China Today series

Greg Austin, Cyber Policy in China

Jeroen de Kloet and Anthony Y. H. Fung, Youth Cultures in China

Steven M. Goldstein, China and Taiwan

David S. G. Goodman, Class in Contemporary China

Stuart Harris, China's Foreign Policy

William R. Jankowiak and Robert L. Moore, Family Life in China

Elaine Jeffreys with Haiqing Yu, Sex in China

Michael Keane, Creative Industries in China

Joe C. B. Leung and Yuebin Xu, China's Social Welfare

Hongmei Li, Advertising and Consumer Culture in China

Orna Naftali, Children in China

Eva Pils, Human Rights in China

Pitman B. Potter, China's Legal System

Pun Ngai, Migrant Labor in China

Xuefei Ren, Urban China

Nancy E. Riley, Population in China

Judith Shapiro, China's Environmental Challenges 2nd edition

Alvin Y. So and Yin-wah Chu, The Global Rise of China

Teresa Wright, Party and State in Post-Mao China

Jie Yang, Mental Health in China

You Ji, China's Military Transformation

LiAnne Yu, Consumption in China

When I was asked by Polity to consider writing this book, I was in the final throes of another book (Party and State in Post-Mao China, Polity, 2015) and had been looking forward to a break. But, the proposed topic of this book – popular protest in China – reinvigorated me. As a new graduate student in the fall of 1988, I had been captivated by the student protests that had emerged in China 1986–7, and made them the subject of my MA thesis. In early 1989, I excitedly signed up for my first trip to China, for summer Mandarin language study. When student demonstrations again arose in mid-April of 1989, I was glued to the television, following every turn in the developing story. Watching the movement end with a bloody crack-down, I was devastated. I also found that my planned summer study abroad program had been cancelled. In the summer of 1990, I finally made my first visit to China, traveling on my own across many provinces, and doing my best with my still rudimentary Mandarin to speak with the people I met. I wanted to know more about the protests of 1989, and as I began my PhD dissertation research in the early 1990s, I sought out and interviewed exiled Chinese protest leaders (later published in Protest and Peril: State Repression and Student Activism in China and Taiwan, University of Hawaii, 2001). I was inspired by these leaders’ courage and commitment to ideals in confusing and highly risk-laden circumstances, and overcome by the great sacrifices they had made. Few would ever return to their families back in the mainland PRC.

In the late 1990s, some of the leaders of the protests of 1989 worked alongside leaders of China's earlier “Democracy Wall” movement (1978–80) to establish the first true opposition political party in China – the China Democracy Party (CDP). Intrigued, I interviewed those that I could find, collected a great deal of information about the group, and published some of my findings. Like the protests of 1989, the CDP was allowed to exist for a number of months before its major leaders were imprisoned. But unlike in 1989, when millions joined protests in virtually every major Chinese city, the CDP did not attract a large following.

This lack of apparent public interest in political change – which stood in stark contrast to the late 1970s and 1980s – puzzled me. My attempt to explain it resulted in two subsequent books, Accepting Authoritarianism: State–Society Relations in China's Reform Era (Stanford University Press, 2010) and Party and State in Post-Mao China.

But in their focus on the reasons why the Chinese public had appeared to become more satisfied with CCP rule since 1989, these books did not sufficiently address the tens of thousands of new and often large-scale non-political protests that had arisen since 1989 – protests that involved a far greater range of socioeconomic groups (most notably, China's vast rural population) than had been the case in the more politically-oriented protests of 1978–89. In addition, these books did not consider the political protests that have been undertaken by Tibetans, Uighurs, and residents of Hong Kong in the post-1989 period.

Consequently, despite my desire to rest after completing Party and State, I accepted Polity's invitation to write this book. The research for this book reminded me of the courage in the face of injustice and adversity that I so admired in those who led the protests of the 1980s. It also underscored that the Chinese public is far from passive, obedient, or complacent. To the contrary, Chinese citizens often boldly, defiantly, and doggedly confront authority when they feel that their rights have been violated or that they have been treated unjustly. This is not to stay that they are not careful and strategic in their activism; as you will see in this volume, they are very astute in their protest behavior. But at the same time, they are not cowed by their apparent lack of power relative to political and economic elites, and they do not shy away from confrontation when they feel that it is warranted.

Chinese citizens’ commitment to standing up for what is right reminds me of my parents, Pete and Nancy, whose dedication to social justice and community betterment has inspired me throughout my life. I could not be more grateful to them for giving me this gift.

More concretely, I wish to express my sincere thanks to the many scholars that generously took the time to read and provide valuable feedback on portions of this text. They include: Dorothy Solinger, Yongshun Cai, Yanhua Deng, Christopher Heurlin, Anne Christine Lie, Dragan Pavlicevic, Benjamin Read, Christoph Steinhardt, Zhengxu Wang, Ngai Ming Yip, and two anonymous reviewers. Of course, any errors and flaws are mine alone. I also am grateful to the East-West Center for supporting my research with office space and intellectual camaraderie over the course of many summers. In addition, I am thankful for the unfailing support of Amelia Marquez, who has assisted me with administrative matters – and generally has kept me smiling – for nearly two decades. Similarly, the editorial staff at Polity Press – Louise Knight, Nekane Tanaka Galdos, Neil de Cort, and Ian Tuttle – have been an absolute pleasure to work with; professional, reasonable, and supportive. Further, I extend my heartfelt appreciation to Fanyi Yang for our weekly Skype sessions in Mandarin; a more talented and good-humored jiaoshou would be impossible to find.

And finally, I am deeply grateful to my daughter Anna, my son Nicholas, and my partner Ty for helping me grow on a daily basis, for appreciating my passion for studying China, for reminding me to prioritize the things that matter most, and for being the best companions a person could ever hope for. I cannot thank them enough for the joy and fulfillment that they have brought to my life.