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An Analysis of Deadly Repression Against Anti-Regime Protests in The

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An Analysis of Deadly Repression Against Anti-Regime Protests in The Beyond the Red Line: An Analysis of Deadly Repression Against Anti-Regime Protests in the People’s Republic of China By Tucker Craven Senior Honors Thesis Political Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill April 12, 2021 Approved: Dr. Mark Crescenzi, Thesis Advisor Dr. Navin Bapat, Reader Dr. Cameron Ballard-Rosa, Reader 1 Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3 Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 5 Defining State Repression ........................................................................................................................ 5 Protest and Repression under Chinese Authoritarianism ........................................................................ 8 China’s Ethnic Policy since 1949 ............................................................................................................ 12 Theory and Hypotheses ......................................................................................................... 14 Research Design .................................................................................................................... 25 Case Studies and Analysis ..................................................................................................... 34 1989 — Tiananmen Square Student Protests ......................................................................... 34 The Protests ........................................................................................................................................... 34 Repression .............................................................................................................................................. 36 Pro-Democracy Movements in the Lead-up to Tiananmen ................................................................... 37 2008 — Tibetan Unrest ......................................................................................................... 40 The Protests ........................................................................................................................................... 40 Pre-History of Protest Prior to 2008 ...................................................................................................... 42 2009 — Urumqi Protests ....................................................................................................... 46 The 7/5 Incident ..................................................................................................................................... 46 The Riots and Repression ....................................................................................................................... 47 Protestor Violence ................................................................................................................................. 49 Historical Protests in Xinjiang ................................................................................................................ 50 2014 — Hong Kong Umbrella Movement .............................................................................. 53 The Protests ........................................................................................................................................... 53 The Repression ....................................................................................................................................... 54 Analysis of (Non-lethal) Repression ....................................................................................................... 55 2019 — Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Protests ........................................................................ 57 The Protests ........................................................................................................................................... 57 The Repression ....................................................................................................................................... 58 Analysis of the Repression ..................................................................................................................... 60 2020 — Inner Mongolian Education Protests ......................................................................... 63 The Protests ........................................................................................................................................... 63 Analysis of Repression ........................................................................................................................... 66 2 Discussion of Findings ........................................................................................................... 70 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 77 Appendix A: Data and Estimations ........................................................................................ 84 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................... 88 3 Introduction Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the central government has exercised an “ultimate control” that is emblematic of authoritarian regimes in general (Brodsgaard 2012, p. 226). For the first fifty years of its existence, as in most authoritarian regimes, there was generally “a lack of political opportunities for collective action” (Cai 2008, p. 411) in the PRC. Taking well-known crackdowns such as the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 into consideration, it is clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been willing to resort to military force to maintain its strong grip on the population. However, over the 70-year history of the PRC, the government’s response to political protest has not been invariable; that is to say, in response to some mass protests, the government responds swiftly and totally while in response to others, there seems to be some level of restraint. From the turn of the 21st century, this variation has become more and more apparent. Instead of absolute intolerance of popular protest, there appears to be a red line before which protest movements are allowed to move forward and may even be accommodated, but beyond which protest movements are repressed. The idea of different demands being tolerated while different demands are repressed has become a staple of understanding contentious politics under authoritarian regimes today (Cai 2008; Li 2019). In China, protests in favor of the protection of workers’ rights or environmental issues are generally accommodated (Li 2019; Göbel 2020). Demands that destabilize or threaten the legitimacy of the regime (i.e. calls for democracy) are typically repressed (Ibid). However, particularly in the case of China, a question remains: when a protest movement has crossed that red line, why are some movements more harshly repressed than others? Specifically, why are some protests met with deadly force while others are not? Given the fact 4 that the aforementioned red line is often drawn based on the type of demands of a protest movement (Cai 2008), it seems prudent to start by examining the demands of different protest events to answer the question above. Which types of anti-regime demands are met with the highest level of deadly repression? Why is it that these demands are so threatening to the Chinese government? These are the questions that I seek to answer in this paper. The following study is a qualitative historical analysis of protests, among which there are two major types of anti-regime protest: pro-democracy protests and identity-based protests calling for increased ethno-cultural autonomy. An independent variable that increases level of deadly repression along with demand type is the history of similar protest movements preceding the main case. The cases to be analyzed are either single protest events or series of interrelated protest events in a specific region or locality. The six cases analyzed took place between the years of 1989 and 2020. I hypothesize that deadly repression will be highest in those protest events or movements that include demands for increased cultural autonomy. I theorize that such demands threaten Chinese sovereignty even more than calls for democracy due to the compounding effect of preceding protests. Calling for democracy is calling for internal regime change that reshapes the Chinese state and, likewise, the Chinese national identity. In contrast, calling for increased ethnic and cultural autonomy could mean declaring an independent state that would sever ties to the Chinese state and reject Chinese national identity altogether. My primary hypothesis, that identity-based protests will be repressed with more deadly force than pro-democracy protests, is supported by the analysis, with the Chinese government shifting the use of deadly force away from pro-democracy protests to identity-based protests. With China’s rising status in the international system, both economically and politically, the need to understand how, and why, it maintains its internal legitimacy is of utmost 5 importance. Furthermore, the success of the PRC most certainly confronts many theoretical ideas embraced by political science to this point, primarily concerning those theories supporting a correlation between democracy and economic
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