Andrew C. Mertha, China's Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change

Abstract

According to him, injustice simply lacked "power to attract the broad support necessary for policy change" (p. 93), because similar problems were experienced by many Chinese and empathy was therefore difficult to invoke.141 As soon as mass protests broke out, the state converted to repression mode, dispatching large-scale military and police units and declaring the issue a threat to social stability. [...]China's Water Warriors might indicate that analyses of Chinese politics (at least those seeking to understand the potential for bottom-up policy and political change) might need to broaden their theoretical scope and take political power and resistance against it more seriously in its symbolic/linguistic dimensions.