2Tactical escalation typically involves dramatic gestures and provocations that test the vulnerabilities of one's foes. It may appear in the form of a single tactic (e.g. the sit-in, the mock shantytown, the suffrage parade) that vividly symbolizes injustice and is difficult for the authorities and onlookers to ignore. Or it may arise as a cluster of related innovations [Voss and Sherman 2000] that reflects a fresh approach to protest and signals a new “tactical grammar” [Ennis 1987: 531] is at work.

3In rural China, much like it did during the American Civil Rights Movement, revitalizing the repertoire of contention has entailed a radicalization of tactics ­ a move from humble petitioning to the politics of disruption [McAdam 1983: 738]. In places such as Hengyang county, Hunan, rightful resistance has become far more confrontational over the last decade, as the mediated tactics of the past are being demoted or adapted and more direct protest routines are on the rise.

4In its basic form, rightful resistance is a rather tame form of contention that makes use of existing (if clogged) channels of participation and relies heavily on the patronage of elite backers. It is mediated in the sense that complainants do not directly confront their opponents, but instead rely on a powerful third party to address their claims. Activists at this point always act under the sufferance of, and energetically seek support from 1) officials as high as central policy makers, 2) cadres as low as any local official other than the ones they are denouncing, and 3) journalists (or others) who can communicate their grievances to high-ranking authorities. In this basic form, rightful resisters may mobilize popular action, but their main aim is to use the threat of unrest to attract attention from possible mediators and to apply pressure on officeholders at higher levels to rein in their underlings. Protest leaders, in other words, seek to bypass their adversaries rather than to compel them to negotiate.

5Direct action is quite different. In Hengyang county, for instance, activists increasingly place demands on their targets in person and try to wring concessions from them on-the-spot. This form of rightful resistance does not depend on high-level intercession, but on skilled rabble-rousers and the popular pressure they can muster. Although protest organizers still cite central policies, rather than sounding “fire alarms” [McCubbins and Schwarz 1984] they (and the villagers who join them) try to put out the fires themselves ­ they enforce rather than inform. In direct rightful resistance, though activists may still view the Center as a source of legitimacy, a symbolic backer, and a guarantor against repression, they no longer genuinely expect higher-ups to intervene on their behalf. Instead, they regard themselves and their supporters to be capable of resolving the problems at hand. Acting as ever in the name of faithful policy implementation, rightful resisters now confront their targets (often face-to-face) and mobilize as much popular action as they can to induce them to halt policy violations. Direct action, in the end, relies on appeals to the community rather than to higher level authorities and its goal is immediate concessions.

6This article will begin by examining some of the forms that direct rightful resistance takes in rural China. Then we will move on to a series of questions suggested by the broader literature on tactical innovation, including: are these tactics truly new and how widespread are they? Who is mainly responsible for initiating direct action, newcomers or seasoned complainants? And, most importantly, why is tactical escalation occurring? Along the way we will alight on a number of explanations for tactical change, including ones that underscore the role of prior experiences with contention, resources, and popular support.

Three Variants of Direct Action

8Mediated contention is a form of seeking grace from intercessors whose characteristic expression is group petitioning. Direct action, on the contrary, rests on a public rallying call and high-pressure methods that are designed to coax local leaders to revoke an illegal decision. When employing direct tactics, protesters and their supporters assert a right to resist (not only expose and denounce) unlawful acts.

10Participants in direct action use a variety of methods to make beneficial policies known and to mobilize resistance to their violation. They may begin by showing government papers they have acquired to their neighbors. The most inconspicuous way to do this is in a private home. A somewhat more overt approach involves photocopying central or provincial documents and then handing or selling them to interested villagers. One activist in Hengyang proudly explained that he charged his neighbors precisely what he paid the copy shop and actually lost a fair sum when some villagers walked off with photocopied documents without reimbursing him.

12Disseminating policies need not employ even the simplest technology and can occur at unexpected times, as is seen when resourceful activists appropriate apolitical rituals or celebrations and turn them to their own ends. In rural Hengyang for instance, rightful resisters hijacked a traditional dragon dance during Spring Festival (three consecutive years) to publicize central documents granting villagers a right to reject unreasonable burdens and (on the sly) to solicit donations for their cause. While parading up and down every lane, they summarized the “spirit of central documents” in rhymed verse, chanting in unison as they wound their way from home to home.

13Many efforts to make beneficial policies known are limited to a single village; others expand the field of action. An example of the latter is employing “propaganda vehicles” or putting up posters throughout a township criticizing excessive fees or rigged elections. One activist in Hengyang, already famous for organizing a road blockade in 1999, rented a truck and used it as a mobile broadcasting station to transmit provincial directives limiting rural taxation to a number of small hamlets scattered throughout his township [Johnson 2004: 63, 67, 71]. Another protest leader, after participating in an expensive and fruitless collective complaint to the Hunan provincial government in 1996, copied excerpts of central documents calling for tax and fee reductions on large posters and had a group of young villagers paste them up around the county.

14For many of these tactics, the intended audience does not have to make any special effort. They can stay indoors, open their windows and listen, or simply walk outside and watch what is going on. One variety of dissemination that involves a more direct (if surreptitious) effort to attract a crowd is presenting a movie and then publicizing beneficial policies moments before the show begins. In Henan, as early as 1993, a villager did this with a State Council regulation that limited township and village fees [Yu 1993]. Activists may also inform villagers about poor implementation at rural markets. This again, involves taking advantage of a ready-made audience. According to several Hengyang protest organizers, on market days they sometimes simply set up a loudspeaker in the town center and read out documents concerning tax and fee reduction that were issued by the Center, Hunan province, or Hengyang city [Yu 2001: 555]. In such cases, even though rightful resisters may do their best to minimize confrontation, clashes frequently occur after local officials appear. Township cadres, when they heard the Hengyang activists disclosing fee limits on a busy market day in 1998, first cut off electricity to their loudspeaker. But a sympathetic restaurant owner stepped in and supplied the villagers with a generator. Then, a number of officials came out of their offices and ordered the protesters to disperse, only to find themselves upbraided for impeding the lawful dissemination of central policies.

15Although they usually shy away from physical confrontation with their adversaries, policy disseminators sometimes publicize policies in ways that cannot help but lead to conflict. One technique sure to produce official ire is distributing documents near a government compound. A Hengyang activist for example, excerpted central directives limiting peasant burdens on large, red posters and plastered them on several buildings in the township government complex. Protest organizers in Jiangxi have likewise sold pamphlets about Beijing's fee reduction policies directly in front of a Party office building [Ding 2001: 433-434]. In both cases, these tactics cornered township officials, heightened their fears that further popular action was imminent, and led to a swift (and negative) response. In Hengyang, township cadres removed the posters; in Jiangxi, the book sellers were arrested.

16By far the most assertive form of publicizing policies involves both deliberate confrontation and undisguised mass mobilization. One common tactic employed in Hengyang is to trail behind township tax collectors as they try to collect fees, all the time loudly quoting tax reduction directives. This practice not only challenges the legality of an exaction, it also often draws scores of onlookers and encourages less daring villagers to withhold their payments. Another highly provocative form of propagating policies involves calling so-called “ten thousand-person meetings” in a government compound to study policies that excoriate corruption or limit fees. Such gatherings can rapidly turn into melees when township or county officials intervene. In Hengyang, a protest leader organized a mass meeting to force a rollback in taxes and fees. To symbolize the activists' willingness to challenge the township head-on, the speaker's podium was placed just steps away from the main government office building. Hundreds of villagers were invited to attend the rally and the organizers planned to detain and deliver to the city authorities any township official who ventured to interfere. In another widely-reported episode in Ningxiang county, Hunan, after a multi-village band of “Volunteer Propagandists for the Policy of Reducing Burdens” used tape recorders and hired a loudspeaker truck in 1999 to tell villagers about their rights, protest organizers assembled 4,000 people outside the town government complex to demand adherence to central and provincial directives that capped taxation and opposed corruption. But before the speakers could say a word, the assembled villagers rushed into the compound. Over 1,000 police and 500 soldiers dispersed the demonstrators, using clubs and tear gas. Many villagers were arrested or injured, and 1 man was killed [Bernstein and Lü 2003: 128-129].

19But events do not always unfold so peacefully. On another occasion also in Hengyang, a school head postponed a scheduled dialogue so that he would have time to hire a group of local toughs to scare off the “burden reduction representatives.” But when the meeting began and the schoolmaster signaled his men to make their move, an elderly bystander came to the defense of the representatives. He said he admired their altruism and would protect them to the end.

20“Demanding a dialogue” has also been employed against far more powerful targets than local school heads. In Qidong county, Hunan, a riot occurred in July 1996 in which hundreds of people attacked township and village officials and smashed the signboards of the township government. (Destroying the placards that identify government offices is a symbolic denial of their legitimacy, much like burning a flag or effigy.) The county Party secretary rushed to the area to look into what had caused the unrest. At the urging of hundreds of villagers, he agreed to have an unlawfully-collected education surcharge rescinded. The incident ended, but news of the successful protest spread rapidly. Upon learning of it, villagers in other parts of Qidong county were inspired to rise up and demand dialogues. In early September 1996 3 activists arranged a movie presentation in order to read out a Hunan provincial document that reduced peasant burdens, to organize villagers to resist excessive education apportionments, and to gather signatures for a petition to present to the township. After the video ended, just before a group of indignant movie-goers set out for a nearby government compound, a skirmish broke out with township officials who had come to dissuade the protesters from demonstrating. Two days later, over 600 villagers, carrying banners and flags, beating drums and gongs, and setting off fireworks, paraded down the busiest street in the township to the main office building to insist on a meeting with the Party secretary and government head. Over the next three days, hundreds of villagers from four other townships in Qidong marched to their township seats and demanded dialogues with Party and government leaders [Yu 2001: 558-560].

21If publicizing a policy aims to remind errant cadres that they are vulnerable to rightful claims, demanding a dialogue is directed at unresponsive targets who refuse to back down. At this stage, negotiation and compromise are still possible, even desired by activists. Cool bargaining and face-saving concessions become distinctly less feasible when protesters turn to the third variant of direct action: face-to-face defiance.

22Activists who use this tactic confront local officials on the job and try to halt any illegal acts. They, for example, flatly reject unauthorized impositions and loudly encourage others to follow suit. In Hengyang in 1998, one particularly feisty rightful resister followed township tax collectors wherever they went. With two other “burden reduction representatives” at his side, he brandished a copy of a central directive and contested every effort to collect even a yuan (12 US cents) too much. The tax collectors dared not challenge him in public, but one of them muttered an insult after he refused to get out of their way and let them do their job. A scuffle broke out and hundreds of villagers came to defend the fee resister, eventually pinning the beleaguered taxman in his jeep. That same year a similar incident occurred in another township in Hengyang county. Two “burden-reduction representatives” had locked horns with township revenue collectors when they tried to prevent the collection of several unauthorized fees. When the officials struck one of the representatives with a flashlight, a shoving match broke out. Again, angry villagers responded, this time overturning two jeeps the township cadres used for their work.

23Rightful resisters may also use face-to-face defiance to challenge rigged elections. In one dramatic episode in the early 1990s, a group of villagers in Hubei successfully disrupted a villagers' committee election in which nominations were not handled according to approved procedures. Just as the ballots were being distributed, one villager leapt to the platform where the election committee was presiding, grabbed a microphone and shouted:

Xiong Dachao is a corrupt cadre. Don't vote for him.

25Public-minded intellectuals sometimes urge on direct action. The following episode involved both disseminating policies and face-to-face defiance. In Jiangxi, the deputy editor of a rural affairs journal published 12,000 copies of a Work Manual on Reducing Farmers' Tax Burdens. He later said:

I was just carrying out my duty to help farmers personally monitor arbitrary fees, and at the end of the day, central government policies are not enough to help the farmers. They need to be able to help themselves.

26The book had a section advising farmers how to seek redress and its subtitle was “The imperial sword is in your hands, farmer friends, hold on tight!” Although the editor ultimately lost his position and the provincial government dispatched the police to confiscate as many copies of the book as they could locate, the story received national attention in the newspaper Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo) [Gilley 2001; Yang 2001: 39; Wang 2002: 6; O'Brien and Li 2004: 78].

27The three variants of direct action described here are interrelated and often appear together. In addition, rightful resisters sometimes employ them in sequence, starting by publicizing policies and then moving on to demanding dialogues or face-to-face defiance. Whatever form it takes, direct action marks a significant break from mediated contention. Its appearance leads local cadres (and protesters themselves) into uncharted territory and introduces new uncertainties, especially when activists lose control of their followers or officials panic. It also opens up the possibility that rightful resisters will continue to escalate their tactics (perhaps toward out-and-out violence) while embracing broader and deeper claims [Rucht 1990: 171-172] ­ claims that are general and ideological rather than concrete and specific [Tarrow 1989; Mueller 1999: 530-531], claims that challenge the legitimacy of local government rather than the lawfulness of particular decisions.

How New?

28Techniques of protest are seldom invented out of whole cloth. More often, they appear at the edge of an existing repertoire of contention as “creative modifications or extensions of familiar routines.” [Tilly 1993: 265-266; McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001: 49] Innovations, in this way, signal a broadening of tactics and a growing strategic flexibility by activists who are generating a multi-pronged strategy that can be deployed on many fronts [McCann 1994: 86, 145; Rochon 1998: 202-203; Tarrow 1998: 37, 104; Andrews 2001: 77].

29This is very much the story in rural China today. Mediated tactics continue to be used while direct, confrontational forms of contention have also become more common. Especially in locations where the old ways have been found wanting again and again, nearly contained acts are being augmented by decidedly boundary-spanning or even transgressive acts, as protesters begin to enforce central directives themselves and literally use policies as a weapon in their battles. As a researcher from the Development Research Center of the State Council put it:

“Contention within the system” (such as petitioning) is still the main feature of peasant action, but “contention outside the system” (such as violence) is also obviously increasing [...] Peasants start by lodging complaints at the county level or higher, and doing so at the province or in Beijing is also fairly common [...] If the petitions fail, they often turn to “direct” resistance [Zhao 2004: 213, 221].

30The repertoire of contention, in other words, has expanded and some of the newer tunes are becoming quite popular. Protest leaders in places such as Hengyang are “stretching the boundaries” of rightful resistance and are trying to breathe life into a form of contention that had been enjoying only limited success. In particular, they have established a “radical flank” [McAdam, McCarthy and Zald 1996: 14] at a time when it has become clear that the mediators they put their faith in are often ineffective and local opponents are largely impervious to half-hearted pressure from above.

How Widespread?

33To this point, Chinese researchers have uncovered evidence of direct action in the provinces of Sichuan, Anhui, Hunan, Jiangxi, Henan, Shaanxi, and Hebei [Yang 1999; Ding 2001; Yu 2001; Hao and Chen 2002; Xiao 2002; Zhao 2004]. Our interviews suggest that direct rightful resistance may be particularly well-developed in Dangshan county, Anhui, Gushi county, Henan, and Fengcheng county, Jiangxi. Furthermore, direct tactics in Hunan have appeared not only in Hengyang, but also in the counties of Lianyuan, Ningxiang, Qidong, Taoyuan, Xiangyin, and Yizhang.

Origins of Direct Tactics

35In the following pages, we discuss four factors that have contributed to tactical escalation in the Chinese countryside: 1) past defeats, 2) information about government policies and assurances obtained during mediated contention, 3) advances in communications and information technology, and 4) popular support for disruptive protests.

DEFEATS

37For many long-time complainants, the bitter truth is that protectors at higher levels have too often shown themselves to be all talk and little action. Anticipated backers frequently turn out to be little more than a symbolic source of legitimacy, who intervene only when egregious wrongs threaten political stability (such as after village cadres in Henan killed a villager who persisted in pursuing complaints). In less incendiary circumstances, rightful resisters who employ mediated tactics are commonly ignored, given the run-around, or harassed. Even if they do receive a favorable response from someone in power, their antagonists at lower levels often ignore “soft” instructions from above or delay endlessly in implementing them [O'Brien and Li 1999; Wedeman 2001; Edin 2003; Whiting 2004: 119].

People who visit higher levels to lodge complaints very rarely obtain justice. Justice for them is like a carrot dangling in front of a donkey. The donkey walks for many kilometers but can never eat the carrot [Cai 2003: 664, 679].

39In the end, many veteran activists have come to doubt the capacity of the Center to ensure faithful policy implementation, and some even think of it as a clay Buddha that local officials must bow to but can ignore with impunity [Li 2004]. All this has led to growing frustration among protesters who had relied on mediated tactics and has encouraged some of them to find new ways to pursue their goals.

INFORMATION AND ASSURANCES

40Despite its frequent failure to produce much redress, mediated contention can generate resources and create openings that promote direct contention. Activists, most notably, have obtained copies of authoritative “red-headed documents” via mediated contention that confirmed policy violations were taking place. In Hengyang, for instance, Hunan Provincial Regulation No. 9 (1996) on limiting exactions has played a large part in helping activists pinpoint misconduct by local officials. Such documents can be shown to potential supporters to prove, in detailed and clearly-worded language, that township and county cadres have betrayed their superiors.

41Some of these measures even authorize direct action when central directives are ignored. A 1991 State Council Regulation, for example, states:

It is the obligation of farmers to remit taxes to the state, to fulfill the state's procurement quotas for agricultural products, and to be responsible for the various fees and services stipulated in these regulations. Any other demands on farmers to provide financial, material, or labor contributions gratis are illegal and farmers have the right to reject them [cited in Bernstein and Lü 2003: 48].

42Even more authoritatively, the 1993 Agriculture Law (Art. 18) explicitly grants villagers the right to refuse to pay illegal impositions. It is true that these acts offer little protection if rejecting a demand leads to detention, a beating, having one's home torn down, or having one's valuables or livestock confiscated. Nor do they spell out punishments for cadres who flout the limits. But this incompleteness has only stimulated some protest leaders to devise their own ways to make these rights real. Among other initiatives, activists in various provinces have organized mass meetings to study and publicize the Agriculture Law and provincial caps on taxation, and they have openly challenged officials who fail to comply with them [Ma 2000].

43Participants in mediated contention also sometimes obtain oral or written assurances that disseminating beneficial policies is legally protected. When several farmers in Hunan asked whether they could publicize documents concerning excessive fees, officials at the provincial Letters and Visits Office encouraged them to do so, so that villagers knew what was forbidden and what was not. On one occasion, the Office director also reassured them that such actions were lawful and jotted some supportive remarks on the cover of a provincial regulation he gave to the lead complainant. Another Hengyang protest leader received similar words of encouragement when he visited the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing. More remarkably, when several farmers lodged a complaint at the Fujian provincial government concerning a township's illegal sale of farmland they had contracted, the staff member who received them at the Letters and Visits Office reassured them that they had the right to block the purchaser from taking over the land. Acting on a belief that they had located a “guarantor against repression” [Tarrow 1998: 79], each of these protest leaders then transformed a few kind words (in fact, the only politically correct response) into permission to pursue a broad-based campaign of publicizing policies. In the Fujian case, villagers also went a step further: they took the official's advice literally and physically blocked the land buyer's men when they came to claim the property.

44Strictly speaking, there is no law that allows Chinese citizens to publicize Party policies and state laws. But this is an act whose correctness no one can legitimately challenge. While an official who scrawls on a letter of complaint “disseminating policies is protected by law” may be seeking mainly to get a group of activists out of his or her office and to discourage them from returning [Guo 2001: 434], enterprising activists often waste little time expanding this discursive crack into a window of opportunity. They interpret official “instructions,” as informal and off-hand as they usually are, to be evidence that a meaningful gap exists between authorities at higher and lower levels. What might have been little more than a brush-off, in other words, can easily justify upgrading a general license to publicize policies into an explicit go-ahead to challenge abusive local officials and mobilize opposition to unlawful decisions in one's own village.

45In sum, even though mediated contention usually fails to generate the hoped-for relief, it can provide activists with crucial information about official misconduct, suggest political openings (that may or may not exist), and (by changing protest leaders' expectations and their store or resources) set the stage for direct rightful resistance.

COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

46Some activists in rural China use remarkably low-tech (or no-tech) means to mobilize and coordinate direct action. In Jize county, Hebei, for example, protest leaders set off firecrackers to assemble villagers in front of a general store before leading them to demand a dialogue with township leaders, while in Hunan village lookouts used gongs to summon community members to defend protest organizers who were about to be arrested.

47But some newer technologies (which have only recently reached the countryside) have played an even bigger role in facilitating direct rightful resistance. We have already seen how audio equipment such as tape recorders, loudspeakers, and mobile broadcasting stations can help publicize policies and rally supporters. Insomuch as direct action requires considerable coordination and planning, telephones have also become an important tool for protest leaders. More and more activists these days use mobile phones to arrange multi-village or even multi-township actions. In Hengyang, for instance, one farmer set up a telephone tree that connected hundreds of activists in nearly a dozen townships. Many of his fellow organizers now have cell phones or land lines at home; those who do not, rely on neighbors who are willing to pass on messages about the time and place of meetings, upcoming actions, the number of protesters to turn out, and so on. In Hunan, villagers have even used mobile phones to protect investigators who have come to do research on rural contention. One protest leader called two journalists sent by the magazine Window on the South Wind (Nanfeng Chuang) to warn them (three times) to change taxis after his followers discovered that county officials had learned the license plate number of their vehicle; later, after the reporters stayed in one location too long and were detained, another activist phoned to offer to mobilize hundreds of villagers to free them [Bernstein 2003; Johnson 2004: 69].

48Personal computers are another breakthrough that has promoted the use of direct tactics. Computer printing, in particular, can aid both in publicizing policies and reproducing letters of complaints. Activists in Anhui province, for instance, painstakingly entered a beneficial tax policy on a computer, character by character, and then distributed printouts to stir up resistance to unlawful taxation. Shortly before a number of “burden reduction representatives” in Hengyang demanded a dialogue with a school head concerning tuition and fee increases, they circulated printouts of their letter of complaint to parents of school children.

49Most of these newer technologies are no longer forbiddingly expensive. Mobile phones can be bought for 200 to 300 yuan (approximately US $25-$40) and calls run about 60 fen (7 US cents) or less per minute. Shops that provide word-processing and computer printing can be found in virtually all county towns and many townships.

50The technology that has transformed protest the most is also one of the most widely available: photocopying. In Hunan, it costs 30 fen (4 US cents) to reproduce a page the size of this one and copy shops can be found in most township seats. Photocopying not only eases duplication of central, provincial and city regulations, it also lends a patina of authenticity and legitimacy to those documents and impedes crackdowns by officials who previously would have claimed they were bogus. In Hengyang, when a deputy township head and the chair of the township People's Congress attempted to shut down a group of activists who were reading copied regulations over a loudspeaker and alleged that they were publicizing phony “black documents,” several activists challenged them to produce the real or “red” versions. Rebuffed, the officials had nothing more to say. The protest leaders then immediately announced to the surrounding crowd that these officials were “active counter-revolutionaries” because they had “defiled” central policies.

51All these technologies enable adept rightful resisters to reach out to (and fire up) a mass constituency in a way that was less critical when they were simply lodging mass complaints and depended largely on elite allies rather than disgruntled, agitated villagers. Advances in duplication and communication (with faxes, e-mail, text-messaging, and the internet not far behind) [Tarrow 1998: 132; on Falun Gong, see Thornton 2002] also help organizers mount popular action and gauge how disruptive they can be without crossing into “forbidden zones.”

POPULAR SUPPORT

52In rural China today, there is not much evidence of a “strategic dilemma” where disruption is necessary to draw attention but militancy reliably alienates the public [Rochon 1988; Jasper 1997: 9, 13]. So long as rightful resisters refrain from demanding excessive donations or harassing free-riders, tactical escalation usually generates more community approval than disapproval. Particularly in locations where villagers have become exasperated with the Center's failure to rectify long-standing wrongs, unconventional tactics do not undermine the legitimacy of protest and drive away supporters, but more often lead to comments such as:

When officials push people to rebel, people have to resist.

53Direct tactics can help a group of activists expand their base by creating solidarity, forging a collective identity, and strengthening trust. It is often the case that the more assertive and enterprising protest leaders are, the more their stature rises ­ though popular acclaim does not always translate into active participation in the next round of contention. As we will see in Chapter 5, interested onlookers sometimes join protests or become leaders themselves; more frequently, they offer financial support or applaud the actions of activists whom they have come to respect or even admire. In this way, although direct tactics establish a “radical flank,” they do not redound chiefly to the benefit of those who employ moderate, mediated tactics. Instead, they often set in motion a sequence of events where wary but hopeful spectators (and some new participants) are delighted to see imperious, corrupt, and abusive officials get their comeuppance and even privately egg rightful resisters to ratchet the level of confrontation up a notch.

54The following episode illustrates how the back-and-forth between protest leaders and their followers can lead to tactical escalation. In Shandong, an elected village director lodged numerous complaints and even filed a lawsuit against an accountant who was the front-man for a corrupt village Party secretary. But the director could not secure access to the accounts that confirmed the financial shenanigans of the two men. (To shield their underlings and themselves township officials had spirited away the account books to their office and locked them up.) In 2002, with a new election approaching, the director realized that he might lose, largely because he had been so ineffective in bringing the Party secretary and the accountant to justice. His supporters were concerned and urged him to use bolder, direct tactics. The director demanded a meeting with the township head, during which he threatened, if he was again prevented from seeing the accounts, to mobilize his following to occupy the township office building. The township head relented but only granted permission to review the books for a single day. The director agreed but decided to spring a surprise. At the end of the appointed time, nearly 60 of his supporters suddenly appeared, seized the accounts, and ran off with them. This incident led the township leadership and the village Party secretary to cancel the upcoming election, thereby allowing the village director to retain his position. It also helped the director win back many of his former backers who had been disappointed with his lack of resolve.

Who Innovates?

57Of course, long-time complainants do not always graduate to direct rightful resistance. Those who do, in Hengyang, have typically been middle-aged or slightly older men who say they feel boxed in, in that they have few other options to improve their economic, social or political position. A number of Hengyang protest leaders who were under 35 years of age simply left the countryside and became migrant workers after a multi-village, collective complaint in 1996 failed to produce any relief. Older complainants however, could not easily do the same, not least because they often had elderly parents and teenage children to look after. Some of these men had also been migrant workers themselves for a time, but

I have been combative since I was young and have no tolerance for injustice and evil.

59Another protest leader from Hengyang was proud to announce:

• 20 On the persistence and reputation for courage of protest leaders, see T.P. Bernstein [2003].

I have been rebelling against abusive cadres since Mao Zedong was still ruling China.20

60Indeed, several rural organizers even compared themselves to vaunted Party martyrs and vowed that they would rather die than knuckle under to unjust and corrupt local officials. One activist from Lianyuan county, Hunan, went so far as to allude to the famous Qin dynasty rebels Chen Sheng and Wu Guang by claiming:

Kings and generals are not born to be kings and generals.

61These diehards not only refuse to retreat, they also have no use for tactics that have repeatedly shown themselves to be inadequate. For protest leaders with such hard-charging personalities, disenchantment with mediated contention only feeds their indignation, brinksmanship, and dreams of grandeur while boosting their commitment to find a way to do whatever it takes to prevail.

63Lastly, architects of direct rightful resistance seem to possess an abiding faith in the Center's desire (if not capacity) to halt policy violations. They appreciate better than most that officials up to the province level are unlikely to redress popular grievances, yet they continue to say that some leaders at the Center truly wish to end misimplementation of beneficial measures [Guo 2001: 435-437; Li 2004]. In the words of a protest leader from Fujian:

Central leaders share a common interest with people like me, at least to the extent that they agree that what I'm struggling against also undermines Party rule.

64Similarly, although an activist from Shandong repeatedly dodged questions about whether he genuinely trusted the Center, he insisted that so long as China's President wished to stay in power, he would need people like him to help control wayward local officials. For such individuals, declining trust in the Center's capacity does not cause a lapse into passivity; instead, it strengthens their resolve and encourages them to step up their efforts to assist a besieged and weakened Center.

Some Implications

65Rightful resistance has evolved in rural China. Some long-time activists, seeing few alternatives and too proud to accept defeat, have turned to more confrontational forms of contention. Instead of counting on higher-level patrons to address their claims, these rightful resisters and their followers have increasingly come to demand justice on the spot. In an attempt to halt policy violations, they have transformed tiny openings into opportunities to deploy new, more disruptive tactics, such as publicizing policies, demanding dialogues, and face-to-face defiance. In the course of doing so, they have exploited the spread of communications and information technologies, including mobile phones, photocopying, and computerized printing. Direct tactics, to this point, have generally not overstepped the Center's sufferance (so long as protest leaders and their followers stop short of violence and clearly illegal acts), and they almost always meet with popular acclaim, as rightful resisters persist, win occasional victories, and keep trumpeting their willingness to sacrifice all for the interests of the Party and the people.

66These developments have several broader implications for research on contentious politics. Tactical escalation, it should be noted, has brought about what D. McAdam, S. Tarrow and C. Tilly [2001: 144-158] call “object shift,” in two different senses. On the one hand, the focus of rightful resistance has shifted downwards, since direct contention is usually aimed at lower level officials than mediated contention. Local adversaries are confronted not bypassed. Protesters give up on high-level patrons and take matters into their own hands. On the other hand, rightful resisters sometimes turn on their ineffectual (or two-faced) advocates at higher levels and attack them. Consider this example from Hengyang: after a protest organizer's wife was beaten by township cadres and several hired toughs, another activist led a delegation of villagers to the county to insist that the perpetrators be punished. At this point, the protesters were employing mediated tactics because they treated the county as a potential ally against their township foes. But when the county head summarily rejected their demands, the activists decided that the county was in truth a backstage supporter of their antagonists. Instead of proceeding up a level to the city government (which they still considered an ally), they decided they would challenge the county itself by setting up a human blockade on a county highway. As their perception of the county's stance changed, their tactics had morphed from mediated contention (aimed at the county, by appealing to it for help) to direct action (against the county, by blocking the county road). So far, direct contention has mostly targeted township and village cadres; this episode shows it can move up the hierarchy, with potentially explosive consequences.

67The “addressees” [Szabo 1996] of contention have changed in another important way. In rural China, the audience for collective action is broadening well beyond fair-weather friends in officialdom. Rightful resisters now regularly turn to another third party ­ the public. The strategic dilemma that researchers have observed in the West [Rochon 1988; Jasper 1997: 9, 13; della Porta and Diani 1999: 182-183] can easily be overstated in the Chinese countryside, where radicalism typically attracts support rather than chases it away. Many of our interviewees in fact believe that protest organizers should have acted earlier and even more dramatically. This is a good reminder that tactical escalation is often as much about building a protest subculture as winning battles [Jasper 1997: 237] and that we need to peer deep inside protest groups to understand how internal solidarity is built and collective identities form [della Porta and Diani 1999: 181-182]. This implies more attention to recruitment and leader-group dynamics, and further consideration of the ways in which tactical choices can “widen the circle of those psychologically prepared for mobilization” [Rochon 1998: 162], play a role in knitting a group together, and “reinforce affective ties among protesters.” [Jasper 1997: 237]