ABSTRACT
This chapter compares peasant protest against heavy taxation and land expropriation in China since the 1990s and analyses briefly the impact of rural protest on the Chinese state. It argues that peasant anti-tax protest was policy-based while land protest was interest-based. Protest leadership was crucial in the emergence of both types of protest and thick ties in a village community facilitated mobilisation of the peasants. Anti-tax protest emerged in the 1990s when some peasants acquired central policy documents on lowering peasant taxation level and started popularising them among fellow villagers. Anti-tax protests were widespread but township-bound, loosely organised, led by men trained politically by the local Party-state, who tended to be a team head. Land protest emerged simply because great interests were at stake. It was more militant, better organised, but less widespread and smaller, with more diversified leaders and relying on non-state social organisations, such as clans, for mobilisation. Both types of protests were local, driven by concrete economic grievances, targeting the local government and posing no organisational or ideological challenges to the state. These protests, however, exerted great influence on local officials and the local government, shaped national rural policies and transformed state-society relationship in China.
