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Repression has long been regarded as the main response of the state when encountering contentious actions. Although recent studies point out that repression may vary by regime types and state-level concerns regarding international reputation, few analyses to date have analyzed how movement dynamics and movement targets jointly shape state responses. In this article, I analyze over 7,500 episodes of labor protests in mainland China to advance scholarship on state responses to social movements. I develop a typology of state responses, from active coercion to accommodation and even tolerance. I then explore differences in state responses based on protest tactics and whether they are against private or state-affiliated targets. My results show that state responses differ based on the tactics that movements employ. Furthermore, these effects are moderated by whether activists target state-affiliated or private entities. This research offers important insights into the dynamic relations between state and social movement, the diverse ways highly bureaucratic governments use to manage social unrest, and the conflict between maintaining legitimacy and social control in both authoritarian and democratic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Wang Ruqi's contribution to the drafting of the 1950 Marriage Law, the first codified law promulgated by the People's Republic of China (PRC). It argues that Wang—who had been a legal specialist and a female political activist dating back to the 1930s and 1940s—was the actual author of the law's first draft. In rehabilitating Wang's long-forgotten contribution to the making of the Marriage Law, this study highlights that, first of all, lawmaking in the early years of the PRC was characterized by legal "professionalism," rather than the "vernacularism" that scholars in recent years have tended to ascribe to this period. Second, Wang was an exemplary figure of a new breed of "state feminists" in the PRC, which we term "state-legal feminists." State-legal feminists, like state feminists in general, were brought into the PRC state apparatus and took advantage of their role in the state to advance sociopolitical agendas. However, they differed from their fellow state feminists because they firmly believed that the state's will and intent could be best articulated and exercised through codified laws and legal institutions. The making of the Marriage Law thus exemplifies the state-legal feminist approach insofar as it resorted to a codified law to push for the political agendas of women's emancipation and restructuring families in China. While recent scholarship highlights the politicization of the law in the 1953 campaign to promote the Marriage Law, this study inverts this by addressing the legalization of political and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do social movements respond to geopolitical uncertainties and mobilize aspirations and imagined futures for progressive social change? Building on scholarship on social movements and imagined futures, this article provides an empirical analysis of Taiwan's marriage equality movement as it navigated the shifting horizon of the nation's future. With the economic and diplomatic rise of mainland China, Taiwan has confronted with an increasing international isolation due to the nation's lack of widespread external legitimacy as a nation-state. Given this geopolitical context, Taiwan's marriage equality movement not simply drew on the globalized notion of equal rights for same-sex couples. Instead, it rearticulated the meaning of 'equality' of sexual minorities in parallel to Taiwan's aspirational equal status as a nation-state in the global sphere. Through the intimate entanglement of LGBT rights claims and sovereign aspirations, the marriage equality movement became a powerful emblem of the national vision that differentiated Taiwan from mainland China. This article thus provides new insights for scholarship on social movements and imagined futures, geopolitics, and gender and sexual rights movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on social movements suggests that when protesters use violence, public opinion often turns against them, unless the observers already view the protesters as extremists. This creates what we refer to as an "asymmetric liability," where by moderate protest movements are held to a higher standard of civility than more extreme ones. Based on a survey experiment surrounding the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, we show that violence undercuts Chinese public sympathy when movements are framed around rights-based agendas but has little impact when protesters are portrayed as separatists. Pairing our survey results alongside media trends offers suggestive evidence that mainland respondents became less sympathetic to anti-government protesters and slightly less sensitive to protest violence as state media began depicting protesters as radical separatists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the purpose, system of subjects, principal tools and consequences of neo-authoritarian intervention. The peculiarities of the neo-authoritarian regime, neo-authoritarian intervention, and export of neo-authoritarianism are clarified. China and Russia are selected as the main cases for analysis. The purpose of neo-authoritarian intervention is defined as the intention to strengthen the internal stability of non-democratic regimes and to broaden their influence on international processes, the effort being to change the world order and destroy liberaldemocratic values. It is argued that the key subjects of neoauthoritarian intervention are the governments of neoauthoritarian states and a great number of actors (puppet parties; government-organized non-governmental organizations; marginal, ultra-radical social and political movements; statecontrolled media; unscrupulous analytical centres; and international multilingual networks of TV, radio broadcasts, news agencies, which are financed by neo-authoritarian governments). The system of tools of neo-authoritarian influence includes tools of: power; influence within the soft power; subversion; value modification; election tampeering; and pressure on international organizations. The tools of neo-authoritarian intervention are based on the classic tools of authoritarianism, but are modernized due to digitalization, information and communication progress, and the other technologies. Neo-authoritarian intervention is proven to increase the risks to global security. The main consequences of the strengthening of neo-authoritarian intervention on a global scale are the growth of threats to democracy, the risks of changing the world agenda. The consequence of neo-authoritarian interference in the internal affairs of non-democratic states is the growth of dependence on neo-authoritarian exporter states, further socio-political instability, increased use of force in solving socio-political problems. The research states that in the case of neo-authoritarian intervention in the affairs of democratic states, the consequences may include both effective counteraction to neo-authoritarian interventions and thus strengthening of the quality of democracy, and destructive tendencies including the growth of populism, radicalism, corruption, and hate speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerged from the anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in 2019, the yellow economic circle (YEC) is the first ever widely adopted political consumerism in post-handover Hong Kong, where people buycott yellow (pro-movement) and boycott blue (anti-movement/ pro-Beijing/ pro-HKSAR-government) businesses. The reflection's prominence lies in the popular engagement in YEC, and the political consumerism still lingers in the city even after the abrupt end of the 2019 movement. Existing research lacks the exploration of the meanings YEC entailed in relation to the context of Hong Kong and the lessons YEC can impart to the city's civil society development. By classifying YEC into "sign" and "process," the article first examines the particular juncture at which YEC emerged to show how Beijing has tried to govern Hong Kong through the market. It subsequently delves into a discourse analysis, scrutinizing how Beijing has constructed a civility for the market, which is later reshaped by YEC. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe's theorization of "politics" as well as Hardt and Negri's discussion of "identitarian love," the article continues by shedding light on the identity politics and oxymoron of liberal democracy inherent in the political consumerism. It also addresses the narrow democratic imagination reflected in different incidents arising from YEC, which may be symptomatic of Hong Kong's current political struggle. The exploration concludes with suggestions on how the YEC can strengthen Hong Kong's civil society after Beijing's crackdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the state-led, market-oriented, and elite-centered art framework in present-day China. Focusing on the rupture between art and public life, it aims to understand the structural forces that trivialize ordinary people's aesthetic experiences. Utilizing the term "absent others," this study first untangles historical and social circumstances that underlie the formations of the exclusionary feature in art. Against this backdrop, the second part of this study examines the case of a community-based art space in urban China. Focusing on its spatial practices and method experiments, discussions examine the efforts that art practitioners have made to revise the historical legacy, spatial order, and method issues in artistic practices that have continuously (re)produced stratification in cultural life in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Studies on the "protest paradigm" have long explored how a society's mass media system frames the social movements occurring within that society. This study adopts a social movement diffusion perspective to sharpen the transborder dimension of the protest paradigm. Specifically, we introduce the concept of the "diffusion-proofing" protest paradigm, given that an understudied and undertheorized function of the protest paradigm is the prevention of the import of exogenous social movements. Taking the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement as an example, we investigate how mainland China's mass media acted to prevent movement diffusion. Four transborder components of the diffusion-proofing protest paradigm are proposed: reactions, attributions, consequences, and solutions. Through content analysis, we argue that by highlighting these transborder components, China's newspapers attributed the movement's rise to foreign intervention, emphasized the movement's negative effects on both Hong Kong and mainland China, and revealed the uncompromising nature of China's reaction and the urgency of cross-border cooperation for containing the movement and its diffusion. Further, we identify two modes of reporting: a mainly descriptive mode that relied on a local framework to depict the movement and its local context and an evaluative mode that emphasized the level of deviance and foreign intervention, thus amplifying the movement's transborder effects and the need to prevent its diffusion. Notably, the level of deviance acts as a mediating channel between the two modes, transforming the local framework into a transborder one. The diffusion-proofing protest paradigm is also found to vary across media types and periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to extend the theoretical discussion of interstitial emergence to an authoritarian context. An interstitial space is a space whose relations with the dominant power structure are not yet institutionalized. In analyzing interstitial emergence in an authoritarian context, it is necessary to examine the interaction between interstitial space and the state as an institutionalizing force and recognize that 1) institutionalization is an ongoing process that spans over a period and 2) a state's intervention may induce unintended consequences. The rise and fall of labor NGO activism in China between 1996 and 2020 are used as a case to illustrate the theoretical discussion. Labor NGOs emerged out of the interstices of state control since the 1990s. Although the state started to regulate these organizations since the late 2000s, its intervention lacked consistency. Before the state finally gained the capacity to enforce rules, which was around 2015, labor NGOs had already launched a series of advocacy activism and cultivated a group of activists who identified with the value of social movement. Hence, although the activism was eventually incorporated, it had successfully thematized labor issues and produced enduring impact on the culture of public discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine three transnational women's movements in countries currently led by dictators—Nicaragua, Russia, and China—to uncover lessons they might offer feminist activists across the world as authoritarian regimes increase in the context of globalization. Although the rise in feminist action within these countries paralleled social movement mobilization elsewhere, what distinguishes feminist activism in these three countries is the national political context in which they each operated: a demonstrably repressive turn in which feminist activities became dangerous. In the three countries under investigation, the leaders' rise to power included feminist repression. To understand how these three different states could evolve from encouraging feminist action to engaging in strategic repression a decade later, we examine oral history interviews with feminist activists in Nicaragua, Russia, and China that were recorded as part of the Global Feminisms Project. Thus, we had thirty-seven unique first-person accounts of the period in question from the perspective of feminist activists. Our analysis suggests that these states employed three mechanisms that disempowered the women's movement over time: suppression of the international flow of ideas and funding, state control of the media, and public criminalization of dissent and activism. We focus on the first as critical to transnational feminism and review the other two as enhancing the effort to suppress the flow of ideas, people, and funding. Among other implications, the conclusion suggests that to protect feminist activism, we directly work to protect the free flow of ideas and funds across national boundaries, as well as a freely operating media that conveys accurate information, and freedom of protest and dissent where they currently exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines blockades not as disruptions in logistical circulations, but as entities which aim to reorient and produce different political and social processes. Inspired by Deleuzean conceptualisations of assemblage, this paper emphasises the ways blockades and occupations arise from globe‐spanning networks of social relations which then attempt to produce alternative regimes of governance through reorienting places and their topologies of interconnection. To make these points, this paper engages with three case studies which highlight different kinds of blockades. One example focuses on the regional scale where US military interests have expressed concern over potential blockades of Sea Lines of Communication due to the rising geopolitical and economic influence of China in the island Pacific. The second example focuses on blockades at the construction site of a US military base on the coast of Henoko, Okinawa. The third example examines blockade protests by Kanaka Maoli kia'i (protectors) on Maunakea in Hawai'i. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Chairman Mao's Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China" by Bin Xu is a book that explores the experiences and memories of the zhiqing, or "sent-down youth," who were part of the Up to the Mountain and Down to the Countryside Movement in China from the 1950s to the 1970s. The author uses qualitative and quantitative data from interviews with zhiqing participants to analyze their diverse life patterns and classifies them into four groups based on their political activities and status. The book also examines how public memories of the movement have been portrayed in literature, exhibitions, and museums, and explores the intergroup dynamics and memories of the zhiqing. While the book offers valuable insights into the experiences of the zhiqing, some aspects could be improved, such as providing more detail on the political context and engaging with existing literature on contemporary political histories in China. Overall, the book provides a new framework for exploring class-related issues in Chinese society and is recommended for those interested in social movements and the dynamics of memory. [Extracted from the article]

The rising level of automation has increasingly attracted scholars' attention. On the other hand, there are many studies of the consequences of social movements, but relatively fewer studies focus on their economic consequences, and even fewer studies have examined their consequences on automation. This article bridges the gap between the two literatures by hypothesizing that a rising number of labor protests will lead to a higher level of automation. We argue that political economy factors influence the adoption of more automation. Protests anticipate higher wages and labor costs; contest for social power with employers and the state, and, in extreme cases, pose a public relations challenge to employers, which will likely push employers to replace human workers with robots. We empirically test the relationship by using two protest event datasets in China, the China Labor Bulletin and Collective Action from Social Media and robot data from the International Federation of Robotics. Statistical analysis shows that provinces and industries that have more protests also tend to concentrate more robots, and the results are robust to most specifications and placebo tests. The findings have implications for both understanding the mechanism explaining rising automation and the consequences of social protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Taiwan During the First Administration of Tsai Ing-Wen: Navigating in Stormy Waters" edited by Gunter Schubert and Chun-Yi Lee provides a comprehensive analysis of the challenges faced by Tsai Ing-Wen during her first term as President of Taiwan. The book covers various policy areas and issues, including cross-strait relations, industrial policy, social movements, pension reform, curriculum reform, transitional justice, same-sex marriage, migration policy, and international relations. The authors argue that Tsai's administration focused on developmental policies rather than opposing previous administrations, and her position on China played a significant role in her re-election. While the book lacks a concluding chapter, it offers valuable insights for scholars and students interested in Taiwan and its political landscape. [Extracted from the article]

Ruckus doesn't have a clear answer to any of this, even while he does seem to assume that leftist social struggles play a role similar in China as they do in Euro-America, a premise about which I am considerably less convinced than he is. The lead-up to 1989 and the aftermath of the Tiananmen movement occupy a good deal of Ruckus's attention towards the last chapters of the book. The periodizing, then, gives an indication of what concerns Ruckus most: these are anti-systemic organized social movements that are neither Communist Party-led nor Communist Party-inspired, but rather that attempt to force the Party to live up to its proclaimed socialist pursuits. [Extracted from the article]

Environmental movements are a special social movement against environmental injustice, as well as a political conflict regarding environmental issues. To understand the motivation to participate in environmental movements, it is necessary to explore the role of governments in environmental management. Using the cross-sectional data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2013, the author estimates the associations between participation in environmental movements and satisfaction with governments in environmental management. Results show that participation in environmental movements is not associated with individual satisfaction with the central government but is significantly associated with individual satisfaction with the local government when demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are adjusted in models. This finding suggests that public satisfaction and trust in local governments' environmental governance can promote the public to participate in environmental protection activities. This study also reflects that Chinese individuals believe the local governments can undertake the responsibility of environmental management, suggesting that the central and local governments reach a consensus on environmental management in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regarding media framing of protests, current studies have primarily focused on the negative side of framing tools, that is, marginalization devices that news media employ to belittle and demonize a protest. Yet little scholarship has scrutinized the positive side of framing tools, i.e., affirmation devices that mass media adopt to convey sympathy for and approval of a protest. Through comparing U.S. media coverage of two recent large anti-government movements taking place in China and France—the movements sharing similarities in vital factors impacting media coverage—this paper illustrates a series of affirmation devices, including highlighting issues and downplaying violence, blaming violence on authorities, stressing public approval, backing protest goals, and understating a movement's dark side. A systematic examination of affirmation devices contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of media framing and the relations between the media and social movements. This exploration also challenges the popular conception that violence by protesters typically leads to negative media coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is estimated to have 70 million lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and in recent decades, the LGBT movement has seen rapid growth. However, because of the unavailability of data, a comprehensive understanding of the degree of regional development of the Chinese LGBT movement has been unavailable. By analyzing keyword search volumes for LGBT-related terms on Baidu (the largest internet search engine in China) from 2009 through 2015, we have produced the first representative and longitudinal portrait of LGBT orientation across the country. Our data revealed that the level of LGBT orientation search index in a province is significantly correlated with modernization and cultural capital stock factors, such as GDP per capita, resident income level, openness to foreign culture, and local cultural infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a victim-survivor and feminist activist who participated in the #MeToo movement in China, I always have confusion and questions generated from my experiences and observations. The limited literature on Chinese social movements rarely utilises China situated frameworks, which reduces the understanding. This article focuses on 'how #MeToo movement(s) manifest and evolve in China' and aims to find out its 'Chinese characteristics'. Through an analysis of two archives and my autoethnography using He-Yin Zhen's feminist analytical concepts 'nannü' (man/woman) and 'shengji' (livelihood), Confucian moral outlook, and 'Chinese characteristics', I find that the movement displays 'Chinese characteristics' in multiple aspects. There is not one monolithic #MeToo movement in China but many with different agendas, although some of which are prioritised more than others. These findings stress the importance of privileging the historic-cultural context and personal perspectives in studying social movements. This article illustrates that situated feminist research is needed to reconstruct feminist studies in the global South, and that feminist movements need to consider the historical and cultural context, and challenge dominant romanticising and elitist discourses, in order to develop sustainably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratic reform of civil ships is a social transformation movement carried out by the CPC in the field of inland river civil ship transportation in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Before liberation, the aquatic society was "far from the Jianghu" for a long time. It was not controlled by the state power and was not baptized by the revolutionary struggle. As a working class, the boatmen and boatmen had no obvious class consciousness, let alone strict class groups. Therefore, the democratic reform of civil shipping needs to take the question of "who feeds who" as the incision, promote the embedding of class discourse, gradually change the cognitive model of some administrative cadres in the movement, establish the ideology and behavior methods of relying on the masses and relying on activists, and clarify the class boundaries and identity differences between "I" and "others", which is an effective way to achieve the change of social order and political integration on water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1969 and 1979 the Australian women's liberation movement was richly entangled with Vietnamese and Chinese Communism. While this social movement has been substantially critiqued for its privileging of white women, this article considers a moment when women did work across racial and political difference, albeit imperfectly. Australian socialist feminists were directly inspired by Vietnamese and Chinese women, considering them tantalizing evidence of a woman-friendly communist utopia. But other feminists were entangled in ways that were less tightly woven and more surprising; for example, through the technique of consciousness-raising. Feminists also projected their desire for global sisterhood onto Vietnamese and Chinese women. Yet face-to-face visits reveal that East Asian feminists were not just a site for Australian feminist projections. As representatives of state women's organizations, East Asian Communist women acted strategically to construct Vietnam and China as gender equal in the eyes of Australian visitors. This assertion of equality went largely unquestioned due to the revered place testimony occupied in the women's liberation movement. Yet women's differences were exposed in moments of bafflement during these visits. These are animated as moments of productive confusion; they are productive because they reveal the differences between women. Finally, Communist state feminists are not exceptionalized and are compared to Australian state feminists or "femocrats." I find their agency similarly limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective identity framing is the process by which activists identify protagonists, antagonists, and audiences, three identity fields in social movements. Connective action facilitated by information communication technologies decentralizes social movement organization and drastically changes framing processes. Drawing on those theories, this research explores how collective identities are framed in Chinese LGBTQ+ online movements by comparing the collective identity framings in the #IAmGay and #IAmLes protests. It is discovered that in the #IAmGay protest, the collective identity was framed as inclusive, whereas in the #IAmLes protest, the collective identity was framed as conflictual because of lesbians' intersectional identity both as homosexuals and as women. Furthermore, this research also offers implications on the "entanglement of identity fields" in connective action and future exploration of Chinese LGBTQ+ activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project in Myanmar, this paper contests the proposition that China's state-coordinated investments are, by nature, more accommodating to local people's demands than Western investments. Tension between Myanmar villagers and the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) in a copper mine project does not square with Beijing's "inclusive globalization" narrative. Drawing upon extensive semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in a Sino-Myanmar copper mine project, as well as other secondary data, this study finds that the Chinese SOE's operation was reactive to the ebb and flow of social resistance and the government's pressure amid the host country's democratization in the 2010s. Reforms were more likely to occur when the Chinese SOE observed more domestic constraints in its operation environment. It showed less incentive to improve its business practices when societal actors failed to display strong resistance, and the host government did not care about its legitimacy. Despite Beijing's efforts to craft an image of itself as a responsible power, conflicts in the BRI project should not be simplified as the SOE's defiance of the state's regulations. They are rooted in the state-centric foreign policy that systematically overlooks societal actors in state-coordinated investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although once the subject of intense theoretical debate, the lumpenproletariat is largely missing from class-based analyses of popular resistance under authoritarianism. This article introduces a new definition of lumpenproletarians in the developing world, focusing on the nature of their work. It then argues that, given their socioeconomic position, these people should eschew participation in conventional social movements but ought to back protests over state abuse. We evaluate this theory using quantitative and qualitative data from two authoritarian developing countries with large grey economies but different histories of unrest: China and Egypt. In both places, we find lumpenproletarians indeed tend to join demonstrations over government and police mistreatment. Moreover, the Egyptian experience shows that the group is susceptible to mobilization for both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship indicates that the rise of networked grassroots protests points to a new mode of organizing activism, connective action. Unlike social movement organization-led collective actions, connective actions are organized by non-human agents – digital networks and platforms – because of the latter's inherent connectivity in assembling people, information and resources scattered across digital spaces into relatively cohesive protest networks. Yet, not all digital platforms are designed to afford unlimited connections; 'walled gardens' and proprietary systems disconnect more than connecting. WeChat, a China-based social media platform, spearheads in engineering an enclosed digital ecosystem, due to China's political economy. How can protest networks develop in such an insulated environment? This study examines a WeChat-based protest campaign organized mainly by Chinese Americans to illustrate the organizing dynamics on disconnected platforms. Relying on interviews, observation and textual analysis, the findings show that WeChat, instead of acting as a non-human organizer, dis organized the mobilization by impeding the free flow of information and resources. To head off the platform-led barriers, activists performed articulative labor to cross boundaries, bridge gaps and broker resources, which finally articulated the protest network in this digitally disconnective environment. As contemporary digital landscapes become increasingly fragmented, this study not only sheds light on the significant yet hidden articulative labor in networked activism but also prompts us to rethink connective action and other technological deterministic models' valorization of non-human agency and to reconsider the relationship of human and non-human agency in constituting collective actions and sociality in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the motivation for pro-democracy forces to successfully mobilise an active and large-scale social movement in Hong Kong fell into abeyance. However, the Extradition Law Amendment Bill provided a new impetus, and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill (Anti-ELAB) movement suddenly broke the silence, launching a series of protests and protester-police confrontations. This article aims to explore the sustainability of this movement up to the date that the extradition bill was withdrawn on 4 September 2019. The article identifies two transformative events that facilitated the intense escalation of the movement. The events suggest the issue of "police brutality" perceived by many Hong Kong people played a notable role in sustaining the movement. It also discusses how the ineffective tactics adopted by the Hong Kong government and police contributed to sustaining the movement. It argues that the proactive tactics implemented by the Hong Kong government in the Umbrella Movement were no longer capable of undermining the 2019 uprising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the sustainable development strategy by the United Nations and the 10th anniversary of eco-civilization becoming one of the key elements of China' s modernization. Sustainability science is a theoretical study of sustainable development but there are opinion conflicts between weak sustainability and strong sustainability. Eco-civilization is recognized as China' s agenda for sustainable development but would be potential to contribute to the theoretical construction of sustainability science. Based on policies and practices of eco-civilization in China and discussing five controversial key issues, this article shows that China' s eco-civilization is strong-sustainability-oriented, and suggests that the theory base of sustainability science should include five critical elements with logic relationships. The five critical elements pursue the social and economic prosperity within Earth' s bio-physical limits; consider controlling eco-scale much more important than improving eco-efficiency; introduce different transition models for developed and developing countries, respectively; set up a three-level framework for sustainable development; and organize the interdisciplinary studies into an integrated paradigm. This article concludes that academic studies of sustainable development need to be updated to a new version with strong sustainability as a core principle, and that China' s eco-civilization as a social movement of such a large scale unprecedented in the rest of the world could play a leading role in deepening and developing sustainability science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress adopted the Anti-food Waste Law of the People's Republic of China in April 2021 to guarantee grain security, conserve resources, and protect the environment. We pursue three research questions: Why has China implemented a law with sanctions to reduce food waste, and why now? Why does the law target the catering industry? To answer these questions, we collected primary data through semi-structured interviews with government officials, as well as secondary data through recorded interviews available online with officials of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) and food waste activists, as well as NPCSC conference reports. We find a legal approach with sanctions was necessary since cultural aspects, specifically conventional Chinese dining habits and pop culture, are difficult to regulate through instruments without sanctions. In addition, we find the Chinese law focuses on the catering industry for a few reasons: (1) More waste is generated by the catering industry than households, (2) waste from the catering industry is easier to monitor than household waste, and (3) this was a response to citizen requests collected during the Anti-food Waste Law public consultation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As consumption of mainstream news media declines and alternative news media proliferates, in this paper, we seek to assess the impact of digital alternative news media (DANM) in relation to mainstream news media (MNM). We examine the range of DANM, especially public Facebook pages, related to two large-scale social movements neighbouring mainland China as case studies of social movement media exerting maximalist effects. The assessment relies on academic sources, archival materials, descriptive social media metrics, and an original analysis of external content shared on public Facebook pages and groups using data collected from the Facebook Graph API. A six-dimensional scheme is proposed to guide the assessment. Sorting through and piecing together multiple sources, we arrive at a multi-faceted description, comparison, and analysis of the impact of DANM during two social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1979 to 1991, Modern China , a landmark journal of Chinese studies, published a large number of articles in the field of peasant studies. These articles are of two types: studies of peasants in premodern China, which focus on the rural economy, politics, and ideology; and studies on the history of "peasant studies" itself, which focus on the problems, paradigms and directions of the field. Taken together, all these articles reveal the influence of three major approaches to history: the longue durée perspective of the French Annales school, the "bottom-up" approach to lived experience of the British new social history movement, and the time, space, and demography frame of reference of G. William Skinner. 摘要: 20世纪中后期西方新兴的农民学学科与区域研究具有内在的关联。在中美学术交流正常化时期，《近代中国》(1979–1991年) 作为中国学研究的标志性刊物，集中刊发了大量农民学领域的学术成果。这些成果可分为两类: 其一是农民问题研究，从乡村经济、政治与思想等方面探讨中国前现代社会时期农民的具体问题；其二是农民学学术史研究，讨论农民学研究本身面临的问题、范式与方向。《近代中国》的农民学研究延续了法国年鉴学派的"长时段"视域和社会史学派"自下而上"的材料意识，以及"施坚雅模式"区域细分的方法，这些学术成果展现了西方农民学发展历程以及美国的中国史研究思路与方法。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) has been broadly applied to understand the social implications of discourse, yet few studies have compared different forms of discourse in Chinese media, especially on the topic of race. Referencing the CDA framework, this study compares two sample news items from Mainland China and Taiwan about the killing of George Floyd and the associated social movements, analyzing their presentational forms, sourcing patterns, headlines, lexical and syntactic choices. A racial analysis is also conducted to better comprehend how racism is constructed and potentially reproduced in Chinese media. The results suggest that the two media sources bifurcate in reporting styles – due to respective journalistic environments and regulations – and their attitudes towards the cause of the reported event. However, they both explicitly identify the issue of racism in the US. This study applies CDA in a non-US context to uncover the reporting styles and racial connotations in Chinese news discourse from Mainland China and Taiwan, identifying future directions for racial discourse analysis in Chinese media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do labor organizations with a movement orientation arise in an authoritarian regime? How do they organize workers collectively in a repressive society? What movement roles do they play? What challenges do they face? To answer these questions, I use synthesized social movement theories to examine movement-oriented labor non-governmental organizations in China. Based on qualitative data collected through triangulated sources, I find that movement-oriented labor non-governmental organizations use political opportunities to promote one type of modular collective labor action, which consists of three tactics, namely the election of worker representatives, collective negotiation, and protest. They guide workers to build mobilizing and connective structures, formulate collective action frames, and amass movement resources. However, the movement roles of this type of labor non-governmental organization have weakened, owing to diminishing political opportunities caused by changes in government administration. This research contributes to our understanding of social movement theories, labor organizations in China, labor non-governmental organizations and worker centers generally, and state–society relations in non-democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Civil Society in China: How Society Speaks to the State" by Runya Qiaoan explores the effectiveness of advocacy groups in an authoritarian state. Qiaoan introduces the concept of "cultural resonance" to explain how advocacy groups can change minds and persuade policymakers by aligning their framing strategies with the audience's understanding of the issue. The book presents eight cases, including four environmental cases, and uses a combination of case study and process tracing to provide detailed analysis. While the evidence presented is not always clear and concrete, Qiaoan's work contributes to our understanding of policy advocacy and lays a foundation for future research in this area. [Extracted from the article]

Dance sports is an emerging sport that can not only exercise the body but also please the mind and body. Under the theoretical guidance of "lifelong sports" and "health first," in recent years, sports dance courses have not only been introduced in ordinary colleges and universities in China, but the overall quality development of students has been greatly improved, and the call for quality education for the whole people has also been answered. In recent years, the rapid development of mobile communication systems around the world has greatly enhanced the communication services of developed and developing countries to various places. This paper studies the current situation of sports dance based on mobile communication and links the century-old sports dance project with modern mobile communication to promote Chinese sports dance education and summarize more practical experience and methods with reference value. This paper introduces the development of mobile communication technology in detail, focusing on improving the user experience and service quality of sports dance, and introducing the mobile communication network into the geographic grid to solve the problem of the association between the data attributes of the base station and the geographic space. In addition, this paper systematically investigates the current situation of sports dance in A district and designs a targeted questionnaire. On the basis of the analysis of the current situation, corresponding countermeasures and measures are put forward, aiming to provide reference for the development of sports dance and make a modest contribution to promoting the widespread development of national fitness movements and promoting social harmony and civilization progress in the region. The results of the survey show that the residents' sports dance programs have obvious age characteristics, and 77% of the students are 10-20 years old and over 50 years old. In the investigation of the main restrictive factors of sports dance development, sports dance coaches and students both put the restrictive factor of the teaching staff in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, a widespread movement for animal rights arose only recently and without a strong level of state-based support, unlike the well-documented rise in Europe and North America. This movement has nonetheless become a vocal force for social change. Somewhat surprisingly, as other social movements have experienced increasing state-led resistance and pressure since 2012, the animal rights contingent has remained a vibrant part of the social landscape that mediates humans' relations with other animals. How have these agents been able to persist despite the greater political clampdown? We argue that the Covid-19 pandemic, first identified in China, has become a new resource for animal rights activists. These activists are working to leverage the growing fear of zoonotic contagion as a rationale for their work for dogs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the imbrications between queer precarity and social reproduction from the perspective of homonormative division of labour. Contextualizing the emergence of China's HIV/AIDS economy and its reliance on queer intimate labour, it argues that the homonormative division of labour are part and parcel to maintain and nurture the economic, political structures of LGBT liberalism. Instead of providing 'local case' of homonormativity, this paper connects the normalizing power on sexuality and bodies to the larger geography of transnational labour division and conditions of labour precarity, providing an analysis of South-focused political economy of homonormativity. Arguing against viewing precarity as an overarching global phenomenon, this essay centres on lived experiences of the queer 'precariat' and highlights the contradiction and interplay of agency and conformity. Reclaiming the Chinese queer lexicon tongzhi (comrades), not only as a sexual identity, but as queer sociality where desires and work converge, this essay cautions against narrowly defined but broadly circulated concepts such as 'oppression', 'resistance', 'social movement' and 'community' that are predominantly derived from Western centric political imagination and activist space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to investigate the capacity of restorative justice (RJ) to reduce incarceration in China. It utilizes a "top-down" approach to explore how macro transitions in Chinese politics and criminal justice translate into micro implementation of RJ, which ultimately affects incarceration. Interviews with Chinese police, prosecutors, and judges revealed how minor injury cases were diverted by RJ throughout the criminal justice system. In addition, 172,731 judicial judgments were coded to estimate RJ's effect on sentencing lengths and the probability of probation for offenders. The findings suggest that the Chinese approach to implementing RJ does liberate numerous offenders from harsher incarceration. Yet, Chinese RJ reforms remain a thin version without deep roots in civil society, in "bottom-up" social movement excellence, or thorough foundations in restorative Confucianism with roots in ancient Chinese society. RJ is still a marginalized part of a Titanic that resists turning away from the punitive "Strike-Hard" ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of social media as a mobilization tool has been widely discussed in the digital age, yet empirical evidence on the online consensus mobilization around environmental issues in a relatively restrictive political setting remains largely unexplored. In this study, my aim is to understand how activists strategically harness social media to take collective initiatives and to stimulate communal awareness against current waste disposal industry and waste management policies in China. Using a content analysis method, I examined 557 posts from 12 anti-incineration WeChat subscription accounts with the help of NVivo software. In reference to social constructionism and social movement theories, I argue that consensus mobilization includes three core undertakings: identification, demonstration, and resolution. Investigating the anti-incineration discourse production on WeChat contributes to a more nuanced comprehension of online mobilization in an authoritarian context. And the results have practical implications for environmental-related activism via social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brokers have played important roles in the trade of green tea between China and Mali, from the 19th century when tea first came to Mali up to the present. They mediate between tea buyers and sellers, work on their own account, use soft skills, knowledge and networks and make a living from the commission they gain. This article examines the work of brokers in the tea trade, the social constellations in which they are active and the scope of their activity. Based on extensive field research in Mali and China, this article shows how brokers create their own jobs in a dynamic business landscape, which is often delimited by governmental policies, competing entrepreneurial activities and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the global #MeToo movement, the #MeToo movement in China started in early 2018. For over a year, several influential cases, broad civic participation and engagement, as well as extensive discussions shocked and shook the whole country, creating a sociopolitical dynamic that was unusual in the context of persistent suppression of civil society and strict restrictions on freedom of speech. As feminist activists and researchers—Jing living and working in China, Dušica doing her fieldwork in Taiwan at the time—we were astounded by the powerful challenge that #MeToo has posed to misogynistic societies around the globe. What we have been trying to understand is how the #MeToo movement emerged and grew even as so many other social movements were suppressed in China, and what strategies the survivors, volunteers, and activists in the #MeToo movement used to break through the overwhelming censorship and restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to existing literature analyzing how public spaces are strategic mobilization resources for activists, we focus on the inconspicuous constraints placed by the state on public spaces that limit their utility as mobilization resources. Employing the spatial dimensions of social movement theory and Althusser's state power theory analyze an activism case in Guangzhou, China, we argue that through everyday spatial governance by the state, public spaces in China are also forms of ideological state apparatuses that latently disrupt activists' attempts to engage in contentious spatial practices to gain resources through media coverage. We further propose the concept of 'spatial inertia', which are durable, routine, and diversified spatial meaning-making practices mediated through media coverage that affect the success of social movements. This paper complements social movement scholarship by examining how the state, through latent processes exercised using public spaces as ideological state apparatuses, competes with and subverts activists' efforts to use these spaces as strategic resources for collective mobilization, especially in authoritarian contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement-media/public interaction has been largely examined from the lens of "asymmetric dependency" in which both movements' representation and self-understanding are mainly shaped by their media and public opinion environment. The introduction of digital technologies, however, has diversified this discursive environment and seemed to reverse the uneven dynamics. Using a case study of a protest campaign organized by Chinese American immigrants, this study demonstrates a new pattern of movement-media/public dynamics that goes beyond the "asymmetric dependency" model or its obverse. In the aftermath of a Chinese American police officer who shot a black man to death, Chinese immigrants stood with him and deliberated on WeChat, a China-based digital platform engineered like a "walled garden." The technolinguistic enclosure of the platform facilitated the development of a separate interpretative universe in the WeChatsphere vis-à-vis the one in the mediasphere. Later, even when immigrant protesters confronted the public in the Twittersphere, they continued talking past each other. By unpacking the decoupling processes between movements and the media/public, this study shifts the research focus from understanding their interaction to examining their disengagement, as well as the "filter bubble" effects that contribute to contemporary fragmentation and polarization in political and civic engagements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecumenical National Christian Council of China (NCC) was the institutional home to an important religious and social campaign: the Christianizing the Home Movement. This article traces the development of this movement from the NCC's founding in 1922 until the Second World War disrupted its activity. This home- and family-centered movement was a site of female empowerment, and the expansive topics it addressed show women's desires to serve and lead in a broad set of arenas. This article shows how the Chinese women who led the Christianizing the Home Movement built and shaped a movement and describes the nationwide network of leaders that carried it out, promoting an ideal of Christian family that was culturally informed and progressive. 摘要: 作为组织机构，普世的中华全国基督教协会推动了一次宗教与社会意义重大的运动：基督化家庭运动。本文追溯了基督化家庭运动的始终，从1922年中华全国基督教协进会建立到第二次世界大战协会活动被干扰。这个以家庭及家人为核心的运动赋予了妇女权力; 在运动涉及的广阔领域里，女性都表现出服务及领导的愿望。本文展示了领导基督化家庭运动的中国女性如何建造运动，以及联合全国的领导推 动有文化背景、又先进的基督教家庭理想。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]