An assistant professor at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna recently discussed different ways in which the Chinese government responds to protests and observed that the state seems confident that it can control protesters if and when it is necessary.
Assistant professor H. Christoph Steinhardt spoke with the Center for Strategic & International Studies' (CSIS) Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette on the podcast "Pekingology" to discuss Steinhardt's recent paper, "Defending Stability Under Threat: Sensitive Periods and the Repression of Protest in Urban China," CSIS reported on their site.
In his research, Steinhardt analyzed and compared specific key periods in China, such as the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Incident.
"So these kinds of events can serve off what political scientists call coordinating mechanisms," Steinhardt said in the podcast. "So that's why around June 4th, you would see heightened security measures, particularly everywhere in Beijing, perhaps also elsewhere, disruptive events."
Steinhardt said there are two types of repression employed by governments. Responsive repression is typically employed in democracies or in places where protest has become a normal facet of society, and it is used in response to heated events. Preemptive repression is used in autocracies such as China, where repression is employed preemptively before contentious events such as protests can occur. Before these types of events take place, authorities often increase arrests of political opponents and infiltrate familial and professional networks to gain leverage to deter people from protesting.
"This research also kind of highlights that the state is actually pretty confident in managing these types of protests, because my expectation when I went into this was, for instance, around June 4th, there would just be nothing. There would be a complete standstill of contention. And that is not what I find," Steinhardt said. "So that shows to me that the state is actually confident that it can selectively deal with those protests — those few who have some fundamental grievances against the regime — and let the other types of more bread-and-butter, normal contention run its way even under these kind of sensitive periods or conditions."
Steinhardt said that advancing technology could contribute to more preemptive repression in the future, but not a complete end to protests in China.
"All indicators point to more repression over recent years, but not to the extent that everything is kind of coming to a standstill," Steinhardt said. "I don't think that will happen anytime soon. I see the desire on the part of the leadership, I think, to use, in particular, technology to replace some of the positive benefits of protests as a signaling device on policy implementation kind of to replace that, establish all kinds of complaint forums on the internet. I don't see that this is as effective as taking to the streets in terms of if you want to get your voice heard. And there's also probably the desire to use these means to, you know, for surveillance, to make preemptive repression even more effective. My intuition would be the authorities would not be wise to use all the means of surveillance and repression they have to completely stifle this type of claim-making in the public sphere."
The Tiananmen Square incident refers to a string of protests that took place in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in spring 1989, Encyclopaedia Britannica said. Chinese university students began calling for political and economic reforms and speaking out against inflation and corrupt government officials. As the numbers of protesters in Beijing grew and similar protests emerged in other cities, the government issued "stern warnings."
By late May, Chinese officials had implemented martial law in Beijing, but Beijing residents crowded the streets and prevented military personnel from reaching Tiananmen Square, Encyclopaedia Britannica said. On June 3, soldiers and tanks proceeded toward the square at night, shooting and running over protestors who got in their way. All protestors were cleared from the area by the morning of June 4.
The Chinese government said that only 200 people were killed in the Tiananmen Square incident, BBC News reported. Contradicting this, Sir Alan Donald, who was the British ambassador to China, said at the time that 10,000 people were killed.
Students in China are not taught about the events that took place in Tiananmen Square, and mentions of June 4 are strictly regulated on the internet, Time reported.
"Parents who lost children are prevented from paying tribute to their deceased sons and daughters," Time reported. "Activists and outspoken dissidents are detained as the anniversary approaches."
CSIS is a nonprofit policy research organization that was founded in 1962 and focuses on national security issues, CSIS said on their site.
H. Christoph Steinhardt is an assistant professor at the University of Vienna and researches protests, political identities, and social and political trust as a lens through which to analyze the evolution of China's political regime.
