After 30 years of economic reform, the social structure of China has been experiencing dramatic transformation in recent years. Social conflicts emerged as the social estate changed and income gap enlarged, which make popular resistance increase every year during the last decade. Nowadays, the popular resistance in China has become a pivotal negative factor for CCP and Chinese government to build a harmonious socialist society, and hence become a worthy research topic for scholars.Most of the researches of popular resistance in China put emphasis on the protestors, instead of focusing on government which is another important actor in collective actions. Actually, the governmental behavior, especially local governmental behavior can put great influence on the process of popular resistance. So my research questions are: What kind of actions will local government take to deal with popular resistance? Which factors influence local governmental behavior during the process of popular resistance? And how these factors come into effect?The structure of this thesis is as follows. After a brief introduction of popular resistance and literature review on this topic in the introduction part, the framework of analysis is discussed in the second chapter. Based on the observation of popular resistance, three factors (Interests of Local Government, Pressurized System and Repertories of Collective Actors) are concluded as the theoretic framework of this thesis. Chapter Three to Five, each chapter discuss one factor in detail on how these factors influence local governmental behavior. Chapter Six will discuss the coercive actions made by local government. Chapter Seven is a summary of this thesis. |