Abstract
This chapter reviews two prominent paradigms in the literature and develops my alternative form of transnational activism, the theory of the “internal spiral,” and explores the rationality and behavioral patterns behind opportunists, advocates, and protestors who struggle with each other on this internal spiraling process. More practically speaking, internationalism brings unnecessary tension, interference, and suspicion that may be fatal for a weakly supported transnational religious movement. Instead, carefully crafted intergroup strategies play a more important role than external strategies such as international shaming or spiral campaigns promoted by conventional wisdom. Using a relational lens on the key actors involved, I emphasize an overlooked dimension in the prominent theories of transnational activism: opportunists can act as both spoilers and advocates for their foreign sponsors, especially when protestors cannot be deterred and officials’ threats become “cheap talk” in reality.
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Notes
- 1.
Sikkink’s network theory includes members of government and international organizations. Members of transnational religious networks are often invited by Western governments or the United Nations to testify to violations of religious freedom in their resident nations. However, the critical strategic difference between conventional TAN and religious TAN highlighted in this project is that the advocacy approach explicitly excludes state-based agencies from its networks. The key reason is that activists in this kind of network try to avoid the “naming and shaming” tendency in state-based reporting and monitoring processes. They believe that this kind of strategy would increase the difficulty of their work, because the repressive states could mobilize nationalism and anti-imperialist discourse to weaken the legitimacy of their demands. For repressive countries like China, the addition reason is the nuclear power and Security Council permanent member status; there is little that IOs and sympathetic state governments can do to a regime like this.
- 2.
The formal definition of PRNEU is “The people-run non-enterprise units referred to in these Regulations mean enterprise institutions, societies and other social forces as well as social organizations established with non-state-owned assets by individual citizens for non-profit social services.” The highest-level law regarding NGO-related organizations is the “Provisional Regulations for the Registration Administration of People-Run non-Enterprise Units” in Decree No. 251 of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China on October 25, 1998 (Ministry of Commerce, 1998).
- 3.
The original source is the China Charity & Donation Information Center, a platform sponsored by the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) of the PRC in order to increase the transparency of the Chinese charity sector.
- 4.
- 5.
Relevant evidence of forbidden foreign influence is plentiful in official documents. For example, in the Regulations of Religious Affairs, the highest Chinese law on religion, Article 4 states “All religions shall uphold the principle of independence and autonomy. Religious groups, places of religious activity, and religious affairs shall not be under the control of a foreign power. Religious groups, places of religious activity, and religious instructors shall deal with outside parties on a basis of friendship and equality. Other organizations and individuals shall not be subject to religious requirements during cooperative or exchange activities of an economic, cultural or other nature” (Wen, 2004).
- 6.
Nanjing City is the parish of former Anglican Bishop K. H. Ting, later the highest leader of TSPM from the 1950s to today. Today the Amity Foundation has become the largest Christian charity organization in China and receives annual foreign donations of US$400,000–1,000,000. Bible printing has become an independent “business” separate from the Foundation.
- 7.
Most academic studies of the Chinese Bible are on its pre-1949 history. Studies of the post-1950s Chinese Bible in the English world are extremely rare and they do not touch on political issues (Zetzsche, 1999).
- 8.
The most prominent writers in this branch of the literature are Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly, and Sidney Tarrow. In general, there are four criteria for assessing the political opportunity structure: (1) the open or closed nature of the institutionalized political system; (2) the stability or instability of that broad set of elite alignments; (3) the presence or absence of elite allies; and (4) the state’s capacity and propensity for repression (McAdam, McCarthy, Zald, & Mayer, 1996, p. 27). A more recent discussion can be seen in Tarrow and Tilly (2007).
- 9.
Against this standard, Chinese Protestant networks are weak and probably ineffective because their leaders, with few exceptions, are still reluctant to take public action against an outdated management policy (Tarrow, 2005, p. 25).
- 10.
The effects of secularism on religious NGOs are powerful and affect scholarly work on religious organizations as well. Sociologist Kurt Alan ver Beek (2000) reviewed the literature on humanitarian and development aid and finds that religious NGOs have been mysteriously overlooked by researchers. He calls religion a “development taboo” in the humanitarian and development aid literature. Quoted from Marie Juul Petersen (2010).
- 11.
For example, the Sadat regime freed all members of the Muslim Brotherhood and offered them legal status as an apolitical NGO, but they refused (Abdelrahman, 2007, pp. 128–133).
- 12.
BTJ is a popular international evangelical movement, which refers to the Crusades in the eleventh to thirteenth century, but stresses non-violence. The Chinese version of BTJ is to emphasize the geographic significance of China to Central Asia and the Middle East, and therefore the responsibility of Chinese Christians to fulfill this historic destiny (Xin, 2009, pp. 108–109, 134–136).
- 13.
Almost every underground missionary I interviewed has the experience of hiding or escaping from police research and raids. Local churches are often capable of helping outsiders. One church leader, whose church was underground but registered under TSPM in the 1990s, told me that their newly built training center has a special locked door, which is specifically designed to stop a raid and give time to illicit workers and missionaries to escape. Interview No. 99, July 12, 2011.
- 14.
Interview No. 98, August 21, 2011.
- 15.
The concept of embeddedness is raised by sociologist Mark Granovetter’s work about economic policy and was introduced into political science by Robert Putnam (2000) in his seminal work on American political participation, Bowling Alone. This phenomenon is well documented, particularly in the corruption literature, where institutional embeddedness is often treated as one of the sources of double-standard law enforcement; i.e., corruption. Here I see the relaxation of regulation or selected punishments as an opportunity to expand a social group’s freedom, because Chinese religious law itself is designed to constrain, not protect religious groups. The original concept can be seen in Granovetter (1985).
- 16.
All participants of the CPPCC are invited only. The Chinese Communist Party selects individuals it can trust to represent groups that supposedly select their own representatives to the CPPCC. The heads of the TSPM are the necessary members of the Chinese Protestant delegations to the national CPPCC. The CPPCC is a grand system that has instituted levels of meetings from the state, to provinces, metropolitan areas, major cities, and counties. As long as there is a government structure, there is the CPPCC.
- 17.
The monetary relationship between Christians and the local government is full of possibilities. The Amity Foundation is an example showing that even the central government can be bought. Local governments want more investment, tax, and aid when Christians have the means to provide them. One possibility is the investment brought by Christian-owned companies. For example, one report has said that a Hong Kong–based company announced a US$659 million tourism project in China’s northeastern Liaoning province to build a Christian theme park. Similar stories abounded when I interviewed what were called “business Christians” in China. “Businessman plans to build China’s first Bible park” AFP, November 24, 2009.
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Wang, R. (2019). Facilitating Activism in a Strong Authoritarian State. In: Resistance Under Communist China. Human Rights Interventions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14148-6_2
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