Civic engagement in China has been under particular scrutiny in the last decade. The analytical vantage points have often built on the implicit understanding of state-society relations as a zero-sum game in which the third sector’s gains are equivalent to the party-state’s loss, and vice versa. As a result, the findings from such studies often oscillate between scenarios of subliminal democratization on the one hand, and increased repression and the advent of a regime-stabilizing third sector on the other (Chamberlain Reference Chamberlain1993; McCormick et al. Reference McCormick, Shaozhi and Xiaoming1992; Unger and Chan Reference Unger, Chan, Sharpe, Bowles, McCormick and Unger1996; White Reference White1993). Deviating from this dichotomy we start from a more nuanced perspective and conceptualize civic engagement as an integral part of state-society relations that constitute the interplay between state and societal actors (Ho Reference Ho2007; Ho and Edmonds Reference Ho and Edmonds2008; Saich Reference Saich1994, Reference Saich2000; Shieh Reference Shieh, Schwartz and Shieh2009; Teets Reference Teets2013, Reference Teets2014). We follow Migdal’s (Reference Migdal2001) ‘state in society’ concept to add to existing theory the notion that civic engagement can be either mutually empowering or lead to disengagement and alienation between both sides. Which conditions and strategies are necessary for mutual empowerment, and conversely, which conditions and strategies inhibit such empowerment? Civic activities do not take place in a vacuum: drastic changes induced by economic growth, technological progress and environmental degradation form the background against which the contributions of this special issue set out to delineate the continuity and change of civic engagement. Central to the ‘state in society’ approach is the notion that the state is embedded in society and needs society to create synergies and coproduction for its governance, because the state itself is increasingly unable to deal with the challenges of complex modernity: “[s]tates may help mold, but they are also continually molded by, the societies within which they are embedded” (Migdal Reference Migdal1988, p. 31). From this perspective, civic engagement describes not only the intra-societal developments of citizen’s activities but also the ways in which NGOs and citizens impact on the Chinese state while pursuing their goals. Since the last special issue dedicated to civic engagement (Dekker Reference Dekker and Evers2009), new developments have profoundly changed how citizens and the state interact with one another—and not only in China. The emergence of new modes of communication and mobilization (based, for example, on new media) has coincided and interplayed with the rise of actors in the third sector. The dynamic triggered by these developments and the changing polity of the highly adaptive (He Reference He2003; Nathan Reference Nathan2003) and fragmented (Mertha Reference Mertha2009) authoritarian system in China has produced unprecedented and unique varieties of state-society relations.

Xiao Mengli and Lin Haozhou’s contribution provides an intriguing example of how seemingly historical modes of control still influence state-society relations as they have been transmitted and kept viable through transformation and adaptation. In their case study of the Shanghai Medical Association Joint Management Office, Xiao and Lin depict how interactions between NGOs and the state have changed amidst political reforms. The successful reinvigoration of strategies dominant in the danwei system of the pre-reform era constitutes an insightful example of path dependency. Xiao and Lin find that the modes of control have become more sophisticated and sublime, effectively tightening the grasp of the state on the third sector by linking state funding with the ability to undermine the personnel autonomy of organizations.

As a consequence, Xiao and Lin suggest that the state’s continuous interference leaves third-sector organizations with two choices: to pursue a strategy of either incorporation or provocation. The former (in Migdal’s terms) does not represent a case of mutual empowerment, thus indicating alienation between state and society. The latter puts the societal actors in the position to what Bandurski (Reference Bandurski, Jensen and Weston2012, p. 37) has called “hitting line balls”: to constantly push by calculatedly overstepping the existing boundaries on civic engagement. The result of the binary options gives the impression that civic engagement in China is oscillating between them.

Against this backdrop, the question arises: under which conditions can civic engagement lead to a productive increase in state–society relations? Wong provides evidence for the intriguing argument that civic engagement—especially in its more provocative and confrontational form—leads to mutual empowerment of state and society when consultative elements are present. She shows how the protest against the construction of an incinerator that clashed in its nascent phase with state planning and policies evolved on the basis of participatory elements. This institutionalization of civic engagement was epitomized in the founding of an environmental NGO. In cooperation with local elites and the local government, the NGO was able to mediate and successfully solve the conflict. In the course of the transformation of the civic process, activists steered away from a confrontational strategy and toward a constructive engagement of state actors. Wong identifies two factors that significantly contributed to the success of this civic engagement: the activists’ network of social ties to state bureaucracy and the mobilizing power of new media. The activists’ connectedness enabled them to build local advocacy coalitions to further their cause. Complementarily, activists used new media to leverage publicity through raising awareness and placing the issue onto the public agenda to a degree that would not have been possible with traditional media.

While the awareness-raising and information dissemination functions of new media by civic actors and third-sector organizations is well researched, the ramifications of their emergence and diffusiveness are more complex and diverse, as revealed by the contributions of Wu and Yang on internet-based civic monitoring and Fedorenko and Sun on environmental protection. Wu and Yang use three case studies to illustrate how internet platforms assist civic engagement in three characteristic ways: policy monitoring and critiquing, activism for basic rights, and direct participation and governance. They convincingly show the potential of these communication channels to share information, increase participation, mobilize citizens, and allocate resources. This has tipped the power relationship between state and society more in favor of society. Through new media, not only experienced activists but also citizens have access to the means to perform “sousveillance” (Mann et al. Reference Mann, Nolan and Wellman2003): the power of individuals to counter-surveil or monitor the state. One of Wu and Yang’s cases, in which a professor’s criticism of the military’s use of expensive luxury cars resulted in a change of regulation, is exemplary of this.

A key challenge of civic engagement in new media is how to transform the activities of this virtual public sphere into concrete and tangible outcomes. Irian Fedorenko and Yixian Sun explore this with regard to air pollution, which has reached such dramatic levels as to threaten the welfare of Chinese society. Rampant air pollution was the focus of a society-wide campaign in 2011/2012, driven to a significant degree by social media and leading to the adoption of the stricter air quality measurement standard PM2.5. Key to the success of activists and NGOs was their strategy not only to garner public support using sophisticated framing strategies but also—and equally importantly—to strategically engage with officials and the bureaucracy. This applied strategy is an example of how to combine the provocative elements that Xiao and Lin identified in order to achieve legislative results. Fedorenko and Sun describe how “stick and carrot” tactics can be applied in the confined space of social media: activists laud the government’s past efforts while continuously demanding a new measurement standard. The proactive engagement of the third sector with the state identified by the authors represents a viable model not only for China but also potentially for civic engagement in similarly configured authoritarian systems.

Innovative strategies are particularly necessary when civic engagement targets sensitive issues. Stephanie Bräuer’s study on the latest tactical developments in the anti-domestic violence movement in Beijing represents such a scenario. Drawing on concepts of advocacy and social movement theory, she traces how advocacy organizations can increase awareness of a hitherto marginalized cause and lobby in a politically and socially sensitive setting. The discrepancy between official commitment and actual policy outcomes is the background against which civic engagement struggles to raise awareness and create consciousness for their cause in a largely patriarchal environment. Bräuer observes that a shift of responsibility from the state to individual and collective social actors is taking place. The marginalization of the topic with its stigma of taboo has forced activists to become creative in their strategies and to adopt ideas from international contexts to China. The use of public art performances is one of the most recent examples. Through live art performances, activists use open spaces to reach public audiences, raising awareness of and support for their cause. Key to this tactic is its ostensible usage by activists to circumvent and avoid governmental restrictions, avoiding association with established NGOs so as not to endanger them. Nonetheless, the protagonists have extensive links to NGOs and indirectly draw on the resources willingly provided by them. Bräuer thus finds that public art performances are an effective tool for civic engagement and are particularly suited for politically and socially sensitive topics.

The importance of raising issues in the public, putting them on the agenda and having officially endorsed regulations and laws—even if they are vaguely formulated—is exemplified in Hua, Hou, and Deng’s analysis of the Wukan protests. They argue that the protests were a manifestation of neither “rights consciousness” (O’Brien and Li Reference O’Brien and Li2006) nor “rules consciousness” (Perry Reference Perry2009), but rather that the protesters used civil rights as a means to realize economic rights. The protesters instrumentally utilized civil rights for the realization of their economic rights—specifically, land rights—and the protests were thus a manifestation of instrumental civil rights. Grassroots elections and self-governance practices introduced as a result of the protests were not the outcome of independent bottom-up civic engagement. Hua, Hou, and Deng view the Chinese state as a fragmented and heterogeneous entity in which different parts can pursue antagonistic interests. From this vantage point, the central government’s interest in incorporating grassroots civic protest powers as a supervisory counterbalance to local authorities was crucial for the success of civic engagement.

The increased reliance on and incorporation of civic engagement by the Chinese state is not conducive to democratization. Yang, He, and Long differentiate between types of civic engagement in their case study of social management in Hangzhou, derived from institutional isomorphism. They find that increased public participation has not led to increased democratization of the government vis-à-vis its citizens, but rather that it consolidates the current polity by increasing public service provision and thus bolstering the government’s legitimacy. In this way, the incumbent regime is able to cope with civic participatory measures through a logic of what Yang, He, and Long call “instrument-absorption.” The government frames civic engagement through ideologically imbued discourses that highlight the necessity and indispensability of the current polity.

Zhao, Wang, and Thomas’s contribution focusses on trade associations that form a triadic network with governments and companies. Based on their case study of trade associations in Shanghai, they are able to trace their transformation amidst top-down policy changes, bottom-up market forces, and a rapid pace of economic development. From a longitudinal perspective, they dissect the change of the trade association’s status right from the start of the reform and opening period in 1978. They have increased their autonomy from the state since their nascent phase of “informal interdependence” and have reached lately a level of “institutional participation.” The trade associations took advantage of national and local policies to pursue their interests more effectively. As a consequence, the relations between the trade associations and the government are not just non-adversarial but are best characterized by cooperative stance from both sides.

The contributions to this issue highlight the continuity and change of civic engagement in China from various perspectives. Continuity is apparent through the persistent use of state control mechanisms that, over time, have simply been adapted to fit the developmental dynamics. At the same time, change has been brought about by new “arenas of domination and opposition” (Migdal Reference Migdal2001, p. 9). Arguably, the most prominent of these new arenas is new media, which has not only changed the strategies and tactics used in civic engagement but also allowed previously marginalized groups to place their causes more effectively and use public support to influence the state to an unprecedented extent. Civic engagement in China is diverse and exhibits thriving dynamics. The insightful examples highlighted throughout this special issue represent insightful examples of this plethora of state–society relations.