3: Everyday Violence in China

Saturday, March 26, 2022

10:30am – 12:00pm EST

Location: Conv. Center, Room 308A

Paper Presenter(s)

SS

Suzanne Scoggins
Clark University, United States

Protests and riots are the best-known expressions of state-society conflict in China, but a broad undercurrent of smaller-scale, violent encounters between police officers and residents also defines the contentious relationship between the state and the public. These confrontations are lower profile than mass incidents and thus more likely to escape attention, yet evidence of the clashes is openly available on video sharing sites, social media, online forums, and even local news sites and serve as tangible evidence of police-society conflict at the grassroots. This paper probes the contours of “everyday violence” in China, using an original dataset chronicling violent, smaller-scale encounters between the police and the public. The incidents span a broad range of conflicts and outcomes and include violent incidents initiated by both police officers and civilians. The study maps the location, frequency, causes, and resolutions of everyday violence, finding that conflicts resulting in police injury are most likely to be initiated by civilians and involve traffic disputes or charges of disorderly conduct. Conflicts resulting in civilian injury are more varied. The data also capture reports of violence against police officers and inspectors for attempting to enforce Covid-19 protocols such as mask wearing and temperature checks. The results provide new insight into the nature of state-society conflict in China and the challenges for legitimacy and order faced by local state law enforcement.