Journal of Contemporary China

ISSN: 1067-0564 (Print) 1469-9400 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjcc20

Weiwen at the Grassroots: Chinas stability

maintenance apparatus as a means of conflict
resolution
Jonathan Benney
To cite this article: Jonathan Benney (2016): Weiwen at the Grassroots: Chinas stability
maintenance apparatus as a means of conflict resolution, Journal of Contemporary China, DOI:
10.1080/10670564.2015.1104876
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2015.1104876

Published online: 26 Jan 2016.

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Date: 03 April 2016, At: 21:40

Journal of Contemporary China, 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2015.1104876

Weiwen at the Grassroots: Chinas stability maintenance apparatus

as a means of conflict resolution
Jonathan Benney
Monash University, Australia

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ABSTRACT

This article assesses stability maintenance (weiwen) as a means of conflict

resolution in China. It argues that the resolution of local disputes in China,
particularly outside cities, is now being influenced and facilitated by the
discourse and practice of stability maintenance, rather than legal methods
and traditional mediation processes. This conclusion adds to the existing
academic views of stability maintenance, which have previously emphasized
social control to the exclusion of almost all else, and suggests that stability
maintenance-focused conflict resolution may have practical benefits to
Chinese citizens, given the states withdrawal from legal conflict resolution
methods and its ambiguous attitude towards mediation.

This article explores stability maintenance1 (weiwen) as a means of facilitating conflict resolution in modern China. Its emphasis on conflict resolution is novel. Previous examinations of the weiwen apparatus
have concentrated on its political function: managing resistance and maintaining party-state authority.
This has been a fruitful means of characterizing the political motivations and the higher-level strategies
of stability maintenance. Nonetheless, there remain conceptual and empirical gaps relating to how stability maintenance offices and processes actually function, particularly outside larger cities. It considers
the effectiveness of stability maintenance as a part of the market for conflict resolution in local2 China,
and assesses how the stability maintenance apparatus functions in an authoritarian system in which
the rule of law is constantly being debated and adjusted. It suggests that conflict resolution facilitated
by weiwen is a relatively pragmatic and effective means of actually resolving local-level conflicts in the
current context, notwithstanding the closeness of the stability maintenance discourse to state authority
and its relative distance from rule of law-based methods of dispute resolution.
The argument uses an analysis of 65 cases, reported in the media, of conflict resolution facilitated by stability maintenance offices (weiwenban). Furthermore, it considersmore than previous

CONTACT Jonathan Benney

jonathan.benney@monash.edu

Weiwen () is translated as stability maintenance in this article, although it is also translated frequently as stability
preservation. There appear to be no substantial differences between these two translations. The terms dispute resolution and conflict resolution are also used interchangeably. While legal scholarship in English tends to refer to dispute
resolution, other disciplines sometimes use conflict resolution. This inevitably leads to an overlap in uses.
2
In this article local refers specifically to town, county and village-level government, often referred to as difang zhengfu
() or jiceng zhengfu () in Chinese. The aim is to distinguish these levels of practice from larger urban
centers (as discussed by Lee and Zhang). Although the data in this article do sometimes refer to larger population centers,
the conclusions mainly target these local levels.
1

2016 Taylor & Francis

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J. Benney

English-language publications havethe indigenous Chinese discourse on weiwen and stability maintenance policy-making. Such discourse must be regarded with a critical eye, but reports of grassroots
weiwen lead this article to its second argument: that stability maintenance work has stimulated innovation in local government.
This analysis confronts some key issues in modern Chinese studies by exploring how Chinese citizens
confront changes in their world under a politics based on fragmented authoritarianism3 or bargained
authoritarianism.4 Its findings support arguments about Chinas retreat from legal methods and its
complex strategies for facilitating local conflict resolution. It also addresses connections between the
central, provincial and local government, in particular the practical and ideological effects of top-down
campaigns, of central targets imposed on local government, and the amount of freedom and innovation
which the center and the provinces permit local authorities. Consequently, it provokes a discussion of
social management in China which distinguishes between highly politicized large-scale social control
strategies, characteristic of large population centers and mass incidents, and localized conflict resolution
strategies, characteristic of town and county government.
The analysis of weiwen in this article concentrates simultaneously on discourse and praxis, as, in
Chinese social politics, these are inherently linked. It situates stability maintenance in its historical
context, to characterize the uses of the stability discourse in China and to explain the structure of the
stability maintenance apparatus. It then assesses the effectiveness of weiwen strategies in resolving
conflicts. It concludes by considering the place of weiwen in a Chinese society where other means of
conflict resolution are increasingly marginalized; the space for local innovation and experimentation
in conflict resolution in an authoritarian milieu; and the prospects for legal conflict resolution and the
rule of law in the era of stability maintenance. In each of these, it argues that stability maintenance can
assist, as well as hinder, conflict resolution.

Weiwen as part of the Chinese stability discourse

Stability is an inescapable concept in China, but it is crucial to distinguish between three easily conflated
aspects: stability as an official discourse; stability measured empirically; and stability maintenance as
a series of practical processes. Stability in post-Mao China functions as a cognitive filter or framing
device5: the party-state uses stability as a justification for its responses to events and increasingly for
its policy-making. This discourse arose in reaction to growing dissent in China, as a means of characterizing the party-states departure from Maoism, and as a response to Chinas economic growth and
its consequent need for reliable commerciallegal processes.
The state strategy is to conflate different types of stability, referring to all of them with an umbrella
label: Sandby-Thomas calls this mystifying stability, allowing it to be discursively flexible.6 The discourse
of stability and consequently of stability maintenance implies that national stability (the political
stability of the central party-state), economic stability, social stability and psychological stability are
essentially fungible, and that increases or decreases in one form of stability will lead to parallel changes
in the other forms. The empirical evidence does not support this analysis. While Chinas political stability
has been constant, and while its economic growth has been steady, a parallel increase in social instability has been manifested in mass incidents and public protests7 and an increase in crime.8 Emotional
stability, a psychological outlook promoted by the state and closely associated with the discourse of

Andrew C. Mertha, Chinas Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).
Ching Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang, The power of instability: unraveling the microfoundations of bargained authoritarianism in China, American Journal of Sociology 118(6), (2013), pp. 14751508.
5
Peter Sandby-Thomas, Legitimating the Chinese Communist Party since Tiananmen: A Critical Analysis of the Stability Discourse
(Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2010).
6
Ibid., p. 155.
7
Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in Chinas Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
8
Yue Xie, The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China, Issues and Studies 48(3), (2012), pp. 141.
3
4

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Journal of Contemporary China

civilization,9 has also suffered as reform has gone on: in fact, some authors have characterized modern
China as an angry society, suffused with untargeted abstract anger.10
At a broad discursive level, then, the neologism weiwen, and its conceptual application to the problems that China faces, reflects the dual concern of the Chinese state: maintaining the political stability
of the central government and addressing areas of instability at the local level. However, local sources
of instability take many forms, whereas the genealogy of stability maintenance is chiefly political. The
highest administrative organization for stability maintenance, the Central Leadership Small Group for
Stability Maintenance Work (Zhongyang Weiwen Gongzuo Lingdao Xiaozu), was formed as a response
to a political problem: the perceived challenge of Falun Gong and other evil cults to the party-states
authority.11
This group is tightly integrated with a larger and much more complex political apparatus, which can
be collectively characterized as implementing comprehensive management of public security (CMS).
This policy, developed in the early 2000s, incorporates existing strategies for crime prevention and social
control with new strategies characterized by their emphasis on local communities and on non-legal
measures, such as increased use of informants and the targeted monitoring of particular groups.12 The
broader significance of CMS is the shift in emphasis away from the legal promotion discourse of the
1990s, to the facilitation of local conflict resolution based on political, financial and personal imperatives,
a trend characterized by Minzner as a turn against law.13
Weiwen therefore penetrates most sectors of Chinese life, and it is difficult to assess what is and is
not covered by the label. Academically, this has led to an emphasis on the political aspect of stability
maintenance, particularly on the punishment of political and legal dissidents. The resulting analysis
is not inherently wrong, but can lead to a misunderstanding of the nature of weiwen policy and discourse. For instance, Kan proposes an extremely broad interpretation of weiwen work,14 categorizing
re-education through labor (laojiao), the forcible sending of citizens to mental hospitals, and unofficial
detention centers (black jails) as being manifestations of weiwen. Although these strategies do have
the effect of maintaining stability from the states viewpoint, it seems misleading to refer to them as
straightforwardly being weiwen. They are better interpreted as manifestations of the CMS policy apparatus, or, even more broadly, of state authoritarianism. A more specific approach to stability maintenance
work which does not tar all social management activities with the weiwen brush seems more fruitful
as a mode of analysis.
Consequently, this article concentrates on strategies labeled as weiwen, implemented by weiwenban,
and with evident conceptual links to state weiwen policy. The structure for implementing weiwen is now
well established. At the highest level, the Central Leadership Small Group for Stability Maintenance Work
shares members with the Central Comprehensive Management Committee and the Central PoliticoLegal Committee. At a senior administrative level, the Central Office for Stability Management interacts
with its parallel CMS group, the Central Office for Comprehensive Management. The Central Office for
Stability Maintenance is then responsible for stability maintenance offices, which operate in tandem
with CMS offices, for example as offices for comprehensive management of petitioning and stability,
at provincial, county, town and village level.15

Luigi Tomba, Civilization and the middle class in urban China, Positions 17(3), (2009), pp. 591616.
Yongnian Zheng, China in 2011, Asian Survey 52(1), (2012), pp. 2841; Jianrong Yu, You Yi Zhong Chouxiang Fennu,
(31 August 2009), available at: http://blog.voc.com.cn/blog_showone_type_blog_id_582560_p_1.html (accessed 14
September 2015).
11
Xie, The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China, pp. 1819; Zhongwei Zhang and Jiewei Yi, 2009 Zhongguo
Benmingnian: Zhonggong Yingdui Dongluan Weiji (Carle Place, NY: Mirror Books, 2009).
12
Xie, The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China, pp. 911.
13
Carl Minzner, Chinas turn against law, American Journal of Comparative Law 59, (2011), pp. 935984; Carl Minzner, The
turn against legal reform, Journal of Democracy 24(1), (2013), pp. 6572.
14
Karita Kan, Whither weiwen? Stability maintenance in the 18th Party Congress era, China Perspectives 1, (2013), pp. 8793.
15
Kai Xu and Weiao Li, Weiwen jiqi, Caijing, (6 June 2011), available at: http://www.caijing.com.cn/2011-06-06/110738832.
html (accessed 14 September 2015).
9

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This structure has two notable aspects. The first is its administrative separateness from the state
agencies of law enforcement: the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, the courts
and procuratorate system, the police, and the National Office for Letters and Petitions.16 The second key
aspect is the flexible structure and personnel of weiwen bodies. At a senior level, the office can recruit
staff from anywhere and has no fixed premises.17 At a local level, the lack of operational guidelines for
stability maintenance processes has meant that the strategies used by local stability maintenance offices
can differ substantially from place to place. Generally, each weiwen office is staffed by between five and
ten official staff (often transferred from other government duties) and relies on networks of informers
(xinxiyuan) and volunteers (zhian zhiyuanzhe) who alert the staff to relevant matters.18
This is reflective of overall trends in Chinese political organization. The weiwen structure combines an
authoritative top-down approach (reflecting the party-states unwillingness to cede power) with increasing freedom for local officials (reflecting the increasing complexity of the Chinese economy society). It
allows the systematized use of weiwen to control mass incidents in urban centers, while allowing local
authorities greater flexibility. The structural separateness of the weiwen apparatus from the courts and
even the police also reflects Chinas turn against law. Lee and Zhang characterize stability maintenance
processes as reflecting legal-bureaucratic absorption.19 That is, forms of conflict resolution that might
have involved explicitly legal processes are increasingly being channeled into purely bureaucratic or
governmental structures. Hence, disinterested and regulated legal processes (whether or not these ever
actually existed) are supplanted by negotiated bargains between citizen and state, with a consequent
orientation towards personalized and clientelist forms of interaction.
It is clear, then, that grassroots stability maintenance work involves a negotiative balance between a
top-down form of state authoritarianism and a bottom-up range of ad hoc local strategies. The authoritarian aspect of weiwen has been the chief focus of Western studies of stability in China,20 whereas its
flexible side has only recently attracted academic attention. Lee and Zhangs conclusions in this area
provide an analytical backbone for the cases below. Even so, their characterization of stability maintenance as bargained authoritarianism risks conflating two imperatives of the stateits desire to avoid
mass resistance, and its need to negotiate with citizens in some circumstances. These, while closely
linked, are sometimes discrete and indeed can clash with each other, particularly in smaller-scale conflicts or at local levels. Nor do they address the question of why the discourse of stability maintenance
has arisen and why stability is used to frame local disputes.
By emphasizing the interconnection of state and market in China, the states desire to depoliticize
everyday life, and the importance of interpersonal and clientelist relationships to problem-solving
in China, Lee and Zhang argue persuasively that stability maintenance is a consequence of Chinese
authoritarianism. Nonetheless, as the cases below begin to demonstrate, bargaining and negotiation
is not necessarily a direct or inherent consequence of Chinese authoritarianism. There are many cases
where the state does not intervene in areas of public unrest, or where it even facilitates complaint.21
In analyzing stability maintenance across all its manifestations, it can unnecessarily color the process
of thinking about weiwen to suggest that every feature of stability maintenance is inherently linked to
authoritarianism, even in mitigated form. Hence, by concentrating on stability maintenance as a form of

Ibid.
09 Nian Weiwen Xin Siwei, Nanfeng chuang, (13 April 2009), available at: http://www.nfcmag.com/article/1464.html
(accessed 1 October 2015).
18
Chongyi Feng, Preserving stability and rights protection: conflict or coherence?, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 42(2),
(2013), pp. 2150.
19
Lee and Zhang, The power of instability, pp. 14801481.
20
Sarah Biddulph, The Stability Imperative: Human Rights and Law in China (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015); Chongyi Feng,
The dilemma of stability preservation in China, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 42(2), (2013), pp. 319; Kan, Whither
weiwen; Gnter Schucher, China: Stabil Durch Revolten, Bltter fr deutsche und internationale Politik 3, (2012), pp. 2529.
21
Jonathan Hassid, Safety valve or pressure cooker? Blogs in Chinese political life, Journal of Communication 62(2), (2012),
pp. 212230; David Kelly, Citizen movements and Chinas public intellectuals in the reform era, Pacific Affairs 79, (2006),
pp. 183204.
16
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Journal of Contemporary China

conflict resolution, this article posits an alternative view: one not mutually exclusive with other analyses
of stability maintenance, but which sheds light on it from a different angle.

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The world of conflict resolution in modern China

Many scholars of China have linked collective conflicts, such as labor disputes, strikes, street marches
and group political activism, with stability maintenance. In contrast, this article considers small-scale,
less controversial cases which, in the Western world, might be subject to non-legal or expedited legal
resolution, using means like small claims tribunals or mediation. This article does not aim to consider
the states response to so-called mass incidents, which have attracted much recent academic attention.
The incidents examined below are consciously not mass in nature.
Applying this narrower focus does not simplify the question of how conflicts are resolved in modern
China. Rather, it complicates it. At local, individual levels, conflict resolution becomes more diffuse.
Outcomes are less likely to be subject to public scrutiny. The potential for informal solutionsmoney
or goods changing hands, violence, intimidation and so onincreases. Family and social networks
become more important, as do individuals personal characteristics.
This is exacerbated by the changing landscape of conflict resolution in China. Since reform, conflict
resolution strategies in China have moved first towards, then away from, courts and legal dispute
resolution methods. As Lubman22 and Fu et al.23 have described, Maoist China resolved most disputes
through mediation (tiaojie), a process characterized by interpersonal bargaining and negotiation, albeit
led by Party officials and judges. Written laws and processes carried little weight. Personal influence and
moralpolitical qualities were the primary justifications for decisions. In tandem, the process of xinfang
or letters and visits provided for citizens to appeal to higher authorities to intervene in complaints
against local bodies, the most symbolically powerful form being appeals to the central government.
This process became more regulated in the 1990s.24
This characteristically non-legal framework changed in two key ways during the past two decades.
Law became more and more important as a means of social regulation during the early 1980s. This
gradually spread to interpersonal disputes. Under the leadership of the relatively progressive Minister
for Justice, Xiao Yang,25 China underwent a process of legalization (fazhihua). Local authorities were
empowered to facilitate legal resolutions to problems, for example under the pufa or legal dissemination program and the earlier, government-facilitated stages of the weiquan movement.26 The reasoning
behind this was to synthesize ideas of law and morality with state authority.27 While this tendency never
extended to all the implications of a political system ruled by law, these processes gave law and lawyers
greater conceptual space and prestige, simultaneously increasing the legal consciousness of citizens.
Until the mid-2000s, lawyers and citizens often used the law and legal rhetoric to frame complaints,
often with the states tacit support.28 These changes in framing and discourse strategy did not lead to

Stanley B. Lubman, Deng and dispute resolution: Mao and mediation revisited, Columbia Journal of Asian Law 11, (1997),
pp. 229231; Stanley B. Lubman, Mao and mediation: politics and dispute resolution in Communist China, California
Law Review 55, (1967), pp. 12841359.
23
Hualing Fu, Richard Cullen, Mary E. Gallagher and Margaret Y. K. Woo, From mediatory to adjudicatory justice: the limits
of civil justice reform in China, in Margaret Y. K. Woo and Mary E. Gallagher, eds, Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Revolution
in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 2557.
24
Carl Minzner, Xinfang: alternative to formal Chinese legal institutions, Stanford Journal of International Law 42, (2005),
pp. 192.
25
Hualing Fu, Access to justice in China: potentials, limits, and alternatives, in John Gillespie and Albert H. Y. Chen, eds,
Legal Reforms in China and Vietnam: A Comparison of Asian Communist Regimes (Oxford: Routledge, 2010), pp. 163187.
26
Jonathan Benney, Defending Rights in Contemporary China (Oxford: Routledge, 2013).
27
Ronald C. Keith and Zhiqiu Lin, New Crime in China: Public Order and Human Rights (Oxford: Routledge, 2013).
28
The state visibly supported rights defenders like Chen Guangcheng and activist lawyers like Teng Biao during the
early 2000s. The states attitude towards such activists subsequently became negative, as the well-known case of Chen
Guangchengs detention and subsequent asylum in the United States demonstrates.
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more than a small fraction of disputes reaching court; regardless, the number of cases referred to courts,
and the number of trained legal practitioners, increased steadily during this period.29
Under Xi Jinping, and after the persecution of the former Minister for Public Security, Zhou Yongkang30
(widely linked with the promotion of weiwen and its methods), the state promotion of rule of law
linked closely with an intense anti-corruption campaignhas again come to the forefront.31
Despite this wavering rhetoric, ultimately the party-state has come to perceive legalization as a
threat rather than an opportunity. As Trevaskes indicates,32 the intermittent use of rule of law rhetoric
does not alter the desire of the state to maintain its own stability at the expense of legal process and
the interests of citizens. The increasing preference for non-legal means of social control (including CMS
and weiwen) reflects the states mistrust of lawyers, legal forms of conflict resolution, and the whole
discourse of law. Courts and lawyers continue to regulate high-level cases, particularly commercial ones,
but there are few incentives, and many disincentives, for citizens to use the court system to resolve
personal disputes. The weiquan cases promoted in the Chinese state media during the late 1990s and
early 2000sin which vulnerable citizens used the law as a weapon, with the approval of the state to
solve labor disputes, cases of domestic violence, violations of the rights of the disabled and so on33
are now hard to find. The state appears to contend that such cases are best solved by mediation or by
a weiwen process.
Simultaneously, the xinfang petitioning process has become less effective. During the 1990s, petitioning played a valuable role in Chinese conflict resolution,34 both in that it allowed problems to at
least reach the attention of higher levels of government, and it provided a safety valve to express discontent.35 However, the number of petitions has decreased since 2006, largely a result of pressure on
petitioners from local and national levels. During a high tide of petitions from 2003 to 2006, thousands
of petitioners took the petition principle to its logical conclusion and travelled to Beijing to present
their grievances to the central government.36
While citizens came to realize that petitioning was costly, ineffective, and often counterproductive,37
state suppression was even more significant in curbing the tide. Increasingly strict targets for petitions
were implemented after 2005. Local officials attempted to prevent petitioners reaching Beijing, under
threat of severe penalties ranging from fines to criminal prosecution.38 These authorities then adopted
new strategies to avoid formal complaints, labeled as a means of stabilizing potential petitioners,39 just
as the hard targets on local government were nominally intended to maintain political stability.40 This
demonstrates the states overall policy for stability maintenance and conflict resolution: developing
an overarching rhetoric based on stability, setting strict targets designed to protect the Center from
criticism, but providing local authorities with flexibility in how they meet targets.

Ethan Michelson, Climbing the dispute pagoda: grievances and appeals to the official justice system in rural China,
American Sociological Review 72, (2007), pp. 459485; Ethan Michelson, Justice from above or below? Popular strategies
for resolving grievances in rural China, The China Quarterly 193, (2008), pp. 4364.
30
Samson Yuen, Disciplining the party: Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaign and its limits, China Perspectives 3, (2014),
pp. 4147.
31
Randall Peerenboom, Fly high the banner of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics! What does the 4th Plenum
decision mean for legal reforms in China?, (6 November2014), available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2519917 (accessed
14 September 2015).
32
Susan Trevaskes, Mapping the political terrain of justice reform in China, Griffith Asia Quarterly 2(1), (2014), pp. 1836.
33
Benney, Defending Rights in Contemporary China, pp. 4648.
34
Minzner, Xinfang, p. 86.
35
Ibid., pp. 8992.
36
Lianjiang Li, Mingxing Liu and Kevin OBrien, Petitioning Beijing: the high tide of 20032006, The China Quarterly 210,
(2012), pp. 313334.
37
Ibid., p. 321.
38
Ibid., p. 325.
39
Ibid., p. 330.
40
Ibid., p. 325.
29

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As for mediation, the perceived effectiveness of court-facilitated mediation had by the early 2000s,41
coupled with its labor-intensiveness and the prestige and increased availability of court adjudication,
led to a decrease in its use.42 However, the retreat from law has given mediation a complex new status. Minzner43 describes attempts to resuscitate extra-judicial mediation practices that had fallen into
disrepair with the rise of law during the 1980s and 1990s. The Peoples Mediation Law, enacted in
2010, forms part of this attempt to codify and re-emphasize mediation as a form of dispute resolution.
The law represents the culmination of attempts to revivify the Peoples Mediation Commissions
(PMCs) prevalent during the Mao period.44 The law sets out requirements for the makeup of PMCs,
mediators, processes of mediation and mediation agreements. Administrative mediationmediation
conducted by administrative organizations, such as disputes relating to land administration and demolition, contract disputes and public security disputes, and marriage disputesdoes not fall under a
single governing law.45
The Chinese party-states perspective on local mediation is ambivalent. First, complainants are often
suspicious of mediation.46 Second, the law still gives great flexibility to the PMCs. As the cases below
demonstrate, this leads to stagnation in PMCs and mediation processes. Third, administrative mediation
has no systematic coordination or regulatory structure. Finally, while the state attempts to prioritize
mediation, it must also promote laws and courts, particularly in higher-level disputes; this, coupled with
the promotion of the rule of law, means that the state cannot take a consistent stance on mediation.
Mediators may also become increasingly inclined to incorporate legal ideas and principles into their
work.47
Stability maintenance, therefore, enters the Chinese landscape of dispute resolution as a conceptual
newcomer. Even if the implementation of weiwen in conflict resolution involves similar processes and
personnel to peoples mediation or administrative mediation, its novel label may lead to greater engagement with the dispute resolution process. Also, the substantial central funding allocated to weiwen
can allow local governments to devise new means of dealing with the epidemic of public complaints
and dissatisfaction. Tracking the precise distinctions between stability maintenance and mediation,
as well as tracing government funding, is difficult if not impossible, but the cases described below
do begin to illustrate how stability maintenance is functioning at the grassroots: specifically, whether
conflict resolution facilitated by weiwen is the most pragmatic and effective means of actually resolving
conflicts in the current political context, and whether stability maintenance work has stimulated local
government innovation.

The data
In 2012 and 2013, Chinese news databases were searched for cases where stability maintenance offices
had been involved in conflict resolution.48 Sixty-five cases were retrieved, which included cases where
the conflict was not resolved at the time of writing (23 cases), cases where the dispute had been partly
Hualing Fu, The rights defence movement, rights defence lawyers and prospects for constitutional democracy in China,
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal 1(3), (2009), pp. 150169; Hualing Fu and D. W. Choy, From mediation to adjudication: settling labor disputes in China, China Rights Forum 3, (2004), pp. 1722; Fu et al., From mediatory to adjudicatory
justice, pp. 2557.
42
Haitian Lu, State channelling of social grievances: theory and evidence in China, Hong Kong Law Journal 41, (2011),
pp.231255.
43
Minzner, Chinas turn against law, p. 945.
44
Aaron Halegua, Reforming the Peoples mediation system in urban China, Hong Kong Law Journal 35, (2005), pp. 715750.
45
Wei He and Ying Zeng, Extra-judicial mediation system and practice, King and Wood China Bulletin, (July 2011), pp. 1925.
46
Fu et al., From mediatory to adjudicatory justice; Lu, State channelling of social grievances.
47
Shahla Ali, The jurisprudence of responsive mediation: an empirical examination of Chinese peoples mediation in action,
The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 45(2), (2013), pp. 227248.
48
The author used five search sources: the Peoples Daily database, the Chinese Newspaper Database, the Chinese Academic
Journal database, Google News, and general searches of the web and other social networking services. The search term
(weiwenban, or stability maintenance office) was used, and results were filtered to use only cases where there
were conflicts between two or more parties where a weiwenban attempted to facilitate resolution. Articles between
January 2008 and April 2013 were retrieved.
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J. Benney

resolved (11 cases), and cases where it was reported that the dispute had been fully resolved, at least
in the short term (31 cases).
The coding framework listed the nature of the complaints and complainants; the location of the
complaint; the affiliation of the relevant stability maintenance office; the type of entity complained
about; the type of complaint made by the complainant; the time before the stability maintenance office
intervened; the method of conflict resolution; the entities other than the stability maintenance office
involved in the conflict resolution; whether the CCP or CCP members were explicitly stated to have been
involved; whether the conflict was resolved in the short term; and (if known) the longer-term outcomes.
Despite this framework, the mode of analyzing the data was largely qualitative and discursive. The
data were insufficient, in quantity and reliability, to perform rigorous technical analysis. However, the discursive analysis allowed key themes to be identified. The datacoupled with an analysis of the Chinese
academic discourse on stability maintenanceprovide valuable answers to the research questions. It
also allows for discussion of the policy options open to the party-state. The findings also situate stability
maintenance more clearly in the academic field of conflict resolution, and provide illustrative narratives
of the conflict resolution process.
Practically all of the newspaper articles used were sourced from the Chinese media, and many of
the academic critiques of stability maintenance processes which are used to analyze the data come
from Party journals or publications promoting the party-states agenda, such as policing journals. The
analysis of the data does not proceed on the basis that these were precise narrations of actual events.
Rather, it is predicated on the belief that one can read Chinese academic and newspaper articles in
interlocking ways:
as depictions and critiques of events that actually took place or are taking place;
as depictions of phenomena which the state would like people to believe are occurring;
as morallegal narratives designed to encourage citizens and government bodies to behave in
particular ways; and
as manipulation of units of state discourse: that is, writing designed to promote new terms and
ideas, such as weiwen; including pieces written less to inform the audience and more for the economic or strategic benefit of the author (for example, articles published in order to legitimize a
local government organization, or published by academics in order to meet publication quotas).
In keeping with this approach, the cases are used not so much as individual units of data, but
more as pointers demonstrating useful themes in the practice of weiwen as conflict resolution. This
approach focuses on how stability maintenance discourse is formed, negotiated and expressed in
different contexts. Whether the cases are used as depictions of actual events or merely as expressions
of state discourse, it is still possible to observe:
a nexus between weiwen and conflict resolution, previously unexplored in Western academic
analysis;
innovation in local government, stimulated by weiwen funding;
flexibility and personalization of disputes, questioning the idea of rigid weiwen popular in Chinese
political discourse; and
shifts in labels for conflict resolution: from weiquan, to xinfang, shangfang, tiaojie and weiwen.
As Figure 1 demonstrates, the 65 cases originated from sources across China, with a particular bias
towards the Pearl River Delta, which experiences a particularly high level of stability maintenance
cases. There was a balance between large cities and smaller population centers. Articles from a range
of media sources, primarily local or provincial newspapers, were recorded. Overall, when juxtaposed
with the discussion of weiwen in the official media, it appears that innovation in weiwen as a form of
conflict resolution is most obvious in smaller population centers.

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Journal of Contemporary China

Figure 1.The 65 cases, plotted on a map of China.

Trends and policy implications

Five key areascompensation, fresh starts, informality of negotiation, interaction with other bodies,
and practical facilitationwere apparent from the cases.

Compensation
Financial exchange is key to stability maintenance. Zhuo contextualizes the rise of weiwen, particularly
at grassroots level, as being a logical progression of the development of a profit-making model for
townships and villages. Increasing economic independence of the township and village leaderships
means that local leaders have become profit-making model regime executives (moulixing zhengquan
jingyingzhe), clashing with their traditional role in conflict resolution.49 Such a policy approach has
led to a situation where local governments have drifted away from the service provision model and
towards a purely profit-making model, a consequence of which has been increased fees for services
and increased disputes over fees.50
Lee and Zhang extend this analysis by situating it conceptually in what is termed the microfoundations of authoritarian domination in a post-state socialist era. They suggest that tendencies apparent before reformthe patronclient relationship within the party-state, the tacit hidden bargaining

Jie Zhuo, Jiceng Weiwen Beihou De Liyi Boyi, Zhongguo shichang 12, (2013), pp. 4254.
Ibid., p. 42.

49
50

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characteristic of socialist economic relations, and the bureaucratic absorption of legal functions by
party-state bodiesare equally apparent within the stability maintenance regime.51 The major change is
that the bargaining now takes place on a financial plane, a phenomenon known as huaqian mai pingan
or buying stability.52 The cases of stability maintenance-based conflict resolution which attract most
popular interest are those involving the transfer of funds: for example, cases where compensation has
been used by weiwenban to break up fights and for complainants whose complaints have no legal basis
(as in the loss of youthfulness case described below).53
This tendency was demonstrated in the cases, although not to the extent suggested by previous
analysis. In 12 of the 65 cases, it was reported that the stability maintenance office required the entity
being complained about to pay compensation; in two others, compensation was decided after a drawnout process of discussion and mediation; in another case (in Beiliu city, the weiwen system of which is
discussed below), the stability maintenance office had voluntarily compensated the family of a youth
who had died while saving a drowning villager.54 In some cases the sums involved were very high: in
one case, in Sanya city in Anhui province, a family was paid 200,000 after they blocked a busy highway
as a protest after a relative was killed in a traffic accident.55 This is not to say that only these 12 cases
were resolved financiallymany of the cases were resolved by the stability maintenance apparatus
requiring organizations to pay outstanding wages or fees.
These cases demonstrate the extent to which local governments are prepared to draw from
stability maintenance funds in order to prevent conflicts reaching courts or petitioning, and to prevent
larger-scale mass incidents or long drawn-out public displays of dissenta key principle of Xies analysis
of stability maintenance. Nonetheless, financial compensation did not figure highly in many of the cases.
Two potential conclusionsneither mutually exclusiveflow from this. One is that, at a grassroots level
where the stability maintenance office deals with relatively small interpersonal conflicts, financial compensation is used less frequently than in large-scale conflicts in larger cities with larger stability maintenance funds. Instead, negotiative strategies, characteristic of mediation, are used more frequently.
Second, financial compensation may be just as common a strategy as other research indicates, but
may not be emphasized when weiwen cases are reported. This would suggest an interesting tendency.
The state desires to maintain compensation as the backbone of stability maintenance, but intends to
frame stability maintenance as a quasi-mediation form of interpersonal negotiated conflict resolution,
either as a response to the academic criticisms of weiwen described below, or as a means of suggesting
to the public that the weiwen process of dispute resolution is negotiative and facilitative rather than
merely financial.
The key to Zhuos discussion of weiwen bargaining, which he analyses using game theory, is information asymmetry.56 The local government knows more about what compensation is possible in a given
situation than any complainants, because it is able to communicate with higher levels of government
and because it has more information about similar cases taking place elsewhere. The state is more
likely to obtain its preferred outcome (minimizing costs) than individual complainants receiving their
desired compensation. Given the states extra negotiation power, it is theoretically in their interests to
promote the negotiative aspect of stability maintenance, as extended negotiation is likely to shift the
outcomes in their favor. This extended negotiation is hypothetically possible, and sometimes appears to
occur, but it is not particularly consistent with the obvious fact that the compensation aspect of stability
maintenance-based conflict resolution is well known, and motivates many complainants.

Lee and Zhang, The power of instability, pp. 14781481.

Ibid., p. 1485.
53
Yonglin Tang, Zhen Weiwenban de Shengyi Jing, Nanfang Zhoumo 26, (2010).
54
Yinghua Jin, Shaonian Bushen Luoshui Cunmin Sheming Dajiu: Qian Ren Leibie Hao Yingxiong, (4 July 2012), available at:
http://difang.gmw.cn/gx/2012-07/04/content_4475528.htm (accessed 14 September 2015).
55
Zhuo Song, Sanya Qi Xun Laotai Beizhuang Shenwang: Jiashu Ting Shi Taojia Dulu 4 Xiaoshi, (31 October 2012), available at:
http://www.anhuinews.com/zhuyeguanli/system/2012/10/31/005289936.shtml (accessed 14 September 2015).
56
Zhuo, Jiceng Weiwen Beihou De Liyi Boyi, pp. 4344.
51
52

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Overall, despite these ambiguities, the data suggest a key finding: that the influence of compensation
is less than Western academics have previously observed, and that the weiwen process can take place
without financial compensation being used. From a policy perspective, this suggestsalbeit optimisticallythat the stability maintenance framework could be used to strike a middle ground in conflict
resolution: that is, it may be possible to set up a system of conflict resolution which is cross-institutional
and is supported and regulated by the central government, but does not inherently necessitate the
exchange of large amounts of money.

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Fresh starts
In several of the cases, it seemed that the stability maintenance apparatus provided a novel means of
resolving long drawn-out disputes. In representative cases, a dispute over the remuneration of hotel
workers which had gone on for four years without any resolution was resolved by the intervention of
a weiwenban at the behest of the city government, apparently to great public acclaim;57 and a long-
running dispute between farmers over the sale of pigs was referred by the local police station to the
local weiwenban, which was able to liaise with the police and the complainants to resolve the problem.58
While these articles are intended to suggest that the stability maintenance process is effective as a
negotiative facilitator of dispute resolution, they also show that existing processes of dispute resolution,
in particular quasi-legal processes like mediation and adjudication, have a tendency to stagnate, as
there are increasingly fewer options that the mediators may offer the complainants, and the personnel
involved in the mediation may lack the skills required to develop suitable outcomes. In this context,
the advantage of the weiwen process is first that it is relatively new and has been heavily promoted,
and second that it is well funded, allowing its staff to facilitate a wider range of mediation strategies,
including financial compensation. However, in the longer term, as the novelty of the process decreases,
fresh starts will likely become increasingly less relevant.

Informality of negotiation
Compared to the methods of dispute resolution promoted during the earlier parts of the reform period,
dispute resolution facilitated by weiwenban is characterized by informality. It is conceptually close both
to recent mediation reforms in China, particularly in the use of PMCs, and to the mediation techniques
characteristic of the Mao period. At the grassroots there are few rules governing amounts of compensation, strategies for negotiation, lengths of time required or interaction with other bodies. Weaknesses
in weiwen implementation can result from local governments limited strategic knowledge,59 tending
to use either compensation or violent strategies on the grounds that they have little training in other
forms of mediation.60 This informality has led to bargaining predominating.
A characteristic case concerns a woman who, after an abortion, sought 80,000 compensation from
her former boyfriend for loss of youthfulness. The man was only willing to pay 10,000. The weiwenban
assigned the head of the local police to discuss this with the man: no-one knows what they said during their meeting, but the man subsequently agreed to pay 30,000 to the woman and 9,000 to the
weiwenban as a coordination fee.61 The arbitrariness of this bargaining, and its lack of transparency, is

Yongyi L, Hancheng Chenggong Huajie Yiqi Sinian Jiufen An, Shaanxi ribao, (3 April 2013), available at:
http://www.kaixian.tv/R1/n1122401c19.shtml (accessed 14 September 2015).
Renbing Xiong,Hubei Zigui JingfangSan Fang LianshouZhiyu ZiqiYinan Za'an, Renmin Wang, (23 January 2013), available at:
http://hb.people.com.cn/GB/n/2013/0123/c337099-18063598.html (accessed 23 March 2013).
59
Taijun Jin and Junfeng Zhao, Jiceng Zhengfu Weiwen Guaiquan: Xianzhuang, Chengyin Yu Duice, Zhenghixue yanjiu
4, (2012), pp. 91100.
60
The difficulty of performing weiwen processes and writing weiwen reports (such as the yearly stability maintenance work
summary) has led to the publication of handbooks and software designed for stability maintenance officials (see tujian.
org). It is possible to find templates for stability maintenance reports online.
61
Tang, Zhen Weiwenban De Shengyi Jing.
57
58

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often considered detrimental to conflict resolution, as well as, in Lee and Zhangs language, being a
means by which the state can resist and mediate threats to its authority.
Nonetheless, the very flexibility of this process can have positive effects. As in the case above, it can
provide remedies where individuals have been damaged in some way but where there is no obvious
legal recourse for their injury (a problem which, Abel argues in his famous critique of tort law,62 is characteristic of rapidly changing and fragmenting capitalist societies). It allows remedies to be tailored
to the participants in the conflict, allowing forin contrast to legal methodsmore flexible forms of
remedy than financial compensation, such as apologies or restitution, allowing these to be negotiated
between the parties.
Three cases from the data, each with a medical orientation, demonstrate this. In one case, in Shenzhen
in 2012,63 a hospital agreed (after dialogue with the weiwenban) to provide free treatment to a man
who needed corrective surgery after he lost an eye in an operation. A second case64 involved community protest at the risk of infection spreading from a proposed new hospital. After negotiation, it was
agreed that the hospital would not handle infectious diseases, and it would be built 34 meters away
from other buildings, more than the legal minimum standard of 20 meters. Third,65 a hospital agreed
to pay 350,000 compensation to the family of a man who had died during a blood transfusion.
These processes are clearly incongruent with notions of the rule of law, even in the Chinese context. Closed-door negotiations violate the principle of transparency, under which decision-makers
reasoning processes should be obvious to outside observers.66 Negotiation which depends on what
the parties involved believe, what they can contribute, or how much bargaining power they have,
violates the principle of consistency (that is, that legal decisions should be predictable and similar in
similar cases), crucial to the rule of law.67 The effectiveness of negotiative conflict resolution processes,
and the extent to which they might shape future policy, is limited given the ambiguity towards the
rule of law in the Xi era.
However, acknowledging these deficiencies does not automatically invalidate these informal negotiation processes, particularly given the lack of financial and human resources devoted to the development of the Chinese legal system, and the correspondingly high level of resources given to the stability
maintenance project. Essentially, then, the potential critique of this aspect of weiwen remains very
similar to Fus, Lubmans and Alis critique of mediation: that, while it can and does play a role in local
Chinese communities, it is not as consistent with legal principles as outside observers would desire.

Interaction with other bodies

One specific aspect of the weiwen apparatus which has been promoted in the state media is its ability
to coordinate with other government bodies. Being administratively separate from the courts, police,
procuratorate and so on, but frequently sharing staff and facilities with them, has evidently provided
weiwenban with a novel form of coordination power. One user was reported to have said:
Before, if people wanted to go to the government, or get divorced, or if they had a dispute, they didnt know who
to go to Now they know to go to the weiwenban, who can pass on the problem to the right people.68

Richard L. Abel, A critique of torts, UCLA Law Review 37, (1990), pp. 785831.
Hongmei Li, Cong Yihuan Duikang Dao Yihuan Duihua (Jujiao: Yiliao Jiufen Tiaojie 2): Shenzhen Yiliao Jiufen Tiaojie Moshi
Diaocha, Renmin Ribao, (29 March 2012), p. 18.
64
Yanting Tong, Shi Fuyou BaojianyuanNi Jian Zhuyuan LouZao Zhoubian Jumin Fandui, Shenzhen wanbao, (5 March
2013), available at: http://wb.sznews.com/html/2013-03/05/content_2394443.htm (accessed 14 September 2015).
65
Wuhe Zhou, Nanzi Yiyuan Shuye Shenwang: Jiashu Danao Tao You Shuofa Huo Pei 35 Wan, Guangzhou ribao, (22 February
2013), available at: http://society.people.com.cn/n/2013/0222/c1008-20566369.html (accessed 14 September 2015).
66
Randall Peerenboom, China's Long March Towards Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
67
N. J. Schweitzer, Douglas J. Sylvester and Michael J. Saks, Rule violations and the rule of law: a factorial survey of public
attitudes, DePaul Law Review 56(2), (2007), pp. 615638.
68
Tang, Zhen Weiwenban De Shengyi Jing, (translated by the author).
62
63

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This tendency, or at least the desire of the state to promote stability maintenance as a one-stop shop
for conflict resolution, was evident in many of the cases. There were only six of the 65 cases in which no
other government organization was reported to have been involved in the conflict resolution process.
There was an obvious overlap between the architecture of PMCs and between the work done by the
weiwenban. When tiaojie (mediation) is referred to in the cases, it was often difficult or impossible to
ascertain whether the PMC, the weiwenban, or both, was facilitating the mediation.
In resolving conflicts, the weiwen apparatus worked with local Public Security Bureaus, judicial
offices, district courts, Politics and Law Committees, city development boards, economic and trade
bureaus, housing construction bureaus, village committees and local governments, quasi-government
organizations such as the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and PMCs and specialized mediation
committees. Limited funding for local police means that the stability maintenance apparatus, which is
sometimes better funded, sometimes acts as a de facto police force, although over-spending on weiwen
can still damage local budgets.69
The weiwenban may refer its clients to the local body which fits their needs. Cooperating government
organizations can also interact with weiwenban during the conflict resolution process, as well as acting
as supervisors for the remedies that the weiwenban enforces. For example, after a dispute in a bus company, the bus drivers and company came to a consensus, and the drivers agreed to go back to work.
Facilitated by the weiwenban, in tandem with the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the
Federation of Trade Unions (both at district level), the bus company promised changes to the drivers
work contracts. The District Labor Department was enlisted to enforce and supervise these changes.70
The policy implications of this trend are ambiguous. While the advantages of increased interaction
between various departmental bodies are obvious, and while the cross-institutional nature of weiwenban appears to have led to increases in efficiency at times, it is impossible to escape the problem that
increased interaction can merely exacerbate some of the significant problems that local governments
face: arbitrary policy- and decision-making strategies, as well as corruption and an overemphasis on
personal relationships.

Practical facilitation
Since the stability maintenance apparatus has so much access to other government bodies, and since
the process of conflict resolution is fundamentally negotiative and non-legal, the weiwenbans role
tends to be practical and facilitative. There is little attempt to develop general decision-making principles or precedents which can be applied in subsequent cases. This does not just extend to financial
compensation. As part of the bargaining process, the stability maintenance apparatus allows for the
construction of complex facilitative solutions to conflicts.
Examples of this include mandated apologies in situations where official bodies have made mistakes,
such as cremating the wrong body;71 promoting rational patriotism in a case where anti-Japanese
protests were perceived as having got out of hand;72 requesting that children provide their elderly
mother with spiritual care as well as money (she had been attempting to bring a lawsuit to require

Xie, The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China.

Xinying Wei, Qifulou Basiji, Yangcheng wanbao, (18 January 2013), available at: http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2013-0118/143926068160.shtml (accessed 14 September 2013).
71
Hongzhong Zhang, Shangfang Nongfu Bei Song Jingshenbing Quxu: Xian Lingdao Daoqian Chuli Qi Ming Ganbu, Xi'an
wanbao, (14 October 2012), available at: http://news.anhuinews.com/system/2012/10/14/005254614.shtml (accessed
14September 2015); Wenling Binyiguan Fasheng Wulong ShiCuo Ba Atai Yiting Dang Agong Huohua, Taizhou ribao,
(17 January 2012), available at: http://www.anhuinews.com/zhuyeguanli/system/2012/01/17/004713912.shtml (accessed
14 September 2015).
72
Qiping Li, Diaoyudao Shijian Hou Mengcheng Xian Shudao Xuesheng Qingxu Jiaqiang Weiwen Diaoyan, Zhongan jiaoyu
wang, (18 September 2012), available at: http://edu.anhuinews.com/system/2012/09/18/005219613.shtml (accessed 14
September 2015).
69
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this);73 and many cases where weiwenban have spearheaded or mandated the investigation by police
or local government of cases of criminal conduct or financial deception.
This is consistent with the retreat from law and the localized approach characteristic of the weiwen
apparatus, as well as the tendency to make mediation less legalistic and more facilitative. It demonstrates
that the work done by stability maintenance organizations is not confined to financial compensation
or bargaining between individualsonce again, potentially justifying the current policy approach.
Further, even if the cases above are relatively infrequent, or have been exaggerated, it is still possible
to observe some vestiges of weiwen being taken at face valuethat is, as a series of schemes for
increasing the level of stability in society.

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Policy debates
Western writers have tended to assume that the stability maintenance apparatus has a unitary aim:
domestic coercion.74 This is inconsistent with the localized and diverse network of stability maintenance offices. Empirically, the cases above demonstrate great variety in the implementation of stability
maintenance. Critiques of weiwen from Chinese authors also affect the practice of stability maintenance,
particularly at local levels.
Three key concepts have attracted particular academic attention: Yu Jianrongs rigid stability versus
flexible [or resilient] stability;75 Sun Lipings specter of instability and stability maintenance vicious
circle;76 and Yang Yiyongs criticism of movement-based stability maintenance.77 While the articles
that stimulated these particular critiques are short and not very empirical, they have stimulated considerable academic discussion. The practical response to this academic debate can be used to test
the hypothesis that local stability maintenance offices are acting as catalysts for innovation in local
government practice.
Yus concept of rigid stability (gangxing wending) refers to the idea that non-political protest is being
interpreted by the state as being political and handled politically. Many mass incidents, he argues,
are actually cases of anger venting based on local incompetence and the perception by local citizens
that they cannot participate in the management of their own affairs. He suggests that the state has
taken a high tension approach78 characterized by suppression of public opinion and reliance on state
violencewhile the public expresses its opinions increasingly vigorously. Flexible stability, he suggests,
would be characterized by decentralization and micro-politics, where social conflicts at a local level
are treated negotiatively by the state, and accepted as a normal consequence of social development;79
thus, stability and development can co-exist.
Sun conceptualizes Yus high tension society as being characterized by a phantom of instability
(bu wending huanxiang)subjective feelings of social instability have led to excessively censorious
treatment of social conflict. Sun makes the argument that China is not especially unstable: an increase
in social problems is a good thing. It means that people are daring to express their demands, and society
must tolerate and understand this phenomenon. Sun criticizes the common practice by government
of achieving short-term stability by suppressing the expression of vulnerable social groups, describing
this as a stability maintenance vicious circle (weiwen guaiquan) in which the more stability maintenance there is, the less stability there is. Yang furthers this idea by criticizing campaign-based stability
maintenance (yundongshi de weiwen) and suggesting that the key to long-term stability is institutional
development and maintenance rather than severe action in specific circumstances.

63 Sui Apo Qisu San Zin Bu Yanglao, Nandu wang, (10 May 2013), available at: http://paper.oeeee.com/nis/201305/
10/49512.html (accessed 1 October 2015).
74
Xie, The political logic of weiwen in contemporary China, p. 80.
75
Jianrong Yu, Cong Gangxing Weiwen Dao Renxing Weiwen, Xuexi yu tansuo 5, (2009), pp. 113118.
76
Liping Sun, Bu Wending Huanxiang Yu Weiwen Guaiquan, Renmin luntan 295, (2010), pp. 2324.
77
Yiyong Yang, Yundongshi Weiwen Shi Bu Kequ De, Renmin luntan 295, (2010), p. 25.
78
Yu, Cong Gangxing Weiwen Dao Renxing Weiwen, p. 115.
79
Ibid., pp. 116117.
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These analyses are largely targeted towards the perceived problem of mass incidents. Perversely,
perhaps, as Lee and Zhang show, the state treatment of mass incidentscharacterized by buying
short-term stability to avoid attenuated public conflicthas remained largely the same, despite the
evidence that some intellectuals doubt that this method is effective in the long term. But at lower levels
of conflict resolution, those not likely to escalate into mass incidents, this academic discussion may have
had some effect. Local responses to the academic critique of weiwen demonstrate a tendency to use
the structures and discourse of stability maintenance as a means of innovating in local government.
The case of Beiliu city in Guangxi province80 demonstrates the interaction of weiwen with existing
governance structures. Beiliu, particularly Liujing village (the focal point of the case study), had suffered
from inefficient dispute resolution, particularly in view of its increasing number of interpersonal disputes. Dispute resolution was overseen by the two committees (liang wei, the sharing of power between
the Communist Party and village committee81). The responsible cadres lacked expertise, and decisions
had limited enforceability, resulting in many cases being referred upwards through petitioning and
legal action. In short, the existing process had ceased to function. This administrative management
was invigorated by the introduction of harmony associations (hexie xiehui). Twenty-eight harmony
associations were registered as not-for-profit social groups under the direction of the village-level
workstation for comprehensive management, letters and visits and stability management.
The harmony association project might be described as dispute resolution microfinance. Under the
thought leadership of the CCP, the harmony associations aimed to distribute responsibility for dispute
resolution and enhance links with the community (through mass propaganda or qunzhong xuanchuan).
The associations received a startup fund (a weiwen jijin or stability maintenance fund) of 150,000. Rather
than to compensate complainants, this funding was mostly used to increase payment for mediators.
The mediators thus recruited were local people who had the respect of the community and were
recommended by community members, often Party members or retired cadres. Their close links with
the community gave them moral authority in mediation, and their local knowledge allowed them to
negotiate effectively in property and boundary disputes. Liberating cadres from the burden of dispute
resolution improved local relationships, but still provided a means of supervision and objectivity. Yang
suggests that this method provided a more efficient use of resources by limiting compensation, as well
as providing a dispute resolution method which was well-received in the community. He claims that
this is a manifestation of Yus flexible stability, in that it is responsive to the pluralism of the area and
reduces the distance between people and their government.
Reports of similar schemes can be found elsewhere in the academic literature: for example, the implementation of grassroots weiwen through rural village offices (nongshi cunban), also in Guangxi,82 and
the use of stability offices to mediate labor disputes in Henan.83 These are manifestations of a broader
need: to stimulate innovation in weiwen practice; to allow such innovation to improve local government
practice; as a response to the increasing complexity of society; and to facilitate methods of dispute
resolution which promote longer-term stability rather than papering over immediate problems with
compensation and causing more problems later (escaping the stability maintenance vicious circle).
These innovations demonstrate that it is possible for the practice of stability maintenanceat local
level and for personal-level conflictsto respond to the general criticisms of policy which have been
mounted in the past few years and to create innovative practices which are consistent both with the
demands of the party-state and with the specific needs of the region. These strategies seem to accept
that the legal and petitioning system are of limited value in the current local government milieu, and
aim to work around this.
Yuquan Yang, Caogen Zuzhi: Nongcun Weiwen De Neishengxing Ziyuan Yu Zhengfu Shehui Guanli Chuangxin,
Zhonggong Guizhou shengweidangxiao xuebao 142(6), (2012), pp. 97101.
81
Xin Sun, Travis J. Warner, Dali L. Yang and Mingxing Liu, Patterns of authority and governance in rural China: whos in
charge? Why?, Journal of Contemporary China 22(83), (2013), pp. 733754.
82
Zhongqun Huang, Nongshi Cunban Zhulao Weiwen Diyi Daofangxian, Dangdai Guangxi 12, (2010), pp. 4647.
83
Caiyan Li and Changfeng Wang, Erqi Qu Weiwenban: Jishi Huajie Maodun Jiufen Bao Wending, Nongcun-nongye-nongmin
8, (2009), p. 15.
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Naturally, there are limits on this. Since the innovative methods described have not appeared to
work well in dealing with larger-scale mass incidents, it is difficult to see that the particular distribution
of funding which occurred in the Beiliu harmony associations could be applied to systems where mass
incidents were more common: as the stability maintenance funds would presumably continue to be
applied to buying stability in response to mass incidents, it is unlikely that grassroots conflict resolution
methods would be prioritized. Second, the problem of expertise remains crucial. This is so both in terms
of the low capacity of local officials to resolve conflicts skillfully, which none of the proposed weiwen
reforms really address, as well as in terms of the harmony association model, which requires that people
of sufficient skill and standing in the community can be lured into performing difficult and controversial roles on the basis of relatively small sums of moneya situation which, while it appears to have
happened in various places, cannot be said to be guaranteeably replicable across the whole of China.
In a broader sense, while the debate about weiwen reform is has been approved of by the state
at some level, the ideas promoted by such controversial figures as Yu Jianrong and Sun Liping are
unlikely to form part of the mainstream thought processes of the party-state. Observation of the overall tendency of the Chinese state under Xi Jinping, as well as within the management of the stability
maintenance scheme (for example, that the responsible minister, Guo Shengkun, has a background
in policing and business rather than in law), suggest that it is the authoritarian tendency and the
financial tendency rather than negotiation or long-term social planning which will rule in these cases.
But even if this is true, it remains clear that experimentation is the fulcrum on which Chinese policy is
often developed,84 so local innovation in stability maintenance practice cannot merely be ignored or
conceptually marginalized.

Conclusion
Fundamentally, this article has aimed to study the weiwen phenomenon in and of itself. That is, it has
attempted not to conflate stability maintenance as a series of organizations and practices with the
pursuit of actions which are designed to increase the level of actual stabilityhowever that can be
measuredor to prevent the level of stability from being lowered. On both a practical and an epistemic
level, these two things are linked but ultimately discrete. Weiwen has become, and was likely intended
as, an all-purpose tool for solving various social and political problems (in much the same way as petitioning was in the mid-2000s), in a context in which, through lack of resources and political will, legal
methods have been marginalized. One of its uses has been conflict resolution at a local level, an area
which has perhaps been ignored by other writers because it does not always fit into a larger picture
of national political stability.
This analysis of grassroots weiwen highlights a society which is struggling with low-level local conflicts and in which it is difficult to resolve problems other than by financial compensation or state violence. Stability maintenance does not address these problems in an overall sense, and in some ways it
exacerbates them. Nor is stability maintenance at all compatible with legal development or the rule of
law, harking back as it does to traditional interpersonal means of mediation characteristic of the Mao
period and earlier.
Nonetheless, considered at a grassroots level, the hypotheses posed about the effect of stability
maintenance have been in part confirmed. It is clear that, although it may not be a feasible option in
the long term, stability maintenance bodies have brought more to the world of conflict resolution than
just extra money: they have been able, in various ways and in various places, to improve the quality of
negotiation in disputes, and to facilitate outcomes which involve more than just the transfer of sums
of money. The data seem to demonstrate that, when the conflict is below mass incident level, the roles
played by stability maintenance officials become increasingly flexible. In terms of the issue of policy

Sebastian Heilmann, From local experiments to national policy: the origins of Chinas distinctive policy process, The
China Journal 59, (2008), pp. 130.

84

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17

flexibility and innovation, it has been demonstrated that local authorities have been able to respond
to academic critiques of weiwen by creating innovative local means of resolving conflicts.
None of the arguments made above necessarily contradict the broader critique of weiwen mounted
by the Western authors cited above. Rather, they demonstrate first that weiwen is a complicated organism difficult to generalize about, and second that weiwen, together with peoples mediation, is providing
a means of local conflict resolution which fills a gap in local Chinese society which other organizations
and strategic approaches, whether from the state or from individuals, cannot effectively fill.

Acknowledgements

Downloaded by [Universite Laval] at 21:40 03 April 2016

This article was initially developed during the authors tenure as Visiting Research Fellow at the LOEWE Research Focus,
Goethe University, Frankfurt, and later refined with the assistance of a New Staff Grant from Macquarie University. The
author thanks Deng Yanhua, Peter Gries, Heike Holbig, Liu Mingxing, Xiao Tangbiao and Zhang Yonghong, as well as the
anonymous referees, for their assistance and comments, and extends special thanks to his research assistant, Andrew Yeo.

Notes on contributor
Jonathan Benney is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash
University, Australia. He has previously worked as a lecturer at Macquarie University and a researcher and postdoctoral
fellow at the National University of Singapore, Goethe University and the University of Oklahoma. He received his Ph.D.
from the University of Melbourne in 2010. He studies contentious politics and political communication in modern China,
with particular emphasis on new media, activism, dispute resolution, the role of law and rights, and the history of ideas.
His first book, Defending Rights in Contemporary China, was published by Routledge in 2013.

ORCID
Jonathan Benney

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6972-9591