Government Response to Nationalist Protests and State-Society Relations in Contemporary China
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Contentious Stability: Government Response to Nationalist Protests and State-Society Relations in Contemporary China By Chunhua Chen B.A. in English, June 2007, University of International Business and Economics M.A. in Foreign Languages and Applied Linguistics, June 2009, University of International Business and Economics M.A. June 2011 in International Affairs, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Middlebury College A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 31, 2016 Dissertation directed by Bruce J. Dickson Professor of Political Science and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Chunhua Chen has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of August 5, 2016. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Contentious Stability: Government Response to Nationalist Protests and State-Society Relations in Contemporary China Chunhua Chen Dissertation Research Committee: Bruce J. Dickson, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Celeste Arrington, Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Committee Member Harris Mylonas, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2016 by Chunhua Chen All rights reserved iii To my grandfather, Chen Wenxiang iv Acknowledgment I have benefited immeasurably from the support of many individuals and institutions over the course of my graduate studies and the development and completion of this dissertation. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation committee members Bruce Dickson, Celeste Arrington, and Harris Mylonas. As the chair of the committee and my mentor since I first came to the George Washington University, Bruce has always been available when I needed guidance, has given me detailed comments on countless drafts, and has provided intellectual as well as moral support. He also provided me with contact information and introductions that enabled me to start my field research in China. I count myself extremely fortunate to have him as my mentor. Throughout the process, Celeste has provided excellent feedback and cheerful encouragements, and this project, especially its theoretical portion, has benefited immensely from her input. Harris has been a great source of inspiration during my graduate school years. It was in his class of Nationalism that I developed the interest in the subject of this dissertation. His profound knowledge on the subject of nationalism and nation building, rigorous thinking, and timely responses to my questions would always be missed. I am also grateful to Steven J. Balla and Andrew I. Yeo for serving as external readers of my dissertation. I also wish to thank Haotian Qi, Jackson Woods, Mara Pillinger, Tian Wu, Rui He, and See-Won Byun for their helpful suggestions at various stages of this project. The feedback I received while presenting my work at the IQMR workshop in summer 2014 and the ACPS Annual Meeting in June 2015 was also extremely valuable. At the George Washington University, I would like to thank professors Harvey Feigenbaum, Eric Grynaviski, Caitlin Talmadge, Robert Adcock, and Emmanuel Teitelbaum for their willingness to read and offer comments on my writing and for their encouragement throughout the years. I am also grateful to Kimberley Morgan and Brandon Bartels for their support as graduate advisors. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues and friends at GWU and the DC area for their v devoted friendship during my graduate school years: Madeleine Wells, Chana Solomon-Schwartz , Amanda Wade, Dillon Tatum, Liao Zhou, Annelle Sheline, Jessica Anderson, and Dorothy Smith Ohl. This dissertation would not have been possible without institutional and financial support from the following institutions: At the George Washington University, the Political Science Department and the Columbian College for Arts and Sciences have generously funded five years of my graduate education; the Sigur Center for Asian Studies funded my research trip to China in summer 2014. The Boyuan Foundation provided funding for my field research in 2015. I am also indebted to Professor Shen Mingming and the Research Center for Contemporary China of the Peking University for providing me institutional support during my stay in China for field research. My fieldwork in China would not have been successful without the trust, patience and generosity of the many scholars, officials, students, intellectuals, think-tank analysts and journalists that I interviewed, whom for various reasons must remain anonymous. To them I am deeply grateful. I would also like to thank George Zhao, Autumn Fan, Eddie Liu, Helen Zeng, Alice Yang, Shari Lin, Luo Ting, Lv Aofei, Yun Anqi, Ning Jing, Jie Dalei, An Gang, Zuo Yilu, Zheng Yan, Bian Yongzu, He Gang and Liu Zhaokun for their devoted friendship throughout the years. The cocktails, dinner parties and daily greetings that started with “how is your dissertation going” really helped. Although my parents, Chen Deming and Li Yuzhu, still do not quite understand what I have been working on and once suggested, when seeing me “toil,” that maybe even carpentering was a better vocation than researching, they did their best to tolerate my long absence from home, provide me with consistent care and support, and give me the space I needed to complete the dissertation. My special thanks go to Li Xiaoqing, my dearest aunt, who took great care of me in spring and summer of 2016, when I was busy writing the main chapters. Finally, I am forever indebted to Chen Wenxiang, my grandfather, for being my source of vi strength and aspiration for a better self. This dissertation is dedicated to him. vii Abstract of Dissertation Contentious Stability: Government Response to Nationalist Protests and State-Society Relations in Contemporary China Why does the Chinese government permit popular nationalist protests some times but not others in the post-Tiananmen incident era? Given the ideological implications and broad appeal of nationalist protests in contemporary China, nationalist protests are prevented from taking place more often than not. Therefore, it is puzzling that the Chinese government would have allowed them to happen in certain cases, primarily protests triggered by disputes with Japan and the United States, because it involves very high political risks for the regime. Based on case studies of government response to potential and actual nationalist protests in China in the years after 1989, this dissertation argues that the response of Chinese government to popular nationalist protests triggered by external issues should be conceptualized as a process consisting of two stages: the initial stage, when there are signs of attempts at nationalist protests or only small-scale, sporadic protests have broken out, and the escalated stage, when nationalist protests have escalated into large-scale protests that cut across regional boundaries and class lines. It argues that at the first stage, only under rare conditions--when there is the coexistence of a) recent tense relations between China and the target country and b) elite disunity/indecision, the Chinese government would allow nationalist protests to take place. If nationalist protests have escalated, elite disunity or indecision would give way to the government’s collective will to re- impose domestic stability without backlash. The government’s response at this stage will be dependent on the public support the protests evoke and the nature of the protest demands. From high level to low level of coercion, the government will resort to repression (high-level coercion) when there is little public support for the nationalist protests, exercise discouragement (medium- level coercion) when protests enjoy high public support and spill over from nationalist ones to other issue areas, and respond with monitored tolerance (low-level coercion) when protests are viii with high public support and only with nationalist motivations. ix Table of Contents Dedication .................................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... vi Abstract of Dissertation .............................................................................................................. ix List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... xii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ xiii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2: Development of Nationalism in China ..................................................................... 44 Chapter 3: Domestic Stability Overrides Everything Else ......................................................... 61 Chapter 4: Government’s Handling of Anti-Japanese Protests in Contemporary China .......... 93 Chapter 5: Anti-US Protests: The Exception or the Rule? ...................................................