Abstract
Rural protests and mass incidents are crucial to our understanding of China s state-society relations, the possibility for economic and political reform and the future of the Chinese Communist Party regime. The widespread abuse of collective land ownership rights since the reform era is a major cause of rural unrest in China, and mass incidents will likely continue to increase. The Wukan Incident is one of many cases of rural unrest that illustrate the growing gap between urban and rural development, the deep-seated problems of local government corruption and the desperate need for land rights reform. This thesis is a case study of the 2011 Wukan Incident, in which people protested the illegal sale of their farmland and subsequently demanded local village committee elections, which had not been held in Wukan for many decades. It is the aim of this thesis that a qualitative study of the Wukan case can contribute to our understanding of rural unrest in China. This thesis will consider the theory of rightful resistance, as put forth by Kevin O Brien and Li Lianjiang, an influential theory in the field of popular resistance in China. O Brien and Li have found that the central government shows a willingness to tolerate local protests as long as they do not directly challenge the Party s claim to power. This thesis is based on qualitative research methods such as interviews and observations from fieldwork in Wukan village, Guangdong province. Other primary sources include messages from the social media site Sina Weibo. Furthermore, I have relied on a wide variety of written texts, including news media reports and academic articles. My findings show that the Wukan Incident can be considered a case of rightful resistance. However, based on these new empirical findings, I will argue that there may be other variables that can add to the theory of rightful resistance. First of all, I have argued that the geographical location of Wukan had a significant influence on how protesters viewed opportunities for protesting and subsequently how they made use of allies. Secondly, the Wukan case highlights the growing importance of social media and online activism in cases of rural unrest in China.