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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]

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]

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]

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]

In the social movement literature, networked organizations are presented as being pivotal to the development of a movement. Yet in authoritarian states, such organizations are perceived as challenging the redline of the state. Hence, the establishment of networked organizations of homeowner activists in urban China and their proliferation to inland cities signifies a changing state-society interaction. This paper attempts to trace the development of homeowner networked organizations using data from in-depth interviews with homeowner activists as well as information collected from the networked organizations. This paper attempts to trace the development of cross-neighborhood networked organizations of homeowners in urban China against the conceptual backcloth of social movement networks and examines the recent development of such networks within the context of the tight social control of the authoritarian regime. This paper helps to shed light on the process by which seemingly neutral, mundane, and isolated small-scale actions involving everyday issues in residential neighborhoods are able to create networked organizations which may have the potential to orchestrate social movement mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban space plays an important role in shaping the meaning-making process in relation to urban activism, especially for disorganized, spontaneous, and short-lived protests occurring in authoritarian regimes. Taking protests against locally unwanted land use (LULU) projects as an example, this article examines how urban space shapes the meaning-making process in relation to 2 anti-paraxylene (PX) protests in Kunming and Maoming. Particular attention is paid to how residents' interpretations of the hazards of PX shaped the meaning-making process on social media. In the case of Kunming, a city with a long history of natural environmental conservation, the primary frame employed by residents was environment and health risks. In the case of Maoming, a large petrochemical industrial center with severe air pollution, residents expressed their opposition toward the PX project by emphasizing strong distrust in local government. Participants' differentiated meaning-making processes were shaped by the dual space of cities, namely physical conditions and associated meanings and place-bounded historical memories of daily life. This article contributes to the scholarship on cities and social movements by integrating the theories of space/place and the theory of framing to analyze the spatial meaning-making process in relation to urban activism in China and in transitional economies in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement researchers have investigated how personal relationships and emotional attachments are implicated in activism, but less attention has been given to the ways in which activism affects personal lives. This article addresses this issue, drawing on interviews and focus groups with Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement’s active participants, bystanders and opponents to explore its consequences for family life. While those who were not involved in the movement articulated an acceptance of hierarchical family structures and their imposed silences, movement activists saw their experience of the occupation as enabling them to find a voice within their families. The Umbrella Movement, we suggest, has opened up a space for the reflexive exploration of personal life and raised the possibility of modifying Hong Kong family practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bystanders who were not stakeholders had often been mobilized into popular protests in China. Why did these bystanders step in to some protests and choose not to participate in other protests? What were the motivations and mobilizing mechanisms that brought the bystanders into the protests? Based on the case study of the Shishou Unrest in which about 70,000 bystanders were effectively mobilized to step into protests, this article reveals a two-stage mobilization strategy that the stakeholders started by turning a small number of bystanders into activists and then to mobilize more, other bystanders into protests. During the first mobilization stage, the stakeholders provided material incentives to the bystanders. During the second stage, activists appealed to the bystanders’ perception of extraordinary injustice related to the triggering event and the local society as a whole. The two-stage mobilization strategy successfully led a large number of bystanders step into the Shishou Unrest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the biggest puzzles of China’s reform era is how the government was able to implement a stunning enterprise restructuring program amid widespread worker protests. While most existing explanations focus on government repression, concessions, and other policies to reduce workers’ incentives to protest, this article argues that the government’s mastery in undermining the trust and solidarity among workers played an essential role in the success of the restructuring. In particular, the state helped to promote exclusionary power structures and elitist attitudes among workers. Consequently, labor protests during restructuring were typically insider-dominated, and rank-and-file workers were often believed to lack the capacity or qualities to play an important role in collective actions. Exclusionary elitism discouraged ordinary workers’ participation and alienated protest activists from the communities. The article examines the conditions and mechanisms for exclusionary elitism to develop among state workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the antecedent and contingent causes sparking the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Spurred by two contingent events generating pre-emptive and backlash mobilization, the movement is a spontaneous transformation of the staged Occupy Central campaign. Based on an onsite survey (n = 1681) and in-depth interviews (n = 18), this paper demonstrates how protest experience and social media networked and rallied autonomous individuals from diverse backgrounds to occupy the physical spaces, thereby sustaining a self-mobilized, horizontal and resilient movement. Spontaneity, however, did not come out of nowhere. As an integral part of Hong Kong’s bottom-up activism and ecology, this spontaneous episode encapsulates antecedent events diffusing stalwart actors, decentralized organization and transgressive repertories. This paper situates spontaneity in temporal, spatial and emotional contexts to understand the uncompromising claims and participatory practices of the spectacular occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the diffusion of activism in post-colonial Hong Kong through the lens of the political regime and eventful analysis. It first reveals the institutional foundations of the hybrid regime that allowed the creation of a nascent movement society. It then explains how the historic 1 July rally in 2003 and a series of critical events since 2006 have led to a shift in scale and the public staging of street politics. A time-series analysis and onsite survey further capture the dynamics that spawned the collective recognition of grievances and reduced participation costs, leading to the Umbrella Movement. While the spontaneous, voluntary and decentralized organizational structure sustained protest momentum, the regime has adopted hybrid strategies to counter-mobilize bottom-up activism. The result is widening contention between the state and civil society and within civil society, or the coexistence of regime instability and regime longevity, a trend that is increasingly common in hybrid regimes encountering mass protests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This case study of transnational aclivism against the Nu River kvdropower dam plan in China describes a horizontal dynamic in global-local relations, whereas the predominant literature in social movements assumes a vertical or hierarchical conception. The forms and operations of transnational activism were analyzed in order to understand the connectivity of domestic environmental NGOs in China to alliances, venues, and discourses. The case reveals thai the "translocal" nature of local activism helped create linkages with global partners and establish a horizontal dynamic of transnational activism via the development of transnational solidarities and local empowerment. Local activists today should not automatically be viewed as the bottom feeders in a vertical topography, dependent upon global patronage. The study proposes a preliminary set of observable and/or measurable characteristics for assessing the degree to which any case of global-local relations expresses a horizontal dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements constitute a political link between the power of existing polity and the ability of citizens to influence political outcomes. As a result, social movements can represent a potential rival to the acting political system, acquiring power and facilitating change through actions that create threats to existing political structures. In Taiwan, social movements were born from oppression and neglect by the ruling political class of social concerns. Environmental protests were effective in halting further deterioration of the island’s environment. How have democracy and its ensuing freedoms for citizens and movements alike altered movement structure and their issues in the socio-political environment? This research traces the development and transformation of the environmental movement in Taiwan within this changing political structure and examines how mobilized protest has been increasingly muted as an effective movement strategy, and how environmental justice has been slow to materialize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that transnational feminist practices have become the dominant modality of feminist movements around the world, since the Fourth Women's World Conference in Beijing. By transnationalism I mean both organising across national borders as well as framing local, national, regional, and global activism in “transnational” discourses. I review two sites of transnational feminism, the UN and the World Social Forum, especially the emergence of the Feminist Dialogues from the Forum. I argue that the changed socio-political context following Beijing – in particular the continuing hegemony of the neo-liberal economic agenda, the entrenchment of religious fundamentalisms, and the post 9/11 wars and focus on terrorism in the US and around the world – has highlighted the limitations of transnational activism, for both internal movement politics and social transformation. Transnational feminism fragments movement politics as tensions emerge between movement organisations that can actually cross borders versus those that cannot and reproduces inequalities among activists within and between countries in the North and South. More importantly, however, given the spaces within which transnational feminists operate and the modalities of transnational activism, the strategic focus of movements' shifts from outcome to process and from redistribution to policy and discursive changes. Thus, the ironic state of the feminist movements post Beijing, I argue, is that (some) women's agency is visible everywhere even as (most) women's lives remain mired in multiple inequalities. What is needed in this neo-liberal moment is a neo-radical feminist politics that is based on intersectional analysis and democratic practices but devises strategies with other mass movements that can redistribute resources and emancipate women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the history of Chinese neoliberalism, the ideological situation and modernity issue in China. Characteristics of Chinese neoliberalism; Terms closely tied to the formation of neoliberalism; Way to reveal the internal contradictions of neoliberalism; Concepts of socialism; Historical conditions of the social movement of 1989.

Cultural studies, as a cultural and political re-articulation of common sense, knowledge and community practices, aims at opening up new cultural space for criticisms, reflections and action. Originating from the women's movement and later flourishing in the academy as well, feminism espouses similar aims to cultural studies. Both cultural studies and feminist/gender studies have a strong sense of intervening into everyday life politics. This paper is an attempt to discuss how feminism and cultural studies interface with each other, largely based on examples of gender-related everyday life politics taken from the feminist movement in Hong Kong. It will examine issues concerning the conflict of consumption and female subjectivities, the reconceptualization of home and housewives, and the representation of everyday life for women and history writing. It is argued that by blurring, negotiating or deconstructing the boundary or division between positions, identities and domains—such as subject and object, housewives and workers, private and public, personal and political, consumption and production—the re-articulation of knowledge about 'victim', 'exploitation', 'home' and 'history' in the feminist movement will not only provide the movement with new impetus and insight to reconsider its strategies in fighting for more cultural, social and economic space for women and other marginal groups at large in Hong Kong, but will also 'metabolize' the newly developed discipline of cultural studies in Hong Kong by providing a platform to strengthen the dynamic arm of cultural studies education and research. Based on her feminist and teaching experiences in Hong Kong, the author has highlighted activism and pedagogy as the two important dimensions of feminism and cultural studies in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the increasing issue of nationality among the people of Inner Mongolia, China. It mentions that an increase in the number of demonstrations and gatherings have been noticed in Inner Mongolia since 1989. It states that several civic organizations, including the Inner Mongolian Liberation Front, the Inner Mongolian Committee for National Autonomy, and the Inner Mongolian Alliance of Human Rights, demand that Mongolia and Inner Mongolia should be merged and a single independent state of Mongolia should be formed. It mentions several protest activities and demonstrations that took place in Inner Mongolia demanding for independence and merger of Inner Mongolia with Mongolia.

Reports on Chinese workers' rights advocate Han Dongfang's receipt of the 2005 International Activist Award. Services provided by Han's China Labour Bulletin