By Yu Jianrong

(Caijing.com.cn) The frequency, scope and danger of the mass incidents that occurred in China during 2008 attracted a high level of attention from all corners of society. Among these incidents, three have special significance: a clash between rubber farmers and police in Yunnan's Menglian county, protests following the death of a student in Guizhou's Wengan county, and outrage over a business-loan insolvency in Hunan's Jishou City. 

The Menglian county incident began with farmers trying to defend their rights and later developed into a violent confrontation between police and 500 rubber farmers. Before it was over, 41 police officers were injured and nine police vehicles were smashed; two rubber farmers were killed and many injured. The trouble began when the farmers complained that their land rights were being abused by the local rubber company. Though they appealed to both the company and the government to fix the problem, they received no result. So the farmers rose up to defend their rights, and the local government used police to suppress them.  

Such incidents have become more frequent over the past few years. They currently account for over 80 percent of all Chinese mass protests. They are generally triggered when workers, farmers or city residents who have a weak position in society decide to fight back against more powerful social groups infringing their legal interests. Moreover, the protesters generally use existing laws and regulations as the framework for their actions. They appeal for fair and just government mediation, and their actions are usually restrained.

However, once local-level problems morph into focal-point issues, the economic interests involved in these disputes are so large that the special interest side believes it cannot easily concede. On the contrary, it frequently employs gangsters to deal with the protesters, and the local government often sides with the special interests, arguing that "economic development" and "defending social order" justify striking down protesters with police power. The result often triggers a violent uprising.  

What happened in Guizhou's Wengan county started out as a typical anger-venting incident. Large crowds surrounded government offices in frustration over the botched investigation into a female student's death. A few people engaged in smashing, looting and burning. Since these incidents are triggered by sporadic events, there generally are no appeals for intervention from higher authorities and no administrative lawsuits or other official procedures. Instead, an extreme force bursts out suddenly and without clear organizers. You cannot find a representative party to negotiate with, and there are no common interests uniting the participants or the initial outbreaks that spark the larger incidents. The most important factors behind these incidents are street grievances, exaggerations of other issues, expressions of discontent with social injustices, and social venting.

As these events break out and unfold, the media play a large role. New pathways for media dissemination -- such as mobile SMS messages and the Internet -- play upon the blindness of crowd psychology to spread rumors, mobilize the masses, and incite criminal activity such as the smashing, looting and burning of government departments and other facilities.

In recent years, many events were examples of this kind of incident. This demonstrates that there are problems and crises undermining the government's ability to manage social order. There are two key causes of this kind of governance dilemma: first, the crowds of dissatisfied citizens and second, the government's low governing capacity.

In the incident that broke out in Hunan's Jishou city at the end of September, an illegal fund-raising consortium triggered riots after local investors were cheated. This type of incident generally happens when the losing side in an economic dispute becomes frustrated with the government for either refusing to act or acting in a way that does not bring results. The losing side begins by appealing to the government to step in and fix the situation, but this ultimately deteriorates into riots with the smashing, looting and burning of government bureaus, civil facilities and random shops.     

With slowing economic growth, this type of incident breaks out in many forms. The reason these incidents transform from economic disputes into riots and clashes with the government are political. At every level the Chinese government plays a long-term, all-around role and there is a lack of in a vigorous rule of law. In rule-of-law countries, laws and regulations are clear and predictable, the government acts as the judge, and when economic disputes arise the two sides can only resolve the issue by going through judicial processes. In China, a top-down authoritarian system, the people trust the leadership more than the judicial system. So when problems emerge, they ask the government to get involved in specific economic disputes. If the government cannot satisfy these appeals, trouble ensues.

Because of this, and because everybody knows that the power-holders want social stability, people deeply believe in the governing logic of "small noises bring small solutions, big noises bring big solutions, and no noise brings no solution." Although local officials fear that their superiors will intervene to hold them accountable, the ability to actually solve these types of problems is extremely limited. As a result, economic disputes marked by a clash of interests between the people and the government can frequently develop into social disturbances.   

It must be said that no matter whether these incidents are characterized as rights defenses triggered by conflicting interests, expressions of outrage triggered by social disputes, or riots triggered by economic disputes, none of these incidents involve clear political demands. Mass protests against government corruption, government inaction, government carelessness and other governing problems are all aimed at fixing specific problems, not at toppling the government. Even though some participants want to use political methods to solve their problems, they do not have clear political goals and there is no organized political force behind them.

In Guizhou's Wengan incident, for example, although the crowds set fire to the offices of the county committee, the county government and the county public security bureau, they were not trying to set up a new government or share political authority. These mass incidents are the way the public expresses their complaints and releases their common emotions. They are not directed at the integrity and effectiveness of government rules. This is a critical and fundamental difference between these incidents and the riots that broke out in the Tibetan region in March or the terrorist attacks in the Xinjiang region in September.        

Thus, we can expect there will be many more public protests in 2009. Among these will be an increase in incidents triggered by land- and forest-rights disputes, as well as a rise in the number of wage disputes stemming from company bankruptcies and closings. Incidents closely related to economic conditions will also draw greater attention. Yet these protests will still be isolated and limited in scope; it would be very hard for them to develop into a more unified social movement. This is primarily because these incidents all have clear triggers and concrete underlying interests. And although many rights-defending incidents may occur within a common time frame, this does not mean that they are connected.

In addition, China does not have the unified ideology needed to bring these disparate incidents together. In other words, China is divided into various social groups, each with its own interests and problems. So it would be very difficult for this fragmented pattern of disputes to transform into a unified social movement. Although the incidents triggered by anger or discontent may temporarily focus attention on common social issues and draw in outside interests not directly affected by the problem at hand, China's national enforcement powers will prevent these incidents from dragging on and forming social movements.

Because of this, those in power can take action to guard against mass incidents and to better handle them when they do occur. First, they can safeguard the people's legal rights and establish a genuine impartial and an equitable allocation system that will give each level of society a real share in economic development. This is the basic task required to maintain social harmony. Where there are prominent problems such as rural land- or forest-rights disputes and the legal cases over fund-raising schemes, the relevant laws must safeguard the rights-holders in order to resolve historical problems.

The government should also set up judicial checks and balances and establish the authority of the legal system and its institutions in to create a true rule-of-law country. This is the key measure that will resolve China's governance dilemmas. In modern societies, the law is the optimum channel for resolving disputes among conflicting economic interests. Based on China's current judicial situation and ideological restraints, we can to establish judicial independence it needs to allow the local legal system to break away from local party and executive branch controls. In other words, it is crucial to establish county-level judicial checks and balances to allow the county courts and county prosecutors to break away from the political controls that safeguard their personnel, fiscal and business interests. These critical areas that should be under central government rather than county control. In order to deter the county courts and prosecutorial agencies from establishing illegal relationships with the county political regime, the central government could consider rotating judicial personnel on a regular basis.    

The government should also establish a comprehensive system for evaluating the social situation. It should create models encompassing all possible scenarios and move toward a scientific index of social governance that will improve decision making. The government must also strengthen the system for managing modern crises, establish special institutions for handling mass incidents, require all levels of government to formulate effective emergency response procedures for anger-venting incidents, and expand education programs for leading cadres and other officials to instruct them how to handle these incidents. In order to guard against government abuses of police power, the authorities should hold local officials accountable, even assigning criminal blame when necessary.

The most important action is to reform the governing system so institutions in power truly realize the rights that citizens should lawfully enjoy according to the constitution. Reforming these governing institutions is not about a change of dynasty or blindly copying the West. Citizens should be able to select their own delegates via democratic elections. They should be able to use their vote to urge their elected representatives to speak on behalf of their interests and to supervise the courts and prosecutors from the grassroots level. Allowing the people to defend their own legal rights fully and effectively from within the system will be the most reliable political safeguard for China's long-term stable development.

Yu Jianrong is Professor and Director of the Social Problems Research Center, Rural Studies Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This article was published in Caijing's 2008 year-end edition.