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By Root 507 0

and appeal of the ruling party is the rising tensions between the state and society. Both aggregate data and press reports indicate a sharp increase in incidcnts of collective protests, riots, and other forms of resistance against state authorities.112 Such increases were especially pronounced in the 1990s. According to a report released by a research institute affiliated with the MPS, the number of such incidents grew almost fourfold over seven years, from 8,700 in 1993 to 32,000 in 1999. Additionally, the size and the level of violence of collective incidents have increased as well. In 1999, 125 incidents involved more than a thousand protesters. The government also admitted that protests with more than 10,000 participants have become quite common. In rural areas, many localities have reported mob attacks by peasants on officials and government buildings. In 2000, the number of collective protests in rural areas exceeded half of all reported instances of collective protest for the first time.113

The Chinese media occasionally carry stories of such confrontations, many of which are dramatic and violent. Some of the collective protests in rural areas were increasingly well-organized, as research by Yu Jianrong in a county in Hunan province in the late 1990s shows.114 In an in-depth look at rural unrest published in January 2000, the internal edition of the official magazine Banyuetan described in graphic detail a series of rural riots that occurred in the late 1990s in Hunan province, which, ironically, was where Mao fomented peasant uprisings in the 1920s.

Around the New Year’s Day in 1999, 46 peasant leaders in Daolin township in Hunan’s Ningxiang county met and decided to hold a rally of 10,000 people in front of the township government to demand “reducing peasant burdens and fighting corruption.” On January 8, 1999, the authorities mobilized a large police force and blocked the highway leading to the township government complex. But rural residents from all over the township kept coming. At one point, the crowd exceeded 5,000 people. A small number rushed the police line. The police were forced to fire tear gas canisters. This led to one of the most violent collective riots in Hunan’s countryside ... In 1996, about one thousand farmers from Shangjia township surrounded the municipal government building of Lianyuan city and called for reducing taxes. Several farmers ransacked the home of the party secretary of the municipality. In 1998, peasants in the same township forcibly took over a local public school, hired teachers, and stationed security guards in front of the school—in open defiance of the local government. In a neighboring township in the same year, rioting farmers took away the signs in front of the government building, assaulted the party secretary and stripped him naked. Cadres dispatched from the city to mediate the dispute were detained as well... In the wee hours on November 7, 1998, a team of more than 30 policemen, tax collectors, and township officials conducted a raid on Guangyinyan village in Huatan township in Taoyuan county. Their objective was to arrest a local resident who had led a tax resistance movement. But before the team could leave the village, they were surrounded by angry farmers. In a violent confrontation, fifteen police officers and cadres were injured, and ten were stripped naked. Only after the peasant leader was released did the farmers let the hungry and tired police officers and cadres go. Similar violent incidents were reported in practically all the other large agrarian provinces, such as Hebei, Henan, and Sichuan.115

To be sure, economic transitions inevitably produce rising social frustrations because of the socioeconomic dislocation created by the introduction of market forces. In urban areas, for example, rising unemployment has fueled rising social dissatisfaction. Behind the specific social and economic factors closely associated with societal discontent, however, is a set of political variables that both contribute to and exacerbate social frustrations during economic