A mock protest tests riot police in a mass incident exercise in Yibin, Sichuan Province, on June 30, 2010. Photo: CFP
Taking a break from their daily work, local officials hold a brainstorming session at the Party School of Fujian Province on one of the hottest topics in the country: How to maintain social stability.
"Society isn't facing upheaval, most incidents have been blown out of portion by the media," said a police officer from Fujian Province.
"What if it was your house that was being forcefully demolished, would you still say that?" asked another official.
In a class focused on finding a solution to the dilemma between maintaining social stability and protecting people's rights, Professor Wang Liping of the Party school ignites the debate. To help illustrate his point that forceful demolition can lead to violence, Wang shows a slide of a farmer in Hubei Province who used a home-made cannon to drive away a demolition team in order to protect his land. The class falls quiet.
Wang's class reveals the tough challenge facing government officials at all levels as the number of ordinary people who complain their rights have been violated continues to soar.
Sun Liping, a professor at Tsinghua University, estimates that in 2010 alone, there were around 180,000 protests, riots and other mass incidents in China, three times the number in 2003.
Although official statistics haven't yet been released for 2011, most people believe the number of mass incidents increased last year.
All the Party and government officials in Wang's class seem to understand that social tensions are on the rise. They have all read the case involving migrant workers in Zengcheng, Guangdong Province, who became enraged after security personnel pushed a pregnant migrant worker to the ground without apparent justification. The mob ended up torching government offices.
The officials have used the now famous Wukan incident as a case study on how to properly handle a mass disturbance. The fishing village in Guangdong Province had chased out government leaders and barricaded their town, but a rare, high-profile intervention by provincial leaders defused the tense standoff after villagers received promises that their complaints would be taken seriously.
"Most mass incidents happening in China these days share two things in common: People's complaints haven't been solved fairly and citizens are more aware of their rights," Wang told the Global Times.
While the government publicly extols the virtues of everyone working toward the construction of a harmonious society, it is also investing heavily in the country's domestic security apparatus.
Soaring spending
A report by Caijing magazine in May last year showed the government now spends more on public security than it does on national defense. In 2011, the magazine said, China's public security budget soared past 624 billion yuan ($99 billion) while the national defense budget hovered around 600 billion yuan. The statistics have not been confirmed by the central government.
For local, frontline governments, maintaining social stability is a key priority that consumes the work of officials and local resources. "If someone from our county shows up in Beijing to complain we would immediately be ordered to take this person back. During National Day holidays or during the NPC sessions we allocate a lot of people to keep a close eye on these potential troublemakers, and it's indeed time and energy consuming for us," said the head of a small county in Fujian Province, who declined to be named.
"Every day, we remain on high alert, worrying that even a small row among our villagers might lead to a mass incident if it cannot be dealt with in a timely manner," said the official, who complains that a single serious mass incident in her county could ruin her career.
"In the current mode of maintaining social stability, people's expression of their problems might trigger social unrest that needs to be suppressed. If people's demands can't be dealt with the problem becomes more serious, and efforts to maintain social stability have to be further strengthened," concludes a report published by Sun's team at Tinghua University.
Experts believe most disputes that lead to social unrest center on economic losses to individuals or groups, rather than political disputes targeting the rule of the government in ethnic minority areas like Tibet and Xinjiang. They say most protests center on land grabs by corrupt local officials and developers, or involve strikes by employees seeking a pay rise. Experts say dealing with issues in face-to-face negotiations is the key to effectively resolving them.
"The problems can not be resolved if the only goal is to maintain social stability, we have to figure out ways of solving the larger issues," said Yu Jianrong, an expert on civil unrest at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.