Introduction
In the 1990s, Chinese scholars gave “the most severe warning” that social instability had become the most serious problem in China.Footnote 1 In 1993, central authorities reported over 6,000 cases of protests in the countryside. In 1997, some 900,000 peasants participated in collective petitioning and public demonstration. This number reached five million in 1999.Footnote 2 Sinologists who focus on peasant discontent in this period point to excessive and arbitrary fee collections as the main grievances.Footnote 3 In response to peasant discontent, the Chinese government initiated fiscal reforms in the early 2000s, such as the tax-for-fee reform (feigaishui 费改税, hereafter TFF) to regulate arbitrary fee collection by local governments, and the elimination of agricultural taxes to reduce excessive fiscal burdens on peasants. Despite these efforts, however, central reforms fail to alleviate “mass incidents” (quntixing shijian 群体性事件) in rural areas.Footnote 4 My survey of 120 villages across six provinces shows no change in the number of participants but more frequent collective petitions following the central reforms. It is curious that collective petitions have not abated despite the central efforts to assuage state–society conflict in rural areas.
Scholars have attributed rural resistance during the post-fiscal reform era to the declining supply of public goods and a new type of local predatory activity: undercompensated land requisition. While both explanations help address the new wave of rural discontent following the central fiscal reforms, they fail to recognize a new group of activists that has emerged: village cadres. This article fills this gap by examining the role and rationale of village cadres in supporting collective petitions. It argues that central policy changes altered local state practices that used to benefit village cadres, creating incentives for them to turn against their superiors. In addition, village-level elections have created an additional incentive for village cadres to side with their fellow villagers. Both forces converge to compel village cadres to support peasant collective resistance against higher authorities and constitute a powerful force in generating collective action in rural society.
By acknowledging and explaining the leadership role of village cadres in lodging collective petitions, this article complements studies of activists in rural collective action. In addition to peasant activists highlighted in the existing literature, village cadres are now important agents in the formation and success of collective petition. Due to their dual role in China's state–society relations as both state agents and villagers, their stance can be viewed as the focal point of China's contentious politics. On the one hand, the participation of village cadres in collective resistance implies a potential change in the nature of peasant protests from testing the boundary of the state to knowing the regime's capacity to prevent and contain conflict. On the other hand, the changing orientations of village cadres from being adversaries to allies of peasant petitions suggest shifting boundaries between the state and society in the study of contentious politics.
In addition to the existing literature, this article is based on original fieldwork, including over 200 in-depth interviews with local officials and villagers, and a national survey of 1,200 rural households conducted in 2008 across China's northwest (Shaanxi), southwest (Sichuan), north (Hebei), northeast (Jilin), east (Jiangsu), and southeast (Fujian).Footnote 5 The first section of the article reviews existing explanations of persistent rural discontent since central fiscal reforms and redirects the debates to examine the role of leadership in collective action. The second section introduces evidence of village cadre support for collective petitions in rural China and engages such evidence in the literature of contentious politics and China studies. Section three analyses the switch by village cadres from adversaries to allies of rural petitioners. The following section examines the influence of village cadres over their state superiors and the specific tactics they use to facilitate collective resistance. The conclusion reflects on the empirical and theoretical implications of my arguments.
Existing Explanations of Rural Resistance in the 2000s
Research into contentious politics in rural China has focused on revolutionary peasant movements,Footnote 6 collective resistance,Footnote 7 and unorganized or spontaneous protests.Footnote 8 The dominant view is that peasant resistance is reactive, with few allies from other social actors and limited ideological framing of grievance.Footnote 9 Direct triggers of peasant grievances are thus the main focus of scholars who have tried to understand the new wave of collective petitions since 2000. Governmental reports and academic research have confirmed that the central fiscal reforms in the early 2000s significantly lifted the fiscal burdens of peasants;Footnote 10 why, then, does peasant dissatisfaction remain strong?
Two schools have tried to explain this phenomenon. The first attributes petitions to new arbitrary government action, such as land seizure activities. For example, Zhou FeizhouFootnote 11 holds that China's central fiscal reforms undermined local government revenue, which further induced the latter to seek alternative sources of revenue. Local governments in rural China thus increasingly seized land from peasants to develop industrial zones. Peasants feel under compensated for their land and resentful towards local authorities; this has become an increasing cause of grievance in rural China. Coercive expropriation with low compensation may have become an increased practice after the central reforms in the 2000s, but it is not a new phenomenon. Some scholars note that such predatory activities are an “externality of development,” and have been one major cause of rural dissent since the early 1990s,Footnote 12 albeit they were then more frequent in suburban and richer villages where development zones were built.Footnote 13 In addition, grievances raised by peasants in both agricultural and industrial areas include not only land seizures, but also village financial disputes, peasant salary disputes, and environmental issues.Footnote 14 Thus, while land requisition has become an increasingly important trigger for rural discontent, it cannot alone explain persistent grievances in rural areas.
The other school contends that the paucity of township-level revenue sources continues to undermine the capacity of local states to provide public goods, which ultimately leads to rural discontent over the loss of basic services.Footnote 15 This might be the case where governments previously provided public goods but no longer do so after the fiscal reforms in the early 2000s. Yet my national survey data shows that levels of government revenue were not correlated with levels of supply of public goods, especially those related to infrastructure. Tsai also found that the accountability of village cadres in providing public goods may be derived from their embeddedness in local “solidarity groups” rather than availability of revenue.Footnote 16
The above two schools focusing on new claims and the relative deprivation of peasants help to explain state–society conflict in rural China since fiscal reforms, but neither touches upon an important force that enables collective action: leadership. As the literature on contentious politics has long claimed, agents who recognize and seize political opportunities and who mobilize resources are important factors in making collective action.Footnote 17 In the case of China, whereas O'Brien and Li have identified some social activists in collective resistance,Footnote 18 I will demonstrate the emergence of a new group of activists: village cadres. I argue that China's central fiscal reforms in the early 2000s have unintentionally triggered grievances on the part of village cadres, the middlemen between the state and society, who are now motivated to support peasant petitions.
Leaders in Contentious Politics
Peasant grievances are not always mobilized into collective action. The awareness of petitioners regarding their rightsFootnote 19 and the mobilizing role of activists make collective action possible. Sinologists have probed a variety of social factors to explain collective resistance, such as protest framing,Footnote 20 mobilizing structures,Footnote 21 repertoires of contention and their historical roots,Footnote 22 emotions,Footnote 23 and grievances.Footnote 24 For collective action to happen, emotions and consciousness of rights need to be awakened by activists, who invent, adapt, and combine various forms of contention and mobilize people who might otherwise stay uninvolved.Footnote 25
Scholars have explored the role of leadership in rural resistance in Chinese history.Footnote 26 Research focusing on the post-1990s has also recognized the existence of leadership in rural protests.Footnote 27 Yu Jianrong, for example, outlines the characteristics of rural activists: young (mostly in their 30s and 40s), relatively educated (usually above middle-school), and with experience living or working outside of their villages (such as military veterans or immigrant workers).Footnote 28 Explaining the emergence of peasant activists, Li and O'Brien conclude that there are two types of protest leaders in rural China: long-time public figures and ordinary villagers. The first function as representatives of others and demand justice for the collective. The second become activists when other means of pursuing personal grievances fail. These protest leaders shape collective claims, recruit activists, mobilize the public, devise and orchestrate acts of contention, and organize cross-community efforts.Footnote 29
Recognizing that activists exist in an authoritarian regime is a valuable starting point to examine the dynamics of a political space commonly viewed as dominated by coercive political power. However, two issues remain understudied in the case of China. First, when activists exploit inconsistencies between central government policies and local practices to support their claims based upon a variety of tactics,Footnote 30 they are assumed to have a high level of political awareness. But the nature and causes of resistance in rural China are often better understood as class conflict and consequences of social change, rather than peasant awareness of the regime's capacity to prevent and contain conflict.Footnote 31 Distinctively, village cadres' savoir-faire makes them valuable activists to improve the political awareness of dissatisfied peasants. My survey data shows that between 2000 and 2002, village cadres led 1.7 per cent of 116 collective petitions with more than five participants, whereas between 2003 and 2005, village cadres encouraged four per cent of 171 collective petitions. In these cases, they implicitly or explicitly encouraged, organized, or joined collective petitions.Footnote 32 With their dual role as both state agents and villagers, village cadres' stance in state–society relations is crucial for both the rise of civil society and the repressive capacity of the state. When they side with villagers, the latter will be better aware of the regime's capacity to prevent and contain social resistance. This portends a fundamental change in the nature of collective resistance in rural areas.
The second issue in China's collective action is activists' motivation, given that they run higher risks of severe punishment than do their counterparts in democratic polities.Footnote 33 Why do village cadres alter their stance from adversaries to allies of peasant petitions, and oppose their state superiors? Unlike studies in which potential alliance in the state is approached by social movement activists,Footnote 34 my research shows that state agents may be motivated by their own interests to support social protests. This argument does not rule out the possibility that peasants identified the internal conflict between townships and villages, and sought support from village cadres. What is important is the new alliance relationship between village cadres and petitioners. First, it demonstrates that, in addition to the two types of protest leaders highlighted by Li and O'Brien, there is a third group of leadership in peasant resistance.Footnote 35 Second, it implies a change in the nature of peasant resistance from testing the boundaries of the state to knowing the regime's capacity to prevent and contain state–society conflict.
The changing relations between existing actors of contentious politics have been observed by some studies. For example, social movements against migrant workersFootnote 36 and the growing importance of women in the labour forceFootnote 37 demonstrated the emergence of cleavages within the working class. Such phenomena are often understood to be the result of structural changes, such as economic globalization, that strengthen lines of differentiation and criteria for interest definition within socioeconomic groups. The changed position of village cadres can also be explained within the framework of structural change that created new interests and cleavages within previously collaborative local governments.
The Rationale of Village Cadres
As the middlemen between the state and society, village cadres often confront conflicting incentives. Administratively, governments of villages (former production brigades and teams in the 1950s) do not count as an official level of government in China. The loyalty of village cadres to their township-level patrons originates from their access to redistributive resources granted by the Party,Footnote 38 and an expectation of return in status and standing in the villages.Footnote 39 At the same time, however, they are embedded in rural society and have normative obligations towards their fellow villagers, and often feel solidarity with their local community. Therefore, village cadres' loyalty towards the Chinese Communist Party is not uncontested. Given the special location of village cadres in China's political system, an examination of their changing attitudes also promises a shifting boundary between the state and society. The state and society are not mutually exclusive.Footnote 40 In understanding social resistance in China, one must recognize that “soft” boundaries exist between the local state and society, and that the interactions within a state and among different levels of sub-national government may have great impact on state–society relations. Following a rational choice theory of contentious politics,Footnote 41 this section details deliberate choices made by village cadres before and after the reforms.
Township–village relations before fiscal reforms
Before the fiscal reforms of the early 2000s, townships and villages coordinated to extract revenue from peasants and cope with social discontent. This collaboration was based on their interdependence. With few political rewards available to village cadres,Footnote 42 townships controlled villages mainly through administrative and fiscal channels. Since the 1950s, village-based township cadres (zhu cun ganbu 驻村干部 or bao cun ganbu 包村干部) have been the main means of township administrative control over villages and de facto involvement in village affairs. These township cadres do not necessarily live in villages, but in principle they are required to go to villages regularly and frequently to manage, coordinate, and supervise village affairs.Footnote 43
By contrast with the relationship between townships and villages in the 1950s, township governments in the late 1980s and 1990s could no longer make demands on villages solely through administrative fiat. Instead, effective control over village cadres to ensure compliance required material rewards, including direct salary and bonuses, and indirect privileges. First, for resource-deprived villages, salary accounts for a large share of village cadre income. Townships had control over the salary base of village cadres, and had the authority to lower the base or reward bonuses.Footnote 44 Second, townships also provided village cadres with privileges to pursue personal businesses, favoured village cadres' children for job opportunities, and tolerated misappropriation of fiscal subsidies by village cadres.Footnote 45 In return, villages co-operated with townships to extract revenue from peasants and deal with social resistance.
The co-operation between townships and villages is not necessarily within formally sanctioned channels. Their informal tactics of social control follow certain procedures. First, village cadres engage in proactive strategies such as negotiation and bullying to prevent escalation of resistance.Footnote 46 If village-level attempts to contain peasant discontent are ineffective and social claims are then submitted to township and counties, township cadres tend to be receptive to pleas from village cadres. For example, townships and counties may support coercive village fee-collection activities, and punish rebellious farmers by “re-educating” them for a few days in training camps (xuexiban 学习班) or threatening to demolish their houses.Footnote 47 If township and county-level governments find it politically untenable to defend openly an accused village cadre, they often convince judicial authorities to conduct perfunctory investigations of policy-based charges or spend years taking testimony or auditing finances.Footnote 48 Last, when peasant grievances are expressed collectively and require suppression to prevent further exacerbation, counties often support townships that have little coercive capacity.
The informal collaboration between townships and villages was disrupted by central fiscal reforms that ultimately abated village cadres' redistributive resources and privileges. As I shall introduce in the next section, central reforms prohibited local governments from extracting fees and agricultural taxes from peasants and recentralized fiscal autonomy from townships to counties. With reduced revenue and autonomy, townships could provide few material incentives to village cadres. An important source of loyalty from village cadres towards their state superiors was weakened.
Disrupting fiscal reforms
China's central fiscal reforms in the early 2000s included tax reforms, recentralization of fiscal autonomy to the county-level government, and intergovernmental fiscal transfers. The tax reforms started with the TFF reform that replaced township and village charges with single rate agricultural tax and agricultural tax surcharges. In total, peasants would pay no more than 8.4 per cent of their income. After first being piloted in Anhui in 2000, rural tax reforms were completed nationwide by 2003. Following the TFF reform, the Chinese government began to readjust its agricultural tax rate in 2004. On 1 January 2006, the Chinese government officially abolished the agricultural tax across the country. The direct result of these fiscal reforms was a significant decline in revenue resources for the county, township, and village levels of government, especially those dependent on agriculture. Simultaneously, the central government increased its intergovernmental fiscal transfers to compensate for the revenue loss to local governments, but this has been insufficient. The rural tax reform led to a reduction of up to 150–160 billion yuan (US$22–23 billion) in agricultural taxes and fees in 2005 alone, whereas the central fiscal transfers for compensation were only 66.4 billion yuan (US$9.7 billion).Footnote 49
To improve the oversight and efficiency in the fiscal management of townships and to reduce both arbitrary expenditure and local debts,Footnote 50 the fiscal administrative power was recentralized at the county level from the township level through the “county administration of township budgets” (xiang cai xian guan 乡财县管). As such, townships lost their expenditure autonomy. At the same time, the township-level government depended more on the county-level government for revenue, when the latter became recipients of large central fiscal transfers for rural compulsory education and rural teacher salaries.Footnote 51
The impact of central fiscal reforms on the township-level government included declined fiscal revenue, greater dependence on the county-level government, and less expenditure autonomy. This change undermined its incentives to intervene in village affairs and capacity to provide material incentives for village cadre compliance.
Township–village relations after fiscal reforms
When village revenues declined and townships were not willing or able to provide privileges to village cadres, the foundation for township-village collaboration was weakened. In addition, village budgetary autonomy was undermined when township-level governments took control of village budgets in response to their own declining fiscal autonomy. This created further tension between townships and villages.
Township control over village budgets started in the late 1990s and intensified after the fiscal reforms in the 2000s. My survey reveals that only five of 60 townships controlled village budgets before 2002, but after the fiscal reforms, 52 of 60 townships started to manage village budgets. Peasants calling for financial transparency were the justification for such change. Since financial loopholes in village finances triggered peasant discontent,Footnote 52 many townships established an account for village committees to manage and monitor village expenditures. As a result, the fiscal autonomy of villages declined dramatically.Footnote 53 To make things worse, townships have been reported as arbitrarily financing their own expenditures with village revenues.Footnote 54 Rather than effectively reducing peasant grievances, township budgetary control has stirred resentment from village cadres.
In contrast to its tighter control of village budgets after the fiscal reforms, the township-level government is more indifferent about village affairs. Before the fiscal reforms, township cadres, including the government head and the party secretary, were more involved in village affairs. Their responsibilities included grain collection, tax and fee collection, fertility control, policy broadcasting, returning farmland to forest (tui geng huan lin 退耕还林), as well as regionally specific activities such as tobacco production, vegetable planting, and irrigation.Footnote 55 Fiscal reforms left township cadres with only periodical work in rural areas focused mainly on unpopular issues such as fertility and petition control. As a result, the baocun cadres visit villages much less frequently unless there are inspections by upper level authorities.Footnote 56
Township detachment from villages has limited their information and knowledge. They are less attuned to grassroots village dynamics, including awareness of potential threats from collective grievances. At the same time, village cadres are now less willing to cooperate with townships against their fellow villagers. The cleavage that emerged between township and village cadres, and between townships and rural society, makes collective resistance less manageable when it takes place.
Village cadres: redefining friends and foes
After the central fiscal reforms, villages suffered from diminished revenue sources, declined fiscal autonomy, and less attention from the township level. Village cadre authority that came from their redistributive power of resourcesFootnote 57 was thus undermined. In addition, they were left with many unfunded mandates, and had to rely on fundraising from peasants and loans to finance these activities.Footnote 58 This reality led to deep resentment among village cadres against their state superiors. Such state–society relations are similar to those of the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as the rising leadership of village cadres over rural violence. More specifically, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the nationwide implementation of the household responsibility system (baochan daohu 包产到户) reduced administrative functions at the township and village levels and eroded the authority of village and township cadres.Footnote 59 Undermining power bases of grassroots cadres had increased their loyalties towards the local community. Together with the rise of kinship groups, grassroots cadres spearheaded numerous illegal actions and riots.Footnote 60
Closer examination, however, shows two important differences in villager–village cadre relations between the 1980s and the 2000s. First, both Perry and Kelliher agree that an important feature of collective resistance in the 1980s was competitive conflicts among communal groups.Footnote 61 In other words, the division of rural society shifted away from cadre–peasant identity, instead focusing on lineage groups with the same surnames. In the 2000s, however, village-level elections provided important channels for expressing competition and conflict among different power groups within a village.Footnote 62 Village elections were designed to strengthen state control rather than improving state accountability towards society,Footnote 63 yet they did unintentionally create a channel for communal conflicts. My research reveals that competitive elections are more likely in those villages where conflicts within village committees or among villagers are fierce.Footnote 64 One village party secretary in Jiangsu bluntly stated: “If there are conflicts (among village cadres), (they) mobilize the masses separately, and then there would be competition (during elections).”Footnote 65 Otherwise, villagers seem to be indifferent about the candidates, and consider “it does not matter who is elected (shei dang dou wusuowei 谁当都无所谓).”Footnote 66
Second, in the post-fiscal reform era, the hope to be recognized and appreciated by their state superiors became conducive to village cadre support for social petitioners. Village cadres often complain about their “pathetic” (kelian 可怜) situation.Footnote 67 To begin with, despite reduced revenue, the responsibilities of village cadres remain stressful, including implementing fertility controls, social stability, fund raising, and sometimes attracting investment. For example, one village in Sichuan was assigned in 2007 a non-tax revenue quota of 28,000 yuan, and managed to collect more than 20,000 yuan in the form of fines from people violating family-planning regulations (so-called “social fostering or maintenance fees,” shehui fuyang fei 社会抚养费) and 6,000 yuan in the form of burial fees. But the quota was again increased to 43,000 yuan in 2008. If it were not fulfilled, village cadre salaries would be docked.Footnote 68 In addition to extraordinary and impractical pressures and responsibilities, some village heads are not fully supported by townships in village affairs and elections.Footnote 69 For example, the town party committee supported one village party secretary in Jilin in the 2004 election only because he was able to borrow some money and deliver it to the town government as raised funds. He was later dismissed because he failed to continue collecting compulsory assessments (tanpai 摊派).Footnote 70 Further exacerbating their situation, little authority in the village combined with little support from the township-level government traps village cadres in a dilemma between complicated responsibilities. For example, villagers in a Jilin village hoped to build a new bridge with raised funds and possible subsidies from the town government. After their application for subsidies had been rejected by the town government, villagers were eager to deliver grievances to the county government. Village cadres managed to stop them. As a result, however, villagers refused to pay back agricultural taxes owed over previous years.Footnote 71 This in turn had a negative impact on the village cadre performance evaluation, on which their salaries and possible bonuses were based.
Complex and unrealistic responsibilities, few benefits, and limited support and appreciation from townships combine to give village cadres virtually no incentives to stay in their positions. Feeling “disappointed” (shiwang 失望) and wrongly treated, many village cadres are compelled to mobilize peasants to “make trouble” (naoshi 闹事), and to forcefully capture the attention of township and county officials to gain the support from the latter.Footnote 72 In other words, they may join or encourage collective discontent simply to demonstrate their importance and increase legitimacy within the state apparatus.
The rationale of village cadres in the post-fiscal reform era suggests that, the more dependent their authority is on resources provided by the township-level government, the more likely they will form ties with villagers in collective resistance under conditions of relative deprivation in authority and privileges. Consider Chen's categorization of three patterns of rural governance during the post-fiscal reform era: vacuum of authority, abused and defied authority, and depoliticized authority.Footnote 73 The first type exists in poor villages with absent or powerless village cadres after losing their authority and benefits. Village governments disintegrate as social or administrative units. The second type prevails in villages with average wealth or affluence, where cadres tend to maximize short-term material benefits obtained from their limited access to collective resources. Corruption, therefore, is most common in this group of villages. The third type dominates wealthy villages, where the authority of cadres originates primarily from their entrepreneurial activities that benefit the village as a whole, instead of dependence on material rewards from the township level. This typology captures the diversity and complexity of China's rural governance during the post-fiscal reform era, and provides an important perspective to start examining responses of village cadres to the fiscal reforms.
Based upon this typology, social instability as a result of “the crisis of governance and the decay of party authority”Footnote 74 is more likely to occur in the second group of villages governed by predatory cadres. Yet if the rationale of village cadres is taken into account, both the first and the second groups of villages may witness cases of village cadre participation in collective resistance. In these villages, privileges of village cadres are dependent on their official positions and administrative links to the Party, and hence are affected the most by the fiscal reforms.Footnote 75 With diminished authority, village cadres may support petitions for direct material gains, such as sharing benefits from increased land compensation. They may also implicitly support collective petitions to remind the township-level government of their crucial role in rural governance. In fact, support from village cadres facilitates the making of collective action, but does not promise new sets of claims made by petitioners. It is noteworthy that my findings do not suggest homogeneity in village cadre attitudes towards peasant petitions. As more vital members of the administrative organ, village party secretaries and village heads may disagree with or hold more ambiguous positions than other members of village committees.Footnote 76 Presumably, in cases where grievances are directed at certain village cadres, support, if any, may come from competing village cadres.
Power of the Weak: Tactics of Village Cadres
Although village cadres are at the bottom of China's state apparatus and lacking official status, they can have great influence on their state superiors, as other “weak” players in a “strong state” do. For example, some literature has given political significance to “weapons of the weak,”Footnote 77 such as peasants and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The peasantry is capable of manipulating government policies, initiating changes from below, and inflating the cost of state policy preferences.Footnote 78 MoralityFootnote 79 can also empower peasants to seek legitimate central government regulations and redress local state malfeasance.Footnote 80 Studies of NGOs in authoritarian regimes have examined their power in “negotiating the state.”Footnote 81
The influence of village cadres over their state superiors originates from their administrative positions in China's political system. As middleman between the state and society, village cadres are able to conceal information about discontent from their superiors and provide resources to petitioners, such as financial support and information about cadres misbehaving. At the same time, their soft information about community activities gives them leverage to negotiate with or threaten upper levels of authority, especially when collective petitions have become politically sensitive for local governments. Village cadres do not simply resign from their positions following declined authority. Instead, they exercise their influence by staying in the political system for future revival.
Taking advantage of the petition system
The institutional foundation of China's petition system was laid out in 1949 when the Central Party Committee (CPC) established a political secretariat to handle people's letters to the CPC. In principal, xinfang 信访 offices are channels for social actors to report situations and suggest proposals to governments at various levels or departments of the governments at and above the county-level through letters, telephone, or personal appearance. As long as a collective appeal has fewer than five petitioners (the previous limit was three) and is peaceful in nature, the regime does not consider it as a threat and hence it is permitted.Footnote 82 Having more than five petitioners in one single incident counts as failure in solving “people's internal conflicts (renmin neibu maodun人民内部矛盾),” which could negatively affect a cadre's political career.
Some scholars treat this appeal system as political space for collective action, which may escalate into more disruptive or “boundary-spanning” actions.Footnote 83 It is noteworthy that the source of power provided by the petition system derives from the political authority of the Communist Party and individual officials.Footnote 84 Therefore, the petition system in practice functions as a power game played by different levels of state authorities and social forces. On the one hand, a collective petition with more than five participants exposes key local officials to the risk of demotion or punishment, when the higher-level authorities may selectively use incidences of petitions against individual cadres in political struggle. On the other hand, peasants with grievances may impose pressures on individual officials by joining collective petitions of more than five people. Therefore, the petition system as a formal institution created by the central government serves as an important source for the centre to acquire the knowledge of the masses and local officials, as a weapon in the political struggle within the state, and as a source of leverage for society over state.
When social resistance intensified in the late 1990s, the Chinese government once again emphasized the importance of the petition system. The most recent changes in the petition system in 2005 required the setup of xinfang offices or designated officers at the township level and made this level responsible for local petitions.Footnote 85 This change fortified the power of village cadres in bringing down officials at the township and even county levels, with or without accountability towards their fellow villagers. Understanding the significance of collective petitions for the political career of their superiors, village cadres are able to take advantages of the petition system for revenge, attention, or material returns.
Staying in the political system
Expecting unforeseen policy changes constantly, after being deprived of privileges village cadres tend to stay in the political system for future revival. China's local officials are embedded in an uncertain and complex system derived mainly from campaigning and factional politics in upper levels of authority. Campaigns launched by the central, provincial, and prefectural levels of government need to be carried out by counties, townships, and villages. These campaigns are short-lived and frequently inconsistent and unrealistic, contingent upon different leaders and their policy orientations. As the same time, the factional and personal politics in China's political system spawn environmental uncertainty.Footnote 86 Political survival, therefore, becomes an ever-present concern of political actors, be they altruistic or egoistic.Footnote 87
Being subject to nominal, inconsistent, and unrealistic responsibilities handed down by upper levels of authority, as well as everyday demands from local communities, village cadres are rarely able to pursue an optimal outcome. This environment has promoted the emergence of pragmatic officials, who introduce and adopt new ideas and mechanisms to “get things done” by evading formal rules and introducing new mechanisms or procedures that may not be available, developed, efficient, or affordable in formal rules. For example, in order to finance unfunded mandates from upper levels of government under the pressure of tight revenue, some villages (and even townships) have implicitly encouraged violation of family planning policy and thrived on the so-called “belly fiscal income” (dupi caizheng 肚皮财政).Footnote 88 In practice, fines for violation of the family planning policy are collected as a multiple (two–six times) of the average income of the local population estimated by local statistics. To simultaneously collect revenue and meet standards of population control, villages often prepare two different accounts, one showing reasonable population growth for inspection purposes, and another one revealing the real situation and income obtained from fines.Footnote 89
The uncertain and complex system promises opportunities as well as risks. Unforeseen changes in circumstances can arise and bring great political and material rewards. Therefore, even when village cadres share interests with their fellow villagers, they may not overtly oppose their superiors. They may shirk from responsibilities in coping with petitioners, conceal and distort information about rural petitioners to their township and county superiors, or notify villagers about upcoming inspections from upper levels of authorities.Footnote 90 For example, cadres in a Jiangsu village did nothing to prevent or stop peasants who requested a higher rate of land compensation. The land compensation rate in 2007 for the construction of a provincial highway through this village was as follows: for every mu (0.067 hectare) of a peasant's farmland used in road construction, the peasant got a compensation of 16,000 yuan (US$2,440);Footnote 91 for every mu of the village's collective land used in road construction, the village committee received a compensation of 4,400 yuan (US$671). In order to receive the higher rate of compensation, the village party secretary forged names and signatures of peasants for some collective land used in construction. After one peasant allegedly discovered that provincial policy was to pay 40,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan (US$6,100–7,625) per mu for peasant land, instead of 16,000 yuan (US$2,440), this peasant mobilized villagers to block the construction site and request higher compensation. Village cadres remained silent about this incident, because “if the peasants are successful in obtaining a higher rate of compensation, the village committee would benefit as well.”Footnote 92
More proactively, village cadres may provide information to time better a petition and help target responsible officials at the township and county levels. For example, cadres in a Sichuan village organized 20 villagers in 2005 and appealed to the prefectural government about the town government retaining poverty-reduction funds designated to this village.Footnote 93 In addition to information, village cadres may provide financial support to petitioners through village committee.Footnote 94 For example, when the irrigation system in a Fujian village was blocked in 2006 as a result of bridge construction in a neighbouring village, the Senior Citizen's Association (laoren xiehui 老人协会) visited the prefectural government and planned to complain to the provincial government by the time of interview. All associated costs of petition were and would be covered by the association and the village committee.Footnote 95 Similarly, the Party and village committees in a Shaanxi village “secretively” sponsored all trips for collective petitions lodged in 2005. Peasants appealed for a higher level of land compensation to the county, prefectural, provincial and in the end, the central government. The number of petitioners gathered in front of the county government reached 1,800 in 2005.Footnote 96
In these cases, specific types of village cadres that encouraged collective petitions included members of village committees, village heads, and party secretaries. The conditions under which certain types of village cadres are more likely to support collective petitions have yet to be identified. In cases where financial support is provided, it can be assumed that village heads and even party secretaries are behind them. Given their close link to, and reliance on, the administrative channel for redistributive power, village heads and party secretaries are more likely to be implicit in their support for collective petitions than other members of village committees. Even though village elections may promote collaborations between elected village cadres and villagers, the extent to which elected cadres are willing to represent their voters is arguable and contingent upon particular cases and local conditions.Footnote 97
Compared to directly testing the parameters of state tolerance, village cadre support for collective petitions lowers the transaction costs of time investment and political risks of peasants. Information provided by village cadres about township and county cadre activities, as well as central and local policies, is more credible, less costly and timelier. Knowing more about the limits of state tolerance and capacity in containing conflict, petitions supported by village cadres are more likely to occur or succeed.
Conclusion
This article has explored the rising alliances between village cadres and peasants in forming collective petitions and expressing grievances. It demonstrates how central policy changes aimed at improving social stability in rural areas unintentionally induced a new force of activists in the making of collective resistance. This process illustrates that the internal structure and politics of the state are important forces that shape, constrain, and compromise state power vis-à-vis society.
China's village cadres are practical grassroots bureaucrats constantly seeking short-term solutions to the tension between their two identities. Occupying a pivotal role in forestalling or facilitating collective action in rural areas, village cadres have contributed to resolving state–society conflicts, but they can also enable the formation and success of collective resistance in rural areas. As practical bureaucrats, their conscious choice to help collective petitions is not necessarily for political reform or institutional redirection. However, their accommodating attitudes towards collective contention portend an erosion of state access to the information about society that is necessary for effective governance and timely resolution of local political conflicts.
China is a geographically vast and culturally dynamic country. Diachronic changes examined here do not imply the absence of regional variations contingent upon different administrative and fiscal arrangements between townships and villages. However, the reach of the Chinese state into villages has been one of the most powerful instruments of political and economic mobilization in rural China. Whereas China's floating population of over 100 million peopleFootnote 98 has created obstacles for state control over society, the rising alliances between village cadres and villagers can sabotage the roots of the Chinese Party state in rural society.
With better timing and more credible information provided by village cadres, peasant petitioners can push for higher levels of accountability from township and county levels of government. This in turn encourages more frequent and larger scale resistance. Combined with less familiarity about village affairs, the more often township governments are confronted with large-scale resistance by surprise, the more likely greater violence in state–society conflicts will occur. In the absence of compensating reforms that restore the redistributive power of village cadres and motivate their engagement in social control, this process could ultimately undermine the regime's capacity to govern and mobilize rural society.
