The rise of cooptation justice under authoritarian governance in China

The emergence and development of civil rights mobilization depend on the so-called opportunity structures (e.g., Anderson Reference Anderson2006; Epp Reference Epp1998; Hilson Reference Hilson2002; McCann Reference McCann1994; Vanhala Reference Vanhala2012). Following Hilson’s (Reference Hilson2002) distinction between political opportunity and legal opportunity, the rise of cooptation justice in China can be understood as the product of changing opportunity structures. Political opportunity refers to the openness or closedness of the political system and the degree of elite receptivity to collective action, whereas legal opportunity refers to the accessibility and usefulness of courts and legal procedures for advancing claims. In China, political opportunities for extrajudicial mobilization have narrowed, while legal opportunities have expanded in form but remain politically bounded. These developments have redirected contentious claims into judicial processes while reducing the space for extrajudicial mobilization.

Shrinking political opportunity

China has witnessed a large number of social conflicts in recent decades due to unprecedented socioeconomic changes that caused grievances among social groups, including laborers in public and private sectors, farmers, homeowners, and pollution victims (Cai and Chen Reference Cai and Chen2022, 2). Over the past few decades, the Chinese party-state has continuously controlled or suppressed these social protests (Cai Reference Cai2008). Political opportunity, according to Cai and Chen (Reference Cai and Chen2022), “is shaped by the interaction between the central and local government.” Political opportunity for action arises when there are disparities between the central and local authorities, and narrows or disappears if the central government signals its intolerance of social protests. As extrajudicial channels became riskier, less visible, and less effective, grievants were increasingly pushed toward litigation as one of the few remaining legitimate avenues for rights claiming.

Under the Xi administration, especially after 2014, the political environment for social resistance in China became markedly more repressive. According to Cai and Chen (Reference Cai and Chen2022), this decline was closely related to the central leadership’s increasing intolerance of dissident and rights-protection activities, which changed the behavior of local authorities and made the political environment less conducive to collective mobilization. As the center signaled greater tolerance for repression, local governments had stronger incentives to use coercion rather than concession. The use of coercion by local governments is reflected in the number of people who were charged with the crime of “obstructing the social management order,” which can include disrupting, interfering with, or refusing to obey orders from authorities. The number of cases tried in courts more than doubled from 228,684 in 2014 to 603,319 in 2024 (Supreme People’s Court 2026). The behavior of petitioners was further regulated in March 2019. The Ministry of Public Security (2019) specified in detail 32 situations in which petitioners could be disciplined. Under these rules, petitioners can be punished for using prohibited modes of petitioning, petitioning in prohibited places, or engaging in prohibited conduct during petitioning. The rules also prohibit skip-level petitions, trouble-making, and the submission of materials collected through inappropriate or unlawful means (Cai and Chen Reference Cai and Chen2022, 45). These regulations aim to ensure that the grievants must present petitions in a peaceful and nonthreatening manner (Ministry of Public Security 2019; Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council 2022). Finally, the state began to rely on grid-style management as a means of surveillance and preemption, thereby strengthening the state’s capacity to monitor and contain unrest before it could expand (Tang Reference Tang2020; Xu and He Reference Xu and He2022).

Meanwhile, the broader social environment also became more suppressive. Journalists around the country were increasingly pressured to serve as instruments of the propaganda system, and liberal social media accounts were tightly censored or shut down (Cai and Chen Reference Cai and Chen2022, 43; Waight et al. Reference Waight, Yuan, Roberts and Stewart2025). The 2013 Southern Weekly incident, for instance, revealed a heavier propaganda intervention by the local government in the newspaper’s regular New Year editorial, which prompted journalists and supporters to protest censorship and demand greater press freedom and autonomy. It has become a highly visible example of tightening ideological control over the media and showed that even relatively liberal commercial outlets were being pressed more directly into the propaganda system (Richburg Reference Richburg2013). In addition, legal professionals who defended citizens pursuing legitimate rights claims likewise became targets of repression. In July 2015, the authorities launched the “709” crackdown, rounding up around 300 rights lawyers and legal workers, further weakening the support networks that had previously sustained civil rights mobilization (Fu Reference Fu2018). Civic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were also targeted as part of a broader governance strategy that combined cooptation for compliant organizations with repression for rights-advocacy groups because their work linked legal claims to a broader collective action (Wang Reference Wang2025; Wang and Xia Reference Wang and Xia2023; Zhu and Jun Reference Zhu and Lu2022).

Instrumental legal opportunity

The establishment of the instrumental courts enables executive authorities to channel contentious grievances into judicial processes. On the one hand, China’s efforts to establish a sound legal system, along with waves of legal dissemination campaigns since the 1990s, have strengthened citizens’ legal consciousness and encouraged them to use law and courts to defend their rights (Gallagher Reference Gallagher2006; Reference Gallagher2017, 23, 29). A series of judicial reforms that reduce litigation costs, improve legal professionalism, and enhance judicial efficiency have also expanded access to litigation for ordinary grievants (Supreme People’s Court 2023). Courts thus increasingly appeared to offer an accessible and legitimate channel through which rights claims could be pursued.

The petitioning system also became more closely connected to this judicial turn. Although petitioning had once served as a substitute for formal legal channels as a means of resolving grievances (Minzner Reference Minzner2005), disputes have increasingly been redirected toward the courts. The 2014 and 2022 reforms of petitioning practices, for instance, emphasized settling disputes through legal channels rather than administrative ones (Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council 2014, 2022). In particular, the government was to channel litigation-related petitions and complaints to the judicial system and no longer handle them through the petitioning system. Litigation can deter civil rights mobilization more effectively than government intervention, because petitioning has no binding force and may be repeated. Dissatisfaction with the outcome may generate new anger and further destabilize society (He and Feng Reference He and Feng2016). By contrast, grievants are expected to comply with judicial decisions, and their further mobilization can be delegitimized. Under these circumstances, the party-state has made litigation one of the few remaining (and in some cases the only) “legitimate avenues” for civil rights mobilization.

Yet this legal opportunity did not produce an independent judiciary. Unlike some other authoritarian states, such as Egypt and Russia, that established constitutional courts to conduct judicial review (Hendley Reference Hendley2022; Moustafa Reference Moustafa2003, Reference Moustafa2007; Solomon Reference Solomon2004), China’s courts operate instrumentally and lack constitutional review (Ahl Reference Ahl2019). Courts are institutionally embedded within the party-state structure and remain subject to political oversight (He Reference He2021, Reference He2024; Ng and Xin Reference Ng and Xin2017). While judicial institutions have expanded and become more professionalized and efficient after several rounds of judicial reforms, they do not possess the authority to invalidate legislation or challenge fundamental state policies. Litigation, therefore, absorbs social grievances into judicial proceedings without fundamentally challenging the existing distribution of power, let alone bringing about a broader social change.

Moreover, the expansion of formal legal opportunity at the national level does not necessarily translate into effective judicial protection at the grassroots level. Although central laws and policies recognize gender equality and women’s land rights protection in general, grassroots courts decide these cases within a local governance environment shaped by village autonomy, conflict-management pressure, and local governments’ interest in maintaining order (Chan Reference Chan2019; Liebman Reference Liebman2014; Ng and Xin Reference Ng and Xin2017). This local embeddedness of adjudication helps explain why litigation may absorb civil rights grievances while producing authoritative outcomes that narrow the rights of MOW (He Reference He2007).

Against this backdrop, the rise of cooptation justice in China rests on a particular institutional arrangement. Political opportunities for both judicial and extrajudicial mobilization have shrunk, making protest, petitioning, media advocacy, and civic support increasingly risky and fragile. At the same time, legal opportunities have expanded in form, making courts more accessible while keeping them politically bound. Taken together, these developments have redirected contentious grievances into judicial processes and created the conditions under which cooptation justice can emerge as a mode of authoritarian governance.

This account of cooptation justice is related to but distinct from several influential concepts used to explain law and governance in China. Authoritarian legality, rule by law, and law-based governance show how authoritarian regimes use legal institutions to serve multiple goals, including constructing legitimacy, managing disputes, facilitating economic governance, and disciplining political actors (e.g., Ginsburg and Moustafa Reference Ginsburg and Moustafa2008; Gallagher Reference Gallagher2017; Rajah Reference Rajah2012; Zhang and Ginsburg Reference Zhang and Ginsburg2019). Stability maintenance scholarship demonstrates how the party-state prevents unrest through surveillance, petition control, and conflict management mechanisms, including courts and local administrative institutions (Feng and Zeng Reference Feng and Zeng2022; He Reference He2021; Liebman Reference Liebman2014; Ng and Xin Reference Ng and Xin2017). Embedded courts, in turn, direct attention to the institutional location of Chinese courts within the party-state and their responsiveness to political, administrative, and social pressures (Ng and Xin Reference Ng and Xin2017). Cooptation justice builds on these insights but identifies a more specific mechanism: channeling civil rights grievances into litigation, absorbing mobilization into politically embedded adjudication, and closing off further contention by transforming unresolved grievances into authoritative legal outcomes. The concept therefore does not simply describe the instrumental use of law, the pursuit of stability, the formalization of governance, or the political embeddedness of courts. Instead, it specifies how these features interact when political opportunities shrink and formally accessible legal opportunities expand, enabling courts to contain rights mobilization while preserving the appearance of lawful dispute resolution.

Cooptation justice versus legal cooptation

Despite its inherent demobilizing effects on civil resistance, cooptation justice is distinct from the classic notion of “legal cooptation” (Lobel Reference Lobel2007). Social movement scholars use the term “cooptation” to describe “signs of social movements losing their transformative spirit and diluting their original promise by ascribing to a reformist agenda” (Lapegna Reference Lapegna2014, 7; Coy and Hedeen Reference Coy and Hedeen2005; McAdam Reference McAdam1982; Piven and Cloward Reference Piven and Cloward1979; Schwartz Reference Schwartz1976). Sociolegal research that draws on Stuart Scheingold’s (Reference Scheingold2004) criticism of the “myth of rights” has extended the concept of cooptation to litigation and its influence on social change. Scheingold argued that “the direct impact of litigation on implementation is likely to be minimal” and that litigation only indirectly alters the balance of power (130). Galanter (Reference Galanter1974) further demonstrated how unequal resources explain why “the haves come out ahead.” Rosenberg (Reference Rosenberg1991) contended that favorable court rulings alone could not secure social change for discriminated populations in the USA because structural limitations hinder the court’s ability to implement decisions. He concluded that courts produce significant reform only when political, organizational, and market forces support it. Thus, courts act as “fly-paper” and provide only an “illusion of change” (427). Collectively, Scheingold (Reference Scheingold2004), Galanter (Reference Galanter1974), and Rosenberg (Reference Rosenberg1991) highlighted the triple risks of demobilization, unequal outcomes, and ineffective implementation of judicial decisions, delivering a stinging indictment of court-centered reform (Cummings Reference Cummings2018). Abel (Reference Abel1985, 9) likewise pointed out that litigation tends “to re-inforce the client’s experience of powerlessness” (see also Gaventa Reference Gaventa1980, 256). Lobel (Reference Lobel2007) further identifies six strands of the legal cooptation critique, showing how litigation can drain movements’ resources, narrow their claims, empower lawyers over activists, crowd out alternative strategies, fail to produce enforceable structural change, and reshape consciousness in ways that make movements overly dependent on courts.

Cooptation justice, however, differs from legal cooptation in several respects (see Table 1). The legal cooptation literature conceptualizes cooptation as a process that unfolds largely in the process of social movements. Litigation becomes one tactic within a broader repertoire of collective actions that may include protest, media exposure, and coalition building. Although legal avenues can redirect resources and reshape movement priorities, extrajudicial avenues remain available for activists. In this context, the political opportunity structure allows activists to produce at least a “radiating effect” that raises awareness of the problems (Galanter Reference Galanter1983). Litigation, thus, is a form of strategic drift. Conversely, cooptation justice suggests that the activists turn to litigation merely because they do not have alternative channels of mobilization. As extrajudicial opportunities become constrained, contentious claims are directed into judicial institutions, making litigation the primary channel for pursuing their grievances.

Table 1.

Cooptation justice versus legal cooptation

Table 1 Long description

Comparison of two pathways for incorporating social movements across three dimensions: mode of incorporation, operative logic, and outcome of mobilization. Legal cooptation is described as strategic drift, driven by professionalization, framing constraints, and routinization that reshape movement strategy. Its mobilization outcome is continued activism, but in a moderated form. Cooptation justice is described as institutional absorption, operating through authoritative adjudication under political constraint that perpetuates unfairness. Its mobilization outcome is delegitimized mobilization and institutional closure. The contrast emphasizes moderation and ongoing activism under legal cooptation versus absorption and shutdown effects under cooptation justice.

The two concepts are also different in their operative logic. Under legal cooptation, mobilization strategies gradually adapt to the institutional logic of law. Activists invest resources and time in legal engagement, frame their claims in legally required forms, and increasingly rely on legal professionals or experts. Consequently, the rights mobilization becomes more routinized, professionalized, and focused on court-centered advocacy. Despite this, the political support structure, including interest organizations, human rights lawyers, and opposition parties, is available and allows the grievants to prevail in litigation (Moustafa Reference Moustafa2003). Though Rosenberg (Reference Rosenberg1991) criticized the court’s inability to implement its decisions effectively in the USA, contentious cases can at least obtain a justifiable outcome from its constitutional court. Cooptation justice, however, operates through authoritative adjudication that perpetuates unfairness by prioritizing the attitudes of the government. Therefore, the court often issues decisions unfavorable to activists. It was unlikely to produce meaningful decisions establishing rules to protect liberal rights.

Regarding the outcome of mobilization, legal cooptation leads to moderated activism rather than to its termination. Lobel (Reference Lobel2007) argues that legal and extralegal strategies should not be treated as mutually exclusive paths to social change. Many examples have demonstrated that legal mobilization is embedded in broader movement-building efforts (Holzmeyer Reference Holzmeyer2009; McCann Reference McCann1994; Lehoucq and Taylor Reference Lehoucq and Taylor2020; Trowbridge Reference Trowbridge2022; Vanhala Reference Vanhala2012). The precondition for such practices, however, lies in a sound political opportunity structure. Cooptation justice, however, produces a more restrictive outcome. Once grievances are absorbed into judicial proceedings and resolved through authoritative rulings, continued mobilization can be delegitimized, and the space for further contention significantly narrowed or even foreclosed.

To summarize, these distinctions suggest that legal cooptation focuses on strategic drift within movements, whereas cooptation justice captures how authoritarian states use courts to absorb and contain contentious mobilization.

MOW’s landlessness and the rise of disputes in transitional China

China’s ruling party paints a rosy picture of gender equality, but women’s landlessness remains rampant in rural areas. Rural land policies during the reform era, since 1979, have led to widespread landlessness. State reform policies and laws, including the family-based household responsibility system, the land tenure security policy, and the village autonomy system, initially appeared gender-neutral but had profoundly gendered effects on land distribution and use (K. Li Reference Li2020).

Established in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the household responsibility system enabled individual families to contract arable land directly from village collectives and assume responsibility for profits and losses arising from that land. Therefore, families gained rights to possess, use, and profit from contracted land while bearing obligations to pay taxes and fees to local governments. The laws also granted families the right to acquire residential land.Footnote ¹ However, the concept of “household” lacked a clear definition and depended mainly on the discretion of rural collectives. In most rural areas, male villagers could establish a household after marriage and thus enjoyed greater opportunities to obtain a homestead (K. Li Reference Li2020; Lin Reference Lin2022).

The second land policy that created landless women extended land tenure from 15 years to 3 decades – the so-called “no change for thirty years” rule. This policy secured household landholding for longer periods and established the rule of “no increase in land allocation when households expand and no decrease otherwise” (增人不增地,减人不减地). During the land tenure period, increases or decreases in family members did not change the land allocations. As a result, women who married into a village during the land tenure period did not receive additional land. Their natal collectives denied them land rights (Yang and Xi Reference Li and Xi2006: 629), while their husbands’ villages excluded them as new members (Judd Reference Judd2007: 694). Scholars have described this phenomenon as “a fall between two stools” (两头空).

The system of village autonomy is the third mechanism that disadvantages women. The governance framework, anchored in the Organic Law of Villagers’ Committees (OLVC), rests on “democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic management, and democratic supervision.” The villagers’ committee governs land and other properties of the village collectives (OLVC, amended in 2018, Article 8). The villagers’ assembly deliberates and decides on matters involving collective interests, including the use of collective economic profits, land-contracting proposals, house-site allocations, and land requisition compensation (OLVC, amended in 2018, Article 8).

With the rapid urbanization and large-scale expropriation of rural land in China, villagers can benefit from the distribution of land acquisition compensation (H. Li Reference Li2021a). The recent proliferation of community-based shareholding companies has also enabled villagers to adopt a new identity as shareholders and to receive dividends from collective profits (Zhe and Chen Reference Zhe and Chen2005; J. Li and Yan Reference Li and Yan [颜丹丽]2011; Kan Reference Kan2018; H. Li Reference Li2021b). The villagers’ committee often votes to exclude women from the distribution of village collective interests (Mo Reference Mo2013; H. Li Reference Li2017; Xie and Weng Reference Xie and Weng2017; J. Li and Yan Reference Li and Yan [颜丹丽]2011). A 2014 survey of 1,126 women from 21 provinces found that 52.85 percent lost their right to contracted land after marrying out of their natal village (H. Li Reference Li2017). Another nationwide survey revealed that 21 percent of women aged 18–64 did not receive land acquisition compensation or shares in village collectives (Huang and Wu Reference Huang and Wu [吴柳芬]2015). The All-China Women’s Federation (2013) reported that rural women’s land-related complaints rose sharply between 2000 and 2007, reaching 10,927 in 2007, an increase of 82.8 percent in 8 years (31–32).

The legal opportunity for MOW’s land rights

Lifting the judicial barriers

For years, however, Chinese courts refused to hear MOW land disputes, treating them as matters of village self-governance. This practice persisted until the central government issued a notice in 2001 requiring the protection of rural women’s rights to contracted land (General Office of the Chinese Communist Party and the General Office of the State Council 2001). Following the notice, the Research Office of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) (2001) instructed courts to accept disputes over rural land compensation. However, in another case, the Case Filing Tribunal of the SPC (Supreme People’s Court 2002) simultaneously advised the High People’s Court of Zhejiang Province not to accept such lawsuits.

The SPC (Supreme People’s Court 2005) resolved this inconsistency in 2005 by issuing interpretations that required courts to hear cases involving land contracts, infringements on contracted land, transfers of acquired land, compensation for contracted land, and inheritance of leased land (Article 1) (henceforth SPC’s 2005 Interpretations). Article 22 further required courts to support claims for corresponding shares of land compensation made by rural collective economic organization members. This rule created a path for MOW, recognized as a rural collective economic organization, to obtain compensation.

The 2010 amendment of the OLVC expanded judicial opportunities for MOW (Mo Reference Mo2013). The law prohibited village charters, rules, or decisions from violating the Constitution, state laws, or policies, or from infringing upon villagers’ personal, property, and political rights. It required local governments to order corrections when violations occurred (OLVC, amended in 2018, Article 27). After this amendment, Chinese courts gradually accepted MOW lawsuits (Mo Reference Mo2013). Judicial reforms in 2015 further propelled courts to accept MOW disputes (Supreme People’s Court 2023). Courts established a new case-filing system that requires courts to register every lawsuit. Litigants dissatisfied with the decision could appeal to a higher court. It also incentivized courts to accept new lawsuits to avoid complaints and appeals that might harm performance evaluations.

The cases

By observing the dynamics among MOW litigants, villagers, courts, and local governments, we can gain a deeper understanding of how activists have turned to litigation, how courts have addressed these struggles, and how litigation has affected broader outcomes. This study’s primary data source comes from in-depth fieldwork investigations conducted in two locations between 2019 and 2025: one in Guangdong Province and the other at a quasi-NGO law firm in Beijing that specializes in protecting women’s rights.

Located in the Pearl River Delta, Guangdong Province has long served as China’s pilot for economic reform and urbanization. Since the mid-1990s, many MOW have persistently submitted petitions and staged protests in villages, towns, and cities across Guangdong to claim land rights (Huang and Wu Reference Huang and Wu [吴柳芬]2015; Mo Reference Mo2013; Po Reference Po2020; Xie and Weng Reference Xie and Weng2017). In Guangzhou’s Fanyu District, MOW land disputes accounted for 83 percent of all petitions in 2010 (Chen Reference Chen2010). The authors visited three cities in Guangdong Province: Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Huizhou. In June 2019, we interviewed four groups of MOW in four Shenzhen villages (Tianliao, Dachong, Nangang, and Tanglang; see Appendix Cases 11, 12, 19, and 20). We then paused our fieldwork between 2019 and 2022 because of the pandemic travel restrictions. We resumed in May 2023 after China lifted the restrictions, visiting Zengcheng District in Guangzhou (Case 9) and Daya Bay District in Huizhou (Case 13). Both sites experienced large-scale government land development projects that triggered numerous MOW disputes. In addition to interviewing the MOW, one of the authors also conducted a phone interview with the director of Y Center in Guangdong Province in December 2025. Established in 2001, Y Center has assisted MOW in bringing administrative and civil cases to the local courts.

Our second data source consists of four interviews with a Beijing law firm (henceforth “Z Law Firm”) conducted between 2019 and 2025. Established in 1995, Z Law Firm specializes in protecting women’s rights in areas such as marriage and family, education, domestic violence, sexual harassment, labor, and property, including rural women’s land rights. Its 2022 statistical report noted that the firm had handled 221 MOW land disputes nationwide over the past 2 decades. Of these lawsuits, MOW won 25 cases (11.3 percent), lost 92 cases (41.6 percent), and had 104 cases refused by courts (47.1 percent). From the firm’s records, we obtained 15 cases with detailed information (Cases 2–9, 13–15, 17–18, and 21–22) during our four visits in May 2019, May 2023, December 2024, and December 2025. Many other case files were missing, incomplete, or unavailable because the responsible lawyers had left the firm or passed away.

In Guangdong Province, we interviewed 14 MOW in Shenzhen (Cases 11, 12, 19, and 20), 4 in Guangzhou’s Zengcheng District (Case 9), and 1 in Huizhou’s Daya Bay (Case 13). We conducted the interviews individually or in group meetings. At Z Law Firm, we interviewed three lawyers with over a decade of experience handling MOW disputes. During the pandemic, we also conducted several phone interviews with them. With the firm’s assistance, we interviewed by phone two MOW from Zhejiang Province (Cases 15 and 18), one from Inner Mongolia (Cases 4 and 14), and one from Hubei Province (Case 8). A nonexhaustive list of our questions for MOW included: How did the village committee or the local government infringe on your rights? What strategies did you use to mobilize the law? Why did you choose to go or not go to court? What was the outcome of your litigation? And what else did you do after the litigation? We collected a wide range of materials during the interviews, including government investigation reports, court files, petition letters, government replies, and news reports.

We also analyzed two landmark cases in the Nanhai District of Foshan City, Guangdong Province, to assess mobilization dynamics (Cases 1 and 16). The Nanhai local government pioneered successful methods to address MOW grievances. Drawing on reports from the All-Women’s Federation and China Online Judgements, we extracted detailed information about these cases (Huang and Wu Reference Huang and Wu [吴柳芬]2015; Po Reference Po2013, Reference Po2020).

Therefore, our analysis draws on 22 cases: 3 from eastern China (Zhejiang), 4 from the west (Gansu and Inner Mongolia), 2 from the north (Hebei), 10 from the south (Guangdong), and 3 from the central region (Henan and Hubei). The earliest MOW resistance activities began in 1985; 1 occurred in the 1990s, 9 in the 2000s, and 11 in the 2010s. The data, however, have limitations. We were unable to conduct interviews with village committees, courts, or local governments because these disputes remain politically and socially sensitive. This limits our ability to fully reconstruct their perspectives. To address this limitation, we treated the narratives of MOW and public interest lawyers with caution. We triangulated them with court judgments, government replies, petition materials, settlement agreements, investigation reports, and other documentary evidence collected during fieldwork. In analyzing court adjudication, we paid attention to the arguments, evidence, and factual claims presented by village committees and local governments in judicial decisions. We used these materials to verify and contextualize the accounts provided by MOW claimants and lawyers to reduce potential information bias.

Litigation as pressure-building (1990s–2000s)

In this stage, litigation functioned as pressure-building within a broader repertoire of rights mobilization. Rather than serving as the sole or dominant channel for rights claims, it worked alongside petitioning, protest, media exposure, and organizational support to elevate political pressure on local governments, strengthen women’s bargaining power, and raise rights awareness of women and the public (see also McCann Reference McCann1991).

Perpetuating unfairness through adjudication

Courts initially sidestepped MOW cases by arguing that they did not fall within their jurisdiction (see also He Reference He2007), although this trend diminished significantly after 2015. Since village committees controlled land allocation and membership, civil courts typically refrained from adjudicating these cases out of respect for village autonomy (see Cases 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, and 18). When MOW initiated administrative litigation against village committees, courts rejected the cases on the grounds that the village committees were not administrative institutions and therefore not subject to administrative litigation (see Cases 5, 14, and 18). Consequently, both civil and administrative courts often dismissed MOW’s land disputes.

After 2015, however, the new case-filing system required courts to accept these cases and prohibited them from refusing them. As a result, courts were compelled to formally hear disputes that they had previously avoided. At the same time, the uncertainty surrounding the substantive law governing MOW’s land rights gave judges considerable discretion in deciding these cases. A common approach was for judges to acknowledge certain discriminatory practices of village committees or local governments while upholding the substantive decisions of the village or government by selectively interpreting relevant laws, even though the reasoning often appeared weak. In this way, adjudication did not resolve the underlying injustice but instead translated existing local practices into legally validated outcomes.

The central legal issue in MOW litigation involved determining membership status, which decided whether women qualified for rural land interests. Courts assessed connections to the natal village by examining factors such as household registration (户口), birthplace, upbringing, residence, social and medical insurance, primary income source, contracted land, fulfillment of obligations or contributions to the village, possession of share certificates, and land rights in the husband’s village (Chan Reference Chan2019). Courts nationwide, however, applied inconsistent and highly discretionary criteria to determine MOW membership. The Tanglang (Case 19) and Nangang (Case 20) cases show how courts ignored this core issue. Both cases occurred in Shenzhen, where villages introduced shareholding reforms in the early 1990s. Male villagers automatically became shareholders of collective companies, while the village generally excluded female villagers. In both cases, courts ruled that the MOW failed to prove shareholder status at the time of company establishment, even though they had already proven village membership. Courts also failed to act when village committees illegally removed MOW from compensation lists. Additionally, courts applied structurally biased criteria, such as evaluating whether a woman had obligations or contributed to the village. Because many villages had already excluded MOW from collective activities and services once a dispute arose, these criteria effectively penalized the women for exclusions that the women had no control over (Cases 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, and 18).

Another key legal issue concerned the validity of settlement agreements between MOW and village collectives, under which women relinquished their rights in exchange for monetary compensation. Local governments and villages regularly used this strategy to prevent further claims. Many MOWs signed agreements without understanding the terms and consequences, while relatives sometimes signed on their behalf without their knowledge. In the case of Lin (Case 13), the court ruled against women based on a written document provided by the village committee. This document, titled “One-Time Subsidy Schedule for Married-Out Women,” indicated that the women’s relatives had signed on their behalf after receiving RMB 5,000 (US$724). According to the village committee, the payment constituted a one-time settlement, and acceptance of the subsidy meant that the women had relinquished all their rights and interests in the village thereafter. Lin, however, stated that she and the other women had understood it as an ordinary compensation payment and had never been informed of the details of the schedule. The court accepted this evidence and ruled against the women largely on this basis. The judgment, however, did not closely examine whether the relatives who signed the document had authority to waive the women’s future benefits, whether the women had given informed consent, or whether the arrangement was fair given the value of the rights allegedly relinquished. The case illustrates how courts may treat village-produced documents as dispositive evidence while insufficiently scrutinizing the voluntariness and fairness of such arrangements.

Another approach that the court sometimes adopted was to support MOW’s minor claims while rejecting their material claims. Located in central Guangdong Province, Zengcheng, a prefecture-level city under Guangzhou, is well known for lychee production (the case of Zengcheng, Case 9). In 2013, the local government decided to acquire land from local lychee farmers and build a new community. Four villages were expropriated. Each household (户) could obtain around RMB 1.1 million (US$159,535) in compensation. MOW’s families, however, received only around RMB 80,000 (US$11,599) because they were not recognized as village members and therefore could not enjoy equal rights with others. In 2013, they brought administrative litigation against the local government. The court ruled that the local government’s compensation scheme was illegal. Although the local government revised the scheme in 2014, the new arrangement still restricted MOW’s rights. The women then applied for recognition of their village membership status. The local government rejected the request in 2017. In 2019, the four women sued the local government to seek recognition of their membership status, and the court again ruled in their favor. They therefore became optimistic about the next step. In 2020, they sued the local government for compensation related to the land expropriation in 2013. The court, however, ruled that the compensation issue could not be revisited because they had previously signed the compensation scheme. Similar to Case 13, the compensation scheme was not signed by the women themselves; instead, it was signed only by their fathers. Through this sequence of rulings, the court acknowledged the women’s formal membership rights but effectively denied them meaningful material compensation. Despite the rectification of the membership status in the village, the women could only obtain limited future benefits, while the substantial compensation linked to the earlier land expropriation remained unavailable.

A fourth approach emerged in cases involving multiple claimants. Courts sometimes fragmented collective claims by applying different legal criteria, thereby dismissing most claims while granting relief to only a small number of women. In the Elder and Younger Sisters’ case (Case 11-1; 11-2), the older and younger sisters claimed for distribution of the village collective company shares. Drawing on the distribution plan designed by the village committee, newborn babies, newly married-in wives, and new matrilocal husbands who moved to the village between July 1, 1992, and June 30, 1996, could become shareholders. The village would remove original shareholders from the shareholders’ list who have died, married out, or gone abroad or to Hong Kong or Macau between July 1, 1992, and June 30, 1996. Further, original shareholders who marry out or reside outside the village after July 1, 1997, can retain their membership, even though they have registered their households elsewhere. Since this distribution plan violated the existing law, the court ruled that the plan was illegal. However, the court deployed another rule to determine the membership of the MOW: whether the MOW’s household registration remained in the village. Based on this criterion, the younger sister lost the litigation because she had registered her household in her husband’s village, but the older sister won the litigation because she retained her household registration in the natal village. This result isolated the younger sister and weakened her social support. By splitting the plaintiffs and granting relief selectively, the judgment weakened the collective basis of the claim and reduced the likelihood of further joint mobilization.

These adjudicative strategies, including recognizing the practices of village committees or local governments, granting partial recognition to minor rights while ignoring substantive material interests, and fragmenting collective claims into individualized disputes, allowed courts to process disputes while leaving underlying inequalities largely intact.

Delegitimizing continued mobilization

After obtaining an unfavorable judgment, MOW would turn to extrajudicial avenues to continue their mobilization. Many, however, came to realize that court adjudication effectively foreclosed further resistance. This increased the village’s unfair treatment of MOW and reinforced the village’s continued exclusion of the women. Government offices also dismissed MOW’s letters and visits, claiming that the courts had already resolved the grievances. When the women turned to more confrontational strategies, such as protest, they faced the risk of prosecution for causing disturbances or provoking trouble. By these means, judicial decisions not only close disputes formally but also redefine continued resistance as unreasonable or unlawful.

First, MOW faced antagonism from their village communities after losing litigation. Villagers insulted them with names such as “elderly-gnawing adult children (啃老)” and people who “grab money (抢钱).” These stigmatizing labels portrayed the women not as rights claimants but as opportunistic individuals attempting to exploit collective resources. In reality, many MOW stayed in their natal villages after marriage due to monetary and nonmonetary concerns. Some remained because their husbands’ communities offered poor living conditions, while others preferred to stay because of the existing local social networks. However, once the courts rejected their claims, villagers and even their parents and family members often treated the judicial outcome as confirmation that the women’s demands were illegitimate. In the case of Lin (Case 13), after the unfavorable ruling, the village head told her and the other three women, “You lost the case! Even the court didn’t back you. Don’t expect to get a penny more!” Before filing the lawsuit, Lin and the other MOW applied pressure through peaceful protests, letters, and visits, which led the government to offer a settlement and to recognize their membership in the village. Expecting greater protection under the law, however, they rejected the offer and pursued litigation. The court’s unfavorable ruling denied their claims and effectively legitimized the village’s continued exclusion of them from collective benefits.

The case of Ren (Case 18) demonstrates a similar pattern. During her 10-year struggle, Ms Ren became increasingly isolated by both her family and the village. Her father remained silent, her mother yelled at her, her brother refused to speak to her, and her sister-in-law physically attacked her. Forced to leave, she relocated with her husband and children to another village, yet the harassment continued. The failure of legal remedies, therefore, not only denied her substantive relief but also deepened her social exclusion and increased the personal costs of continued resistance.

Judicial rulings also became a justification for administrative authorities to dismiss further claims. In the case of Zengcheng (Case 9), for instance, after losing the trial and appeal in an administrative case against the local government, the MOW and their families resorted to other formal mobilization tactics, namely, letters and visits. Some traveled to Beijing, while others petitioned the provincial government. The government’s letters and visits office rejected their applications, stating that courts had already resolved the matter. The government issued the following notice:

This response illustrates that petitioning authorities refused the matter when they learned that courts had heard the cases and issued rulings, even when litigation failed to provide substantive relief. The MOWs often began by petitioning the government, but petitioning offices redirected them to legal procedures such as litigation, arbitration, or administrative reconsideration, as outlined in the Regulations of Letters and Visits Work (Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council 2022). After losing in court, their claims were rejected by petitioning offices because courts had already handled their cases.

After the rejection, if the women adopted more aggressive tactics of mobilization, the state would reframe such actions as threats to social stability and prosecute them for the criminal offense of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” which is defined in Article 293 of the Criminal Law of the PRC to sanction anyone who creates disturbances that disrupt public order (Feng and Zeng Reference Feng and Zeng2022). Ms Guan, for example, moved to the city with her husband and built a thriving career (the case of Guan, Case 14). Her home village reclaimed her four acres of land even though she had not received land from her husband’s family. She petitioned repeatedly and filed lawsuits to reclaim her land rights. The court rejected her claims, reasoning that she had already received compensation from the local government. Ms Guan argued that the compensation only covered past production interests and excluded future rights. During her continued petitioning, authorities detained her four times and imprisoned her for 1 year and 2 months for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” After completing her sentence, she remained under residential surveillance for an extended period (see also the Zengcheng case, Case 9; the Hu case, Case 15; and the Ren case, Case 18).