China’s Stability

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Journal of Contemporary China

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Weiwen at the Grassroots: China’s stabilitymaintenance apparatus as a means of conflictresolution

Jonathan Benney

To cite this article: Jonathan Benney (2016): Weiwen at the Grassroots: China’s stability

maintenance apparatus as a means of conflict resolution, Journal of Contemporary China, DOI:10.1080/10670564.2015.1104876

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2015.1104876

Published online: 26 Jan 2016.

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JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CHINA, 2016http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2015.1104876

Weiwen at the Grassroots: China’s stability maintenance apparatusas a means of conict resolution

Jonathan Benney

Monash University, Australia

This article explores ‘stability maintenance ’1 (weiwen) as a means of facilitating conict resolution in mod-ern China. Its emphasis on conict resolution is novel. Previous examinations of the weiwen apparatushave concentrated on its political function: managing resistance and maintaining party-state authority. This has been a fruitful means of characterizing the political motivations and the higher-level strategiesof stability maintenance. Nonetheless, there remain conceptual and empirical gaps relating to how sta-bility maintenance offices and processes actually function, particularly outside larger cities. It considersthe effectiveness of stability maintenance as a part of the ‘market’ for conict resolution in local 2 China,and assesses how the stability maintenance apparatus functions in an authoritarian system in whichthe rule of law is constantly being debated and adjusted. It suggests that conict resolution facilitatedby weiwen is a relatively pragmatic and effective means of actually resolving local-level conicts in thecurrent context, notwithstanding the closeness of the stability maintenance discourse to state authorityand its relative distance from rule of law-based methods of dispute resolution.

The argument uses an analysis of 65 cases, reported in the media, of conict resolution facili-tated by stability maintenance offices ( weiwenban ). Furthermore, it considers—more than previous

1Weiwen ( ) is translated as ‘stability maintenance’ in this article, although it is also translated frequently as ‘stabilitypreservation’. There appear to be no substantial differences between these two translations. The terms ‘dispute resolu-tion’ and ‘conict resolution’ are also used interchangeably. While legal scholarship in English tends to refer to ‘dispute

resolution’, other disciplines sometimes use ‘conict resolution’. This inevitably leads to an overlap in uses.2In this article ‘local’ refers specically to town, county and village-level government, often referred to as difang zhengfu ( ) or jiceng zhengfu ( ) in Chinese. The aim is to distinguish these levels of practice from larger urbancenters (as discussed by Lee and Zhang). Although the data in this article do sometimes refer to larger population centers,the conclusions mainly target these ‘local’ levels.

ABSTRACT

This article assesses stability maintenance ( weiwen) as a means of conictresolution in China. It argues that the resolution of local disputes in China,particularly outside cities, is now being inuenced and facilitated by thediscourse and practice of stability maintenance, rather than legal methodsand traditional mediation processes. This conclusion adds to the existingacademic views of stability maintenance, which have previously emphasizedsocial control to the exclusion of almost all else, and suggests that stabilitymaintenance-focused conict resolution may have practical benets toChinese citizens, given the state’s withdrawal from legal conict resolutionmethods and its ambiguous attitude towards mediation.

© 2016 Taylor & Francis

CONTACT Jonathan Benney [email protected]

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English-language publications have—the indigenous Chinese discourse on weiwen and stability main-tenance policy-making. Such discourse must be regarded with a critical eye, but reports of grassrootsweiwen lead this article to its second argument: that stability maintenance work has stimulated inno-vation in local government.

This analysis confronts some key issues in modern Chinese studies by exploring how Chinese citizensconfront changes in their world under a politics based on ‘fragmented authoritarianism ’3 or ‘bargainedauthoritarianism’. 4 Its ndings support arguments about China’s retreat from legal methods and itscomplex strategies for facilitating local conict resolution. It also addresses connections between thecentral, provincial and local government, in particular the practical and ideological effects of top-downcampaigns, of central targets imposed on local government, and the amount of freedom and innovationwhich the center and the provinces permit local authorities. Consequently, it provokes a discussion ofsocial management in China which distinguishes between highly politicized large-scale social controlstrategies, characteristic of large population centers and ‘mass incidents’, and localized conict resolutionstrategies, characteristic of town and county government.

The analysis of weiwen in this article concentrates simultaneously on discourse and praxis, as, inChinese social politics, these are inherently linked. It situates stability maintenance in its historicalcontext, to characterize the uses of the stability discourse in China and to explain the structure of thestability maintenance apparatus. It then assesses the effectiveness of weiwen strategies in resolvingconicts. It concludes by considering the place of weiwen in a Chinese society where other means ofconict resolution are increasingly marginalized; the space for local innovation and experimentationin conict resolution in an authoritarian milieu; and the prospects for legal conict resolution and therule of law in the era of stability maintenance. In each of these, it argues that stability maintenance canassist, as well as hinder, conict resolution.

Weiwen as part of the Chinese stability discourse

Stability is an inescapable concept in China, but it is crucial to distinguish between three easily conatedaspects: stability as an official discourse; stability measured empirically; and ‘stability maintenance’ asa series of practical processes. Stability in post-Mao China functions as a ‘cognitive lter’ or framingdevice 5: the party-state uses ‘stability’ as a justication for its responses to events and increasingly forits policy-making. This discourse arose in reaction to growing dissent in China, as a means of charac-terizing the party-state’s departure from Maoism, and as a response to China’s economic growth andits consequent need for reliable commercial–legal processes.

The state strategy is to conate different types of stability, referring to all of them with an umbrellalabel: Sandby-Thomas calls this ‘mystifying’ stability, allowing it to be ‘discursively exible’ .6 The discourseof ‘stability’ and consequently of ‘stability maintenance’ implies that ‘national stability’ (the political

stability of the central party-state), economic stability, social stability and psychological stability areessentially fungible, and that increases or decreases in one form of stability will lead to parallel changesin the other forms. The empirical evidence does not support this analysis. While China’s political stabilityhas been constant, and while its economic growth has been steady, a parallel increase in social insta-bility has been manifested in ‘mass incidents’ and public protests 7 and an increase in crime. 8 Emotionalstability, a psychological outlook promoted by the state and closely associated with the discourse of

3Andrew C. Mertha, China’s Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).4Ching Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang, ‘The power of instability: unraveling the microfoundations of bargained author-

itarianism in China’, American Journal of Sociology 118(6), (2013), pp. 1475–1508.5Peter Sandby-Thomas, Legitimating the Chinese Communist Party since Tiananmen: A Critical Analysis of the Stability Discourse (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2010).

6Ibid ., p. 155.7Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).8Yue Xie, ‘The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China’, Issues and Studies 48(3), (2012), pp. 1–41.

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‘civilization’,9 has also suffered as reform has gone on: in fact, some authors have characterized modernChina as an ‘angry society’, suffused with untargeted ‘abstract anger’. 10

At a broad discursive level, then, the neologism weiwen , and its conceptual application to the prob-lems that China faces, reects the dual concern of the Chinese state: maintaining the political stabilityof the central government and addressing areas of instability at the local level. However, local sourcesof instability take many forms, whereas the genealogy of stability maintenance is chiey political. Thehighest administrative organization for stability maintenance, the Central Leadership Small Group forStability Maintenance Work ( Zhongyang Weiwen Gongzuo Lingdao Xiaozu ), was formed as a responseto a political problem: the perceived challenge of Falun Gong and other ‘evil cults’ to the party-state’sauthority. 11

This group is tightly integrated with a larger and much more complex political apparatus, which canbe collectively characterized as implementing ‘comprehensive management of public security’ (‘CMS’). This policy, developed in the early 2000s, incorporates existing strategies for crime prevention and socialcontrol with new strategies characterized by their emphasis on local communities and on non-legalmeasures, such as increased use of informants and the targeted monitoring of particular groups. 12 Thebroader signicance of CMS is the shift in emphasis away from the legal promotion discourse of the1990s, to the facilitation of local conict resolution based on political, nancial and personal imperatives,a trend characterized by Minzner as a ‘turn against law’. 13

Weiwen therefore penetrates most sectors of Chinese life, and it is difficult to assess what is and isnot covered by the label. Academically, this has led to an emphasis on the political aspect of stabilitymaintenance, particularly on the punishment of political and legal dissidents. The resulting analysisis not inherently wrong, but can lead to a misunderstanding of the nature of weiwen policy and dis-course. For instance, Kan proposes an extremely broad interpretation of weiwen work,14 categorizingre-education through labor ( laojiao ), the forcible sending of citizens to mental hospitals, and unofficialdetention centers (‘black jails’) as being manifestations of weiwen . Although these strategies do havethe effect of ‘maintaining stability’ from the state’s viewpoint, it seems misleading to refer to them as

straightforwardly being weiwen . They are better interpreted as manifestations of the CMS policy appara-tus, or, even more broadly, of state authoritarianism. A more specic approach to stability maintenancework which does not tar all social management activities with the weiwen brush seems more fruitfulas a mode of analysis.

Consequently, this article concentrates on strategies labeled as weiwen , implemented by weiwenban ,and with evident conceptual links to state weiwen policy. The structure for implementing weiwen is nowwell established. At the highest level, the Central Leadership Small Group for Stability Maintenance Workshares members with the Central Comprehensive Management Committee and the Central Politico-Legal Committee. At a senior administrative level, the Central Office for Stability Management interactswith its parallel CMS group, the Central Office for Comprehensive Management. The Central Office for

Stability Maintenance is then responsible for stability maintenance offices, which operate in tandemwith CMS offices, for example as ‘offices for comprehensive management of petitioning and stability’,at provincial, county, town and village level. 15

9Luigi Tomba, ‘Civilization and the middle class in urban China’, Positions 17(3), (2009), pp. 591–616.10Yongnian Zheng, ‘China in 2011’, Asian Survey 52(1), (2012), pp. 28–41; Jianrong Yu, ‘You Yi Zhong “Chouxiang Fennu”’,

(31 August 2009), available at: http://blog.voc.com.cn/blog_showone_type_blog_id_582560_p_1.html (accessed 14September 2015).

11Xie, ‘The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China’, pp. 18–19; Zhongwei Zhang and Jiewei Yi, 2009 ZhongguoBenmingnian: Zhonggong Yingdui Dongluan Weiji (Carle Place, NY: Mirror Books, 2009).

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Xie, ‘The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China’, pp. 9–11.13Carl Minzner, ‘China’s turn against law’, American Journal of Comparative Law 59, (2011), pp. 935–984; Carl Minzner, ‘Theturn against legal reform’, Journal of Democracy 24(1), (2013), pp. 65–72.

14Karita Kan, ‘Whither weiwen? Stability maintenance in the 18th Party Congress era’, China Perspectives 1, (2013), pp. 87–93.15Kai Xu and Weiao Li, ‘Weiwen jiqi’,Caijing, (6 June 2011), available at: http://www.caijing.com.cn/2011-06-06/110738832.

html (accessed 14 September 2015).

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This structure has two notable aspects. The rst is its administrative separateness from the stateagencies of law enforcement: the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, the courtsand procuratorate system, the police, and the National Office for Letters and Petitions. 16 The second keyaspect is the exible structure and personnel of weiwen bodies. At a senior level, the office can recruitstaff from anywhere and has no xed premises. 17 At a local level, the lack of operational guidelines forstability maintenance processes has meant that the strategies used by local stability maintenance officescan differ substantially from place to place. Generally, each weiwen office is staffed by between ve andten official staff (often transferred from other government duties) and relies on networks of informers( xinxiyuan) and volunteers ( zhian zhiyuanzhe ) who alert the staff to relevant matters. 18

This is reective of overall trends in Chinese political organization. The weiwen structure combines anauthoritative top-down approach (reecting the party-state’s unwillingness to cede power) with increas-ing freedom for local officials (reecting the increasing complexity of the Chinese economy society). Itallows the systematized use of weiwen to control ‘mass incidents’ in urban centers, while allowing localauthorities greater exibility. The structural separateness of the weiwen apparatus from the courts andeven the police also reects China’s ‘turn against law’. Lee and Zhang characterize stability maintenanceprocesses as reecting ‘legal-bureaucratic absorption’. 19 That is, forms of conict resolution that mighthave involved explicitly legal processes are increasingly being channeled into purely bureaucratic orgovernmental structures. Hence, disinterested and regulated legal processes (whether or not these everactually existed) are supplanted by negotiated ‘bargains’ between citizen and state, with a consequentorientation towards personalized and clientelist forms of interaction.

It is clear, then, that grassroots stability maintenance work involves a negotiative balance between atop-down form of state authoritarianism and a bottom-up range of ad hoc local strategies. The author-itarian aspect of weiwen has been the chief focus of Western studies of stability in China, 20 whereas itsexible side has only recently attracted academic attention. Lee and Zhang’s conclusions in this areaprovide an analytical backbone for the cases below. Even so, their characterization of stability mainte-nance as ‘bargained authoritarianism’ risks conating two imperatives of the state—its desire to avoid

mass resistance, and its need to negotiate with citizens in some circumstances. These, while closelylinked, are sometimes discrete and indeed can clash with each other, particularly in smaller-scale con-icts or at local levels. Nor do they address the question of why the discourse of stability maintenancehas arisen and why ‘stability’ is used to frame local disputes.

By emphasizing the interconnection of state and market in China, the state’s desire to ‘depoliticize’everyday life, and the importance of interpersonal and clientelist relationships to problem-solvingin China, Lee and Zhang argue persuasively that stability maintenance is a consequence of Chineseauthoritarianism. Nonetheless, as the cases below begin to demonstrate, bargaining and negotiationis not necessarily a direct or inherent consequence of Chinese authoritarianism. There are many caseswhere the state does not intervene in areas of public unrest, or where it even facilitates complaint. 21

In analyzing stability maintenance across all its manifestations, it can unnecessarily color the processof thinking about weiwen to suggest that every feature of stability maintenance is inherently linked toauthoritarianism, even in mitigated form. Hence, by concentrating on stability maintenance as a form of

16Ibid .17‘09 Nian Weiwen Xin Siwei’, Nanfeng chuang , (13 April 2009), available at: http://www.nfcmag.com/article/1464.html

(accessed 1 October 2015).18Chongyi Feng, ‘Preserving stability and rights protection: conict or coherence?’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 42(2),

(2013), pp. 21–50.19Lee and Zhang, ‘The power of instability’, pp. 1480–1481.20

Sarah Biddulph, The Stability Imperative: Human Rights and Law in China (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015); Chongyi Feng,‘The dilemma of stability preservation in China’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 42(2), (2013), pp. 3–19; Kan, ‘Whitherweiwen’; Günter Schucher, ‘China: Stabil Durch Revolten’, Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 3, (2012), pp. 25–29.

21Jonathan Hassid, ‘Safety valve or pressure cooker? Blogs in Chinese political life’, Journal of Communication 62(2), (2012),pp. 212–230; David Kelly, ‘Citizen movements and China’s public intellectuals in the reform era’, Pacic Affairs 79, (2006),pp. 183–204.

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conict resolution, this article posits an alternative view: one not mutually exclusive with other analysesof stability maintenance, but which sheds light on it from a different angle.

The world of conict resolution in modern China

Many scholars of China have linked collective conicts, such as labor disputes, strikes, street marchesand group political activism, with stability maintenance. In contrast, this article considers small-scale,less controversial cases which, in the Western world, might be subject to non-legal or expedited legalresolution, using means like small claims tribunals or mediation. This article does not aim to considerthe state’s response to so-called ‘mass incidents’, which have attracted much recent academic attention. The incidents examined below are consciously not ‘mass’ in nature.

Applying this narrower focus does not simplify the question of how conicts are resolved in modernChina. Rather, it complicates it. At local, individual levels, conict resolution becomes more diffuse.Outcomes are less likely to be subject to public scrutiny. The potential for informal solutions—moneyor goods changing hands, violence, intimidation and so on—increases. Family and social networksbecome more important, as do individuals’ personal characteristics.

This is exacerbated by the changing landscape of conict resolution in China. Since reform, conictresolution strategies in China have moved rst towards, then away from, courts and legal disputeresolution methods. As Lubman 22 and Fu et al.23 have described, Maoist China resolved most disputesthrough mediation ( tiaojie), a process characterized by interpersonal bargaining and negotiation, albeitled by Party officials and judges. Written laws and processes carried little weight. Personal inuence andmoral–political qualities were the primary justications for decisions. In tandem, the process of xinfang or ‘letters and visits’ provided for citizens to appeal to higher authorities to intervene in complaintsagainst local bodies, the most symbolically powerful form being appeals to the central government. This process became more regulated in the 1990s. 24

This characteristically non-legal framework changed in two key ways during the past two decades.

Law became more and more important as a means of social regulation during the early 1980s. Thisgradually spread to interpersonal disputes. Under the leadership of the relatively progressive Ministerfor Justice, Xiao Yang, 25 China underwent a process of ‘legalization’ ( fazhihua ). Local authorities wereempowered to facilitate legal resolutions to problems, for example under the pufa or ‘legal dissemina-tion’ program and the earlier, government-facilitated stages of the weiquan movement. 26 The reasoningbehind this was to ‘synthesize’ ideas of law and morality with state authority. 27 While this tendency neverextended to all the implications of a political system ruled by law, these processes gave law and lawyersgreater conceptual ‘space’ and prestige, simultaneously increasing the legal consciousness of citizens.Until the mid-2000s, lawyers and citizens often used the law and legal rhetoric to frame complaints,often with the state’s tacit support. 28 These changes in framing and discourse strategy did not lead to

22Stanley B. Lubman, ‘Deng and dispute resolution: “Mao and mediation” revisited’, Columbia Journal of Asian Law 11, (1997),pp. 229–231; Stanley B. Lubman, ‘Mao and mediation: politics and dispute resolution in Communist China’, CaliforniaLaw Review 55, (1967), pp. 1284–1359.

23Hualing Fu, Richard Cullen, Mary E. Gallagher and Margaret Y. K. Woo, ‘From mediatory to adjudicatory justice: the limitsof civil justice reform in China’, in Margaret Y. K. Woo and Mary E. Gallagher, eds, Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Revolutionin Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 25–57.

24Carl Minzner, ‘Xinfang: alternative to formal Chinese legal institutions’, Stanford Journal of International Law 42, (2005),pp. 1–92.

25Hualing Fu, ‘Access to justice in China: potentials, limits, and alternatives’, in John Gillespie and Albert H. Y. Chen, eds,

Legal Reforms in China and Vietnam: A Comparison of Asian Communist Regimes (Oxford: Routledge, 2010), pp. 163–187.26Jonathan Benney, Defending Rights in Contemporary China (Oxford: Routledge, 2013).27Ronald C. Keith and Zhiqiu Lin, New Crime in China: Public Order and Human Rights (Oxford: Routledge, 2013).28 The state visibly supported rights defenders like Chen Guangcheng and activist lawyers like Teng Biao during the

early 2000s. The state’s attitude towards such activists subsequently became negative, as the well-known case of ChenGuangcheng’s detention and subsequent asylum in the United States demonstrates.

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As for mediation, the perceived effectiveness of court-facilitated mediation had by the early 2000s, 41 coupled with its labor-intensiveness and the prestige and increased availability of court adjudication,led to a decrease in its use. 42 However, the ‘retreat from law’ has given mediation a complex new sta-tus. Minzner 43 describes attempts to ‘resuscitate’ extra-judicial mediation practices that had ‘fallen intodisrepair’ with the rise of law during the 1980s and 1990s. The People’s Mediation Law, enacted in2010, forms part of this attempt to codify and re-emphasize mediation as a form of dispute resolution.

The law represents the culmination of attempts to revivify the People’s Mediation Commissions(PMCs) prevalent during the Mao period. 44 The law sets out requirements for the makeup of PMCs,mediators, processes of mediation and mediation agreements. Administrative mediation—mediationconducted by administrative organizations, such as disputes relating to land administration and dem-olition, contract disputes and public security disputes, and marriage disputes—does not fall under asingle governing law. 45

The Chinese party-state’s perspective on local mediation is ambivalent. First, complainants are oftensuspicious of mediation. 46 Second, the law still gives great exibility to the PMCs. As the cases belowdemonstrate, this leads to stagnation in PMCs and mediation processes. Third, administrative mediationhas no systematic coordination or regulatory structure. Finally, while the state attempts to prioritizemediation, it must also promote laws and courts, particularly in higher-level disputes; this, coupled withthe promotion of the ‘rule of law’, means that the state cannot take a consistent stance on mediation.Mediators may also become increasingly inclined to incorporate legal ideas and principles into theirwork. 47

Stability maintenance, therefore, enters the Chinese landscape of dispute resolution as a conceptualnewcomer. Even if the implementation of weiwen in conict resolution involves similar processes andpersonnel to people’s mediation or administrative mediation, its novel label may lead to greater engage-ment with the dispute resolution process. Also, the substantial central funding allocated to weiwen can allow local governments to devise new means of dealing with the epidemic of public complaintsand dissatisfaction. Tracking the precise distinctions between stability maintenance and mediation,

as well as tracing government funding, is difficult if not impossible, but the cases described belowdo begin to illustrate how stability maintenance is functioning at the grassroots: specically, whetherconict resolution facilitated by weiwen is the most pragmatic and effective means of actually resolvingconicts in the current political context, and whether stability maintenance work has stimulated localgovernment innovation.

The data

In 2012 and 2013, Chinese news databases were searched for cases where stability maintenance officeshad been involved in conict resolution. 48 Sixty-ve cases were retrieved, which included cases where

the conict was not resolved at the time of writing (23 cases), cases where the dispute had been partly

41Hualing Fu, ‘The rights defence movement, rights defence lawyers and prospects for constitutional democracy in China’,Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 1(3), (2009), pp. 150–169; Hualing Fu and D. W. Choy, ‘From mediation to adjudica-tion: settling labor disputes in China’, China Rights Forum 3, (2004), pp. 17–22; Fu et al ., ‘From mediatory to adjudicatory justice’, pp. 25–57.

42Haitian Lu, ‘State channelling of social grievances: theory and evidence in China’, Hong Kong Law Journal 41, (2011),pp. 231–255.

43Minzner, ‘China’s turn against law’, p. 945.44Aaron Halegua, ‘Reforming the People’s mediation system in urban China’, Hong Kong Law Journal 35, (2005), pp. 715–750.45Wei He and Ying Zeng, ‘Extra-judicial mediation system and practice’, King and Wood China Bulletin, (July 2011), pp. 19–25.46Fu et al ., ‘From mediatory to adjudicatory justice’; Lu, ‘State channelling of social grievances’.47Shahla Ali, ‘The jurisprudence of responsive mediation: an empirical examination of Chinese people’s mediation in action’,

The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 45(2), (2013), pp. 227–248.48 The author used ve search sources: the People’s Daily database, the Chinese Newspaper Database, the Chinese AcademicJournal database, Google News, and general searches of the web and other social networking services. The search term

(weiwenban , or stability maintenance office) was used, and results were ltered to use only cases where therewere conicts between two or more parties where a weiwenban attempted to facilitate resolution. Articles betweenJanuary 2008 and April 2013 were retrieved.

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resolved (11 cases), and cases where it was reported that the dispute had been fully resolved, at leastin the short term (31 cases).

The coding framework listed the nature of the complaints and complainants; the location of thecomplaint; the affiliation of the relevant stability maintenance office; the type of entity complainedabout; the type of complaint made by the complainant; the time before the stability maintenance officeintervened; the method of conict resolution; the entities other than the stability maintenance officeinvolved in the conict resolution; whether the CCP or CCP members were explicitly stated to have beeninvolved; whether the conict was resolved in the short term; and (if known) the longer-term outcomes.

Despite this framework, the mode of analyzing the data was largely qualitative and discursive. Thedata were insufficient, in quantity and reliability, to perform rigorous technical analysis. However, the dis-cursive analysis allowed key themes to be identied. The data—coupled with an analysis of the Chineseacademic discourse on stability maintenance—provide valuable answers to the research questions. Italso allows for discussion of the policy options open to the party-state. The ndings also situate stabilitymaintenance more clearly in the academic eld of conict resolution, and provide illustrative narrativesof the conict resolution process.

Practically all of the newspaper articles used were sourced from the Chinese media, and many ofthe academic critiques of stability maintenance processes which are used to analyze the data comefrom Party journals or publications promoting the party-state’s agenda, such as policing journals. Theanalysis of the data does not proceed on the basis that these were precise narrations of actual events.Rather, it is predicated on the belief that one can read Chinese academic and newspaper articles ininterlocking ways:

• as depictions and critiques of events that actually took place or are taking place;• as depictions of phenomena which the state would like people to believe are occurring;• as moral–legal narratives designed to encourage citizens and government bodies to behave in

particular ways; and• as manipulation of units of state discourse: that is, writing designed to promote new terms and

ideas, such as weiwen ; including pieces written less to inform the audience and more for the eco-nomic or strategic benet of the author (for example, articles published in order to legitimize alocal government organization, or published by academics in order to meet publication quotas).

In keeping with this approach, the cases are used not so much as individual units of data, butmore as pointers demonstrating useful themes in the practice of weiwen as conict resolution. Thisapproach focuses on how stability maintenance discourse is formed, negotiated and expressed indifferent contexts. Whether the cases are used as depictions of actual events or merely as expressionsof state discourse, it is still possible to observe:

• a nexus between weiwen and conict resolution, previously unexplored in Western academicanalysis;

• innovation in local government, stimulated by weiwen funding;• exibility and personalization of disputes, questioning the idea of ‘rigid weiwen’ popular in Chinese

political discourse; and• shifts in labels for conict resolution: from weiquan , to xinfang , shangfang , tiaojie and weiwen .

As Figure 1 demonstrates, the 65 cases originated from sources across China, with a particular biastowards the Pearl River Delta, which experiences a particularly high level of stability maintenancecases. There was a balance between large cities and smaller population centers. Articles from a rangeof media sources, primarily local or provincial newspapers, were recorded. Overall, when juxtaposed

with the discussion of weiwen in the official media, it appears that innovation in weiwen as a form ofconict resolution is most obvious in smaller population centers.

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Trends and policy implications

Five key areas—compensation, fresh starts, informality of negotiation, interaction with other bodies,and practical facilitation—were apparent from the cases.

Compensation

Financial exchange is key to stability maintenance. Zhuo contextualizes the rise of weiwen , particularly

at grassroots level, as being a logical progression of the development of a prot-making model fortownships and villages. Increasing economic independence of the township and village leadershipsmeans that local leaders have become ‘prot-making model regime executives’ ( moulixing zhengquan jingyingzhe ), clashing with their traditional role in conict resolution. 49 Such a policy approach hasled to a situation where local governments have drifted away from the ‘service provision model’ andtowards a purely prot-making model, a consequence of which has been increased fees for servicesand increased disputes over fees. 50

Lee and Zhang extend this analysis by situating it conceptually in what is termed the ‘microfoun-dations of authoritarian domination’ in a post-state socialist era. They suggest that tendencies appar-ent before reform—the patron–client relationship within the party-state, the tacit ‘hidden bargaining’

49Jie Zhuo, ‘Jiceng Weiwen Beihou De Liyi Boyi’, Zhongguo shichang 12, (2013), pp. 42–54.50Ibid ., p. 42.

Figure 1. The 65 cases, plotted on a map of China.

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characteristic of socialist economic relations, and the ‘bureaucratic absorption’ of legal functions byparty-state bodies—are equally apparent within the stability maintenance regime. 51 The major change isthat the bargaining now takes place on a nancial plane, a phenomenon known as huaqian mai ping’an or ‘buying stability’. 52 The cases of stability maintenance-based conict resolution which attract mostpopular interest are those involving the transfer of funds: for example, cases where compensation hasbeen used by weiwenban to break up ghts and for complainants whose complaints have no legal basis(as in the ‘loss of youthfulness’ case described below). 53

This tendency was demonstrated in the cases, although not to the extent suggested by previousanalysis. In 12 of the 65 cases, it was reported that the stability maintenance office required the entitybeing complained about to pay compensation; in two others, compensation was decided after a drawn-out process of discussion and mediation; in another case (in Beiliu city, the weiwen system of which isdiscussed below), the stability maintenance office had voluntarily compensated the family of a youthwho had died while saving a drowning villager. 54 In some cases the sums involved were very high: inone case, in Sanya city in Anhui province, a family was paid ¥200,000 after they blocked a busy highwayas a protest after a relative was killed in a traffic accident. 55 This is not to say that only these 12 caseswere resolved nancially—many of the cases were resolved by the stability maintenance apparatusrequiring organizations to pay outstanding wages or fees.

These cases demonstrate the extent to which local governments are prepared to draw from‘stability maintenance funds’ in order to prevent conicts reaching courts or petitioning, and to preventlarger-scale mass incidents or long drawn-out public displays of dissent—a key principle of Xie’s analysisof stability maintenance. Nonetheless, nancial compensation did not gure highly in many of the cases. Two potential conclusions—neither mutually exclusive—ow from this. One is that, at a grassroots levelwhere the stability maintenance office deals with relatively small interpersonal conicts, nancial com-pensation is used less frequently than in large-scale conicts in larger cities with larger stability main-tenance funds. Instead, negotiative strategies, characteristic of mediation, are used more frequently.

Second, nancial compensation may be just as common a strategy as other research indicates, but

may not be emphasized when weiwen cases are reported. This would suggest an interesting tendency. The state desires to maintain compensation as the backbone of stability maintenance, but intends toframe stability maintenance as a quasi-mediation form of interpersonal negotiated conict resolution,either as a response to the academic criticisms of weiwen described below, or as a means of suggestingto the public that the weiwen process of dispute resolution is negotiative and facilitative rather thanmerely nancial.

The key to Zhuo’s discussion of weiwen bargaining, which he analyses using game theory, is informa-tion asymmetry. 56 The local government knows more about what compensation is possible in a givensituation than any complainants, because it is able to communicate with higher levels of governmentand because it has more information about similar cases taking place elsewhere. The state is more

likely to obtain its preferred outcome (minimizing costs) than individual complainants receiving theirdesired compensation. Given the state’s extra negotiation power, it is theoretically in their interests topromote the negotiative aspect of stability maintenance, as extended negotiation is likely to shift theoutcomes in their favor. This extended negotiation is hypothetically possible, and sometimes appears tooccur, but it is not particularly consistent with the obvious fact that the compensation aspect of stabilitymaintenance-based conict resolution is well known, and motivates many complainants.

51Lee and Zhang, ‘The power of instability’, pp. 1478–1481.52Ibid ., p. 1485.53

Yonglin Tang, ‘Zhen Weiwenban de “Shengyi Jing”’, Nanfang Zhoumo 26, (2010).54Yinghua Jin, ‘Shaonian Bushen Luoshui Cunmin Sheming Dajiu: Qian Ren Leibie Hao Yingxiong’, (4 July 2012), available at: http://difang.gmw.cn/gx/2012-07/04/content_4475528.htm (accessed 14 September 2015).

55Zhuo Song, ‘Sanya Qi Xun Laotai Beizhuang Shenwang: Jiashu Ting Shi Taojia Dulu 4 Xiaoshi’, (31 October 2012), available at: http://www.anhuinews.com/zhuyeguanli/system/2012/10/31/005289936.shtml (accessed 14 September 2015).

56Zhuo, ‘Jiceng Weiwen Beihou De Liyi Boyi’, pp. 43–44.

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Overall, despite these ambiguities, the data suggest a key nding: that the inuence of compensationis less than Western academics have previously observed, and that the weiwen process can take placewithout nancial compensation being used. From a policy perspective, this suggests—albeit optimis-tically—that the stability maintenance framework could be used to strike a middle ground in conictresolution: that is, it may be possible to set up a system of conict resolution which is cross-institutionaland is supported and regulated by the central government, but does not inherently necessitate theexchange of large amounts of money.

Fresh starts

In several of the cases, it seemed that the stability maintenance apparatus provided a novel means ofresolving long drawn-out disputes. In representative cases, a dispute over the remuneration of hotelworkers which had gone on for four years without any resolution was resolved by the intervention ofa weiwenban at the behest of the city government, apparently to great public acclaim ;57 and a long-running dispute between farmers over the sale of pigs was referred by the local police station to thelocal weiwenban , which was able to liaise with the police and the complainants to resolve the problem .58

While these articles are intended to suggest that the stability maintenance process is effective as anegotiative facilitator of dispute resolution, they also show that existing processes of dispute resolution,in particular quasi-legal processes like mediation and adjudication, have a tendency to stagnate, asthere are increasingly fewer options that the mediators may offer the complainants, and the personnelinvolved in the mediation may lack the skills required to develop suitable outcomes. In this context,the advantage of the weiwen process is rst that it is relatively new and has been heavily promoted,and second that it is well funded, allowing its staff to facilitate a wider range of mediation strategies,including nancial compensation. However, in the longer term, as the novelty of the process decreases,‘fresh starts’ will likely become increasingly less relevant.

Informality of negotiation

Compared to the methods of dispute resolution promoted during the earlier parts of the reform period,dispute resolution facilitated by weiwenban is characterized by informality. It is conceptually close bothto recent mediation reforms in China, particularly in the use of PMCs, and to the mediation techniquescharacteristic of the Mao period. At the grassroots there are few rules governing amounts of compen-sation, strategies for negotiation, lengths of time required or interaction with other bodies. Weaknessesin weiwen implementation can result from local governments’ limited strategic knowledge, 59 tendingto use either compensation or violent strategies on the grounds that they have little training in otherforms of mediation. 60 This informality has led to bargaining predominating.

A characteristic case concerns a woman who, after an abortion, sought ¥80,000 compensation fromher former boyfriend for ‘loss of youthfulness’. The man was only willing to pay ¥10,000. The weiwenban assigned the head of the local police to discuss this with the man: ‘no-one knows what they said’ dur-ing their meeting, but the man subsequently agreed to pay ¥30,000 to the woman and ¥9,000 to theweiwenban as a ‘coordination fee’. 61 The arbitrariness of this bargaining, and its lack of transparency, is

57Yongyi Lü, ‘Hancheng Chenggong Huajie Yiqi Sinian Jiufen An’, Shaanxi ribao , (3 April 2013), available at:http://www.kaixian.tv/R1/n1122401c19.shtml (accessed 14 September 2015).

58Renbing Xiong, ‘Hubei Zigui Jingfang “San Fang Lianshou” Zhiyu Ziqi “Yinan Za'an”’,Renmin Wang , (23 January 2013), available at: http://hb.people.com.cn/GB/n/2013/0123/c337099-18063598.html (accessed 23 March 2013).

59

Taijun Jin and Junfeng Zhao, ‘Jiceng Zhengfu “Weiwen Guaiquan”: Xianzhuang, Chengyin Yu Duice’, Zhenghixue yanjiu 4, (2012), pp. 91–100.60 The difficulty of performing weiwen processes and writing weiwen reports (such as the yearly ‘stability maintenance work

summary’) has led to the publication of handbooks and software designed for stability maintenance officials (see tujian.org ). It is possible to nd templates for stability maintenance reports online.

61 Tang, ‘Zhen Weiwenban De “Shengyi Jing”’.

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often considered detrimental to conict resolution, as well as, in Lee and Zhang’s language, being ameans by which the state can resist and mediate threats to its authority.

Nonetheless, the very exibility of this process can have positive effects. As in the case above, it canprovide remedies where individuals have been damaged in some way but where there is no obviouslegal recourse for their injury (a problem which, Abel argues in his famous critique of tort law, 62 is char-acteristic of rapidly changing and fragmenting capitalist societies). It allows remedies to be tailoredto the participants in the conict, allowing for—in contrast to legal methods—more exible forms ofremedy than nancial compensation, such as apologies or restitution, allowing these to be negotiatedbetween the parties.

Three cases from the data, each with a medical orientation, demonstrate this. In one case, in Shenzhenin 2012, 63 a hospital agreed (after ‘dialogue’ with the weiwenban ) to provide free treatment to a manwho needed corrective surgery after he lost an eye in an operation. A second case 64 involved commu-nity protest at the risk of infection spreading from a proposed new hospital. After negotiation, it wasagreed that the hospital would not handle infectious diseases, and it would be built 34 meters awayfrom other buildings, more than the legal minimum standard of 20 meters. Third, 65 a hospital agreedto pay ¥350,000 compensation to the family of a man who had died during a blood transfusion.

These processes are clearly incongruent with notions of the ‘rule of law’, even in the Chinese con-text. Closed-door negotiations violate the principle of transparency, under which decision-makers’reasoning processes should be obvious to outside observers. 66 Negotiation which depends on whatthe parties involved believe, what they can contribute, or how much bargaining power they have,violates the principle of consistency (that is, that legal decisions should be predictable and similar insimilar cases), crucial to the rule of law .67 The effectiveness of negotiative conict resolution processes,and the extent to which they might shape future policy, is limited given the ambiguity towards therule of law in the Xi era.

However, acknowledging these deciencies does not automatically invalidate these informal nego-tiation processes, particularly given the lack of nancial and human resources devoted to the develop-

ment of the Chinese legal system, and the correspondingly high level of resources given to the stabilitymaintenance project. Essentially, then, the potential critique of this aspect of weiwen remains verysimilar to Fu’s, Lubman’s and Ali’s critique of mediation: that, while it can and does play a role in localChinese communities, it is not as consistent with legal principles as outside observers would desire.

Interaction with other bodies

One specic aspect of the weiwen apparatus which has been promoted in the state media is its abilityto coordinate with other government bodies. Being administratively separate from the courts, police,procuratorate and so on, but frequently sharing staff and facilities with them, has evidently provided

weiwenban with a novel form of coordination power. One user was reported to have said:Before, if people wanted to go to the government, or get divorced, or if they had a dispute, they didn’t know whoto go to … Now they know to go to the weiwenban , who can pass on the problem to the right people. 68

62Richard L. Abel, ‘A critique of torts’, UCLA Law Review 37, (1990), pp. 785–831.63Hongmei Li, ‘Cong Yihuan Duikang Dao Yihuan Duihua (Jujiao: Yiliao Jiufen Tiaojie 2): Shenzhen Yiliao Jiufen Tiaojie Moshi

Diaocha’, Renmin Ribao, (29 March 2012), p. 18.64Yanting Tong, ‘Shi Fuyou Baojianyuan—Ni Jian Zhuyuan Lou—Zao Zhoubian Jumin Fandui’, Shenzhen wanbao , (5 March

2013), available at: http://wb.sznews.com/html/2013-03/05/content_2394443.htm (accessed 14 September 2015).65

Wuhe Zhou, ‘Nanzi Yiyuan Shuye Shenwang: Jiashu Danao Tao You Shuofa Huo Pei 35 Wan’, Guangzhou ribao , (22 February2013), available at: http://society.people.com.cn/n/2013/0222/c1008-20566369.html (accessed 14 September 2015).66Randall Peerenboom, China's Long March Towards Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).67N. J. Schweitzer, Douglas J. Sylvester and Michael J. Saks, ‘Rule violations and the rule of law: a factorial survey of public

attitudes’, DePaul Law Review 56(2), (2007), pp. 615–638.68 Tang, ‘Zhen Weiwenban De “Shengyi Jing”’, (translated by the author).

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This tendency, or at least the desire of the state to promote stability maintenance as a ‘one-stop shop’for conict resolution, was evident in many of the cases. There were only six of the 65 cases in which noother government organization was reported to have been involved in the conict resolution process. There was an obvious overlap between the architecture of PMCs and between the work done by theweiwenban . When tiaojie (mediation) is referred to in the cases, it was often difficult or impossible toascertain whether the PMC, the weiwenban , or both, was facilitating the mediation.

In resolving conicts, the weiwen apparatus worked with local Public Security Bureaus, judicialoffices, district courts, Politics and Law Committees, city development boards, economic and tradebureaus, housing construction bureaus, village committees and local governments, quasi-governmentorganizations such as the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and PMCs and specialized mediationcommittees. Limited funding for local police means that the stability maintenance apparatus, which issometimes better funded, sometimes acts as a de facto police force, although over-spending on weiwen can still damage local budgets. 69

The weiwenban may refer its clients to the local body which ts their needs. Cooperating governmentorganizations can also interact with weiwenban during the conict resolution process, as well as actingas supervisors for the remedies that the weiwenban enforces. For example, after a dispute in a bus com-pany, the bus drivers and company came to a consensus, and the drivers agreed to go back to work.Facilitated by the weiwenban , in tandem with the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and theFederation of Trade Unions (both at district level), the bus company promised changes to the drivers’work contracts. The District Labor Department was enlisted to enforce and supervise these changes. 70

The policy implications of this trend are ambiguous. While the advantages of increased interactionbetween various departmental bodies are obvious, and while the cross-institutional nature of weiwen-ban appears to have led to increases in efficiency at times, it is impossible to escape the problem thatincreased interaction can merely exacerbate some of the signicant problems that local governmentsface: arbitrary policy- and decision-making strategies, as well as corruption and an overemphasis onpersonal relationships.

Practical facilitation

Since the stability maintenance apparatus has so much access to other government bodies, and sincethe process of conict resolution is fundamentally negotiative and non-legal, the weiwenban ’s roletends to be practical and facilitative. There is little attempt to develop general decision-making prin-ciples or precedents which can be applied in subsequent cases. This does not just extend to nancialcompensation. As part of the bargaining process, the stability maintenance apparatus allows for theconstruction of complex facilitative solutions to conicts.

Examples of this include mandated apologies in situations where official bodies have made mistakes,

such as cremating the wrong body;71

promoting ‘rational patriotism’ in a case where anti-Japaneseprotests were perceived as having got out of hand; 72 requesting that children provide their elderlymother with ‘spiritual care’ as well as money (she had been attempting to bring a lawsuit to require

69Xie, ‘The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China’.70Xinying Wei, ‘Qifulou Basiji’, Yangcheng wanbao , (18 January 2013), available at: http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2013-01-

18/143926068160.shtml (accessed 14 September 2013).71Hongzhong Zhang, ‘Shangfang Nongfu Bei Song Jingshenbing Quxu: Xian Lingdao Daoqian Chuli Qi Ming Ganbu’, Xi'an

wanbao , (14 October 2012), available at: http://news.anhuinews.com/system/2012/10/14/005254614.shtml (accessed

14 September 2015); ‘Wenling Binyiguan Fasheng Wulong Shi—Cuo Ba Atai Yiting Dang Agong Huohua’, Taizhou ribao ,(17 January 2012), available at: http://www.anhuinews.com/zhuyeguanli/system/2012/01/17/004713912.shtml (accessed14 September 2015).

72Qiping Li, ‘Diaoyudao Shijian Hou Mengcheng Xian Shudao Xuesheng Qingxu Jiaqiang Weiwen Diaoyan’, Zhongan jiaoyuwang , (18 September 2012), available at: http://edu.anhuinews.com/system/2012/09/18/005219613.shtml (accessed 14September 2015).

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this);73 and many cases where weiwenban have spearheaded or mandated the investigation by policeor local government of cases of criminal conduct or nancial deception.

This is consistent with the ‘retreat from law’ and the localized approach characteristic of the weiwen apparatus, as well as the tendency to make mediation less legalistic and more facilitative. It demonstratesthat the work done by stability maintenance organizations is not conned to nancial compensationor bargaining between individuals—once again, potentially justifying the current policy approach.Further, even if the cases above are relatively infrequent, or have been exaggerated, it is still possibleto observe some vestiges of weiwen being taken at ‘face value’—that is, as a series of schemes forincreasing the level of stability in society.

Policy debates

Western writers have tended to assume that the stability maintenance apparatus has a unitary aim:‘domestic coercion’. 74 This is inconsistent with the localized and diverse network of stability mainte-nance offices. Empirically, the cases above demonstrate great variety in the implementation of stabilitymaintenance. Critiques of weiwen from Chinese authors also affect the practice of stability maintenance,particularly at local levels.

Three key concepts have attracted particular academic attention: Yu Jianrong’s ‘rigid stability’ versus‘exible [or resilient] stability’; 75 Sun Liping’s ‘specter of instability’ and ‘stability maintenance viciouscircle’;76 and Yang Yiyong’s criticism of ‘movement-based stability maintenance’. 77 While the articlesthat stimulated these particular critiques are short and not very empirical, they have stimulated con-siderable academic discussion. The practical response to this academic debate can be used to testthe hypothesis that local stability maintenance offices are acting as catalysts for innovation in localgovernment practice.

Yu’s concept of ‘rigid stability’ ( gangxing wending ) refers to the idea that non-political protest is beinginterpreted by the state as being political and handled politically. Many mass incidents, he argues,

are actually cases of ‘anger venting’ based on local incompetence and the perception by local citizensthat they cannot participate in the management of their own affairs. He suggests that the state hastaken a ‘high tension’ approach 78 characterized by suppression of public opinion and reliance on stateviolence—while the public expresses its opinions increasingly vigorously. Flexible stability, he suggests,would be characterized by decentralization and ‘micro-politics’, where social conicts at a local levelare treated negotiatively by the state, and accepted as a normal consequence of social development; 79 thus, stability and development can co-exist.

Sun conceptualizes Yu’s ‘high tension’ society as being characterized by a ‘phantom of instability’(bu wending huanxiang )—subjective feelings of social instability have led to excessively censorioustreatment of social conict. Sun makes the argument that China is not especially unstable: ‘an increase

in social problems is a good thing. It means that people are daring to express their demands, and societymust tolerate and understand this phenomenon’. Sun criticizes the ‘common practice’ by governmentof achieving ‘short-term stability’ by suppressing the expression of vulnerable social groups, describingthis as a ‘stability maintenance vicious circle’ ( weiwen guaiquan ) in which ‘the more stability mainte-nance there is, the less stability there is’. Yang furthers this idea by criticizing ‘campaign-based stabilitymaintenance’ ( yundongshi de weiwen ) and suggesting that the key to long-term stability is institutionaldevelopment and maintenance rather than severe action in specic circumstances.

73‘63 Sui Apo Qisu San Zinü Bu Yanglao’, Nandu wang , (10 May 2013), available at: http://paper.oeeee.com/nis/201305/ 10/49512.html (accessed 1 October 2015).

74

Xie, ‘The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China’, p. 80.75Jianrong Yu, ‘Cong Gangxing Weiwen Dao Renxing Weiwen’, Xuexi yu tansuo 5, (2009), pp. 113–118.76Liping Sun, ‘“Bu Wending Huanxiang” Yu Weiwen Guaiquan’, Renmin luntan 295, (2010), pp. 23–24.77Yiyong Yang, ‘Yundongshi Weiwen Shi Bu Kequ De’, Renmin luntan 295, (2010), p. 25.78Yu, ‘Cong Gangxing Weiwen Dao Renxing Weiwen’, p. 115.79Ibid ., pp. 116–117.

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These analyses are largely targeted towards the perceived problem of ‘mass incidents’. Perversely,perhaps, as Lee and Zhang show, the state treatment of mass incidents—characterized by ‘buying’short-term stability to avoid attenuated public conict—has remained largely the same, despite theevidence that some intellectuals doubt that this method is effective in the long term. But at lower levelsof conict resolution, those not likely to escalate into mass incidents, this academic discussion may havehad some effect. Local responses to the academic critique of weiwen demonstrate a tendency to usethe structures and discourse of stability maintenance as a means of innovating in local government.

The case of Beiliu city in Guangxi province 80 demonstrates the interaction of weiwen with existinggovernance structures. Beiliu, particularly Liujing village (the focal point of the case study), had sufferedfrom inefficient dispute resolution, particularly in view of its increasing number of interpersonal dis-putes. Dispute resolution was overseen by the ‘two committees’ ( liang wei , the sharing of power betweenthe Communist Party and village committee 81). The responsible cadres lacked expertise, and decisionshad limited enforceability, resulting in many cases being referred upwards through petitioning andlegal action. In short, the existing process had ‘ceased to function’. This ‘administrative management’was invigorated by the introduction of ‘harmony associations’ ( hexie xiehui ). Twenty-eight harmonyassociations were registered as not-for-prot social groups under the direction of the village-levelworkstation for comprehensive management, letters and visits and stability management.

The harmony association project might be described as dispute resolution micronance. Under the‘thought leadership’ of the CCP, the harmony associations aimed to distribute responsibility for disputeresolution and enhance links with the community (through ‘mass propaganda’ or qunzhong xuanchuan ). The associations received a startup fund (a weiwen jijin or stability maintenance fund) of ¥150,000. Ratherthan to compensate complainants, this funding was mostly used to increase payment for mediators. The mediators thus recruited were local people who had the respect of the community and wererecommended by community members, often Party members or retired cadres. Their close links withthe community gave them moral authority in mediation, and their local knowledge allowed them tonegotiate effectively in property and boundary disputes. Liberating cadres from the burden of dispute

resolution improved local relationships, but still provided a means of supervision and ‘objectivity’. Yangsuggests that this method provided a more efficient use of resources by limiting compensation, as wellas providing a dispute resolution method which was well-received in the community. He claims thatthis is a manifestation of Yu’s ‘exible stability’, in that it is responsive to the pluralism of the area andreduces the distance between people and their government.

Reports of similar schemes can be found elsewhere in the academic literature: for example, the imple-mentation of grassroots weiwen through ‘rural village offices’ ( nongshi cunban ), also in Guangxi, 82 andthe use of ‘stability offices’ to mediate labor disputes in Henan. 83 These are manifestations of a broaderneed: to stimulate innovation in weiwen practice; to allow such innovation to improve local governmentpractice; as a response to the increasing complexity of society; and to facilitate methods of dispute

resolution which promote longer-term stability rather than papering over immediate problems withcompensation and causing more problems later (escaping the ‘stability maintenance vicious circle’). These innovations demonstrate that it is possible for the practice of stability maintenance—at local

level and for personal-level conicts—to respond to the general criticisms of policy which have beenmounted in the past few years and to create innovative practices which are consistent both with thedemands of the party-state and with the specic needs of the region. These strategies seem to acceptthat the legal and petitioning system are of limited value in the current local government milieu, andaim to work around this.

80Yuquan Yang, ‘“Caogen Zuzhi”: Nongcun Weiwen De Neishengxing Ziyuan Yu Zhengfu Shehui Guanli Chuangxin’,

Zhonggong Guizhou shengweidangxiao xuebao 142(6), (2012), pp. 97–101.81Xin Sun, Travis J. Warner, Dali L. Yang and Mingxing Liu, ‘Patterns of authority and governance in rural China: who’s incharge? Why?’, Journal of Contemporary China 22(83), (2013), pp. 733–754.

82Zhongqun Huang, ‘“Nongshi Cunban” Zhulao Weiwen Diyi Daofangxian’, Dangdai Guangxi 12, (2010), pp. 46–47.83Caiyan Li and Changfeng Wang, ‘Erqi Qu Weiwenban: Jishi Huajie Maodun Jiufen Bao Wending’, Nongcun-nongye-nongmin

8, (2009), p. 15.

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Naturally, there are limits on this. Since the innovative methods described have not appeared towork well in dealing with larger-scale mass incidents, it is difficult to see that the particular distributionof funding which occurred in the Beiliu harmony associations could be applied to systems where massincidents were more common: as the stability maintenance funds would presumably continue to beapplied to ‘buying stability’ in response to mass incidents, it is unlikely that grassroots conict resolutionmethods would be prioritized. Second, the problem of expertise remains crucial. This is so both in termsof the low capacity of local officials to resolve conicts skillfully, which none of the proposed weiwen reforms really address, as well as in terms of the harmony association model, which requires that peopleof sufficient skill and standing in the community can be lured into performing difficult and controver-sial roles on the basis of relatively small sums of money—a situation which, while it appears to havehappened in various places, cannot be said to be guaranteeably replicable across the whole of China.

In a broader sense, while the debate about weiwen reform is has been approved of by the stateat some level, the ideas promoted by such controversial gures as Yu Jianrong and Sun Liping areunlikely to form part of the mainstream thought processes of the party-state. Observation of the over-all tendency of the Chinese state under Xi Jinping, as well as within the management of the stabilitymaintenance scheme (for example, that the responsible minister, Guo Shengkun, has a backgroundin policing and business rather than in law), suggest that it is the authoritarian tendency and thenancial tendency rather than negotiation or long-term social planning which will rule in these cases.But even if this is true, it remains clear that experimentation is the fulcrum on which Chinese policy isoften developed, 84 so local innovation in stability maintenance practice cannot merely be ignored orconceptually marginalized.

Conclusion

Fundamentally, this article has aimed to study the weiwen phenomenon in and of itself. That is, it hasattempted not to conate ‘stability maintenance’ as a series of organizations and practices with the

pursuit of actions which are designed to increase the level of actual stability—however that can bemeasured—or to prevent the level of stability from being lowered. On both a practical and an epistemiclevel, these two things are linked but ultimately discrete. Weiwen has become, and was likely intendedas, an all-purpose tool for solving various social and political problems (in much the same way as peti-tioning was in the mid-2000s), in a context in which, through lack of resources and political will, legalmethods have been marginalized. One of its uses has been conict resolution at a local level, an areawhich has perhaps been ignored by other writers because it does not always t into a larger pictureof national political stability.

This analysis of grassroots weiwen highlights a society which is struggling with low-level local con-icts and in which it is difficult to resolve problems other than by nancial compensation or state vio-

lence. Stability maintenance does not address these problems in an overall sense, and in some ways itexacerbates them. Nor is stability maintenance at all compatible with legal development or the rule oflaw, harking back as it does to traditional interpersonal means of mediation characteristic of the Maoperiod and earlier.

Nonetheless, considered at a grassroots level, the hypotheses posed about the effect of stabilitymaintenance have been in part conrmed. It is clear that, although it may not be a feasible option inthe long term, stability maintenance bodies have brought more to the world of conict resolution than just extra money: they have been able, in various ways and in various places, to improve the quality ofnegotiation in disputes, and to facilitate outcomes which involve more than just the transfer of sumsof money. The data seem to demonstrate that, when the conict is below ‘mass incident’ level, the rolesplayed by stability maintenance officials become increasingly exible. In terms of the issue of policy

84Sebastian Heilmann, ‘From local experiments to national policy: the origins of China’s distinctive policy process’, TheChina Journal 59, (2008), pp. 1–30.

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exibility and innovation, it has been demonstrated that local authorities have been able to respondto academic critiques of weiwen by creating innovative local means of resolving conicts.

None of the arguments made above necessarily contradict the broader critique of weiwen mountedby the Western authors cited above. Rather, they demonstrate rst that weiwen is a complicated organ-ism difficult to generalize about, and second that weiwen , together with people’s mediation, is providinga means of local conict resolution which lls a gap in local Chinese society which other organizationsand strategic approaches, whether from the state or from individuals, cannot effectively ll.

Acknowledgements This article was initially developed during the author’s tenure as Visiting Research Fellow at the LOEWE Research Focus,Goethe University, Frankfurt, and later rened with the assistance of a New Staff Grant from Macquarie University. Theauthor thanks Deng Yanhua, Peter Gries, Heike Holbig, Liu Mingxing, Xiao Tangbiao and Zhang Yonghong, as well as theanonymous referees, for their assistance and comments, and extends special thanks to his research assistant, Andrew Yeo.

Notes on contributor Jonathan Benney is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, MonashUniversity, Australia. He has previously worked as a lecturer at Macquarie University and a researcher and postdoctoralfellow at the National University of Singapore, Goethe University and the University of Oklahoma. He received his Ph.D.from the University of Melbourne in 2010. He studies contentious politics and political communication in modern China,with particular emphasis on new media, activism, dispute resolution, the role of law and rights, and the history of ideas.His rst book, Defending Rights in Contemporary China , was published by Routledge in 2013.

ORCID

Jonathan Benney http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6972-9591

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http://orcid.org/http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6972-9591http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6972-9591http://orcid.org/

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China’s Stability

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