Over the last few decades, the Chinese state has encouraged citizen volunteers to be part of its social stability efforts through a process we term “state-enlisted voluntarism.” This article provides new insights into Chinese state–society relations based on evidence derived from public security volunteers (PSVs hereafter) and the volunteer-based social stability maintenance system operating at the grassroots. Local governments have the flexibility to enlist citizens into a meticulously designed volunteer-management system that functions to eliminate social unrest and respond to public security-based demand. Under unified enlistment strategies, citizens contribute their private resources to public activities in fulfilment of certain rational expectations. Therefore, caution is needed to avoid overstating the democratic value of the state–society partnership in China, especially when referring to the evidence of citizen participation in public security affairs.
We use the term “enlistment” because the state volunteers are recruited and controlled by the government through its administrative and paramilitary authority. This state-enlisted voluntarism system features several characteristics: it is run by local stability-maintenance organizations; it turns the volunteers into local enforcement team members; it reinforces paramilitary discipline through the top-down system of control via the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); and it recruits its volunteers through routinized institutions. The term is also compatible with the warfare terminology used in propaganda in the official media, for example, “tough battles” (gong jian zhan 攻坚战) and people's war (renmin zhanzheng 人民战争). Based on empirical evidence gathered over ten years, we identify direct and indirect enlistment approaches. The findings provide reflections on “state-in-society” assumptions.Footnote 1 According to Joel Migdal, local organizations and authorities can knit “weblike societies” to maintain a fragmented and heterogeneous social control which may inhibit effective policy implementation by the state.Footnote 2 However, based on the evidence in China, we find that web-like social connections can also be used to form a component of the state hierarchy. Political authorities can enlist citizens to participate in stability-maintenance activities and thus protect the government's political legitimacy. Widespread citizen participation may not therefore reflect the rise of independent social power, but rather can be the result of the success of the PSV system in assisting the state to maintain social stability.
Social Governance and Mass Mobilization in China
During the 1980s and 1990s, scholars developed a theory on society-centric “new governance” that focuses on how a government cooperates with a society based on common consent, and how a society can be empowered to engage in self-regulation without administrative restrictions.Footnote 3 Governance is commonly viewed in the literature as involving practices of coordinating activities through networks, partnerships and deliberative forums that have grown out of superseded centralized and hierarchical corporatist representation.Footnote 4 New governance practices have led to the forging of “indirect” or “quasi-” government.Footnote 5
Following the introduction of governance theory to China, concepts such as local governance and community governance gradually penetrated the official discourse.Footnote 6 Francis Fukuyama defines governance as the government's ability to make and enforce rules to deliver services, regardless of whether that government is democratic or not; Chinese officials, however, view governance primarily as involving a “government ability” to maintain itself.Footnote 7 Michael Frolic uses the notion of a “state-led civil society” to depict the Chinese situation in which the state creates a civil society to help it manage a complex and rapidly changing society.Footnote 8 Much of the literature on Chinese state–society relations focuses on how the state co-opts social elites into public affairs in order to more effectively implement policies.Footnote 9 Civic activists run the risk of being repressed if they are perceived as not assisting in the realization of policies or as threatening the legitimacy of the party-state.Footnote 10 The Chinese democratic situation has also been described as consultative authoritarianism: power holders open communication channels for citizens in order to improve policymaking and increase regime responsiveness, rather than for democratic ends.Footnote 11
To understand the role of citizen participation in China, it is first necessary to reflect on the tradition of mass mobilization. During times of war (in the 1930s and 1940s, for example), mobilizing all social actors in support of the CCP was a defining feature of Mao's revolutionary strategy. As well as promoting communist ideology, mass mobilization had a clear purpose in assisting the CCP to overcome wartime difficulties. As Elizabeth Perry states, there were “production campaigns intended to improve the economy; cultural or educational campaigns designed to combat illiteracy and heighten political consciousness.”Footnote 12 After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China's leaders continuously relied on mass mobilization strategies to promote reformist agendas, such as the “Five antis” campaign in the 1950s and the “Up to the mountains and down to the countryside” programme. These campaigns turned mass mobilization into a nationwide political project. In the post-Mao period, mass mobilization has been institutionalized, and the use of coercive, punitive force to eliminate targeted offenders has been formally abandoned. One result of this institutionalization is the “diminished scope of mass participation only in favour of narrow mobilizations of the target population.”Footnote 13 The state enlistment of voluntarism describes a different type of mass mobilization from that used in Mao's campaigns. Although under the control of the CCP, state-enlisted voluntarism is more of an administrative instrument intended to achieve social stability rather than to sustain political struggle. The term also differs from the understanding of institutionalized mobilization favoured by Tyrene White: enlisted volunteers encompass a wide range of citizens with divergent social identities that extend beyond the bounds set by any narrow policy objective.
In state-enlisted voluntarism, the government mobilizes citizens to maintain social stability under a unified and institutionalized framework of voluntary participation. This assessment echoes previous studies in which social actors have been reported as having the capacity to influence policy outcomes.Footnote 14 However, we contend that citizen participation is limited to policy domains that contribute to maintaining social stability. Furthermore, the state enlists citizens to be volunteers who can participate at an implementation stage, but whose participation overall does not foster the perceived advantages of civil society in which voluntary activities have been claimed to improve government performance through self-organized activities.Footnote 15
Empirical Background and Case Selection
In China, the central government has shifted the focus of its “stability maintenance” (weiwen 维稳) efforts, moving from “campaigns” to strike hard (yanda 严打) at criminals in the 1980s and 1990s, through “social management” from 2003 to 2012,Footnote 16 to “social governance” from 2013 to 2018. In 2013, the CCP explicitly articulated a comprehensive goal of deepening reform to improve and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics and promote the modernization of the national governance system and capacity. It would appear that there is consensus among the leading sections of the CCP regarding the regime's legitimacy and what needs to be done to maintain and strengthen the system. While the term “social governance with Chinese characteristics” was coined and defined as part of an official narrative later in government reports, the concept is not limited to service provision. Rather, it is integrally related to mitigating social conflicts. On the one hand, establishing a social governance model based on collaboration, participation and the combination of “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches has hitherto been ostensibly promoted as official political doctrine, both in practice and in propaganda. During the 19th National Congress of the CCP (2017), the integration of “rule of law” (fazhi 法治), “rule of virtue” (dezhi 德治) and “self-governance” (zizhi 自治) was especially highlighted as a national principle with authoritative weight in the Party. On the other hand, the proclaimed “top-level design” (dingceng sheji 顶层设计) of the reforms and the attempt to promote a charismatic leadership role for Xi Jinping 习近平 showed a desire to restore many Leninist features to the CCP, including promoting loyalty/unconditional obedience to the Party through re-galvanizing ideological faith, extending Party organizations inside private and social organizations, and running the CCP as a meritocracy.Footnote 17
Our understanding of the state enlistment of voluntarism emerged during a ten-year project that focused on changes in local governance, especially during Xi's administration (2014–2020). In recent years, party-state priorities for optimizing the governance system have been increasingly aimed at maintaining social stability.Footnote 18 The empirical data that we analyse comprises 45 in-depth interviews, 87 normative policy files, and case descriptions obtained from within mainland China. All the data were collected from major cities in the eastern, middle and western regions of China, such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Guizhou, Zhengzhou and Xi'an. The interviews were conducted with non-governmental organization (NGO) employees and state officials from social security bureaus (zongzhi zhongxin 综治中心). All the organizations discussed in this article were involved in security maintenance programmes. The interviewees were selected because of their rich experience in leading or participating in the stability maintenance programmes endorsed by the CCP. We also draw from empirical evidence gathered during participant observation and the feedback from volunteers and local citizens enlisted in the security maintenance system. In addition, relevant media reports were scrutinized to gain a better understanding of the background in relation to our study objectives.
A Case Study: Enlistment in Action
State-enlisted voluntarism has increasingly been used for local stability maintenance and policy implementation in China in recent years. The government recruits citizens into a bureaucratic system to deploy resources effectively in terms of its security priorities, and grafts policy goals onto localized social networks to configure with the policy agenda. Both direct and indirect enlistment approaches have been adopted.
Direct enlistment
In 1991 and 2001, the central state promulgated two decrees to reinforce state security through qunfang qunzhi 群防群治 (the masses guarding and controlling, QFQZ hereafter). The aim of the initiative was to involve and mobilize local citizens from different institutions, associations and companies to build a self-managed platform for maintaining social security. As one official noted:
The security maintenance responsibilities must be tied to participants’ political merit and economic interest. Those citizens who actively devote themselves or even sacrifice themselves to fight against criminals are to be given honours and compensation. Those organizations and individuals who shirk their responsibilities concerning the government's assigned priorities will be punished according to the law.Footnote 19
However, neither decree offered clear working guidance on how such PSVs should conduct themselves. Instead, the stability-maintenance policies set out several broad principles, taking an imperative or “we should” form instead of detailing specific actions. This lack of clear guidance has allowed local governments a degree of flexibility in interpreting QFQZ policies and in employing pragmatic means when seeking to mobilize PSVs.
The QFQZ regulations are also integrally related to the interests of local cadres as social stability is one of the most important performance indicators in the cadre evaluation system. PSVs can be useful in mitigating stability-related risks. In 2017, according to the Municipal Comprehensive Management Office of the Capital City (shoudu zong zhi ban 首都综治办, MCMOCC hereafter), Beijing had more than 850,000 registered PSVs, with the capacity to mobilize a further 140,0000 volunteers into the QFQZ system.Footnote 20 One popular PSV group in Beijing is the “Chaoyang masses” (Chaoyang qunzhong 朝阳群众). Often described as red armband-wearing “grannies,” these PSVs spend their free time watching their neighbourhoods, thus helping to keep all areas of the city under surveillance. The Chaoyang masses help the police with information and tip-offs. For example, over 2,000 tip-offs were offered between February and April in 2017, 400 of which were deemed valuable. The information resulted in the arrests of 25 suspects and the elimination of 87 “hidden dangers.”Footnote 21 In 2015, another group of Beijing-based PSVs, the so-called Xicheng dama 西城大妈, reported over 13,000 tip-offs, including 720 in relation to criminal activities, leading to the arrest of 1,000 people and the detention of 340 criminals between January and August. The police awarded over 1,700 members of the Xicheng dama a total of more than 1.1 million yuan.Footnote 22 Owing to their clear and increasing value in assisting the police, these volunteers have been dubbed by netizens as “flowing cameras” and the “world's fifth-largest intelligence agency” after the CIA, the FSB, MI6 and MOSSAD.Footnote 23 When social stability becomes a priority for local authorities, local officials can deploy enlistment mechanisms to boost public security. The pragmatic tactics used for PSV mobilization in Beijing have quickly spread to other regions in mainland China.Footnote 24
PSV surveillance networks are required to cover all corners of the cities and to embed themselves in communities and villages.Footnote 25 During major events such as the Olympics and National Day festivals, and public emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of PSVs can be enlisted from different institutions to watch over public squares, big supermarkets, main road junctions and any other crowded or important locations. PSVs come from a variety of backgrounds, as noted by one official: “PSVs include college students, community workers, security staff in companies, floating population managers hired by the police agencies and even retired people.”Footnote 26
The duties of the PSVs overlap with those of frontline bureaucrats (FLBs) in the government security agency, and PSVs are subordinated to FLBs (Table 1). All PSVs are required to register their details with the local civic administrative department (difang minzheng bumen 地方民政部门, LCAD hereafter). The frontline security agencies can distribute top-down tasks to PSVs through volunteer rosters provided by the LCAD. In some places, this is done through “grid management” (wanggehua guanli 网格化管理). Local governments reconfigure their jurisdictional grids so that a certain number of volunteers are placed in different grids. According to one official:
Several volunteers are deployed within each grid in the city. One experienced volunteer could be selected as a grid manager (wanggezhang 网格长) who should have participated in the local government's regular training programmes with other volunteer managers. The grid managers are responsible for supervising and monitoring all the other volunteers in his/her grid.Footnote 27
Table 1: Comparison of FLBs and PSVs
Source: Authors.
On each working day, PSVs are required to upload a specific number of items of community-level security information (i.e. no less than ten items) to the safety maintenance information system (zonghe zhili xinxi pingtai 综合治理信息平台) as part of their mandatory workloads (gongdan 工单). The uploaded information should cover (1) service-in-need problems that should be addressed by the relevant department, such as pavement damage within the grid, and (2) social stability-related matters, such as the activities of potential criminals. It should be noted that local security agencies frequently organize training programmes to improve the quality of grid management. Training programmes pass on such security maintenance skills and knowledge to PSVs as how to upload security information using apps on smartphones. The PSVs do not need to report directly or verbally to local officials. Rather, they use apps designed for grid management to record possible signs of trouble in their managed grids. Upon receiving the information from PSVs, the local authorities will send the police or other enforcement agencies to address any issues. PSVs do not have to interact with their fellow citizens, thus the possibility of conflict between PSVs and residents is low. PSVs boost the government's capacity to exert its control over society through providing instant and detailed information through the grid management system.
In 2014, some major cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Qingdao, pioneered a grid-based system called the “four-level system” (si ji lian dong 四级联动), which integrates official district/county-level, township-level and community-level jurisdictions and PSVs into a hierarchical system. The four-level system aims to gather social stability information through ensuring that “directives can be transmitted, information can be collected, and problems can be resolved” (zhiling xia de qu, xinxi shang de lai, wenti neng jiejue 指令下得去,信息上的来,问题能解决). The system is designed to eliminate any potential unrest and to ensure that “trifles can be resolved within grids, big problems can be eliminated at the grassroots, and no conflicts should be transferred to the upper-level government” (xiaoshi bu chu wang ge, dashi bu chu jiedao, maodun bu shang jiao 小事不出网格,大事不出街道,矛盾不上交).Footnote 28
In addition to the four-level system, most cities in China have installed surveillance technologies such as street cameras. All data recorded by street cameras are automatically transmitted to the public security information database and alert the security agencies to any trouble brewing at the grassroots. Initially, local authorities had to rely solely on such technologies to collect street-level information because many disadvantaged groups such as older adults, migrant workers and children were unable to use or access more modern mobile equipment. Through grid management, many local authorities have subsequently implemented a ground-level information-gathering approach known as the “iron feet + big data” (tie jiaoban jia da shuju 铁脚板加大数据). The “iron feet” refer to the PSVs who conduct daily patrols in the community and record any evidence of social unrest that is not covered by cameras. The “big data” is the information generated constantly by the camera sensors. Alongside the information collected through the installed electronic equipment, PSVs are expected to gather information on citizens by going door-to-door in the communities to ensure that no relevant information is missed.
Although grid managers have discretion in exercising control over the PSVs in their grid, they do not hold any formal positions (bianzhi 编制). This lack of authority presents a problem for grid managers when obtaining citizens’ trust in their surveillance, especially in places that retain a tradition of self-governance. For example, the social elites in localized networks have the resources and authority to influence the provision of public goods.Footnote 29 To effectively mobilize PSVs and overcome the reluctance of citizens to engage in PSV work, frontline government agencies resort to utilizing localized social networks. According to evidence collected during field work, grid managers are usually selected from among local elites (for example, community CCP secretaries and private entrepreneurs) who have built connections with government officials and local citizens. These local elites have informational and resource advantages in transferring top-down directives to those on the ground. One leader of a village committee stated that members were asked to have closed-door meetings (bi men huiyi 闭门会议) with local government officials to receive top-down mobilization tasks:
The village committee should obey the orders from local governments to mobilize citizens. In our village, volunteer mobilization is conducted in terms of self-organized activities … Indeed, these activities provide platforms for citizens to build mutual trust, but that is not enough to sustain voluntary participation … Experienced leaders would attract key individuals who are loyal members of the CCP, active citizens endowed with the spirit of collectivism or altruism, and those attracted by symbolic rewards to be among the first to join PSVs. Other citizens will think it is the right thing to do when these trendsetters (lingtou yang 领头羊) start to do it.Footnote 30
The government can exploit two resources when constructing PSV teams: localized social networks and the social norms created and applied as part of top-down directives. Mobilization tactics are pragmatic rather than routinized. In a localized network, one citizen could have various roles, such as being a member of the CCP, a self-run organization representative, or the relative or friend of a PSV. Each of these identities can help the PSV with the implementation of top-down state directives and decrease the risk of PSV–citizen conflicts because of the social ties that already exist. Owing to the prevalent shame culture in China, most citizens will try to avoid losing face (diu mianzi 丢面子) in a conflict with a PSV because they live in the same community.
Apart from the influence of localized social networks, citizens also tend to cooperate with PSVs because compliance is likely to be the most effective means to balance potential gains and losses. There are two reasons for this. First, the actions of PSVs are embedded in state policies and regulations backed by official rationale, which means that any resistance to PSVs could be regarded as resistance to state authority, with potentially serious repercussions for the contentious citizen. Second, citizens expect not to be regularly disturbed by PSVs. Only during campaign-style projects or major public emergencies, events, or top-down initiatives would citizens expect to be under the strict surveillance of PSVs or to be asked to provide private information and/or participate voluntarily in various activities. Owing to the sporadic nature of such campaigns and large-scale events, citizens will not come into contact with the PSVs once the relevant short-term goals have been realized. Therefore, it is not worth the effort to challenge the PSVs. A former official of a community-based NGO aptly characterized the PSVs and participants as “speculators”:
Both PSVs and other citizens perform a role in a policy-promoting scenario. Citizens do not expect much from PSVs. One bag of cookies (a gift as an incentive) can persuade them to spend several minutes helping an investigation or engaging in propaganda. After that, the local media publicizes photos of the crowd as proof that public activities have a broad social impact.Footnote 31
Indirect enlistment
To date, no formal legislation has been enacted regarding PSV recruitment. Local CCP branches and local authorities have considerable autonomy to enlist citizens into the PSV system and have developed several indirect enlistment strategies.
In 2019, there were over 90 million registered CCP members and 4.6 million CCP branches in China. When an organization establishes a CCP branch, it begins to form a close relationship with the party-state. The organization will continue to operate in a similar manner to organizations without CCP branches, except that the CCP members will organize regular meetings, learn about Party policies and attend activities arranged by upper-level CCP organizations. However, the CCP-embedded organization benefits from the support and resources from party-building funds (dangjian jingfei 党建经费). For many private and public agencies, party-building funds are considered as a further resource, or “freshwater” (huo shui 活水), which can be used to offer employees flexible training programmes and incentives outside the normal fiscal constraints (such as taxes, budgets and reimbursement regulations) that apply in other types of public-funds management. The trade-off is that the organizations with Party branches are expected to follow the CCP's top-down directives and provide human resources to support the PSV system. One leader of an NGO explained the organization's motivation for installing a Party organization:
We connect with the government through the CCP. Once we have a Party organization, we are counted as a bottom-level branch of the CCP. The Party's orders express the government's will. That is why we have approval to do that [mobilize members to become volunteers].Footnote 32
While the government may lack the authority and legal power to persuade people to volunteer, the CCP is not similarly constrained. Strict principles and rules require Party members to show their loyalty and comply with directives within the hierarchical command structure.
Outside of the overarching influence of the CCP, citizens who have been enlisted in the security maintenance system have difficulty registering directly with the relevant voluntary office in the government system. Local government strategies to encourage registration include recruitment drives, honorary rewards and setting specific enrolment quota targets for the various units inside each organization. Pressures are increased for communities when there are tight timeframes for recruitment as they lack the legal enforcement to ensure compliance among staff and citizens because local communities are legislatively recognized in terms of their self-organization within the Constitution. One community manager elaborated on the difficulties:
When there is a plan to host a big event in our city, it is just like a war is going to happen. The event could be a central-government leader inspection tour or a nationwide sports game. We need to persuade our staff to set aside what they are currently doing and help implement the directives of our local government and use our relationships to mobilize citizens living in our community to be volunteers for the few days required.Footnote 33
This networking (la guanxi 拉关系) strategy still plays a dominant role in the daily operations of communities. However, it is unstable and ineffective, especially when the government assigns quotas to communities to mobilize at least a minimum number of residents as volunteers. Apart from the activists, people are not generally that enthusiastic. Our interviews revealed three kinds of prevailing views towards the administrative agencies, as shown in the following excerpts:
They [community managers] are the subordinates of the local government administration. What they are currently doing is straightforwardly following orders, and that is the reason why community affairs are none of my business.Footnote 34
We can only determine something in the community that is not against the will of the government, but there is no clear standard to tell us what the government preference is.Footnote 35
I cannot find peers who have the same interests as me. Elderly people and young children dominate all the community affairs.Footnote 36
Nevertheless, community managers can routinize procedures through finding concrete ways to mobilize residents. Some local communities use social welfare as a bargaining chip to push residents who receive this government subsidy to become “volunteers.” If residents cooperate with the community, their subsidies will not be cut by the community in the future. One interviewee, a lawyer, described a case in the community: “The community uses coercive means to persuade people whose livelihoods depend on public subsistence to contribute obligatory labour (yi wu laodong 义务劳动).”Footnote 37
Enlistment strategies can also be applied in many other institutionalized organizations with clear hierarchies, such as universities, state-owned companies and social service organizations (shiye danwei 事业单位). However, different practical strategies are likely to be deployed. Administrative authorities seek to achieve mobilization goals through a new interpretation of older organizational norms and incentives. As one student who participated in the G20 summit (2016) as a security volunteer in Hangzhou stated:
The CCP organizations in the university and the student union told us how honourable it is for a student to be selected as a volunteer to participate in this activity, and anyone who chooses to participate will learn a lot in practice. It is also designed as a chance for us to get credits for compulsory social practice and higher scores in the annual performance evaluation. This opportunity increases the probability of getting a scholarship in the next semester.Footnote 38
Universities can routinize volunteer mobilization within their regular management. Students are mobilized using procedures that are familiar to the administration staff. In other words, the “depoliticization” generated through bureaucratic absorption leads away from the terrain of political values and power structures and turns mobilization plans into manageable procedures.Footnote 39 The student management offices become responsible for enrolling volunteers, making propaganda, filling in forms and finalizing news and reports. “Considering that the opportunity to become a volunteer in a big event could increase the chances of greater public recognition, many students enthusiastically sign up and the numbers quickly exceed the quotas assigned to each school.”Footnote 40
However, that degree of enthusiasm shown in universities is not typical in other organizations. Because universities carry out their specific directives primarily through mobilizing students, they can frame the action required as a win-win strategy for all concerned. Local enterprises, on the other hand, may be negatively affected by top-down directives but need to avoid any blatant show of defiance. An entrepreneur who had to close his factory during the 2010 Asian games in Guangzhou explained why he had initially cooperated with the directive:
It was a campaign and would not last for a long time. After this event, we could continue our business. Although we knew we would suffer a short-term loss, we did not wish to stand against the government. If we were not smart enough and provoked a conflict, we would lose our business in this place. The government can threaten local business by resorting to punishment for breaking local environmental regulations or commercial registration rules. We did not want to be placed on a blacklist (hei mingdan 黑名单).Footnote 41
While registered PSVs might be considered to be supporters of official directives, local enterprises could be considered to be coerced conformers when they appear to cooperate with government directives, with both the PSVs and the local enterprises all embedded in the safety maintenance framework.
In addition, local governments have increasingly adopted and rolled out surveillance systems that involve individuals checking up on others and making allegations. In an extreme extension of the PSV system, each person becomes an informal volunteer who keeps watch over neighbours’ activities and reports any inappropriate behaviour to the relevant security agency. According to an activist in a village mass organization, this system is effective at shutting down potential unrest:
In 2015, our village responded to the call for mass-organized activity (qunzhong luxian jiaoyu huadong 群众路线教育活动) and we encouraged the local villagers to report any information about misconduct or social unrest to the relevant upper-level agency. Eventually, this evolved into a liability system (lian zuo 连坐) in which any incidents or unrest happening in the village would lead to the people who lived around the site being collectively punished.Footnote 42
Behavioural economists have shown that people tend to show their aversion to having potential threats addressed through the curtailment of their legal rights.Footnote 43 In a liability system, social capital and mutual trust would be so undermined that rational investors would seek to avoid any personal loss by offering information about their neighbours’ supposedly inappropriate behaviour to the relevant security agency. Even if someone were to suffer from a loss because of any form of alleged inappropriate behaviour, any such loss or punishment could be understood as being caused by publicly announced troublemakers and not because of the security strategy, unless such losses or punishments could be avoided altogether through aligning one's interests with the government's security goals more directly through some form of collusion. However, our data reveal that the liability system was less effective, and compliance less guaranteed, when the key officials responsible for it moved to other positions. According to the extent of resources available, stability-maintenance directives applying the liability system can be less effective when they are turned into fragmented tasks that are executed intermittently by different local state actors, or because of conflicting views among upper-level government leaders, or because of the relative weight of differing priorities perceived by those implementing the directives. The system's effectiveness relies heavily on the continuity of specific campaigns or projects.
Motivations for Institutionalizing the State Enlistment of Voluntarism
In general, increasing the availability of a cheap labour force through using volunteers and reducing information asymmetry are the two main motivations for local governments to institutionalize state-enlisted voluntarism.
After the promulgation of the Civil Servant Law (2006), it became difficult for local governments to increase the number of formal positions in their agencies. Apart from civil servants, local governments rely on other staff hired for specific needs from the local labour market (i.e. local government employees). Civil servants differ from these local government employees in two aspects. First, civil servants have greater job security and superior pension benefits. Second, local government employee salaries are drawn from local and district-level government revenues rather than from state revenue-derived coffers. However, the majority of the daily administrative work is done by the local government employees, who occupy most of the positions in the local government. For example, albeit it an extreme one, one local government had 30 times more local government employees than civil servants.Footnote 44 According to our research, this gap is the norm throughout local governments. To reduce hiring costs, local governments have sought to find a qualified but less costly workforce from within their local communities. Therefore, various mass mobilizations have been undertaken to minimize costs and overcome public resistance caused by the clash between state demands and popular desires.Footnote 45 Institutionally enlisting citizens as volunteers into the bureaucratic system is a pragmatic strategy for adding extra members to the workforce rather than for simply promoting greater social participation.Footnote 46
PSVs can also help local governments to deliver a rapid response to social problems and provide useful information to assist decision making. Local authority officials have described the pressures they face in terms of their capacity and their responsibilities as a “thousand threads tied to one needle,” which means in practice that different government departments all rely on local authorities to implement directives but do not provide the frontline agencies with sufficient information and resources. An official who was working in the civic affairs bureau in H city claimed:
It is normal for local authorities to regard the social service organizations as subordinate to them and distribute tasks accordingly. In the current political system, if social organizations refuse to do what the government asks, then what is the meaning of their existence? They will lose their public resources.Footnote 47
This evaluation is common among local authority officials. Currently, many local self-run organizations in China are reported to be only ostensibly “non-governmental” in their form of social organization, and in fact do the party-state's bidding rather than represent their members’ interests effectively.Footnote 48 The government has intentionally blurred its role and relations with self-run organizations when allocating tasks. It does not rely so much on direct and compulsory directives flowing from central to local governments, but more often depends on local initiatives to frame policy innovations and integrate policy goals within local self-governance networks. In cases where government goals have been successfully met, the relevant experiences will be noted; any social innovations developed in the relationship between government and society are likely to attract more attention and resources from upper-level government and be diffused as top-down initiatives in other areas.
Local authorities are sometimes described as loyal proxies in implementing top-down directives, but they also deal with lawbreakers or those seeking to abuse directives for personal gain.Footnote 49 They have accumulated adept strategies in creating a flexible control system that involves the use of collaborative NGOs as proxies to gain political credit (zhengji 政绩) and avoid the risk of being accused of failing to implement policy. Successful state–society cooperation could be interpreted as social innovation, which could, in turn, boost the local leaders’ promotional prospects or enable local authorities to find a scapegoat for any blame. In situations where NGO–state relationships are informal or involve unregistered NGOs, local officials can claim plausible deniability to avoid taking responsibility if something goes wrong and to dodge accusations of contributing to social instability. If the implementation of government policies by local NGOs is successful, local officials can claim the credit; in the event of failure, however, the consequences are borne by the NGOs. Generally, this blame-avoidance strategy is often deployed in situations where PSVs or temporary workers (linshigong 临时工) are used for social stability tasks. Using PSVs to serve social stability ends involves process-oriented activities that do not require specific material outputs but rather a willingness to ensure government expectations are adhered to. Thus, top-down directives always focus on achieving short-term effects. This gives local authorities considerable leeway to present positive results for social stability maintenance tasks and also to deny that specific actions were enacted by themselves. One strategy that takes advantage of this situation has been described as the art of being “busy without moving” (mang er budong 忙而不动).Footnote 50 This refers to local agencies actively assigning tasks to PSVs yet at the same time hindering implementation efforts by not allowing for the flexibility needed to follow the relevant processes and obtain results. Mang er budong essentially explains why local authorities refuse to forge long-term relations with volunteers and instead prefer intermittent enlisting strategies to extend control networks and enhance administrative capacity.
When the Chinese government responds to social needs and seeks to implement relevant key policies, it does not wish to promote an equal partnership with society. Instead, the government retains a dominant position to determine resource distribution and policy agendas. We find that direct enlistment worked to transform citizens into bureaucrats under the government's unified authority and that indirect enlistment brought different institutions more directly under government control and helped to mitigate threats to the current regime. The institutionalization of the state enlistment of voluntarism results from a combination of direct and indirect enlistment approaches (Table 2).
Table 2: Indicators and Elaborations of State-enlisted Voluntarism
Source: Authors.
The Chinese government has not found it necessary or desirable to promote Western democratic values alongside the rapid development of its economy and society. Furthermore, the government does not appear to consider that its legitimacy could be effectively challenged from within Chinese society. Local government officials continuously stress the importance of mass mobilization in achieving policy goals.
Our research on PSVs at the grassroots level indicates that the Chinese state has expanded its hierarchical governmental system to include multiple other social units and has developed the power to recruit various social stakeholders into a top-down command system for security surveillance. According to one definition of institution from a structural-agent perspective, this enlistment system has essentially redefined the shared rules and typologies that identify categories of social actors as citizens, volunteers or street-level bureaucrats, and their appropriate activities or relationships, through fostering the potential of each citizen to be enlisted into the public security system as a co-operator.Footnote 51 Each PSV can be readily transformed into a type of informal street-level bureaucrat. Thus, we find the institutionalization of state-enlisted voluntarism to be a prevalent political phenomenon in China's local state.
Conclusion
Maintaining social stability remains an ongoing priority in China. The CCP and the government have initiated several high-profile policies to ensure the expected degree of obedience and discipline among bureaucrats and Party members while also trying to mobilize a more active participation among the general population in maintaining social stability. In terms of active participation, PSVs represent a specific form of “state-enlisted voluntarism” which moves beyond static cooperation or conflict among different stakeholders. “Good policies” are readily announced in China, but the key for policy success is implementation.Footnote 52 The enlistment strategies employed need to be seen and understood as supplementary methods to enhance policy implementation, rather than as aspects of policymaking.Footnote 53 State-enlisted voluntarism affords an example of a pre-emptive form of social governance that is worth examining. Officials of the current regime have clear incentives to organize citizens to serve as PSVs through highlighting the importance of Party ideology and the virtue of volunteerism in expressing a patriotic spirit. In essence, the enlistment system serves in practice to increase the government's capacity to maintain social stability. The case studies examined indicate that state-enlisted voluntarism has increased the flexibility and autonomy of local authorities in responding to top-down directives. Both the volunteers and potential protesters who are led to comply, even reluctantly, are incorporated into the government's control structure and demonstrate the enlistment system's effectiveness.
In summary, this study can offer three insights into China's state–society relations. First, our analysis of PSVs reveals that the direct enlistment approaches transform citizens into bureaucratic proxies. From the 1990s to the 2000s, the Chinese government launched several policies to build a distinctive security maintenance system known as the QFQZ. We found that policies relating to the QFQZ are sufficiently vague to allow local governments discretion in their interpretation. Creative interpretations of the safety maintenance policies have opened various institutional channels through which local governments can promote obligatory participation. Specifically, through employing the grid management approach, local bureaucrats have intentionally blurred the identity boundaries between volunteers and public servants in frontline agencies to facilitate the integration of these diverse groups into a hierarchical system performing similar duties.
Second, the indirect enlistment approaches ensure that local social institutions are kept under tight control. The CCP operates a hierarchical system, from the centre to local regions, in parallel to the government. It constrains its members through an ideology that emphasizes loyalty and obedience. The management of coercive mobilization projects can be assigned to individuals with Party obligations through a process involving propaganda and meetings. Community-level agencies can take advantage of localized social networks to persuade residents to join in these top-down activities. Furthermore, public organizations such as universities may routinize the enlistment directives as administrative procedures to promote support for state-sponsored activities. To neutralize potential social unrest, the government can encourage reluctant compliance from those inclined to protest through the liability system. Through the adoption of such approaches, the “survival dilemma,” which refers to the difficulty authoritarian rulers face when simultaneously seeking to minimize threats from both the elites and the masses, can be resolved.Footnote 54 In other words, a state maintains its flexibility through being able to mobilize mass support around its directives and from being able to neutralize potential challenges that might induce unrest.
Third, local authorities enlist volunteers from different organizations to build an overarching QFQZ system through highlighting voluntary contributions in state affairs as a choice for the greater good. They apply paramilitary discipline to regulate the volunteers’ behaviour, keep a low threshold in terms of what skills are required for joining, provide various channels for citizens to enrol, and avoid blame in terms of any negative outcomes through their flexible capacity to influence and interpret the implementation process. All these tactics help to forge the institutionalization of the state's enlistment of voluntarism. This phenomenon, therefore, challenges the assumptions of current state-in-society and governance theories, which tend to question the state's capacity to ensure ongoing political and social compliance or its effectiveness in implementing policies when examining state–society cooperation in China. This study offers further evidence concerning Chinese state–society relations, showing an expanded role for citizens as volunteers in support of the government and how the government's legitimacy and the resilience of the party-state have been strengthened.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Shanghai High-level University (Strategic Innovation Team) Construction Project (SHUCP): “Rule of law and grassroots governance innovation in mega cities.”
Conflicts of interest
None.
Biographical notes
Fan YANG is associate professor in the School of Political Science and Public Administration, East China University of Political Science and Law. He focuses on local policy implementation and bureaucratic behaviour in China.
Shizong WANG is professor in the School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, China. His interests encompass local governance, local government and governance theory.
Zhihan ZHANG is a postgraduate student in the School of Political Science and Public Administration, East China University of Political Science and Law. He focuses on local policy implementation and street-level bureaucracy in China.
