Rising Class Conflict, Resilient Communist Party-State: Explaining the Chinese Puzzle

Rising Class Conflict, Resilient Communist Party-State:

Interpreting the Chinese Puzzle

Alvin Y. SO and Yin-Wah CHU**

After the collapse of Maoist socialist regime in 1978, China has experienced rising social equality and class conflict. Within a short span of 40 years, China has transformed itself from one of the most egalitarian to one of the most inegalitarian societies in the world. With the rising social inequality, it is only natural that rising social inequality is accompanied by rising class conflict. The number of “mass incidents” has skyrocketed from 8,700 in 1993 to more than 200,000 in 2011.

What is surprising is the fact that despite the explosion of class conflict and civil unrest, the Chinese communist party-state is highly resilient and is not under any threat of regime change. There is no large-scale national labor protest, no violent peasant rebellion, and no robust democracy movement to challenge the legitimacy of the communist party-state.

The aim of this paper is to interpreting this Chinese puzzle of resilient party-state in the midst of rising social conflict from the workers, peasants, and the new middle class. Why the rising social conflict and civil unrest did not lead to any political instability and regime change, like it did in other post-socialist societies?

This paper argues that the Chinese communist party-state has done an excellent job in managing the class conflict among the workers, the peasants, and the new middle class in theChinese society. Indeed, the Chinese party-state not only was able to stay in power, but it also was able to formulate and implement all sorts of developmental policies propelling the rise of China at the turn of the 21^st century.

**Alvin Y SO, Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

    CHU Yin-Wah, Department of Sociology, Hong Kong Baptist University