The Political Logic of Protest Repression in China

Abstract

Why do China’s authorities repress some protests, but not others? By how much do crowd size, violent tactics and protest location increase the likelihood of repression? Based on a newly available dataset of more than 70,000 protest events collected from social media, this article tests three competing explanations of protest repression in China. It finds that repression is closely correlated both with the cost of concessions for local governments and protest intensity. A small-scale and peaceful labor protest in an urban locality very seldom encounters repression, but rural riots against land grabs, evictions or environmental pollution are nearly certain to experience state-sanctioned violence or arrests even if the number of participants is low.