 Well, well, good afternoon. Did you say what rather unusual time for us to have our seminar, but nonetheless, very welcome to this week's Monday seminar. I'm Steve Zhang and Director of the China Institute, and we have a fantastic speaker today from Canada who will be talking to us on a very important subject. Many of you who have been interested in developments in China. We will have noticed that since 2013 with the issue of document number nine, China under Xi Jinping had banned certain concepts, including civil society. In a sense, it has been what is subject of this afternoon seminar is about it has banned contentious politics not supposed to happen. We are supposed to have a harmonious society in China now. So, our speaker will talk to us on the very subject of contentious contentious politics in China under Xi Jinping rule. And she is Professor Lynette, she is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. She started her academic career as a an N1 postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. And she had also, when she is not at Toronto, spent time visiting institutions like in China, Beijing University and Fudan University and in North America, Harvard. She is the author of a really first class book, POSPA or Purish Credit and Fiscal Systems in rural China, which came out in 2012. I think the year when Xi Jinping became the leader of China. I'm not sure which was the more important matter at the publication of the book or Xi Jinping becoming becoming leader of the Communist Party. But with that, let me hand it over to you Lynette. And then we will have discussions after you share your thoughts with us over to you. Okay, can everyone hear me okay. All right, great. Thank you Steve for the introduction. Very is really my honor to be here presenting my working paper with my graduate student Kevin Lowe. We are going to talk about contentious politics in China, drawing on data, a data set that we have been building on protests in China that happened over the last 15 years or so. We are also going to be drawing on publicly available state statistics on public security spending. So this is the context of our paper. And also what motivates our paper is that we know that political landscape in China under Xi Jinping's rule has actually undergone an autocratic turn in really various dimension and various aspects. There has been increased state control and intensified repressive instruments in terms of ideology we have heard about, you know, China dream Xi Jinping thought a lot of resources and funding has been given to universities to study ideology because the ideology is one of the ways that the state legitimize its rule increased restriction on how civil society works, basically shrinking the space in which civil society could operate. We also see, you know, in establishment of CCP institutions within private sector and private enterprises. We have a lot of talk on urban grid and social credit system for surveillance purposes. There's been curtailment of labor rights a lot of labor labor rights activists have been rounded up and also equally important coverage on religious and ethnic minorities, repression, particularly concentration camp being built in Xinjiang. And all those repression, there's also been slowing economic growth and growing unemployment in some parts of the country, and surely that has an impact independently on, on protest activities independent of repression. Given these mirad of, of things going on in, in China, in China under Xi Jinping's rule, how do citizens then respond to these changing political and economic environments. So that is what motivated our study. Generally, this literature has painted kind of two phases of China's security state and these two phases are sometimes even contradict each other. People have written about the rise of Chinese security state. This tenement. So since 1989 from early 1990s, there is been, there's been quite a lot of evidence. If we look at the statistics on public security, we know that the funding devoted to public security has actually increased. And public security agency has been given increased prominence in terms of their ranking within the bureaucratic system. And since Hu Jintao second term that is from 2007 onwards, public security spending has actually increased faster than defense related expenditures. And for the first time in 2010 expenditure on domestic public security has actually exceeded defense ex expenditures. And in 2016, the gap between them has widened to 13%. At the same time, you know you have the civil society law being being passed, which restricted civil society activities. The overall picture of increased all the rise of Chinese security state really mask a lot of regional as well as sectoral variation. And that is what we wanted to contribute to. We think this overall national level picture might be true, but it actually mask, it might be oversimplifying a lot of regional and sectoral variation. Because first of all, we know that China has actually implemented since 80s and early 90s has implemented fiscal decentralization, meaning that local governments, and in this case provincial and county level governments actually left to finance their public securities, right, left to finance their own salaries for the police and how they would then repress or deal with protesters. So you, we are likely to see these uneven public security spending across provinces. So wealthier provinces have more resources to spend on public security. So provinces also have more resources to spend on public goods in general. This includes education, health, health care pension, and so forth, where it's poorer provinces because they are poorer. They have less of resources to spend on public goods, including public security. So we draw our data from this data set that I've been building for quite some time, which is based on which practice cases based on media reports. So this is a collection of Chinese as well as Western media on on the reports of contentious activities in mainland China. And we collect cases from, you know, over a wide range of period, but from on this particular paper we draw on cases from 2007 onwards, which is the second half of who when period and compare that with cases from 2012 to 2016, which is the first term of Xi Jinping period. So we have four years from who when period and the first four years from Xi Jinping rule and trying to compare these two periods. And we measure different dimensions of protest according to length, length, participant size, locality, and then the protest, then also broken down into different grievance type. There's an education type of protest like all the teachers salaries, ethnic protest environment, human rights, health care, homeowners protest, investment type investment related type protest which is really has really mushroomed until recently before it's cracked down mushroom last couple of years in China, because of proliferation of P2P or peer to peer online platform. And then went bankrupt. So you see a lot of investors that have lost their lifetime savings then gone out to protest. Labor rights protests which has been very common since 90s, labor protest divided into private sector labor protest and SOE or state law enterprise labor protest, miscarriage of justice nationalist protest, protest over police brutality and that includes in a brutality of Chenguan, which is semi semi state or semi formal security in in China, in charge of controlling street vendors, private matters, taxi and petty caps, and protest over taxes and veterans practice. This is a breakdown of practice according to different grievance type number of incidents in from 2009 to 12 and 2013 to 2016. If we look at the change in incidents over these two period. Education protests have gone up, environment has gone up, homeowners protest have gone up tremendously. And these are protests by individual homeowners against not the local government but against people property management companies, companies that actually manage their properties. Let's say if your drainage is not managed properly. If your neighborhood compounds are poorly managed, and you get a lot of pollution. People will often homeowners will often complain to property management companies, right, which is a private firm. And these are the protests have actually proliferated. Human rights protests have also increasingly increased by 57% over the two periods. Investment related practice like I've mentioned earlier the P to P type of investment, a lot of them have gone upside down. That has caused some grievances. This has also increased marginally. SOE protests have gone down, because on the seating pin. There's actually been consolidation of state on enterprises right so few will state on enterprise reform. So few will state on enterprise labor protests. The police brutality protests has declined and this is not so much police brutality but but brutality of Chenguan, which is same informal type of type of security that walked around urban urban China and trying to control movement of micro workers, how informal street vendors run their businesses. They were known to be very violent. About 10 15 years ago, but there has been a series of local governance reform to try to image to try to improve their properties to try to move to improve their, their governance and the way in, in, in which they are funded. And that has. The overall improved governance of Chenguan. Taxi and petty caps. This has also declined because there has also been cracked down and reform of the sector so in the first half of the period. There was the rise of DD and, and, and no ordering of caps during on during mobile apps. And that has caused a lot of competition to traditional taxi drivers, and hence you see a lot of protests of bi taxi drivers in the first first period. In terms of protest, it has been no, no change. In terms of protest size has been largely the same X except you know, I think taxi and petty caps protest have also increased in large in larger size. Investment protests have gone up and land rights protests even though the numbers have declined slightly. The overall size have in have increased slightly by about 25%. The overall distribution of protest but there has been an increase in urban located protest. So more protests are being staged in urban areas now, except you know, land and ethnic protest and environment protests are still concentrated in rural areas. Labor protests are concentrated generally in pro river Delta which around Guangdong region. And there's young the river Delta in Gejiang and Jiangsu area which is not surprising because these are the two areas with the highest concentration of factories. And that ranks highest in terms of land and labor protest and sorry land and housing protest and I'll show you the amount of public security spending in Guangdong in a minute and you could see the correlation between the two. Interestingly, environmental protest used to concentrated in more wealthier and urban areas, but that is in the last in the second period has actually extended beyond Guangdong, Gejiang and Fujian into places even like in the Mongolia, Jiangxi and Sichuan. I think this is overall kind of the spread of increased appreciation for the environment changing in citizens attitude towards the environment that that we have witnessed over the last decade or so. And that is I think reflected in increased environmental protest. And I say, you know, homeowners protests have been dispersed, you know, throughout different provinces with varying level of development. And again, I think that reflects kind of people changing values. They are more, they are more less hesitant these days to bring grievances against property management companies. So if we look through, throughout, you know, different types of protests. Generally, environmental protest and home ownership protest, they are least least repressed compared to other types of protest. So they are less sensitive, as far as the government is concerned, because home ownership protest is generally directed towards private companies. So, so less repressive type of protest have actually gone up quite significantly, right, and spread to other less wealthier provinces. But but labor protests and ethnic type of protest which is very heavily repressed. We have seen a decline in numbers. You know, different dynamics going on here. This shows you provincial public security spending as a percentage of total government expenditures. So out of total provincial government expenditures, the percentage going to public security. So the percentage going to maintaining public security or China or in Chinese is called we went. So, I don't know how well you could see this but let me try to enlarge the, the funds. So, generally, you could see that the province spends between four and 8% on public securities. This is the consistent trend throughout most of the provinces, between four and eight and 8% And Guangdong is an exception. Guangdong in the first in the warm period spent close to 12% in late to 2010s on public security. And I'm way is lower compared to other provinces in terms of how much they spend on public security. So you could see generally that wealthier provinces like Guangdong and Beijing spend more than poor provinces like I'm with us. So higher in Beijing, Fujian, Guangdong, and lower in Anhui, Gansu, and Guizhou. So this reflects kind of the nature of fiscal decentralization in China and the fact that public security is locally funded. And if we were to compare the two periods if we draw kind of 2013 f dividing line with when Xi Jinping came came to power. Generally, public security spending declined in the second half of one era. But then when Xi Jinping came to power just generally an uptick. In most provinces, even with the uptick, it has never recovered to the peak in the warm period. Right. So even with so much talk and so much energy given to how Xi Jinping has become more repressive, judging from the statistics on spending, it has never recovered to in the warm period. I think the reason is that the major reason is that Zhou Yongkang was the secretary of Zhou Yongkang was first of all Minister of Public Security from 2002 to 2007. He made it the secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission from 2007 to 2012 that is Zheng, Zheng Huawei Shu Jing. So he had a lot of power at the time he wanted to build his empire around public securities. And then he was he actually made public public social unrest date data, right, saying that you know social unrest cases have been increasing in China, which then justifies more resources being devoted to public security. And he was placed under investigation for corruption in 2013. And he came to power because you know Xi Jinping thought that he was, he was in a rival faction and he was being too ambitious. So, since then, security spending has actually gone down. This shows you the same thing but but from in a different set of provinces and overall you could see that in our poor provinces, poor provinces like Qinghai, public security spending is lower than other provincial trends. And exception is of course in Xin in Xinjiang, right, which has gone up tremendously. It's spending has gone up tremendously since 2014 or so. Zhou Yong has also devoted a lot of resources more so than other provinces to public security spending because it's a wealthier wealthier province and it could afford it. So a lot of regional variation. And if we talk about national train it actually mask provincial variation significantly. And this, and we were interested in whether what is the function or what is the relationship between public security spending and protest incident. Right. So, so does the government spend on public security in order to preempt protest in advance, or do they use it to repress protest post hoc. We were interested in the sequence between these two type of relationship. So here we have, we lack public security spending so this is public security in the previous year. The dependent variable is protest incidents in the current year. And we control for level of urbanization, level of unemployment, population size, GDP per capita and GDP growth. Here we realize that you know, public security spending in the previous period actually has a negative effect on on protest incidents, suggesting that the nature of repression in China is that it's actually that of a preemptive nature, which means government spend in spend in order to preempt protest. Right. Also interestingly, GDP per capita has a positive and as well as significant effect on protest incidents, right in a wealthy area, you would imagine society relationship is more complicated and hence you are more likely to see more protest. But then again, if region experience high GDP growth, that is able to ameliorate or alleviate the positive relationship between GDP per capita, and, and, and protest. So if you want to keep protest level low. This, this regression model suggests that a problem should spend more on on public security in advance to preempt protest. If you are a region with high GDP per capita that is not really within your control. But if you keep GDP growth up that is able to alleviate the effect of GDP per capita the positive relationship. We thought that was that was that was interesting because there's been a lot of descriptive literature on on preemptive repression and here because we combine two sets of data we are able to show that repression is really off a preemptive nature in China at the provincial level. This shows you the repressive capacity of different regions versus protest incidents. So the x axis is the ratio of spending on repression or public security over total public expenditures. And this is the protest incidents per capita. So this is, this is a general regional variation. I want to highlight you provinces that fall into this bottom right hand quadrant and obvious one being Xinjiang, the Xinjiang spends a lot on on public security, right, you saw the numbers earlier, but he has also able to keep incidents under control, which which it's money pretty much well well spent. Yes, it does spend a lot of money more than other provinces to but is is protest incidents per capita on the per capita basis is also much lower than other provinces. The flip side of this situation is those provinces or municipality in the top hand quadrant. So, you know, a municipality like like like Beijing, which also spends a lot on public security, but see very high protest incidents per capita. Right, and Guangdong is largely because of labor labor rights protests, as well as practice over over over land. And we know that Guangdong has always had a different context and background is traditionally known as a more or less a more rebellious province, which the center has traditionally had issue exerting control over. And, you know, for those of you who have been to Guangdong and done in a few research in Guangdong, particularly around governance and and protest issues, you know that people in Guangdong behave very differently, they think differently and behave differently. There's a lot of disdain for authority from coming from from Beijing their strong local, localism type of attitude going on in that part of China. And Beijing, there's a lot of protest cases but there's also important to bear in mind that grievance actually do not necessarily have to originate from Beijing, a lot of people travel from other provinces far away provinces, they travel to Beijing and stage petition and stage petition in Beijing because Beijing protests could generally attract the attention of central level officials right. So you see more protests in Beijing in Beijing doesn't mean that Beijing is more one than other provinces, it just means that other people, people from other parts of China go to Beijing to protest. Left hand, left top quadrant. These are provinces who do not have a lot of money like in the Mongolia to spend on on protest. They decide not to spend a lot but but protest incidents are also quite high or relatively high. The top left hand quadrant which is most provinces fall under relatively speaking they do not spend a lot on on protest repression. They also do not have a lot of protest and obvious instance being other way. Right. These are generally poorer provinces. This shows you repressive capacity versus protest size. It's slightly different dynamics for Xinjiang is more or less the same and guandong's location or geographical in the, in the, it's spot in the to access more or less the same Beijing as you could see, in terms of if you measure it in terms of protest is size is relatively smaller but in terms of protest incidents it was high up here right and and other way in terms of protest sizes is is higher but in terms of protest incidents it was low down here. So, so, you know, that tells you different relationship between protest and repressive capacity. Now let me, let me end with this slide on what does this tell us about Xi Jinping's rule. Is there a Xi Jinping effect. We know that, you know, under Xi Jinping's rule, Chinese governance has actually taken an autocratic turn, but protest has not actually declined just judging by numbers alone. And in terms of increased repression, like we hear and read from from media and social media every day. That is actually not reflected in the data at all, or put more more precisely I think data suggested more fine grain data suggested there's actually a great deal of variation in terms of repression in China. In places like Xinjiang, it has definitely gone up tremendously places like Guangdong and, and Jo Jiang, devote more resources to to repression because they could afford to do so. But by and large most of the provinces, which are relatively poor, they actually don't have that much resources to devote to repression or public goods in general, and public security is is seen as one of the many forms of public goods repression. Like I say, a great deal of regional variation is quite difficult to generalize. There's been quite a bit of sectoral variation too. And we are doing we are conducting in a more analysis and more investigation into sectoral variation but I think it suffices to say that you know in different sectors, I think protesters in different sectors face political opportunity. Right. And yes, we have increased repression, but there's also slowing economic growth and slowing economic growth, you know, affects some sectors more than other sectors. You can imagine some sectors such as labor might actually benefits from slowing economic growth. Right. Because you know, there's there's there's kind of fewer economic activities going going on on the one hand so you would imagine factory size might actually shrink factories numbers might might actually shrink. But also those existing factories might have trouble paying their workers, and then more workers would then go out and stage protests. Slow economic growth definitely has a dampening effect on labor or sorry on land rights type of process because slowing economic growth generally means slowing construction activities, fewer, fewer construction, fewer land grabs, and therefore fewer land related type of sectoral governance reform have been implemented in Chenguan in in PDP investment platforms that has been clamped down by by the central government, and hence we also see fewer protests in those sectors because of governance reform. And of course, like all data, our data is subject to some measurement issues, like all media related data. It is bias, generally there was a bias towards urban type of protest because reporters tend to have more access on more access to protest in urban localities. And reporters also tend to pay more attention to larger protests so smaller protests may be missed and under reported. But I think we source our data from different different sources, and I think overall we are able to to balance out some of these, these measurement issues. The question mark here in as far as contentious politics is concerned in China, a big wild card is where is the economy going right, and I think slowing economic growth in China which is more of a structural issue will have a major determinant over the direction of process. And I think you know increased repression applies really. It definitely applies to Xinjiang and in other region. There is there is the type of repression at least reflected in the in the numbers that I have shown you have not actually increased that that tremendously. I think with the pandemic it has hit some groups more than other groups such as in a migrant workers more than other other sectors. Let me just end with the other word of caution which is repression in China. What I've shown you is repression that could actually be measured, which is in terms of public security spending, but there are other types of repression in China, a lot of it is not reflected in numbers. For instance, the state might actually mobilize you know, neighborhood committees and stayed on enterprise managers to exert influence over protesters that work in that unit or live in the neighborhood to convince them to not go out to the street to protest. Right there has been quite a bit of literature on this type of relational or informal type of repression I've written some about this sort of repression too. So this sort of repression is not easily measured in a quantitative sense. And I think that sort of repression might actually be ramped up, even though overall spending in public security has not increased all that much. So this is the other hand that this is the other side of the picture that I think we need to pay attention to and this is something that is not captured by statistics. So I will end here and look very much forward to your questions. Thank you very much. That was a fantastic talk, I think extremely interesting data that you have shared with us and very interesting observations as well. We already have a good number of questions in the Q&A box. So if you have any questions to leave forward, I would certainly like to use the privilege of the chair and ask a question first. But before that, let me just remind everybody that if you would like to ask a question, it would be helpful if you could who you are, but if you would prefer your identities to be kept secret, just say so, and the confidentiality will be respected, but it will be helpful for me to know whether you are an academic colleague from somewhere else or whether you are a student and whether you're undergraduate or PhD student, give us a better sense of where the question is coming from. Now, let me start off by asking you about your very, very interesting data set on the grievance types. Well, I found something very interesting in the data you provided. In terms of the ethnic labor police brutality and taxi pedicabs categories. They've all in fact fallen. They were the inactive territories. Ethnic, yes. Labor rights and police brutality correct. Correct. And taxi cap too. Yes, correct. Now, what does that actually tell us? I mean, particularly if something like taxi cap seems to sort of stand out as a separate one. But when we are looking at the ethnic, the labor and the police brutality categories. And given that we know in general terms of the increase in repression under Xi Jinping compares to the Hu Jintao era. Right. So you would expect that there will be more complaints in this categories, not less complaint in this categories. Right. So the fact that they are significantly negative requires an explanation. What does it tell us does it mean that, for example, the repression was actually effective. And therefore there's a sort of intimidating effect. And therefore, people raise less issues. Is that right or is there something else, something much more important. Yeah, you know, this is one area that we that we are trying to look closer into taxi and pedicabs. As well as police brutality with respect to Cheng Guan. This is because of governance reform in the Cheng Guan sector. So under Xi Jinping, Cheng Guan is better paid. There was an economist article I think just two or three weeks ago that talks about Cheng Guan. Right. They used to be very violent. And this would just openly beat up street vendors, some 1015 years ago, but in the last five years, their image has actually improved. They are better paid they are better trained and better funded. And I think that so that might be a supply site issue too. In terms of taxi and pedicabs. In one period, that was the beginning of mobile app. You could order, you know, DD through mobile app. So a lot of taxi drivers felt increased competition. Right. So, so they went out and stage protests usually coordinating with other taxi drivers within the same same city. But I think in the last couple of years, the government has also tried to control that sort of protest and then control how licenses were given in the different municipalities. So that has led to a decline. So a lot of it is, I think if we see decline is actually a result of supply site issue, which is, which is governance reform in that particular sector. Not necessarily increased, not usually because of increased repression. SOE reform, I will say that you know that is because of lesser SOE shutdown and just lesser SOE reform in general on the seating pin. Right. In fact, seating pin is trying to build the SOE sector so less, less protest. So ethnic, ethnic related protests, I think you, I think that is related to repression like that, like what you have pointed out earlier. Lesser protests being staged by Uighurs and other ethnic minorities because the government has actually kept a closer eye on, on, on those ethnic minorities people. Yes. So, you know, a range of reasons. Let me move on to the questions that have come in through the Q&A box is a question from Dr. Jeanette Liao from the University of Dundee. The question, having thank you for your enlightening, enlightening talk, her question is that it's very interesting to see the figures you have presented over the public security spending versus economic levels, which seems to have differed from common sense, which would assume that in poor regions, people would tend to protest more often. The preemptive repression model may explains this lower frequency of protests in richer areas, but can it explain what has happened in the poorer regions? The example of Xinjiang seems to suggest that such kind of spending is also closely related to the central government's policy. You know, that's a great, great question. And I think there are several things going on here. I think, you know, overall protest is, I would say, you know, protest in general tends to happen in wealthier areas because social relationship in wealthier areas are more complex. Right. There's more, there's more, there's more factories. There's more economic activities. And if governance is not improved, more activities means that there's greater opportunities for conflicts to occur between citizen groups as well as between state and society. And I think even from descriptive statistics, we could see that, you know, even you could say that, you know, counter common sense, against common sense, protest tends to happen in wealthier areas. So if we talk about, if we talk about when there's an economic shock, right, when there's, when we have economic crisis, a lot of people turn out to protest. And I think that is different if you were to compare a bunch of regions in terms of economic disparity. So if you have an economic shock, I think if you have a one shock effect that that that sort of shock will generally stimulate people to protest more. But that is different from comparing provinces with different protest level. And the other dimension of the other question that she asked, I don't, I don't remember. But, but anyway, so I hope I've addressed the gist of it, unless you know, Steve remembers the second part of Janet's question. We have quite a few questions so I would. Okay. I will move on. The next one I would like you to address is one from one of our PhD students Melia. How, and she would like to ask you to what extent has censorship impact on your data collection process, which is based on Chinese media report question mark. Do you spot any patent of certain topics becoming so-called sensitive over the years. You know, very, very, you know, sensible and good question. So the data here stops in about 2015. I haven't shown you the data after 2015 because they are so far fewer cases after that. In 2015, you know, the central government really took heart rain over protest incidents reporting in the second half of Xi Jinping period in the first in the first half, we still read quite quite a lot about about protest cases. Rounding up of people collecting, you know, protests statistics, there's a guy in Sichuan, and a couple that has been collecting data on we will, those people were thrown into jail in the last couple of years. So we were lucky that in the first half we were still able to collect, collect incidents in terms of where we collect our cases. We, our sources came from a range of media, such as, you know, Bosun, Radio Free Asia, these are mostly western organization, or dissident organizations that have, you know, presence in China, if not in Hong Kong. And some of them have, have reporters base in China, or rely on eyewitness account and eyewitness reporting of, of incidents. So, you know, multiple sources and multiple ways in which they collect data. Okay. I have a related question from a colleague base at the Norwegian Institute for Defensed Research, Lime Marie Brinstrand. The question is, you say that the research is based on media reports. And this also including social media post. I would have thought that reporting on protest would be sensitive in and of itself. Dust. There would also be quite a lot of pressure to avoid such reporting wouldn't it. So this, my data set is source from, from websites, they are not social media. And there is actually quite a bit of distinction between between them. The website depends on two types of, of accounts on reporters reporting, as well as eyewitness account. Right. So, if my land has been grabbed, I went out to protest. I might, I might, I might report to website to say that you know I saw protest of 50 people about about land. But social media post is only based on eyewitness account. So the, the, the way in which reporting was done is different between these two type of sources. The other thing that I would say about I would about social media post is that you actually so people who work on social media data you see them reporting on large number of protest incidents. But typically a lot less information on each case, because typically when people post on we will, and social media, they, they report less information typically about grievance and protest sites and location that's it. But we have been able to measure different dimensions of protest, including, you know, differentiating where people are from and where they stage protest. Because we use data from websites that has a full reports of protest incidents. So you know they are some, some significant differences between these, these two sources. But you know I've, we have cross, we have cross check our, our trends as well as descriptive statistics with people like Jennifer Pan from Stanford who work on social media data. Generally, two sets of data show similar trends in, in terms of ways social unrest has been heading in the last couple of years. I'm changing directions completely. And this is a question from Dr. Sin Liu from the University of Central Lancaster. And the question is that you, sorry your data compares the last four years of the Hu Jintao Wen Jiao Bao administration with the first four years of the Xi Jinping administration. Do you think the picture would look different if you are comparing Xi Jinping's second term. In other words, the first four years, the first four years of Xi Jinping's second term which is still unfolding. I think the question is, are you comparing like with like when you're comparing the last four years of Hu Jintao with the first four years of Xi Jinping. Right. Good question. So, our motivation was to compare how much Xi Jinping has actually changed compared to one period which is his predecessor right. We, we don't have data for at least not shown here data for the last couple of last four years. So if you were to ask me how is protest like in the last four years I, I will have to speculate. I can tell you that just looking at raw numbers, protest have declined tremendously. And I think a lot of that might be due to censorship issue. We know that, you know, there's no American reporters based in China anymore no American, no Australian reporters based in men in China. Even domestic reporters have finally increasingly difficult to report on something like like protest. And I think this much harsher environment really took place since about four years ago. Since 2015, which is not reflected on data. So a lot more, a lot more difficult to get protest cases now. And partly for that reason we actually stopped in at the end of sitting things first, first time, where data was still relatively available. The follow up from Dr. Liu is a follow up from me, you said the data become much more difficult to gather into the third year of Xi Jinping's first term. What is your sense of why it got so much more difficult at that point. Why is it so much more repressive at that point. I think the central leadership has gone just more paranoid about about about protest. I think I think generally Chinese administration pre Xi Jinping have seen protest as having providing two sides of the coin. One is it is an expression of grievance, but it is also a way for central leadership to keep pulse of society. So unhappy why they are unhappy and the scale of the problem. But I think the current administration's attitude towards protest is, they don't even want to know where the problem is right. They just want to keep a lit on it, keep a very, very tight tight lip on it. So, so, so, so you have these two phases of what two different functions of what protests are supposed to serve. And under current leadership increasingly so they want to forget about the informational function of protest. They just want to focus everything on the grievance dimension of protest and for an authoritarian regime. It is not good for the people to express their grievance period. And I think, I think that is at least my sense of why, you know, it's increasingly difficult to get protest data. Okay, thank you. So a question from one of our PhD students. Johan's cargo. Can you tell us more about the nature of veterans protest in terms of location size and demands, please. Yes. Good question. There's been quite a bit of veterans practice and my understanding is. There has been reform going on in the, in the, in the military so veterans I think they used to be able to draw resources from all sorts of economic activities that they are allowed to run after, after they retired their organizations that could that could run economic activities and then they could draw some of the revenue. That has been reform quite significantly in the last couple of years. So, so, you know, those pocket money or extra funding has has dried up. And I think a lot of veterans unhappy because they, they, the formal pensions that they draw not sufficient to finance their livelihood with skyrocketing inflation rate and, and, and cost of living in China so it's a case of increasing expenses, but dwindling revenue is a case of what is going on in that, in that sector, and veterans protest is typically quite politically sensitive in China because they are seen as regime insiders right. So for you know Chinese scholars who have done a lot of interview work on veterans protest veterans are able to use a lot of emotional tactics to draw sympathy to the applied. You know what SOE protesters do in the late 90s when SOE will shut down a lot of in a lot of them were under reformed in the Tongbei area right. So E workers like veterans felt that they have been cheated by the system, because they contribute their lives and they'll use to the country and to the enterprises. But when, but when they get all the system or the government doesn't, doesn't really take care of them is that it does is that sort of sentiment that gives rise to a lot of emotions. And hence it typically attracts a lot of sympathy. Okay. Let's move to a somewhat run a different subject, which is a question from Matt Kennedy. How has the relationship between the party, particularly a party central and the provinces have evolved under Xi Jinping in comparisons to that under Hu Jintao the changing relationship between the party and the provinces. And I suppose that your question is directed to is with respect to public security spending right. Well, I can't tell you, because I'm not Matthew Kennedy. I think the mind understanding of it that just is really the relationship between the party central and the provinces, and was there significant changes between the Hu Jintao era, and the Xi Jinping era. There was significant changes. What were those changes, whether it is security or something else. Right. What they could tell you that is that, at least my general impression. In terms of political control, there has been political centralization. We know that Xi Jinping has with his anti corruption campaign has actually taken a lot of, you know, people out of the system and some of them include provincial provinces and provision party secretaries right. I charge them with with with corruption, and then take them out of the system and put in place his own people in those places so so I think in terms of political control. The center is now able to control province more effectively than before. So, so short so shorter leash and title control of central over provinces. So physical or economic control. I think China is still relatively speaking physically decentralized place public goods provision is still largely provided for by provincial governments or local governments, even though in some areas such as you know healthcare. It has benefited from central transfers, but I think it's still generally the case that public goods provision including public security varies across regions, because of the gaps in between provinces welfare areas have more money to spend on public goods and poorer provinces have fewer resources to to to spend. Let's move on and this next questions come from one of our postgraduate students. Sylvia Procina. The question is, should like to hear your opinions about whether protest incidents have ever had, or may have in the future, any discernible outcome on government policy. Yes, that's an interesting question. This is, this is about how responsive the government is to protest right. And before I address your question this, this, you know, goes back to my earlier point that protest actually is not all that because in a country like China where there's no feedback look through the government on how the society things of the government protest is a way really to keep power of the society is like running a public opinion poll. If there's a lot of protest in some areas you know that local governments, at least not perhaps not central government you know that at least local governments in those regions with a lot of protest are not very popular. Right, but when sitting being clamped down on protest, you lose sight of the informational function of of protest. So I studied, let's say land land protest find that there's been a bit of improvement. So, there was a lot of. So, let me give you a historical examples. There was a lot of protest against rural taxation and rural executions in the 90s. It was heaped in late 90s and early 2000s, like a lot of large scale and sometimes even violent protest against collection of rural taxes in late 90s. People for court, you know, they are actually forced to pay taxation greater than their annual income. They just couldn't afford it. This is this happened to peasants. George Intel came to power in 2003. One of the grand grand policies that he introduced with his, his legacy was abolition of agricultural tax and making those rural executions illegal. So, so village governments used to go around villages, knock on people's door and just collect any money they like to finance construction of goods to finance salaries of people working in village government. And all those have been made illegal when hushing cow came into power. And that and that was seen largely in response to protests going on in in late 90s which attracted in a worldwide attention even you get reporting in places like like like new times. So, so in that respect, the government has been responsive. Without being safe, you know, China being China you have central government policies, local governments have all sorts of way to to get around it, and some governments to quietly go around and and collect executions that still happens. There are other ways to find to finance their public goods and services, but by and large, that sort of blatant collection of illegal executions have actually stopped because of that policies that was introduced that was largely seen as in response to protest in the previous period. So yes, government has been responsible to some extent. Thank you very useful. So the question about data, which I have overlooked earlier, we'll have asked them together with the other data questions. And this is from a PhD student from the Free University of Berlin, Shang Huang. The question is, does the data include censored social media contents, such as free way ball. Right. No, no it doesn't. So my data set only includes protest cases reported on by by by websites, not collected from social media. If you look at social media data, you might get protest incidents numbers that are you know 10 times multiples of mine. The protest incidents has a lot less information. So mine doesn't include social media. Okay. Next one, I really have to give this one to priority, even though it is the latest questions we have received on the Q&A box. I have to give this one to priority because it comes from the youngest of our participants, I believe, is from a year 13 student free university. And that is Jack Bowen. The question Jack has is that I found your point above the Chinese government's paranoia around protests, very interesting. What would you say is behind this paranoia. Well thank you for your interest Jack, you know very good to to to to see you know interest about Chinese politics coming from a young person like you paranoia. I think there are structural reasons but they're also contingent factors. So let me start with contingent factors which you might have heard of, which has to do with, you know, personality of Xi Jinping himself as well as people that he decides to surround him with himself with. I think, I think if you look at kind of the biographical data of President Xi, how he rose to power his family background the fact that he spends his formative years in the cultural revolution in in in rural areas doing hard hard labor. And people do that in the early years that shaped a certain outlook on their lives, and they'll, and the way that they conduct business right. And I think I imagine myself if I were to go through that in my teenage years, you look at the world through this tinted glass which is everything is, is about politics and power. One has is a winner take all type of situation, if one has power one has control over everything. So in his teenage years, because his father was one of the revolutionary deemed as having bad class background the whole family were thrown into into doing hard hard labor in in rural areas. So I think in his view that having political power is extremely important because it could actually change your change the fate in your life. And I'm going to talk about in more about about his, his own personality. And I think you know some scholars in the UK have spent time, you know, looking at, at, at seating things bio biographies which I won't go go into that into much details but in terms of structural reasons. He has also reached stage where the leadership this current leadership sees itself as, as kind of powerful enough to exert his authority, very confidently that is reflected in his growingly asserted foreign foreign policy. And also domestically, I think that is reflected in repression of, of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and then of ethnic minorities. I think generally increase repression or this extreme autocratic turn. You know, it's because of you know terrorism that happened in, in, in China about 10 years ago such as bombing in, in train station in Kweming, which then justifies government taking harsh actions on ethnic minorities. The analogy here is like, after 911. The US government felt that it is justified to carry a certain policies on the Middle East, and then in an invasion of Afghanistan because they wanted to address Muslim and terrorism problem right. It could also be seen as an overreaction of terrorism and the root cause of terrorism could be because you know, the Chinese government has never paid attention to moderate voices, you know within the society and these include societies of ethnic minorities. And it decided to jail in a moderate intellectuals like Ilam, Ilam Toti, the government has never heard the grievances of Uyghur people. And when you try to silence moderate voices you tend to get radical voices. And I think the same could be said about about just majority of Chinese society in the last couple of years we see shut down think tank more liberal think tank. Intellectuals getting silence. Some of them taken out of the system like sect and they have to run away to the United States. If I think generally if people are not allowed to speak and express their grievance in the mild and moderate manner. Sooner or later you get these radical claims emerging. Lynette, can I fold up on that and ask you when was the last terrorist attack in China or Xinjiang Xinjiang. I don't remember the exact year but my memory tells me that it was about probably about seven to 10 to 10 years ago. But they were also terrorists at carry out outside Xinjiang, right by by weavers in, in, in, I think Kweming train train station if I remember correctly. That was the knife attack. Yes, yes, yes, yes, correct. It's a long, very, very long time ago just to be paranoid about what happens. So, sure, sure. I think that was probably behind Jack's question. Isn't that really paranoid or there's something if it's not paranoid what the hell is it. Yeah, no I so, like I said, I believe that they are contingency factor which is exclusive to this current leadership, meaning that if you take out this current leadership in China, if we could actually do so. There's less of a paranoia, right less repression, but they are I think also structural reasons going on within China and within the autocratic system. There's two, two things going on. Okay, I'll move, I'll move on there's a question, which was kind of echoes what you said a bit earlier about the control over the same tanks. The question is not about think tanks the question is from who to weigh. And it is in regards to the increase in protests related to education. Has this predominantly been in the higher education sector. And if so, is it for a demand for reform in education. So, education type of protests have largely been staged by private teachers in private schools. And so it's Chinese in Chinese is called min ban jiao si. So a lot of private schools in China, so these are not high education they are primary school and secondary school, not government school private schools badly run, which then goes on to pay teachers very very poorly. In the last 10 15 years they have been very, very poorly, poorly paid. And, you know, so you see increased protests in the education sector for that reason. So it's an economic nature grievance. Okay, I have a broad question from Luca. In your opinion, in your opinion, does lack of contentious politics damage or boost the CCP's legitimacy. I have to think because you know usually scholars ask does contentious politics how does contentious politics affect CCVs legitimacy. You said lack of contentious politics I meant that used I take it that you mean fewer protests incidents. You know, if it's fewer protests incidents in the last couple of years, I think that would definitely generally less reports means that you would think the CCP's legitimacy has been boosted right because there's less report of social unrest and supposedly more social stability. But then again, if you don't allow people to at least express their grievance, they might harbor unexpressed discontentment towards the regime. And I think that cannot be good for the regime's legitimacy. So overall, I don't think the conclusion is that clear cut if there is less contentious activities and and its effect on state legitimacy. Okay, now again, that is not a question from the original question is a follow up, which do you think it really matters more that the party believes in it or you as an academic analyst believe in it. I think that the relative lack of contentious politics helps with the legitimacy of the party's day. That's my own, that's my own belief and I don't, I don't work for the CCP. But if the, if the, if the, if the party believes in it as well, right, the party takes the same view as you do as an analyst. Does it matter. If they take the same view as me, then I think they will not spend so much resources in cracking down protest that it is actually good to have it to let people to let people vent their anger and venture frustration. But the question is, by being able to contain contentious politics, because the question, the question asked in a negative way rather than the post in the existence of contentious politics is the lack of contentious politics, which in this case means the containment of contentious politics. And that make the party feel there is more legitimate, which it would appear that the party state does feel that is more makes the party stay more legitimate if there are fewer contentious politics that's why they're spending so much money and resources to contain it. If I think like an autocrat. I would think, you know, if I could control protest. That would boost my legitimacy. Yes, I think I think the lack of contentious activities would translate to great perception of a boost to state legitimacy from people who control it. From the perspective of people who like to control. But in my view, that's that's that view is erroneously held for the reason I said earlier. Thank you. Next is a question from an undergraduate in politics at KCL in London, King's College London. This is from Caitlyn Jen. Could you please elaborate a bit on how you collected the data for the percentage of money spent on public security in each province. Right, I imagine such data is not public. Yes. So we do not collect this data this data is collected by the Chinese government. So it's available from you know on on on from Chinese statistical yearbook. And this is reported by provincial government. So provincial government reports how much they spend every year, and on what they spend on and public security is one of the items. So we take that number and then and then we we and we analyze them. We don't have access to. So I have as much access to this government data as everyone else does. Okay. Next question is from Mauricio Marinee. I would like to hear a little bit more in terms of the qualitative analysis. I would like to give us an example of how the same typology of protests. For example, environmental related or land rights protest was handled in two or three different administrations or geographical areas. But I'm not sure whether different regions, or, you know, based on scholarly research, different regions actually deal with the same type of protests differently. I can speak about land rights protest because I work on land land rights protest. Because land land rights protest is difficult to organize. First of all, people would go out to protest and like environmental protest, it has kind of spillable effects, right, you get some factories being being built it might affect thousands of families and then you could mobilize thousands of families go out to protest land rights differently than when your land is being grabbed or your house is being illegally demolished, then you have an incentive to protest. So it's specific to the aggrieved individual or grieved family. But then again you cannot go out to protest on your own because you are so weak on your own right so typically protest happens when there's a group of people. So if their land is not being grabbed, what is their incentive to go out to protest, which is why land land rights protest is difficult to organize, and it's very easy to very easy to crack down and, and cracking down on land rights protests, some of the repressive measures are not reflected in the numbers so the numbers might reflect the number of police resources spent on police to to arrest protesters. So on land rights protest. If village authorities knew knew that a group of villagers want to stage land land rights protest, they might go to individual families and first of all identify families that could be bought. So they'll knock on your door in the middle of the night and and say that you know, look see I let me pay you some extra money. So promise that you won't go out to protest. So they will buy off individuals in order to reduce the cohesion between the protest groups, and that in a way would reduce the likelihood of protest there. There's a lot of clever strategies being deployed by local authorities. And these are the strategies often not reflected in public security spending numbers. I've got three more questions and I'll try to do them all in the remaining time we have. Next one is from Mark Rebley. Indie is the concept of individual rights and accepted concept within Chinese political discourse. Yeah, so I, I'm not a political philosopher and I feel, you know, a little inadequate to answer these these questions because I'm not able to get to give you a very elegant answer. But generally, I think Chinese culture, political culture sees would put kind of collective rights, and however you define collective above individual rights. And, and, and this is seen, people who hold these views, you know, both Chinese society and Chinese leadership hold these views. So Chinese leadership is able to impose, you know, collective rights. You know, on top of individual rights. So if some individuals want to express their rights, the government could justify certain policies, if that serves the, the better or the good of the, of the collective, even though it might come at the expense of the individuals. Okay. I'll just add a very short rejoin that today if you don't mind the net. That document number nine 2013 make it very clear that universal values is prohibited under Xi Jinping. So the question really is, do you see individual human rights as a matter of part of the universal values. If you see so, then it is prohibited. If it is not part of universal values, then it shouldn't be prohibited from necessarily not. Not so. I got a new question that just came in, I think, from Vijay Prakash. Is there a specific dispute redress systems at the village or municipal level, such as civil cost, or a complaints system, or protests is the only way left for common people to seek redress, or even simple civic issues, like land rights or poverty issues. Right, we have audience based on the question from Delhi from Delhi. There is a petition system. So petition you could write petition, you could do letter petition or you could do in person petition. But the petitioning system in a way is as challenging as as practice and some would even argue that it's even more challenging. Well, these days, it's since several years ago, there's, there is a rule saying that if you live in, let's say, township level, you cannot go to government that is higher than a township to stage petition. So, meaning that if you have grievance against your local government, if you live in the township we have grievance against your, your township government. You have to complain to the township government that other people you have trouble with, which kind of defeat the purpose right. So, so they have the central government has taken people's rights to stage to petition at a higher administrative level. The purpose is very much defeated but even before that rule came into place. Local government would often stopped people from petitioning. So if you live in the village you have to take a train or take a bus to Beijing spend a lot of money going to travel to Beijing to stage a petition. Local government often send people to take you back in Chinese is called GFM. So you get stopped at train station, you get kidnapped at train station by some gangsters that they hire, and then take you back to, you know, put you in some dark black houses for two months, beat you up or something, and then send you back to the village and you get intimidated and you never want to go petitioning again. But that scholar has done kind of public opinion poll of people who have been to Beijing to stage petition and have not been to Beijing and what they think about petition system and the perception of central government. There is a lot of difference. People who have been to petition in Beijing have seen really with their own eyes how the system works actually has reduced confidence in central government quite significantly after they make their trip. Okay, thank you. Got two more questions left and three minutes of our time. And this one is very short. So do what you can and I will read it in full and then it's a question from Chow Chong Town. Please comment on health care. Yeah, I think a little health case is Chinese called E now, which is health care system is overburdened in China, the ratio of doctors to patients are very, very low. So, you know, people are not happy of health care system and the way that the purchase is they would cause harm to medical providers. So a lot of health care practice is of the nature. Okay, thank you. Last question is a second bite of the cherry from Xiang Huang. I have a generally impression that the Chinese people are sometimes proud that China is less launch less chaotic than other developing countries. Could you please kindly share your thoughts about the general public's attitude towards social stability for you and me. Right, right. I think you're right. I think this, this, this perception of social stability or one that goes to the core of, you know, what addresses the attitude of the center, the central leadership, and here I will make a distinction between the righteous and violent protest, or even riots, right, so one wants a protest turn into a riot. When the government loses control over the one over the stability, then it will actually invite very harsh crackdown, and in those cases usually of para para paramilitary forces like wu jing, wu jing. Wu jing is often justified when riots happen. Right. And this is very different from, from non, from non violent protest, if I could extend the analogy to Hong Kong protest, which turned, which took a violent turn over the last last summer, then, you know, resulted in in more repressive measures. That would be seen as an analogy of what's going on in the mainland. Steve might have more to say on Hong Kong. We can indeed have a lot more discussions about Hong Kong or in this the way how the people's armed police is deployed, whether they are deployed only after disturbances have happened or whether they're deployed, and as a result of the deployment real chaos happened. But that's really for a different sessions. If our time is up and in fact we have literally just managed to address all the questions that I have seen. And thank you very much. Thank you for setting it on for your very, very thoughtful and frank presentation and discussions with us. And also thank you very much to you all for the very thoughtful and interesting questions that you have put for this forum. I will just thank you all, and hope to see some of you back next Monday at a later time of five o'clock. Thank you so much to Steve and everyone for attending. Thank you.