CURRENT HISTORY September 2014

“Contrary to conventional predictions, the growth of protest and civil society in contemporary seems more conducive to the resilience of authoritarianism than to imminent democratization.” Citizen Contention and Campus Calm: The Paradox of Chinese Civil Society ELIZABETH J. PERRY

ivil society in contemporary China presents state enterprises prompted laid-off and retired a perplexing paradox. Despite the brutal workers to lodge petitions and stage sit-ins at Csuppression of the 1989 Tiananmen upris- factories and offices in opposition to ing, social contention and associational activism plant closures and paltry pensions. swelled over the ensuing years. One might have In the 2000s, as the negative side effects of expected the ruthless June Fourth repression of rapid economic reform became increasingly visi- the massive student movement to have deterred ble, environmental pollution sparked “not-in-my- subsequent dissent, but in fact the frequency of backyard” rallies among a growing middle class protest has steadily escalated in the past 25 years. anxious to protect its newly acquired property and Moreover, China today is host to countless grass- its health. State-sanctioned infrastructure devel- roots (as well as government-sponsored) nongov- opment and commercial real estate projects ignit- ernmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, ed angry remonstrations by displaced residents. and charities—not to mention a vibrant sphere Labor disputes erupted with calls for higher wages of online public debate. In contrast to 1989, a and better working conditions. Migrant workers nascent civil society can now be said to exist. demanded that their children be permitted to sit Nowhere is this organizing and societal for university entrance examinations in the cit- engagement more evident than among college ies where their parents labored. And yet, amid students. There are, however, few signs of anoth- the explosion of protest activity by seemingly all er student-led “democracy movement” looming manner of aggrieved citizens, China’s university on the horizon. Instead, university campuses in campuses have remained remarkably quiet. the People’s Republic of China (PRC) these days form a critical component of an apparently effec- THREAT AVERTED tive web of support and stability for the existing Averting campus unrest in China is no mean political system. feat. Over the course of the twentieth century, The scope and spread of protest in post-1989 every generation of Chinese university students China have been impressive. The early 1990s wit- played a catalytic role in a cycle of protest move- nessed a wave of violent tax riots by farmers com- ments that transformed the country’s political plaining of “unfair burdens.” When the central trajectory. The (CCP) government responded to the rural unrest with traces its own origins to the May Fourth Movement a historic decision to abolish China’s centuries- of 1919, when nationalist students streamed out old agricultural tax, the locus of protest shifted of college campuses onto the streets to denounce from the countryside back to the . In the late Japan’s threat to Chinese sovereignty. Two years 1990s, the privatization and bankruptcy of many later, a small band of intellectuals—led by the dean and librarian of Peking University—founded the CCP to spearhead a revolution intended to ELIZABETH J. PERRY is a professor of government at Harvard restore China’s national pride. In the 1930s and University and director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Her books include Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary 1940s, thousands of college students suspended Tradition (University of California Press, 2012). their studies to participate in the Communist

211 212 • CURRENT HISTORY • September 2014 revolution and its front organizations—first in the rise spelled the demise of Communist regimes war against Japan (1937–45) and then in the Civil from Bucharest to Budapest. On the other hand, War against the Nationalist Party (1945–49). the absence of a comparable level of autonomous Just a few years after the establishment of associational activity in Beijing was blamed for the People’s Republic in 1949, students rallied the durability of the PRC’s authoritarian political to Chairman Mao Zedong’s injunction to “let a system. hundred flowers bloom” by offering spirited criti- It is certainly true that the Tiananmen uprising cisms of the new socialist system; shocked by the occurred in the absence of a robust and indepen- depth of dissent, the PRC leadership unleashed a dent urban civil society of the type that is often draconian “anti-rightist campaign” in the sum- presumed to be a prerequisite for democratiza- mer of 1957. A decade later, campus protest tion. Although so-called “democracy salons” had again augured radical change when Mao called sprouted up on a number of Chinese univer- on student Red Guards to jumpstart his Great sity campuses in the 1980s, these were small and Proletarian . nebulous entities, closely monitored by the state’s In 1966, Beijing’s leading universities served as security apparatus. The millions of protesters who launching pads for Mao’s final revolutionary quest. marched in Beijing and other major Chinese cit- For the better part of the Cultural Revolution ies in the spring of 1989 were for the most part decade (1966–76), mass criticism and “class strug- mobilized not by new civil society associations, gle” supplanted classroom instruction as the main but instead via preexisting socialist institutions: campus activity. When the Tiananmen Uprising public universities, state-owned enterprises, offi- erupted only 13 years after the conclusion of the cial mass associations, and even government Cultural Revolution, it looked as though China’s and party agencies. When central leaders finally university students were once again poised to issued an unambiguous directive to demobilize spark a major political the movement, these orga- transformation. nizations quickly fell into But the bloody sup- University students are at present line and the protest crum- pression of June Fourth bled almost overnight. devoting more energy to community not only stymied the call Tracing the failure of for fundamental political service than to political mobilization. Tiananmen to the weak- reform on the part of mil- ness of Chinese civil soci- lions of protesters; it also ety heightens the paradox stemmed the generational tide of politically influ- of post-1989 developments, however. For the ential student protest that had punctuated China’s past quarter-century has not only seen a tor- entire twentieth century. For the past 25 years rent of popular protest in virtually all corners of now, Chinese campuses have remained unchar- Chinese society outside of academia; recent years acteristically tranquil. The anomaly appears even have also witnessed an unprecedented growth in starker in light of the cascade of momentous volunteerism and activism—that is, fledgling civil events, invigorated if not always instigated by society—which is particularly pronounced on col- restive students, that occurred elsewhere in the lege campuses. world during this same period: Eastern Europe’s Students and professors are at the forefront of revolutions of 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union, an extraordinary surge in associational participa- the Color Revolutions in former Soviet states, and tion and community service. Yet, further deepen- the Arab Spring, for example. ing the paradox of post-1989 trends, applications In the immediate aftermath of June Fourth, to join the CCP are also at an all-time high among journalistic and scholarly consensus in the university students and instructors. Contrary to West ascribed the disappointing failure of the conventional predictions, the growth of protest Tiananmen uprising—in contrast to the stun- and civil society in contemporary China seems ning success of anticommunist movements across more conducive to the resilience of authoritarian- Eastern Europe later that year—to the relative ism than to imminent democratization. weakness of Chinese civil society. On the one At the center of the PRC’s anomalous situation is hand, Poland’s Solidarity, Czechoslovakia’s Charter the compliance of its academics. The causes of this 77, and Hungary’s Danube Circle were applauded complicity are multiple. First, and most obvious, as part of an emerging urban civil society whose is the array of control mechanisms that the party- The Paradox of Chinese Civil Society • 213 state deploys to maintain order on university cam- sible for student work at all levels of the univer- puses. Second is a range of more subtle techniques sity structure. of cultural designed to produce politi- In recent years these control methods have been cal allegiance and regime loyalty among citizens “modernized” with the aid of new techniques and in general and students in particular. Third, and technologies. For example, as in the United States, arguably most important, are the various oppor- mental health facilities are now a staple feature tunities for regime-supportive civic engagement of Chinese college campuses. But in the PRC the and service afforded by the recent expansion of definition of “mental illness” is broadly construed civil society. Ironically, the increased associational to include ideas and inclinations that the state activity among Chinese students today is work- deems politically dangerous, and the results of ing to underpin, rather than to undermine, the mandatory mental health screening for freshmen authority of the Communist party-state. are forwarded to political cadres for analysis and Compounding this irony is the fact that the possible preventive or punitive action. very term “civil society” (gongmin shehui) is one Another “modernized” means of gauging (and of seven topics (along with universal values, guiding) student opinion is afforded by the spread freedom of speech, civil rights, crony capitalism, of the internet and social media. In 2008 China judicial independence, and historical errors of the passed the United States as the world’s biggest CCP) that the current regime has officially banned internet user, with microblogging via Weibo (the from public discourse on grounds that the concept Chinese equivalent of Twitter) and messaging via reflects “dangerous Western influences.” WeChat (an alternative to Facebook) especially popular among college students. Blog postings, CAMPUS CONTROLS text messages, and other electronic and cellular Let us consider first the control mechanisms. communications facilitate the growth of (both Acutely aware of the potential threat of campus virtual and actual) civil society among Chinese turmoil, China’s Communist party-state has devel- university students. But they also enable the oped a battery of methods to monitor and restrain state to better monitor this burgeoning activism. student behavior. College students are organized Counselors and cadres combat subversive or sus- by “homeroom” (banji) as well as by class year picious content not only through censorship, but (nianji), with these units headed by politically also by commissioning counter-posts that pro- reliable peers who convey information both from mote the officially prescribed point of view. and to university administrators. Peer surveillance The party-state deploys proactive as well as and pressure are embedded within a professional reactive measures in the effort to channel stu- oversight hierarchy. dent sentiment in directions favorable to the Forming the mainstay of the control regimen CCP’s agenda. Since the 1990s, ideological and are so-called “guidance counselors” (fudaoyuan)— political education (sixiang zhengzhi jiaoyu) and trained personnel tasked with keeping close tabs military training (junxun) have been standard on their student charges to ensure that their beliefs components of the university curriculum. Such and behavior do not violate approved boundaries. classes and exercises are designed to inculcate Although a system of guidance counselors was regime-supportive dispositions and deportment. originally introduced at Tsinghua University as Of growing importance in recent years has been early as 1953, it assumed renewed and enlarged instruction in “cultural proficiency” (wenhua significance after 1989. suzhi) and “national character” (guoqing), which Some of the counselors’ duties are similar to presents Chinese history, art, philosophy, and those of resident tutors on many Western college literature in ways that postulate an organic con- campuses: helping to resolve personal problems, nection and essential compatibility between the offering academic advice, and generally serving splendors of China’s ancient “tradition” and its as older role models for undergraduates. Unlike contemporary “socialist” system. resident tutors at Oxford or Harvard, however, This instruction is an extension of the “Patriotic the chief responsibility of the fudaoyuan is ideo- Education Campaign,” launched in the aftermath logical and political. Typically young instructors of the Tiananmen uprising, which highlighted in their late 20s or early 30s, the guidance coun- both China’s national and its selors (assisted by student informants) report modern revolutionary experience as twin sources directly to the deputy party secretaries respon- of legitimacy for the CCP. Cultural proficiency— 214 • CURRENT HISTORY • September 2014 thanks to generous funding from the Central educational activities to the provision of social Propaganda Department—is promoted not only services outside the academy. Although the Xi in the classroom, but also in theaters, museums, Jinping administration has blacklisted “civil soci- field trips to ancient and revolutionary historical ety” as a dangerous Western notion, its emergence sites, invited lectures by distinguished scholars is actually an important contributor to campus and public intellectuals, research projects by calm in the contemporary PRC. The space for renowned teams of social scientists and human- meaningful participation afforded by the growth ists, and so forth. The universities constitute a key of grassroots NGOs encourages college students node in a massive party-state initiative in cultural (and their professors) to concentrate on variet- governance intended to convince citizens that CCP ies of activism that directly and indirectly benefit rule is endowed with “Chinese characteristics” Communist rule—relieving the state of a portion that render the party’s authority both natural and of its social welfare burden while at the same time necessary. channeling youthful energy away from potentially While overt control mechanisms and formal disruptive behavior. ideological instruction are a common cause for Many of the associations that have sprung up in complaint among Chinese university students, recent years enjoy close connections to the party- the more subtle and sophisticated modes of state and its official “mass associations.” The cultural governance appear to enjoy consider- Chinese Communist Youth League (CYL) plays able success. To be sure, one hears many criti- a particularly prominent role on university cam- cisms of the contemporary political system on puses, not only as a training camp for prospective Chinese campuses; seldom, however, do these party members but also as sponsor for a range of critics suggest that the system is in any way “un- volunteer and philanthropic activities. The best Chinese.” Under the banner of patriotism, the known of these CYL endeavors, Project Hope, Propaganda Department’s mobilizes a steady stream of grafting of China’s ancient college student volunteers heritage onto its twentieth- China’s party-state has developed to help staff the thousands century revolutionary leg- of elementary schools that a battery of methods to monitor acy to fashion an allegedly it has recently constructed seamless “socialism with and restrain student behavior. in impoverished areas of the Chinese characteristics” (as country. Deng Xiaoping dubbed the While a disproportionate post-Mao system) seems to have taken firm root. share of financial and political resources is con- For a political system whose basic ideology and centrated in such GONGOs, or government-orga- institutions were imported almost wholesale nized nongovernmental organizations, they by no from the Soviet Union, this level of cultural rec- means monopolize the field of associational activ- ognition and acceptance (at least among those ity either on or off campus. The Chinese Academy who identify as Han Chinese, if not among eth- of Social Sciences, a government think tank, nic minorities such as Tibetans or Uighurs) is a reported an official figure of over 800,000 “social significant achievement. organizations” and “social associations” in 2013. Unofficial estimates, which include a multitude STUDENT VOLUNTEERS of unregistered groups, put the total number of Even more effective in eliciting campus compli- grassroots NGOs of various sorts at several million. ance than either control mechanisms or cultural Thanks to recent reforms making it easier governance, I would submit, are the expanded for social service organizations to register with opportunities for voluntarism and community ser- local municipal bureaus of civil affairs, grassroots vice that have developed apace in recent years— groups have been able to enlarge their fundraising especially since the Wenchuan earthquake and the efforts. Since the catastrophic 2008 Wenchuan Beijing Olympics of 2008. earthquake, when both government and social Student clubs of various sorts had been a media encouraged citizens to dig deep into their feature of Chinese college life since the 1980s. own pockets to aid the disaster victims, the prac- The past few years, however, have seen a mush- tice of private giving has spread rapidly in Chinese rooming of organizations whose missions extend society. Charitable foundations and philanthropic beyond conventional campus recreational and venture funds have proliferated, now numbering The Paradox of Chinese Civil Society • 215 in the thousands, and affording ever expanding nursing homes, for example. A secular sense of opportunities for community activism. social responsibility is fueling donation drives for The Wenchuan quake not only encouraged everything from books for school libraries to win- the rise of private philanthropy; it also triggered ter coats for the poor. And the influence of social- a massive volunteer movement when concerned ist ideals can be detected in the rapid growth of citizens from across the country, especially col- labor NGOs that provide legal and welfare services lege students, flocked to Sichuan to offer their for downtrodden workers. personal assistance to the rescue effort. The trend of youthful voluntarism for public causes acceler- A WORRIED STATE ated a few months later when the government (via Under some pressure to live up to its own offi- the CYL, the Confucius Institute, and other official cially espoused socialist ideology by upgrading agencies) mobilized large numbers of student the provision of social services, the party-state volunteers to help out at the Beijing Olympics. is anxious to reap the positive dividends of this The experiences of 2008 were clearly transforma- flourishing of community activism. In some cases, tive for the current generation of young Chinese, local even contract with civic orga- some of whom went on to establish private chari- nizations to facilitate the implementation of man- ties of their own. Many others have continued the dated welfare policies and other social services. practice of devoting generous amounts of personal But the state’s top priority remains that of “sta- time and money to support their favorite causes. bility maintenance” (weiwen), or the perpetuation While battling HIV/AIDS and environmental of Communist Party rule. Fearful that networks pollution animated the first generation of China’s of social activists could pose an existential threat grassroots NGO activists, both the issues and the similar to what transpired in Eastern Europe in motives that drive today’s activists are remarkably 1989, the government keeps close tabs on NGOs wide-ranging. A variety of religious faiths—from and makes it difficult (through registration rules Christianity to Buddhism—is inspiring the estab- as well as public security surveillance and harass- lishment of privately operated medical clinics and ment) for local groups to forge links with counter-

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Visit fletcher.tufts.edu or email [email protected] 216 • CURRENT HISTORY • September 2014 parts in other parts of the country. The party-state spearheaded some of the largest demonstrations in pays special attention to constraining the involve- the island’s history to register dissatisfaction with ment of intellectuals—college students includ- the PRC’s stipulated process for nominating the ed—in order to prevent their serving as bridges ’s chief executive. between groups operating in different locations or It is too soon to assess the long-term impact composed of disparate social classes or interests. of either of these two protest movements, but the An outside observer might suspect PRC authori- events in Taiwan and Hong Kong this spring and ties of betraying a streak of paranoia by devoting so summer have surely reinforced PRC authorities’ much concern to combating the supposed politi- worries about the dangers of an alliance between cal threat of university students. After all, rapid politicized student activists and an awakened civil expansion in higher education enrollments, com- society. Instead of resorting to crackdowns by riot bined with the growth of professional and techni- police, as occurred in both Taipei and Hong Kong, cal training at the expense of liberal arts education, Beijing would obviously far prefer to prevent the has rendered college students in China today—as emergence of student-inspired protest in the first in many other countries—more focused on secur- place. Ensuring that college campuses are tightly ing a job than on sabotaging the system. But in fact monitored and that student energies are chan- the party-state’s worries are hardly groundless. In neled into system-supportive rather than system- addition to the historic cycles of Chinese student subversive modes of activism is therefore a critical protest, there is ample contemporary evidence of element in the regime’s comprehensive scheme for the challenge posed by student power in those “stability maintenance.” parts of Greater China where campus controls are less stringent than on the mainland. THE UPPER HAND As the PRC keenly appreciates, the possibility Like so many features of the contemporary of college students’ acting as spark plugs of politi- Chinese scene, the role of civil society would seem cal protest certainly did not disappear on June 4, to challenge conventional wisdom concerning the 1989. Twenty-five years after the suppression of relationship between socioeconomic development the Tiananmen uprising, events in both Taiwan and political change. Counterintuitively, the recent and Hong Kong have demonstrated the continu- increase of popular protest and associational activ- ing capacity of Chinese students—in concert with ity in the PRC has proved more of a help than civil society allies—to trigger mass movements a hindrance to the perpetuation of Communist with unwelcome political implications for Beijing. party-state rule. Rather than providing a platform In Taiwan, the Sunflower Student Movement (tai- for political agitation and democratization, the yanghua xueyun) occupied the Legislative Yuan burgeoning of civil society in mainland China has for the first time in its history and forced the rul- offered an outlet for public service that relieves ing party to reconsider a cross-strait service trade the state of some of its own onerous welfare bur- agreement with the PRC. In Hong Kong, students den while also fulfilling citizens’ growing desire for social engagement. The pervasive contestation that takes place Y IN From the archives TOR TH outside the gates of university campuses, while IS E H M of Current History… A sometimes sparked by grassroots NGOs, has con- K I N centrated on economic and environmental issues “The strange compro- G 1 that do not directly challenge CCP authority. And mise in Chiang [Kai- the campuses themselves, the cradle of politi- shek] between ancient cal ferment in twentieth-century China, have ways of thought and remained uncharacteristically quiet for the past new may be essential for the leadership 25 years. of a nation with one foot planted securely To be sure, the PRC is not the only case where in medievalism and the other feeling for a a rising civil society failed to produce democra- stepping stone toward modernism.” tization. Interwar Germany and Japan present Edgar Snow examples of another, more disturbing, scenario “Weak China’s Strong Man” in which the development of vociferous protest January 1934 and vibrant associations in the 1920s and ’30s presaged a turn toward right-wing militarism. The Paradox of Chinese Civil Society • 217

Both Weimar Germany and Taisho Japan lacked small part to new opportunities for volunteerism the robust political institutions necessary to chan- provided by the dramatic development of civil nel the activism of an aroused citizenry in ways society, China’s university students are at present productive of political liberalism. The result in devoting more energy to community service than those cases was not democracy, but fascism and to political mobilization. Hostile as the top lead- the scourge of World War II. ership is toward the whole idea of civil society, In stark contrast to interwar Germany and the Communist party-state’s survival has actually Japan, however, the PRC today does not lack been prolonged by its emergence. for strong political institutions. The CCP retains Still, one cannot help but wonder: If China’s a tight grip on both government and society. authoritarian polity is so resilient, why are its Thus, while a turn toward aggressive militarism leaders so anxious about the system’s durabil- is not beyond the realm of possibility, a more ity? Why do they feel compelled to lavish such likely trajectory for the PRC is that of continued extravagant resources on the quest for “stability Communist Party rule. To date, the party-state maintenance”? Judging by recent events in Taipei has shown a deft ability to keep the upper hand and Hong Kong, the advent of an independent amid an extraordinary explosion of citizen con- Chinese civil society—aroused by impassioned tention. university students—could indeed at some future A key pillar of this successful strategy has been point pose a serious threat to the endurance of the the prevention of campus unrest. Thanks in no Communist party-state. I