The Politics of People

Shih-Diing Liu

Description

Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square occupation, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau have experienced an increase in and persistence of mass gatherings, demonstrations, and blockades staged as a means of protesting the ways in which people are. In this book, Shih-Diing Liu argues that these popular protests are poorly understood, because they are viewed through the lens of protests and occupations globally, with insufficient attention given to their distinctively local aspects. He provides a better account of these distinctively Chinese-style occupations by describing, contextualizing, and analyzing a range of relevant recent case studies. Liu draws on theoretical concepts developed by Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, Ernesto Laclau, and other contemporary critical theorists and shows the the importance of considering bodily, spatial, and visual dimensions of these protests. By seeing them as staged, contentious performances, the author demonstrates how these precarious populations mobilize their bodies and symbolic resources offered by the Chinese government to open up temporary spaces of appearance to articulate their grievances, and argues that this kind of embodied and performative analysis should be more widely conducted in studies of popular politics worldwide.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. Body and State

1. Embodied Practices of Citizenship

2. Migrant Workers' Right to Appear

Part II. Politics of Articulation

3. Engagement with the State

4. The Two Occupy Movements in Hong Kong

Part III. Cultural Resistance

5. Political Protest as Artistic Practice

6. Macau's Cyberpolitics

Conclusion: For the Appearance of a Subject

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• 21st century
• History of Asia
• Activism
• China

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 23 août 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438476223
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

The Politics of People
SUNY series in Global Modernity

Ravi Arvind Palat and Roxann Prazniak, editors
The Politics of People
Protest Cultures in China
SHIH-DIING LIU
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Liu, Shih-Diing, author.
Title: The politics of people : protest cultures in China / Shih-Diing Liu.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in global modernity | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018052661 | ISBN 9781438476216 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438476223 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Political participation—China. | Protest movements—China. | China—Politics and government—2002–
Classification: LCC JQ1516 .L5827 2019 | DDC 322.4/40951—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052661
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my family, Wei and Walter
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
P ART I B ODY AND S TATE
1. Embodied Practices of Citizenship
2. Migrant Workers’ Right to Appear
P ART II P OLITICS OF A RTICULATION
3. Engagement with the State
4. The Two Occupy Movements in Hong Kong
P ART III C ULTURAL R ESISTANCE
5. Political Protest as Artistic Practice
6. Macau’s Cyberpolitics
Conclusion: For the Appearance of a Subject
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations Figure I.1 Map of China. Figure 2.1 The Artigas Factory. Figure 3.1 Map of Guangdong Province. Figure 3.2 The Villagers in Wukan Held Banners Bearing Their Signatures. Figure 3.3 The Honda Worker Protest. Figure 4.1 Map of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Figure 4.2 The Slogans Read: “Anti-MPF Capitalism,” “Down with Real Estate Hegemony, Strive for Worker’s Rights.” Figure 4.3 The Propaganda Department Area Set Up by the Occupiers. Figure 4.4 The Students Attempted to Occupy the Civic Square. Figure 4.5 A Slogan Poster Writes: “I Boycott Classes, Because I Love Hong Kong.” Figure 4.6 A Poster Reads: “Recovering Mong Kok, Umbrella Revolution.” Figure 4.7 An Occupied Zone in Causeway Bay. Figure 4.8 The Pro-China Group Held Their Rallies in Mong Kok. Figure 5.1 Some Improvised Artworks in the Occupied Zone. Figure 5.2 A Spoofed Image of the Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Figure 5.3 A Comic Storytelling Drawn by the Protesters to Describe the Clash with Police. Figure 5.4 The Political Use of Daily Objects (Yellow Umbrella). Figure 5.5 Artists Attempted to Portray the Participants in the Occupied Zone. Figure 6.1 A Flash Mob Event Was Staged to Protest Against the Monopoly of CTM. Figure 6.2 Macau’s Local Artists Used Facebook to Disseminate Protest Spectacles. Figure 6.3 Macau’s Internet Users Launched a Campaign during the National Security Legislation, Known as Article 23, in November 2008. Figure 6.4 The Dissident Publication Concealing Daily . Figures 6.5 and 6.6 Hong Kong Films Referencing Corruption Scandals. Figure 6.7 Critiquing Corruption. Figure 6.8 Macau’s Netizens turn on the Policeman Firing Gunshots on the May Day Protest in 2007, Resulting in Many Spoofs. Figures 6.9 and 6.10 Heroic Figures Used to Spoof Police Involvement. Figure 6.11 Egao Allows the Two Previously Different Worlds—Popular Culture and Politics—to Converge into One Another.
Acknowledgments
I thank the friends and colleagues who provided various kinds of help and assistance during the writing of this book: Baik Young-Seo, John Erni, Chu Yuan-Horng, Christopher Connery, Laurence Simmons, Feng Chien-San, Pun Ngai, Chien Sechin, Hao Yufan, Tony Schirato, and Chen Kuan-Hsing. I am especially grateful to Wang Hui and Ralph Litzinger, who read the first draft of this manuscript and from whose comments I benefited. Wang Hui has helped me stay motivated since 2004; Ralph provided really helpful feedback on the manuscript.
Some chapters emerge from exchanges with scholars working on questions of China, Hong Kong postcolonial, and global modernity. Chapter 3, “ Engagement with the State ,” began as a conference paper that I gave at the 2014 Global Studies Conference, Shanghai University. I thank my interlocutors at the Hong Kong Betwixt and Between Conference held by the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, who responded helpfully to an early version of Chapter 4, “ The Two Occupy Movements in Hong Kong .” I thank the organizers of the two panels/conferences, Daniel Vukovich and Allen Chun, for their invitations and input.
I thank Andrew Kenyon for his excellent editorial advice throughout, and his patience in waiting for the final version of this book. Thanks also to Chelsea Miller, Diane Ganeles, and Hugo Lok for their help during the pre-production process. My appreciation to the Faculty of Social Sciences and RDAO at the University of Macau, for their long-term support of my research project. I also thank my graduate students at the University of Macau for their invaluable assistance, both intellectual and material: Lin Zhongxuan, Kong Mengxun, Su Chang, Geng Li, Zheng Qi, Zhao Zhilong and Xu Min. They have been a stimulating presence during the years that this book was taking shape. Thanks to their participation in the working meetings from which I have greatly benefited.
Finally, I would like to express my deep appreciation and memory to Arif Dirlik, who had enthusiastically supported this book project. I still remember when I was a student in Taipei and London during the late 1990s and early 2000s, I came across Arif’s work and was extremely inspired by his critical spirit. In April 2013, when he came to visit the University of Macau and we met in person for the first time, he encouraged me to develop this project. He read my papers, provided suggestions, and invited me to publish in the SUNY series in Global Modernity. Unfortunately he cannot see the final version anymore. I still remember the conversation with him, his mental strength, voice and laughter—all these moments will never be forgotten. Thank you, Arif.

Earlier versions of some chapters have appeared as follows, and I thank Taylor and Francis for permission to reprint here:
Chapter 3, “ Engagement with the State ,” has been significantly rewritten for this volume from a paper published in 2015, titled “The New Contentious Sequence since Tiananmen,” Third World Quarterly 36 (11): 2148–2166.
Chapter 4, “ The Two Occupy Movements in Hong Kong ,” was first published in slightly different form as “The End of Occupation,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 19 (4): 507–531, in 2017.
Chapter 6, “ Macau’s Cyberpolitics ,” is a revised adaptation of an essay titled “The Cyberpolitics of the Governed,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 14 (2): 252–271, originally published in 2013.
Introduction
People do revolt; that is a fact. And that is how subjectivity (not that of great men, but that of anyone) is brought into history, breathing life into it.
—Michel Foucault, “Useless to revolt?”
Occupy!
On September 28, 2014, a student protest against the restrictive suffrage for the Hong Kong chief executive election, which opposition groups criticized as depriving Hong Kong people of their democratic rights to elect their own leader, quickly took on a wider and more serious significance. After the police arrested student leaders and activists who attempted to seize hold of Civic Square, thousands of people swarmed onto the streets downtown, chanting “Release the students” and “We want true democracy.” The protestors resisted the police’s pepper spray with umbrellas, in the process creating a global media spectacle. Failing to disperse the recalcitrant crowd, the police fired teargas bombs at protestors. Incensed at the police response, protesters blocked the traffic arteries of the business districts of Hong Kong and Kowloon Islands. The occupied streets were transformed into a space of gathering resistance against state power and its apparatuses. This militant action created both partial anarchy and multiple points of resistance around the occupied zones. Some 200,000 participants turned out at the peak of the protest movement, and the confrontation lasted for an unexpectedly long period (79 days). The movement’s explosive intensity and magnitude surprised many, generating arguably the Chinese government’s most serious political crisis since the 1989 Tiananmen occupation.

Figure I.1. Map of China. The map was created by the author via the software Mapbox.V4.3.0, www.mapbox.com .
In a context where political action is becoming more risky and tightly controlled, the physical occupation of public spaces, which has been characterized as an “easily replicable tactic” (Gould-Wartofsky 2015, 44), has come to be seen as a defiant political act. In light of the political sequence that