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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.
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.
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Bulldozers, Violent Thugs, and Nonviolent Brokers
Chapter 2: The Theory: State Power, Repression, and Implications
for Development
Chapter 3: Outsourcing Violence: Everyday Repression via
Thugs-for-Hire
Chapter 4: Case Studies: Thugs-for-Hire, Repression, and
Mobilization
Chapter 5: Networks of State Infrastructural Power: Brokerage,
State Penetration, and Mobilization
Chapter 6: Brokers in Harmonious Demolition: Mass Mobilizers,
Mediators, and Huangniu
Chapter 7: Comparative Context: South Korea and India
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Appendices
Appendix A: Content Analysis of Government Regulations
Appendix B: List of Interviewees
Appendix C: Media-Sourced Event Dataset
Appendix D: Additional Tables & Graphs for Chapter 3
Notes
Bibliography
Lynette H. Ong is an associate professor of political science at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Prosper or Perish: Credit and Fiscal Systems in Rural China (2012). Her work has been published in Comparative Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Foreign Affairs, and other outlets.
A granular, documented, and persuasive analysis of how
authoritarian control is maintained on a quotidian basis in Xi's
China. Lest we ever doubt that all authoritarian regimes operate
'outside' even their own hand-tailored, legal order, this fine
study closes the case. A discerning examination of the atomization,
perversion, and cooptation of what might otherwise be a mobilized,
autonomous civil society.
*James C. Scott, Yale University*
Outsourcing Repression is a fascinating study of an important but
underexplored issue about state control in China—outsourcing state
repression to non-state actors. Analytically rigorous, this book
uncovers how the state exercises its everyday coercion by securing
the collaboration of social actors, mainly thugs-for-hire and
brokers. This is an important book that sheds new light on the
coercive power of authoritarian states.
*Yongshun Cai, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology*
Ong provides what's likely to be the definitive account of
socialized repression in contemporary China. That the state uses
third parties to extend its power down to the grassroots (and to
avoid backlash) is one of the key features of China's hardening
authoritarianism, and a development of great importance to China
scholars and comparativists alike.
*Kevin J. O'Brien, University of California, Berkeley*
Outsourcing Repression is a captivating study of China's use of,
and interactions with, nonstate actors as a means to consolidate
its control over its population.
*Europe-Asia Studies*
The book makes significant contributions to our understanding of
power struggles in China's forced demolition and land-grabbing and
the nature of everyday state power. It will be of interest to
readers from political science, sociology, criminology, urban
studies and China studies.
*Jianhua Xu, The China Quarterly*
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