Social stability is a major concern of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and
government. Public security and social security are seen as essential to achieving
and maintaining stability, in the understanding of the CCP and their policies.
China’s leadership has often publicly expressed its concern to avoid ‘social
instability’. It is viewed as a threat both to the political order and to the continued
growth of the economy. Instability is manifest in what the CCP deems to be
unharmonious relations between government and society as manifested by crime,
dispute and protest. Disparity in income distribution, the underdeveloped welfare
system and weak governance in local areas are especially considered to be the root
causes of social instability and pose threats to the state’s institutional and political
legitimacy.
In the past, China’s approach to resolving social conflicts was rigid stability as
characterised by the suppression of public opinion and a reliance on state violence
and control as a means of government organisation. However, with heightened
economic development and deepening market reform this strategy has not been
able to contain the prevalence of mass incidents which rose substantially in 2007
and 2008 compared to earlier years. In response to concerns that rigid stability is
not working, and might even be making social instability worse, the Chinese
authorities have gradually turned to social management innovation and to social
governance as two alternatives to rigid stability.
The literature on social stability is new but expanding rapidly. Although the first
major academic articles on the subject of social governance, for instance, appeared
only as recently as 2012 a picture of some of its key elements along with those of
social management innovation is beginning to materialize. One notable feature of
social management innovation and social governance compared to rigid stability is
that the state is not considered to be the only actor responsible for maintaining
social stability. Instead, in social management innovation and social governance
provisions have been made to encourage non-government organizations (NGOs)
and social organizations to play a part in maintaining social stability.
However, whereas social management innovation involves the participation of
NGOs and social organizations through the direct co-ordination of local
government as leader, social governance puts NGO’s at the forefront of
intervention shielding state authorities from the full focus of stability responsibility.
This process of ‘decentralization’ is entirely in keeping with the spirit of social
governance which since its inception has entailed a strategy of localizing
grievances while insulating the centre. Contemporaneously, aside from NGO
engagement in social stability maintenance other studies have charted the changing
responsibilities of formal police forces, the development of para policing,
expanding social security provisions and the establishment of new forms of
network governance, amongst others.
Inevitably, given the fairly recent academic attention that has been devoted to
social stability, and in particular to the shift from social management innovation to
social governance, this study addresses two immediate gaps in the literature. First,
most current research of social stability maintenance lacks analysis of China’s
social management development practice at local government level. This is
particularly true of studies of social management innovation and social governance
which tend to be pitched at the level of policy developments only. A second
contribution is that the study expands the extant focus on social management
innovation and social governance to consider the role of rigid stability as a
precursor to both. Although the theme of social management has existed for fifteen
years or so, at this stage it is more usefully defined as rigid stability so that the
notion of social management innovation that was first mentioned in 2004 can be
more subtly distinguished from it and from the subsequent notion of social
governance.
The general empirical questions that are formulated against this background are: to
what extent are the desired properties of social management innovation and social
governance detailed in the policy documentation observable in practice, do they
appear to provide genuine alternatives to rigid stability and what do they reveal
about the changing relationship between state and society? The background to these
questions will be addressed by tracking recent policy developments in the field of
social stability before empirically applying them to two best in class (most
favourable) local government case studies innovating to maintain social stability.
The first case of the Sunshine Aid Project in Qingdao city, Shandong Province,
examines a pioneering social management innovation in the context of social
security. It is designed to address shortcomings in the minimum living allowance
system (MLAS), which serves as the “last line of defence” in the social security
system. The second case of the Ping An Association in Xintai City, Shandong
province, examines a pioneering social governance intervention in the context of
public security. It is designed to resolve a worsening local public security situation
and entails the project leadership of a NGO in the domains of crime prevention,
social conflict mediation and mass incidents. At the most basic level, the case study
analysis suggests that the principles of social management innovation and social
governance can be identified in the two pioneering localities. However, the
expansion of Ping An Association’s intervention into the domain of “cultural
construction” demonstrates how the project, as a pioneering social stability
maintenance intervention, is possibly moving into new uncharted territory.
In conjunction with the observation that the two cases are built on initial
shortcomings of formal social security and public security provision, a point absent
in supporting policy documentation, raises the prospect that social management
innovation and social governance are not so much about displacing, or even
necessarily dispersing, state power but rather more about taking advantage of
societal forces to assist government. Moreover, via the gradual development of
what is referred to as “cultural construction” the social governance alternative to
rigid stability could even signify a consolidation of state power through
pre-emptive, or even socialisation, measures. However, in such a newly emerging
domain of literature one has to proceed cautiously and many of this thesis’
contributions involve either clarifying the empirical presence of emerging concepts
or gradually advancing the field by pointing out other possibilities.
Key Words: Social Stability, Rigid Stability, Social Management Innovation,
Social Governance, Social Security, Public Security, China
| Date of Award | 15 Jul 2015 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - City University of Hong Kong
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| Supervisor | Paul HIGGINS (Supervisor) & Ray FORREST (Co-supervisor) |
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