A variety of evidence from different sources and perspectives confirms the trend that, since the 1990s, social protest in China has risen dramatically. Some of the most frequently cited data come from the Public Security Ministry about “collective incidents” (quntixing shijian). According to this source, 87,000 collective incidents took place in 2005, as compared to 74,000 in 2004, 58,000 in 2003, and about 10,000 in 1994. Although this data is relatively reliable, it offers too little information for us to properly analyze the trend of social protest. For example, it is not clear how the Public Security Ministry defines “collective incidents.” It is quite possible that this term is broader than social protests, encompassing other social disturbances such as intervillage strife, but we cannot know for sure.

This book will rely mainly on data collected from the xinfang (letters and visits) system. Such data have two significant advantages. First, although xinfang data are generally regarded as sensitive, they are more accessible than similarly sensitive data from public safety bureaus. Many local xinfang bureaus have published part of their data, and xinfang officials are more willing to talk to interviewers. Consequently, we can know not only the contents of their reports and findings but also get a better idea of how such data have been collected and processed.

1. My strength uprooted mountains,

2. My power covered the age.

3. But the times do not favor me,

4. And Piebald cannot gallop fast enough.

The territorial and symbolic unification of China in 221 bce under the Qin ruler was the result of decades, if not centuries, of warfare. The Warring States period was ended by a series of wars and campaigns that had militarized virtually all of Chinese society, spreading martial skills throughout the population. All of the states fighting for power or survival required military service from their adult male subjects, and much of a given government’s functions were involved in mobilizing resources and men for war. While the great thinkers were read and discussed by some educated men, moral suasion played little role in reducing the overall level of violence. The Qin state defeated its rivals and imposed real temporal central authority over the Chinese ecumene for the first time.

Later historians gave much of the credit for Qin’s victory, and subsequent collapse, to the policies instituted by Lord Shang (390–38 bce). Lord Shang’s policies were part of an intellectual tradition usually translated into English as “the Legalists.” The Legalists believed that the best way to run a state was through the establishment and ruthless application of rules and regulations. In the case of the Qin, those rules were designed to maximize military power and food production. Rewards were given for taking enemy heads in battle, and punishments were imposed for military failure. There was, of course, more to the success of the Qin than its harsh system of laws or its ruthless centralization of power in the hands of the ruler. All of the other states had their own systems for mobilizing enormous armies from their populations.

The Sui Dynasty unified China in 589 under a Chinese emperor for the first time since the fall of the Han Dynasty. Yang Jian, the founding emperor, posthumously known as Sui Wendi, began his career as a high official under the Northern Zhou and was actually the father-in-law of the last Northern Zhou emperor. Yang had worked dutifully for the Yuwen imperial house, earning a Xianbei surname as a mark of favor, in addition to marrying his daughter to the emperor. Yang seized power soon after a six-year-old child succeeded to the throne, and he exterminated most of the Yuwen clan. He established the Sui dynasty on 4 March 581. Yang was remarkably successful in quickly consolidating his power and shifting over to the conquest of southern China. By 589, Sui navies and armies had defeated every polity in the Chinese ecumene.

Yang Jian himself, though a member of the northern Chinese aristocracy, was fully conversant with Xianbei culture. He was also a devout Buddhist, who hoped that his religion would help unite his empire, while at the same time promoting Confucianism to aid in governing society. Even Daoism was not wholly neglected. Yang reorganized the government institutions he had inherited in order to centralize power. His interest in controlling the reins of power extended even to the Buddhism he supported; he was careful to regulate the Buddhist clergy. He and his son, Yang Guang, posthumously known as Sui Yangdi, understood the need to rule by means other than force of arms alone. They also knew that they had to gain firm control over the soldiers and armies if they were to stay in power.

In the aftermath of one of the most dramatic British colonial retreats – that of the summer of 1947 – two entirely separate states were created out of British India – one on the extraordinary basis of religious community and the other on its denial. Each was founded upon apparently contrary ideas about what constituted a ‘nation’. On the one side lay the outwardly secular democratic state of India. The leading political movement of late colonial India – the Indian National Congress – representing itself as the only truly ‘national’ organisation in the region, had to claim to represent all Indians. On the surface at least, it eschewed the politics of religious community from its very beginning in 1885, as a colonial tactic to divide and rule Indian society. From the very beginning too, though, the Congress’s commitment to secularism became more vague and inapplicable the closer it came to local politics. This could be seen in the 1880s and 1890s when the interests of urbane Congress publicists from the great cities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras came into conflict with the radical Hindu mobilisers of western and northern India. It could also be seen in the late 1940s, when the secular modernist Jawaharlal Nehru struggled for control of the Congress with the UP leader, Purushottam Das Tandon. The former shunned the self-proclaimed champions of the ‘Hindu community’ as reactionaries. The latter, while taking a leading role in the Congress, actively organised the Hind Raksh Dal (Protection of India Party) around the principles of Hindu mobilisation, which involved militaristic protection of the ‘homeland’ from anti-national (Muslim) elements. Independent India was a secular state, but it was clearly a fragile and contested secularism.

On the other side lay the new state of Pakistan, divided by thousands of miles between the western part of Punjab and the eastern half of Bengal, and founded on the principle that the Muslim community of India represented a separate nation. For its champion, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the ‘two-nation theory’, as it came to be known from the early 1940s, did not necessarily imply a push for an entirely separate sovereign state, cut off completely from the rest of India. Yet the clear principles underlying the Muslim League were that the Muslims of India should be seen as a separate political-interest group, with separate rights that could only be represented by co-religionists. This contradicted a powerful tradition in radical Muslim leadership in India, which had, since the first decade of the twentieth century, often worked within or alongside the Congress (a tradition that included Jinnah himself). It also made no sense to large swathes of the Indian Muslim population, who lived comfortably side by side with their co-religionists, took part in Hindu festivals or who worshipped according to regional devotional practices. And when Pakistan was finally formed, not only did a greater number of Muslims remain in India than migrated to the new state, but many who had migrated returned to India in the years following the violence of partition.

Spring and Autumn period aristocrats were organized into kinship lineages focused on ancestral temples. Warfare was part of the service to these temples, a way in which an individual could win glory for himself and his lineage. Indeed, the jealous and violent defense of one’s honor, and that of one’s lineage, was a cultural tie that bound the aristocracy together and separated them from the commoners. Lineages existed apart from the putative political authorities, and all aristocrats shared a similar status, making the organization of power within the aristocracy flatter culturally than would be found in the more hierarchical political structure. As the Spring and Autumn period wore on, however, the incessant warfare, feuds, and vendettas among the aristocracy began to destroy it. The old political order crumbled to be replaced by a new, more hierarchical system in the Warring States period.

On 27 February 2002 at around 8:00 a.m., the S6 carriage of the Sabarmati Express burst into flames as it pulled out of Godhra station in Gujarat. Hindus returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were either burned or asphyxiated in the carriage. The fifty-nine deaths involved in this incident became a mantra for the Hindu right, and a spur for calculated retribution. The incident was sparked by an altercation between the travellers in the carriage and Muslim hawkers on the platform, and a rumour that the former had abducted a Muslim girl. The event triggered revenge killings, largely orchestrated by organisations of the Hindu right, against Muslims across the state, with estimates of deaths ranging between 790 and 2,000 and involving more than a thousand towns and villages. Some of the worst violence occurred in Ahmedabad where specific businesses were also attacked. In the years following the violence, a range of enquiries have attempted to ascertain whether the initial attack on the carriage was a preplanned Muslim attack on the kar sevaks, an act of spontaneous aggression or simply an accident. What had become clear by early 2005 was that a number of state agencies (in particular, the police) had sought to represent the incident, as well as the ensuing violence, in terms of a preplanned Muslim conspiracy theory. The evidence collected on the Godhra incident was highly unreliable for the most part and largely contradictory. Nevertheless, the Gujarat police invoked the Prevention of Terrorism Act to arrest 123 alleged conspirators, including Deobandis and alleged Islamic militants. In the post-Godhra violence too, a range of complaints and independent enquiries were targeted at the Gujarat police who allegedly stood by or actively participated as the violence (against Muslims in particular, although not exclusively) progressed. India’s National Human Rights Commission reported that much of the violence was premeditated by organisations of the Hindu right. There have also been allegations that acquiescence in and support for the violence reached the very top of the BJP-led Gujarat administration.

The two chapters in Part II have identified a particular institutional configuration that have facilitated and shaped popular protests in China. In Part III, my focus will shift from structure to agency. Despite the obvious importance of structures in explaining historical change, they can only constitute part of the story. As William Sewell remarks, “Structure forms the capacities and provides the resources necessary for human agency, enabling humans to reproduce themselves and their social world, but also enabling them to act in innovative ways and therefore occasionally to modify the very structures that shaped them.” Similarly, Doug McAdam argues, “Movements may largely be born of environmental opportunities, but their fate is heavily shaped by their own actions.” This and the following chapters thus focus on protesters’ strategies and tactics. Indeed, given that the political opportunity structure identified in this book puts a special emphasis on contradictions and ambiguities, protesters’ strategic decisions deserve a particularly important role in the explanations.

Ordinary people are often faced with a dilemma in their contentious interactions with an authoritarian state. To enhance their bargaining power, they need to employ some sort of “troublemaking” tactics such as engaging in disruptive activities or forming autonomous organizations. However, if they go too far, radical tactics may not only alienate their supporters, but also incur state repression. The choice between efficacy and safety appears as a trade-off, and it is very difficult to attain both at the same time. Yet ordinary people sometimes manage to engage in resistance while somehow remaining submissive. Their most common strategy is what James Scott calls “everyday forms of resistance:” Ordinary people carry out covert and individualized resistance while feigning obedience. Can ordinary people also mount public and collective resistance while remaining submissive? Rarely. Yet there are some cases, and China since the 1990s is one of them.