Attraction Without Networks: Recruiting Strangers to Unregistered Protestantism in China

Chinese local officials frequently employ relational repression to demobilize protesters.When popular action occurs, they investigate activists' social ties, locate individuals who might be willing to help stop the protest, assemble a work team, and dispatch it to conduct thought work. Work team members are then expected to use their personal influence to persuade relatives, friends and fellow townspeople to stand down. Those who fail are subject to punishment, including suspension of salary, removal from office, and prosecution. Relational repression sometimes works. When local authorities have considerable say over work team members and bonds with protesters are strong, relational repression can help demobilize protesters and halt popular action. Even if relational repression does not end a protest entirely, it can limit its length and scope by reducing tension at times of high strain and providing a channel for negotiation. Often, however, as in a 2005 environmental protest in Zhejiang, insufficiently tight ties and limited concern about consequences creates a commitment deficit, partly because thought workers recognize their ineffectiveness with many protesters and partly because they anticipate little or no punishment for failing to demobilize anyone other than a close relative.The practice and effectiveness of relational, "soft" repression in China casts light on how social ties can demobilize as well as mobilize contention and ways in which state and social power can be combined to serve state ends.Keywords: protest control; soft repression; policing; work teams; thought work; social networks Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters For some years now, students of contentious politics have been calling for a broader understanding of protest control. 1 They argue that existing scholarship has been overly focused on state-based and "hard" forms of repression at the expense of less heavy-handed ways to suppress popular action. In order to redress this imbalance, a number of studies have explored how surveillance, Relational repression is a control technique that uses social ties to demobilize protesters. In China, it amounts to relying on relatives, friends, and native-place connections to defuse popular  For helpful comments, we would like to thank Loren Brandt, Lei Guang, Rongbin Han, William Hurst, Andrew Kipnis, Richard Madsen, Barry Naughton, Jean Oi, Eva Pils, Scott Rozelle, Rachel Stern, Nicolai Volland, Xueguang Zhou, the journal's two anonymous referees, and especially Lianjiang Li. Generous financial support was provided by the China Fieldwork Fund and a Residential Research Fellowship from the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC-Berkeley. 1For typologies of protest control, see Jennifer Earl, "Tanks, tear gas, and taxes: toward a theory of movement repression, " Sociological Theory, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2003) Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2011), pp. 21-37. 3 Myra Marx Ferree, "Soft repression: ridicule, stigma, and silencing in gender-based movements," Re...

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“…On ties of varying strength, see Shi and Cai 2006, 314–32; Becker 2012. On absent ties, see Vala and O'Brien 2007.…”

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confidence: 99%

Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters

Deng

O’Brien

2013

The China Quarterly

188

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“…The first example illustrates one-on-one personal evangelism, which is an abiding feature of China's conservative Protestant house church Christianity (Bays 2003, p. 502;Koesel 2013, pp. 580-82;Vala and O'Brien 2007). A middle-aged member explained, in a longer post, how he had told a former middle school classmate about the handcopying project.…”

Section: Beyond Protestants and Into The Offline World: Training Schomentioning

confidence: 99%

Online and Offline Religion in China: A Protestant WeChat “Alter-Public” through the Bible Handcopying Movement

Vala

Huang

2019

Religions

Self Cite

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Studies of digital religion frequently take democratic regime settings and developed economic contexts for granted, leaving regime and economic development levels as background factors (Campbell 2013). However, in China, the role of the authoritarian state, restrictions on religion, and rapid social change mean that online and offline religious practices will develop in distinct ways. This article analyzes the 2019 Bible handcopying movement promoted through China’s most popular social media WeChat as a way to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the publication of China’s most widely used translation of the Bible. Drawing on interviews by and communication with the movement’s founder, the co-authors participated in and collected postings from a 500-member WeChat group from March to August 2019. We argue that while offline handcopying is an innovation in religious practice due to Chinese cultural and historical traditions, the online group constitutes a micro-scale “alter-public” (Chen 2015; Warner 2002), a site for religious discussion, prayer, and devotion that strengthens an “alternative” Protestant identity alongside that of Chinese citizen of the People’s Republic of China.

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“… 7. Some religious groups in China, such as house churches, have been able to grow without bureaucratic permissions. However, as unregistered organizations these churches are susceptible to considerable pressures and some have taken elaborate measures to survive; see, Wright and Zimmerman-Liu (2013) and Koesel (2013); more generally on unregistered Christians in China, see, Bays (2012) and Vala and O'Brien (2007). …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Economy of Religious Revival

Koesel¹

2015

Politics and Religion

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This article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the religious economy approach by applying it to the religious revival across contemporary Russia and China. This comparison shows that the religious economy framework is beneficial in explaining some aspects of the communist and post-communist religious change, including macroeconomic market trends and why some faiths thrive while others fail. However, it has less explanatory power in explaining religious-state relations under market constraints -that is, how religious groups interact with state regulators to survive and grow; the range of options available to religious actors and their payoffs; and the political consequence of this interaction. This article draws on fieldwork in both countries to illustrate the benefits of grounding the religious economy approach more deeply in politics. The political economy of the marketplace reveals how and why religious groups engage the state to survive, and that they are becoming influential political and economic actors.

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Attraction Without Networks: Recruiting Strangers to Unregistered Protestantism in China

Cited by 21 publications

References 42 publications

Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters

Relational Repression in China: Using Social Ties to Demobilize Protesters

Online and Offline Religion in China: A Protestant WeChat “Alter-Public” through the Bible Handcopying Movement

The Political Economy of Religious Revival

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