Research On The Logic Of Strategy Of China’s Social Contention Since The1990s

Since the1990s, as a non-institutionalized way of delivering and protecting theinterests, social contention is prevalent in many areas of the society. In the overall trend,a prominent feature of the social contention is the diversity of its strategy and taking thehierarchy government as a particular contention object. Facing with the strongcontention object, what can the protesters do to make full use of their strategies toincrease their power in the interest game so as to achieve our objectives? This paperargues that in order to achieve the objectives, the protesters attempt to apply thestrategies of seeking for the authority of the higher government to restrict the lowergovernment by the means of power so as to force the lower government to change thebehavior of the damage to the interests of protesters. This is the social contentionstrategy logic. Taking the political opportunity structure theory as the theoreticalanalysis tools, this paper will analyze how the national and political factors provide apolitical opportunity for the use of the social contention strategies that it enables theeffect of the social contention strategies from three dimensions of the macro structure,meso mechanism and micro strategy.According to the logic of the social contention strategy, the paper does a comparativeanalysis on the events in Xiamen PX and Guangdong Wukan. Although the former takesa more peaceful and rational strategy and the latter adopts a more radical and violentstrategy, they emerges the same contention strategy logic.Based on the analysis of the theories and the cases, the paper argues that theinstitutional governance of the social contention is propitious to the absorbing ability ofthe political system, the reduction of the negative effects in the social contention, andthe positive interaction between the state and the society. As a result, we need take thetransformation of the idea and mode in the social contention governance, the buildup ofthe institutionalized channels for the political communication and interests expressing,as well as the strengthening of the legalization channels in the social contention as the path selection to improve the institutionalized governance of the social contention. Inorder to achieve the social contention institutionalized governance, we need to improveit in four aspects which are consisted of a reasonable division of responsibilities and aeffective monitoring mechanisms, an effective system of supply and a necessary legalconstraints mechanisms, a democratic decision-making mechanism and a scientificincentive mechanism, a modern rational spirit and a game platform of cooperation.