Outsourcing repression: everyday state power in contemporary China

Lynette H. Ong tells the story of how the Chinese state engages nonstate actors-from violent street gangsters to nonviolent grassroots brokers. Drawing from a decade of ethnographic research from 2011 to 2019, a unique and original event dataset, and a collection of government regulations, Ong shows how the state uses these nonstate actors to coerce and mobilize the masses, while reducing resistance. Theorizing a counterintuitive form of state repression, she uses China's urbanization scheme to examine how authoritarian states can successfully enlist a small segment of society to gain acquiescence from the larger segments of society.

In Outsourcing Repression, Lynette H. Ong tells the story of how the Chinese state engages nonstate actors--from violent street gangsters to nonviolent grassroots brokers. Drawing from a decade of ethnographic research from 2011 to 2019, a unique and original event dataset, and a collection of government regulations, Ong shows how the state uses these nonstate actors to coerce and mobilize the masses, while reducing resistance. Theorizing a counterintuitive form of state repression, she uses China's urbanization scheme to examine how authoritarian states can successfully enlist a small segment of society to gain acquiescence from the larger segments of society.

"How do states coercive citizens into compliance and minimize backlash at the same time? Outsourcing Repression portrays state engagement of nonstate actors-violent street gangsters and nonviolent grassroots brokers-to coerce and mobilize the masses for state pursuits in a manner that reduces resistance. This book draws on 200 interviews from ethnographic research conducted annually over a decade (2011-2019) from the era of Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, a unique and original event dataset, and a collection of government regulations to study everyday land grabs and housing demolition in China. Outsourcing Repression theorizes a counterintuitive form of repression that reduces resistance and backlash. Everyday state power is quotidian power acquired through society by penetrating nonstate territories and mobilizing the masses within. Ong uses China's urbanization scheme as a window of observation and explains how the arguments can be generalized to other country contexts"--