This volume is an insightful collection of papers that originated in a 2006 conference on protest in contemporary China. As discussed at the outset of the book, contentious politics and protest is a relatively new, or at least underdeveloped, area of study in the Chinese context. In the prologue, Sidney Tarrow sets the stage by outlining the substantive questions guiding scholars in this area, as he describes the important issues raised in the book according to four themes: aggregation and scale shift, economics and contention, policy responses to contentious politics, and transnational contention (pp. 6–8). Interestingly enough, the book does not satisfy our desire for answers in each of these areas. Rather, it serves as an introduction to four distinct trends on which the contributors only begin to scratch the surface. Thus, the book serves more as an outline for the study of popular protest, as it establishes the future research agenda for the next generation of China scholars.

While the book leaves a lot of questions unanswered, its real contribution is in providing a strong theoretical focus on the protest literature as it relates to China. It tackles two large theoretical issues: “the relationship of contention to institutions and how contention advances or retards the democratization of authoritarian regimes” (p. 8). The contributors use the key elements of structuralism as a theoretical framework and tie it in with comparative analyses that provide a more detailed understanding of protest in China.

The first three chapters by Teresa Wright, Xi Chen, and William Hurst clearly formulate the theoretical core of the book. They are heavily grounded in the social movements literature, and highlight the distinct nature of examining these issues in authoritarian versus pluralist contexts. Wright's chapter on student movements is unique in that she examines the role of trust in the organizational process and uses cases in China and Taiwan to determine what constraints exist on mobilization and organization. Chen's chapter on the relationships between structural issues and institutional configurations offers one of the most interesting analyses of the book, as he describes the xinfang system's role in facilitating collective action and how it produced the unintended consequence of reducing the use of repression by the state. Finally, Hurst's chapter on worker resistance builds on some of his earlier work on labor protests by adding more of a theoretical frame to bring structure rather than agency back to the forefront in the study of movements, and he explains the distinct nature of frames in authoritarian systems. What each of these chapters does well is blend the theoretical with a more detailed analysis of case specifics. However, in the chapters by Wright and Hurst, one must still raise a point of caution about the limited application of these studies, given the highly specialized nature of the examples used. This is a shortcoming of all of the chapters to some extent, yet it does not undermine the value that such focused examples offer for China scholars more generally.

It is difficult to deny the increasing attention given to acts of protest in contemporary China, particularly since Tiananmen in 1989. However, there is an inherent danger in aggregating information from individual protests to develop generalizations on how state and society interact in China as a whole. Kevin O'Brien and Rachel Stern note in their chapter that “political opportunity in China depends (at a minimum) on the identity of the participants, the region, the grievance at hand, and the level of government engaged” (p. 14), and each chapter offers insights into different aspects of protest based on these factors. In addition to Wright, Chen, and Hurst, several authors examine cases involving worker resistance (Feng Chen), religion (Carsten Vala and O'Brien), and environmental issues (Yanfei Sun and Dingxin Zhao), while others explore the changing role of the Internet (Guobin Yang), the likelihood of success with disruptive action (Yongshun Cai), and the challenging nature of transnational protest movements (Patricia Thornton). In each case, the topics examined are useful to scholars interested in how the state is handling the challenges posed with the penetration of new information and media technologies.

The final chapter, by Elizabeth Perry, highlights the insights gleaned from the previous chapters and places them in historical context to assess what these cases tell us about the present state of protest. She examines both the continuities with the past as well as the new features that are emerging to determine where contention stands today. Her conclusions are somewhat pessimistic, claiming that “contention in contemporary China remains limited in size, scale, and scope” (p. 206) and that protests are not a threat to the system because they have been system supportive rather than system subversive (p. 214). In other words, protests still do not target the core principles that would lead to revolutionary changes and challenges to legitimacy (p. 215).

Overall, the book has several strengths that make it a valuable contribution to the literature on popular contention as well as to the study of China more generally. It includes informative cases that reflect some of the contemporary challenges facing the Chinese state. Furthermore, the individual chapters offer detailed reviews of the literature and build on one another quite well, so that the book reads as a unified body of work rather than a disjointed collection of essays, as sometimes occurs with edited volumes. Together, the essays offer a nuanced assessment of the factors contributing to the successes and failures of different protests, and have a nice combination of both historical and contemporary protests to discern important areas of both convergence and divergence. The only noticeable shortcoming is that it is hard to generalize from many of these cases, leaving many questions about structure and process unanswered. However, the contributors have put together a compelling first cut at what the state of the literature tells us at this point, and they outline several important questions for scholars to explore in the future. The book is highly recommended for a wide audience, and it is a must-read for anyone who is interested in what the future holds for the state of protest in China.