Chinese society, she says that the ruling party wants people to be happy with what they have, if you don’t talk to Chinese people about rules [guize], but start talking about natural rights, then your troubles will be greater. China's people now do everything in accordance with the government’s rules, which it does not observe. There are so many problems now precisely because the Government does not observe the rules, what it says can’t be counted on. This is the reason Chinese society maintains stability, without developing fundamental change. I was invited to Harvard in July 2008 by Professor Perry, where we had a discussion on “China’s political tradition and development,” explaining why the kind of unrest hadn’t happened in China as Western scholars assumed.

Third, being reactive outweighs being proactive. It seems to me that the people of China will not go looking for trouble from the Government, it is indeed the government that goes looking for trouble from the people, who feel “your inaction or chaotic actions cause problems,” he [the man in the street] is thus forced to take action, and the problems of peasants workers and townspeople are all related to this.

Fourth, simultaneous legitimacy of objectives and illegitimacy of actions.

I simply sum up these four characteristics of rights defence. A most important feature of so many present issues in China is, we would argue, rights defence.

The second type of group events is like the Weng’an incident that happened on 28 June 2008, which I term "social anger venting."

This was devised at a lecture I gave in an American university on October 30, 2007, when I really could find no term to sum up the “Weng'an incident.”

I think that there is a special kind of group incident that may be called anger venting incidents. They have a number of characteristics, (1) their occurrence is quite fortuitous, with no general process as in petitions or administrative litigation; (2) the most critical problem is that there are no obvious organisers, the vast majority of those taking part have no actual stake, mainly seeing injustice in the street, then seizing upon this opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with society mainly in order to give vent to it; (3) new media play a significant role in the process, such as networking and messaging; the fourth characteristic is incidents of beating, smashing, looting, burning and otherwise violating Government agencies and other facilities. If you study social anger-venting events, you will find all the issues have clear targets in terms of claims; while with the third type there is no such disturbance, nor need it have a clear target.

In the conflict in Jishou in September 2008 over illegal fund-raising, the violence involved shops and other social facilities; on National Day in October 2008 all the stores in Jishou City were closed. Rights defence, anger venting and turmoil are thus not the same.

The fourth type is ideological social conflict. This is mainly manifested in religious and ethnic issues. This type of conflict has a very important feature, namely that it has a certain degree of organisation.

We simply present the four-fold categorization of social issues. Goingg through this brief introduction, you will find that 80% of group events in China currently are over rights defence, having a very clear interest demand; the public authorities and infringers are targeted, and not necessarily with violence; in the case of anger venting incidents there are clear interest demands, aimed again at public authorities and infringers, with violence; in the case of riots the demands are complex, the public authorities and infringers are targeted, with violence;  in the case of religious conflicts there are clear political demands, the public authorities and infringers are targeted, and they are definitely violent.

We are, in fact, very confused about many of the problems in China today. In the television to see demonstrations and a lot of problems taking place in other countries, this is street politics, which China does not have. China has rights defence, and there are riots, but no street politics, why do we say this? I think relatively speaking, someone protesting against government, inaction or random action, is in order to resolve some practical interest problems, but there are no clear political demands, and it is not in order to overthrow the government and replace it.

At present there are many human rights organisations in China, but as yet without genuine organised political force. Each incident is isolated; it is difficult to form a national social movement. The generally judgment about a social movement, not only must it have organisation, objectives and discourse, but also fairly detailed sustainable activiy, again not found in China. These issues are influential in China's current politics, but it cannot change our political structure, nor would it fundamentally affect the comprehensiveness and effectiveness of government rule. China's political unity has not shaken today, so I think it is a relatively stable country.

This stability of China is, however, a rigid stability, based on the coercive power of the state, and may bear enormous social risks. Unrestrained self-seeking behaviour on the part of the rulers, as well as problems in the construction of the basic principles of society are leading to rapid loss of political legitimacy.

What is rigid stability? It is political stability based on exclusive and closed political power. The stability of Chinese social is above all political stability, the core of which is not how the state’s laws are implemented, how the courts or the National People's Congress, Government functioning according to law, and one of its greatest features is, given its exclusivity, making the monopolization of political power the highest, even the ultimate goal, of the political system. Absolute social order is the governing goal of “rigid stability”. As soon as any action—demonstration, petition, demonstration, strike, boycott and so on, occurs in China, it will be seen as non-stable, as a major problem. The greatest feature of social governance under rigid stability is dichotomized, black and white thinking, and often makes out that expression of the people’s legitimate interests is undermining social order and governance. The petition system, for example, has a very important feature: on the one hand, its legitimacy derives from the state, Article 41 of the Constitution, and further based on of the State Council's Regulations which provides that the people can petition, but local government can at the same time claim that when you go to Beijing to petition you are a factor of non-stability. Petitioning is a way for people to solve their problems and participate in society, so why describe it as a factor of non-stability? So a major characteristic of rigid stability is that what it seeks is absolute social order. How can “rigid” be turned into “resilient stability”? This is a very big question, I think that correlated with rigid stability is resilient stability, which was not a word thought of by me, but by a good friend of mine.

I said the antithesis of the rigid stability was "soft" stability, but he said “soft” was wrong, it should be “resilient,” because resilience can be measured, it is unbreakable, whereas rigidity breaks easily. How can China's social stability make a transition from rigid to resilient stability? This is a tough problem. Thinking about it, the most important thing is to establish a fair and equitable social distribution system, to change the current pressure mechanisms, establish county-level political decentralisation, and establish the state’s rule of law through judicial reform. I’ve thought this over for a long time, whether it is possible to turns things around, and I think that it is. First is to address the issue of balancing and expressing interests.

Over 80% of the contradictions in Chinese society are contradictions among the people, that is, so-called renminbi contradictions. To ensure balancing of interests, so that conflicts of interest never develop into major issues, we must establish fair and just systems of social distribution. In the current situation in China, the most important issue of the rural interest system is land, how to let peasants have rights to land, so that they obtain basic life guarantee through their land rights, this is very important, involving the problems of rural land right, in the last two years there has been an increase in disputes between people and authorities in China. Who will dominate these interests, will the people with vested interests like it? We first put forward these views, to discuss in order to explore whether there is any possibility.

The shift from rigid to resilient stability must first address questions of interests, but the key lies not in the interests, but in the politics. I think a truly stable society should be a society with democracy within the framework of the Constitution, with genuine expression of interests, so then there’s a question, how to change? If we want this country, this nation to be able to develop smoothly, it's very difficult to solve the problem without reform of the political system.

I have some of the ideas about reform of the political system. Whether it can be done from the grassroots, a decade ago what I mainly studied was the township, the village level. In the end I found that the village level was no good, and could not represent the grass-roots political power of the state power. So I now think that to genuinely change China it is the county, it is really to be done starting from the county government, if real system reform can be carried out in county government, it is a goal which is possible to achieve. Because this way changes in the entire state system will not be influenced, and can find a way to blaze a trail for the entire state system, carve out an “escape route.” How to change political authority at county level? First, can the county government genuinely implement the institutional arrangements conferred by the Constitution. For example, make the election of Peoples Congress deputies real and solid. Second, can County officials be made genuinely elected by the People's Congress, rather than organizationally deployed? Now the county level has reached the time for separation of political powers, can government be genuinely built to the county level? These are things China can do now, and if done properly at the county level, it would foreshadow the future healthy development of the state as a whole. Dr. Sun Yat-sen set out quite clearly in his Jianguo gangling [Program of of State-building], he said if political authority were consolidated at the county level the nation could find a way, because all county-level political authority is directly in contact with the people, whereas that in the Centre and the provinces was officials governing officials. Recently, I have been writing articles on this, calling for starting reform at the county level political authority.

(Continues).

[1] Yu Jianrong, “Dangqian Zhongguo neng bimian shehui da dongdang ma?” [Can China today avoid social upheaval?], Tianyi, 8 May 2009 [于建嵘： “当前中国能避免社会大动荡吗？”， 天益，2009年5月 8日 (<http://www.tecn.cn/data/26999.html).>http://www.tecn.cn/data/26999.html).].

[2] Elizabeth Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of “Rights: From Mencius to Mao—and Now,” Perspectives on Politics, 6:1 (March 2008), 37-50.

Full Chinese report at:
http://view.news.qq.com/a/20090515/000033.htm

Translated by David Kelly
China Research Centre
University of Technology Sydney




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