On a rainy afternoon, I met Mr. Chen Yuan-Zhang (pseudonym) in a rural town of Sichuan Province.1 I was attending a wedding officiated by a foreign missionary, organized by an underground congregation, and supported by registered churches from other Chinese provinces. It was a very unusual mix of people in a chaotic situation due to the weather and the sensitivity of the gathering, especially when I realized that the bride and groom had first to go to a registered church for a “pretend” marriage ceremony and then return to participate in the “real” ceremony. Mr. Chen was introduced by his family as a local charity activist. Chen became well known in the circle of aid workers after the 2008 earthquakes, because his unique background distinguished him from other activists. He was a Communist Party member and a well-respected local official in the financial sector. People saw him as the “go-to” guy for advice on how best to survive in this chaotic and repressive environment.
After two visits and a long interview, I learned a story of activism that would be repeated by others throughout my fieldwork in China. The story departs from the typical patterns and theories of success in transnational activist networks that are prominent in mainstream Western scholarly literature. Mr. Chen was baptized as a Protestant Christian after returning from a business trip to the United States, and his grassroots organization shelters underground religious activity. He talked about human rights and activism in a pragmatic way. “You have to fight for rights carefully and never cross the ‘red line’ of the Party,” he said. Mr. Chen was frustrated with my questions regarding progress in human rights lawmaking in recent years. “The Communist Party owns the court and the police,” he emphasized. “[Human rights] lawmaking is for show; we cannot win protection by passing new laws that are designed to control us.” I mentioned the campaigns of overseas human rights groups that aim to help Chinese activists. “I understand their concerns,” he insisted, “but their involvement would only complicate things here” (Interview No. 44).
The story of transnational activism being told here differs from those of prominent human rights and transnational activism paradigms, which describe local activists as either passively empowered by outside advocates or aggressively “marketing” their grievances to Western media and organizations for their intervention (Bob, 2005). Clifford Bob defines transnational activism as “sustained and substantial transfers of money, materiel, and knowledge by a foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) or NGO network to a challenger, as well as provision of publicity, advocacy, and lobbying on its behalf.” In contrast to this view, I saw an alternative approach to transnational activism that involves innovative local “challengers” helping to market their foreign NGO sponsors to people in power. Local activists help this fragile advocacy network by providing information and connections, while brokering acquiescence from pragmatic local officials. In return, the advocacy network provides funding and services. Most importantly, the advocacy network provides globally recognized knowledge and norms, which make the local leaders allied with them seem legitimate to their own constituency. Several months after the interview, Mr. Chen’s charity organization obtained official approval and was registered, despite the fact that he and his followers had clashed with riot police and religious officials many times. His low profile and “respect-the-red line” strategy had paid off.
The work of Chen Yuan-Zhang and other activists and organizations examined in this project sheds light on the unique conundrum that activists confront in an authoritarian state. Transnational networks provide assistance to local activists, but their appearance and efforts also increase the risk of local collaborators becoming victims of political repression. This dilemma is particularly exacerbated in places like China, where foreign intervention is readily stigmatized for various ideological and political reasons. In many cases, it is the activists who have affiliated themselves with political institutions who know best. The red line Chen referred to typically includes a “No Foreigners Allowed” rule.2 Although Mr. Chen is well aware of the Party’s opinion about foreign intervention, his organization openly receives donations from overseas charity organizations. He knows foreign missionaries are forbidden to work in China, yet he maintains contact with them and assists them in their work. This red line, therefore, seems to vary from case to case, but it is clear for Mr. Chen that there are ways to work around it without sacrificing the key principles of religious freedom. He is friendly with the establishment, but disobeys its leadership and evades the rules when he considers that his principles and beliefs may be at risk. Although his facilities have been surrounded and attacked by riot police a couple of times, he would never call attention to this repression by alerting the foreign media or rights advocates. Individuals like Mr. Chen are part of a locally based, transnational activism that practices deliberate but not confrontational disobedience in response to state-sponsored repression of religious and other social freedoms.
The critical difference distinguishing the approach of activists like Mr. Chen from that outlined in accounts by scholars is that Chinese “challengers” are facing a geopolitically strong, repressive, and resolute state, and this environment demands an alternative advocacy strategy. The champions of human rights advocacy theory, Keck and Sikkink (1998), admit that the conventional human rights method does not work against strong violators like China, because it has no vulnerability that can be leveraged by activists. Yet international human rights watch groups continue to exert pressure on the Chinese government, despite the fact that their actions have very little positive effect. In some cases, people have been subjected to detention and monitoring due to the constant intervention and questioning of foreign groups. One famous example is the second arrest of political dissident Wei Jingsheng in April 1994. It is widely believed that his arrest was related to the growing clamor from human rights critics in the United States.3
For economic development, dictators need the money, materiel, and knowledge provided by foreign social entities such as NGOs or international NGO (INGO ) networks. However, activists in strong authoritarian states are often aware that publicity, advocacy, and the lobbying efforts of foreigners can do tremendous damage to their cause. This unwanted publicity and pressure can undermine the work of activists, because the repressive state can and will punish locals for bringing outside criticism. Furthermore, the uninvited criticism can alienate their own constituencies, because years of patriotic and anti-imperialist education have made people suspicious of the motives of foreign interventionists. However, as shown by religious groups discussed in this book, the social space for a different kind of activism—one that is more locally based and focuses on behind-the-scenes negotiation rather than direct confrontation, and favors a slower, yet perhaps more fruitful activism—is something for which both foreigners and locals can fight. Local activists can provide services to transnational networks, and they can lobby, advocate, and win the trust of newcomers to the local community. A good understanding of this alternative form of transnational activism brings insights to the existing literature of political opposition and secular activism.
1.1 Argument in Brief: Marketing Activism under Authoritarianism
Not all illegal Christian churches or uninvited missionaries are repressed in China, and some improve their level of freedom despite past grievances with the government. What factors contribute to this variation in the responses of an authoritarian state to transnational religious activism? This project responds to this question via the stories of those like Chen Yuan-Zhang and other Chinese and overseas activists who work for religious freedom. Transnational activists have been involved in many political transformations in former socialist nations (Leitzel, 2003) and military juntas in Latin America (Risse-Kappen, Risse, Ropp, & Sikkink, 1999), but scholars often consider transnational activism in strong authoritarian environments like China’s to be ineffective due to its nuclear power status, strong economic performance, non-liberal culture, isolation from international society, and/or “authoritarian resilience” (Dickson, 2003, 2007; Nathan, 2003; Shambaugh, 2008; Wright, 2010; Yang, 2004). Transnational activism is not very effective on issues that do not involve bodily harm to individuals and equal opportunity of legal rights (Keck & Sikkink, 1998); its effectiveness is greatly limited by the threat it poses to national cohesion and integrity and to societal openness to outside criticism (Risse-Kappen et al., 1999). In this work, I present evidence to support a different, more optimistic assessment of transnational activism in the context of a strong authoritarian state. I argue that by building a local network that includes government-sponsored social groups, transnational activists can push a strong authoritarian regime to incorporate basic freedoms and thereby build a space for their activism, even if the society is closed to outside criticism and the state ridicules such advocacy with anti-imperialist accusations.
Chinese authoritarianism provides a strong test of this argument, because it has been referred to as a glass ceiling with respect to what transnational activists can accomplish (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Charles Tilly cites China and Iran as examples of “high-capacity undemocratic regimes” because of their strong institutions for monitoring dissidents and their use of violence against them, which leave very small civic spaces for the expression of contention (Tilly, 2003, p. 47). Understanding how some transnational religious activists have won concessions from Chinese officials and toleration toward their obvious rule-breaking can shed light on how other activists can broaden the contentious space in China, and perhaps in other authoritarian states as well.
This observation echoes the classic theory of political opposition developed by political scientist Robert Dahl: in democracies, opposition is more likely to be tolerated when the cost and difficulty of repression are high (Dahl, 1971). This work puts Dahl’s logic to the test in a strong non-democratic setting. Promoting public opposition or organized activism is possible in this environment, argues this theory, when disobedience to an official rule occurs in such a way that activists can reshape the cost–benefit calculation of the parties involved and make self-restraint a better option for officials than repression. In other words, a sustainable network of opposition is possible even in an authoritarian state when activists can successfully increase the benefit of toleration or the costs of crackdown.
This work provides a novel explanation for why some efforts to promote transnational religious activism fail and others succeed. Beyond the major theories of activism that suggest that the strengthening of activism depends on rousing the spirit, awareness, and solidarity of opposition through direct confrontation with repressive regimes, the explanations provided here focus on how transnational religious activists can build a transnational network of disobedience that can survive in an environment where there is no visible political opposition available with which activists can ally or consolidate, and promoting public awareness of injustice is almost impossible due to the lack of freedom of expression and association. Disobedience in a high-capacity authoritarian state is dangerous and difficult; the first priority for activists is to ensure that the operation of a network for transferring money, materiel, and knowledge in and out of the country is basically tolerated and is n...