The Roots Of The Eruptive Mass Event And The Countermeasures Against It

How to prevent, respond to and handle the eruptive mass event is not only a new challenge to China's social and political stability but also an important theoretic and practical subject in building a harmonious society. Studies on this subject in China's academic circles and governmental agencies can be classified into two types. The first one is to discuss the results of the eruptive mass event as well as the countermeasures against it from the perspective of crisis management on the part of government. This approach examines damages of the eruptive mass event to people's life and properties, economic development, national security and social stability, aiming to help the government to improve its capability of dealing with emergency. The second type is to find out social roots of the eruptive mass event. This approach argues that China's rapid social transformation tends to produce many problems, and that the eruptive mass event is a social issue by definition—highlighting various social contradiction and interest conflicts in the transitory society. These two approaches have analyzed the causes, characteristics, and implications of the eruptive mass event as well as countermeasures against it from different aspects. Most studies conclude that the eruptive mass event is an unavoidable phenomenon in the period of social and economic transformation, which is the direct cause of the frequent appearance of the eruptive mass event.This paper argues that the social and economic transformation is not the direct cause of the frequent appearance of the eruptive mass event. The direct cause lies in the fact that the homogeneous interest structure has been broken in the wake of economic and social transition in China and a new mechanism of interest coordination has yet to be developed. Before China's reform and openness, the system of the planned economy and uniform social structure had created the same interest among the people, thus making all people feel secure, and preempting the occurrence of the eruptive mass event. Since reform, the increasing social differentiation has produced various social strata and groups with plural interests, leading to interest conflicts, even severe confrontations in the society for want of a workable interest coordinating mechanism. This is the fundamental cause of the eruptive mass event. In order to forestall eruptive mass events, we should begin with institution building by establishing a set of mechanisms for interest articulation, distribution, coordination and guarantee in the spirit of fairness, flexibility, and effectiveness. These mechanisms will help to maintain social and political stability and build a harmonious society.