Environmental Protest in Rural China: A Case Study of the Huazhen Incident.

摘要

This research explores the mechanisms through which farmers in contemporary China might stage successful environmental protests by studying the Huazhen Incident. The author argues that the Huazhen farmers' success in forcing the local government to close the heavily-polluting industrial park can be accounted for by their having successfully aligned an anti-pollution frame with an anti-corruption one, employing the formal village social organizations as mobilizing structures, and creatively developing opportunities for group participation by senior villagers. These three processes empowered Huazhen farmers and constrained the repressive power of the local state as follows: First, environmental issues in Huazhen were entangled with various other social problems. Issue entrepreneurs effectively integrated farmers' multiple grievances through bridging the anti-pollution and anti-corruption frames. Secondly, Huazhen farmers creatively used formal village social organizations as mobilizing structures. By embedding a village-wide mobilization of anti-pollution protest into the village committee election process and by employing the Society of Senior Villagers to mobilize the elderly, the Huazhen protest enjoyed the support of the majority of villagers, as well as the main force of the senior villagers necessary for a breakthrough. Thirdly, farmers in Huazhen both employed existing opportunities and developed new ones, making full use of the formalistic opportunities provided by the local government. Most importantly, the farmers in Huazhen strategically explored the group-specific opportunities of the elderly for constraining state power through the weapons of the weak. During the early stages of the protest, the power of the weak forced the local government to appeal to emotion work instead of repression in order to demobilize the protesters. While officials were doing this, the elderly were protesting with a strategic dramaturgy of moderate extremism, which served to further mobilize the farmers and garner support from the general public. Confronting the moderate but persistent protests of the elderly, the local government switched to repression. Excessive repression, however, failed to control the protests. Worse still, such repression gave farmers the moral high ground. Farmers in Huazhen utilized the protest spectacle as an alternative media and turned the protest base into a direct theatre, broadcasting their protest and sensitizing the public by making them bear witness to state oppression, thereby deconstructing the official discourse of the repression. The protest of farmers in Huazhen ultimately triggered intervention from higher-level authorities, which forced the local state to make a full concession: closing the entire industrial park.