Outsourcing Repression

Outsourcing Repression PDF

Author: Lynette H. Ong

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-04

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0197628796

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A compelling examination of China's engagement of nonstate actors as a counterintuitive solution to coerce citizens while minimizing backlash against the state. How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing Repression, Lynette H. Ong examines how the Chinese state engages nonstate actors, from violent street gangsters to nonviolent grassroots brokers, to coerce and mobilize the masses for state pursuits, while reducing costs and minimizing resistance. She draws on ethnographic research conducted annually from 2011 to 2019--the years from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, a unique and original event dataset, and a collection of government regulations in a study of everyday land grabs and housing demolition in China. Theorizing a counterintuitive form of repression that reduces resistance and backlash, Ong invites the reader to reimagine the new ground state power credibly occupies. Everyday state power is quotidian power acquired through society by penetrating nonstate territories and mobilizing the masses within. Ong uses China's urbanization scheme as a window of observation to explain how the arguments can be generalized to other country contexts.

Outsourcing Repression

Outsourcing Repression PDF

Author: Lynette H. Ong

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0197628761

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Bulldozers, violent thugs, and nonviolent brokers -- The theory : state power, repression, and implications for development -- Outsourcing violence : everyday repression via thugs-for-hire -- Case studies : thugs-for-hire, repression, and mobilization -- Networks of state infrastructural power : brokerage, state penetration, and mobilization -- Brokers in harmonious demolition : mass mobilizers, mediators, and huangniu -- Comparative context : South Korea and India.

The Sentinel State

The Sentinel State PDF

Author: Minxin Pei

Publisher: Harvard University Press - T

Published: 2024-02-13

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 067429646X

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Countering recent hype around technology, a leading expert argues that the endurance of dictatorship in China owes less to facial recognition AI and GPS tracking than to the human resources of the Leninist surveillance state. For decades China watchers argued that economic liberalization and increasing prosperity would bring democracy to the world’s most populous country. Instead, the Communist Party’s grip on power has only strengthened. Why? The answer, Minxin Pei argues, lies in the effectiveness of the Chinese surveillance state. And the source of that effectiveness is not just advanced technology like facial recognition AI and mobile phone tracking. These are important, but what matters more is China’s vast, labor-intensive infrastructure of domestic spying. Central government data on Chinese surveillance is confidential, so Pei turned to local reports, police gazettes, leaked documents, and interviews with exiled dissidents to provide a detailed look at the evolution, organization, and tactics of the surveillance state. Following the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, the Chinese Communist Party invested immense resources in a coercive apparatus operated by a relatively small number of secret police officers capable of mobilizing millions of citizen informants to spy on those suspected of disloyalty. The CCP’s Leninist bureaucratic structure—whereby officials and party activists penetrate every sector of society and the economy, from universities and village committees to delivery companies, telecommunication firms, and Tibetan monasteries—ensures that Beijing’s eyes and ears are truly everywhere. While today’s system is far more robust than that of years past, it is modeled after mass surveillance implemented under Mao Zedong and Chinese emperors centuries ago. Rigorously empirical and rich in historical insight, The Sentinel State is a singular contribution to our knowledge about coercion in the Chinese state and, more generally, the survival strategies of authoritarian regimes.

The Power Triangle

The Power Triangle PDF

Author: Hazem Kandil

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-08-18

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0190239220

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Revolution, reform, and resilience comprise the respective fortunes of modern Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. Although the countries all experienced coups with remarkably similar ambitions, each followed a very different trajectory. Iran became an absolutist monarchy that was overthrown from below, Turkey evolved into a limited democracy, and Egypt turned into a police state. In The Power Triangle, Hazem Kandil attributes the different outcomes to the power struggle between the political, military, and security institutions. Coups establish a division of labor, with one group of officers running government, another overseeing the military, and a third handling security. But their interests begin to vary as each group identifies with its own institution. Politicians wish to rule indefinitely; military officers prefer to return to barracks after implementing the needed reforms; and security men scramble to maintain the privileges they acquired in the post-coup emergency. Driven by conflicting agendas, these partners in domination struggle over regime control. Using comparative historical sociology, Kandil demonstrates how regimes are constantly shaped and reshaped through the recurrent clashes and shifting alliances between the team of rivals in this "power triangle." The Power Triangle's realist approach to regime change shows that a clear explanation of pivotal events in Iran, Turkey, and Egypt is impossible without a firm grasp of the power relations within each country's ruling bloc.

Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen

Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen PDF

Author: Hazem Kandil

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2014-01-07

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1781681422

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One of the most momentous events in the Arab uprisings that swept across the Middle East in 2011 was the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. As dramatic and sudden as this seemed, it was only one further episode in an ongoing power struggle between the three components of Egypt’s authoritarian regime: the military, the security services, and the government. A detailed study of the interactions within this invidious triangle over six decades of war, conspiracy, and sociopolitical transformation, Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen is the first systematic analysis of recent Egyptian history. This paperback edition, updated to incorporate events in 2013, provides the background necessary to understanding how the military rebranded itself as the defender of democracy and ousted Mubarak’s successor, Muhammad Morsi. Impeccably researched and filled with intrigue, Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen is an indispensable guide for anyone trying to fathom what this latest development means for Egypt’s future.

Prosper or Perish

Prosper or Perish PDF

Author: Lynette H. Ong

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-09-15

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0801465516

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The official banking institutions for rural China are Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs). Although these co-ops are mandated to support agricultural development among farm households, since 1980 half of RCC loans have gone to small and medium-sized industrial enterprises located in, and managed by, townships and villages. These township and village enterprises have experienced highly uneven levels of success, and by the end of the 1990s, half of all RCC loans were in or close to default, forcing China’s central bank to bail out RCCs. In Prosper or Perish, Lynette H. Ong examines the bias in RCC lending patterns, focusing on why the mobilization of rural savings has contributed to successful industrial development in some locales but not in others. Interweaving insightful and theoretically informed discussions of rural credit, development, governance, and bank bailouts, Ong identifies various sources for China’s uneven development. In the highly decentralized fiscal environment of the People’s Republic, successful industrialization has significant implications for rural governance. Local governments depend on revenue from industrial output to provide public goods and services; unsuccessful enterprises starve local governments of revenue and result in radical cutbacks in services. High peasant burdens, land takings without adequate compensation by local governments, and other poor governance practices tend to be associated with unsuccessful industrialization. In light of the recent liberalization of the rural credit sector in China, Prosper or Perish makes a significant contribution to debates within political science, economic development, and international banking.

Contesting Cyberspace in China

Contesting Cyberspace in China PDF

Author: Rongbin Han

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0231545657

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The Internet was supposed to be an antidote to authoritarianism. It can enable citizens to express themselves freely and organize outside state control. Yet while online activity has helped challenge authoritarian rule in some cases, other regimes have endured: no movement comparable to the Arab Spring has arisen in China. In Contesting Cyberspace in China, Rongbin Han offers a powerful counterintuitive explanation for the survival of the world’s largest authoritarian regime in the digital age. Han reveals the complex internal dynamics of online expression in China, showing how the state, service providers, and netizens negotiate the limits of discourse. He finds that state censorship has conditioned online expression, yet has failed to bring it under control. However, Han also finds that freer expression may work to the advantage of the regime because its critics are not the only ones empowered: the Internet has proved less threatening than expected due to the multiplicity of beliefs, identities, and values online. State-sponsored and spontaneous pro-government commenters have turned out to be a major presence on the Chinese internet, denigrating dissenters and barraging oppositional voices. Han explores the recruitment, training, and behavior of hired commenters, the “fifty-cent army,” as well as group identity formation among nationalistic Internet posters who see themselves as patriots defending China against online saboteurs. Drawing on a rich set of data collected through interviews, participant observation, and long-term online ethnography, as well as official reports and state directives, Contesting Cyberspace in China interrogates our assumptions about authoritarian resilience and the democratizing power of the Internet.

China’s Influence and the Center-periphery Tug of War in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific

China’s Influence and the Center-periphery Tug of War in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific PDF

Author: Brian C. H. Fong

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1000284263

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Bringing together a team of cutting-edge researchers based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indo-Pacific countries, this book focuses on the tug of war between China’s influence and forces of resistance in Hong Kong, Taiwan and selected countries in its surrounding jurisdictions. China’s influence has met growing defiance from citizens in Hong Kong and Taiwan who fear the extinction of their valued local identities. However, the book shows that resistance to China’s influence is a global phenomenon, varying in motivation and intensity from region to region and country to country depending on the forms of China’s influence and the balances of forces in each society. The book also advances a concentric center-periphery framework for comparing different forms of extra-jurisdictional Chinese influence mechanisms, ranging from economic, military and diplomatic influences to united front operations. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, international relations, geopolitics, Chinese politics, Hong Kong-China relations, Taiwan and Asian politics.

Mobilizing Without the Masses

Mobilizing Without the Masses PDF

Author: Diana Fu

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1108420540

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How do weak activists organize under repression? This book theorizes a dynamic of contention called mobilizing without the masses.

The Electronic Silk Road

The Electronic Silk Road PDF

Author: Anupam Chander

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-07-16

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0300154593

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DIVDIVFrom China to Facebookistan, the Internet has transformed global commerce. A cyber-law expert argues that we must free Internet trade while simultaneously protecting consumers./div/div