While burgeoning research on China's state–society relations has paid attention to the Party, little is known about how the Party interacts with diverse actors and involves itself at the grassroots level in a specific region. This article delineates Party-advancement strategies at the community level in Shenzhen since 2013. To reclaim its leading role at the grassroots level, the Party opted for “Party–government disaggregation” by framing community governance as a Party-building affair, separating the government's affairs from those of the Party and “kicking” the government out of the community. Under the rubric of “reshaping Party–mass relations,” the Party penetrated deep into the community by innovating a “centre-periphery” organizational system, absorbing community elites in a top-down way and using a “service delivery taking the lead” method in a reciprocal exchange. In the end, the Party-governance structure, in which Party–mass relations are at the core, was reframed in the communities.

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power, one million mainland Chinese were forcibly displaced to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's regime. Today, this event is still largely considered as a relocation of government or a military withdrawal operation instead of a massive population movement. Contrary to popular belief, many of the displaced mainlanders were not Nationalist elites. Most were common soldiers, petty civil servants, and war refugees from different walks of life. Based on newspapers, magazines, surveys, declassified official documents produced in 1950s Taiwan and contemporary oral history, this article uncovers the complicated relationship between the regime in exile and the people in exile. It argues that the interdependency between the two, in particular between the migrant state and the socially atomized lower class migrants, was formed gradually over a decade due to two main factors: wartime displacement and the need to face an unfriendly local population together.

This article complicates the conventional wisdom that Chinese lawyers are either politically liberal activists or apolitical hired guns by training our attention on the group of lawyers who choose to stand adjacent to the state and participate in governance. Through an examination of how and why winners of the state-sanctioned Outstanding Lawyer Award participate in politics, we illustrate how state-adjacent lawyers provide the state with information and persuade others to behave in ways the state considers appropriate. Although proximity to power affords some social and professional benefits, award winners are also motivated by a commitment to improving Chinese society. By highlighting the political role played by lawyers who serve as a bridge between state and society, we open the door to future research on the relationship between the state and professionals in other industries and countries, and call for continued attention to how inequality shapes opportunities for political participation in China.

This study explores collaboration between state actors and non-state specialists in the market for coercion. We focus on the case of forced evictions in South Korea, where violence carried out by private companies has occurred with the implicit, and at times explicit, sanctioning of the state. This level of government–private security cooperation has traditionally been explained by various hypotheses, including arguments about the weak capacity of a state to enforce compliance, trends in the neo-liberal marketization of state power, or as the outcome of a state being captured by the capitalist classes. Documenting the history of urban redevelopment projects and changes in government responses to major protest incidents in Korea, we instead argue that this niche market for private force is an observable implication of a shift in state–society relations in the wake of democratization. This phenomenon is, in effect, a very undemocratic response to democratization, by state elites.

In market reform China, contentious and unfair labour relations between vulnerable migrant workers and exploitative foreign factory owners are one of the most critical issues of the political economy. This article analyses another group of workers – non-migrant local village workers – who protect themselves from foreign employers using two political resources: collective land-use rights and local political organizations, such as village governments, affective networks and physical forces, during their suburban village's industrialization. Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork in Shandong (Qingdao) and other coastal regions in 2007, 2008 and 2011–2013, this article attempts to answer the questions of how local village workers protect their labour rights without reliable trade unions or rigorous governmental protection. How can villagers protect, if not maximize, their interests in their relations with the foreign factories in their villages? It also contrasts local labour relations in Qingdao with migrant labour relations in other coastal regions.

This article suggests that the lack of meaningful collaboration between the state and NGOs in China is not solely a result of the state seeking to restrict the development of the sector, or the fear of a potential opposing actor to the state; instead, interviews with NGOs in Beijing and Shanghai suggest that a lack of meaningful engagement between the state and NGOs can be partially attributed to isomorphic pressures within state–NGO relations, and insufficient epistemic awareness of NGO activities on the part of the state. In fact, the evidence suggests that once epistemic awareness is achieved by the state, it will have a stronger desire to interact with NGOs – with the caveat that the state will seek to utilize the material power of NGOs, rather than their symbolic, interpretive or geographical capital.

This article investigates the role of the Moluo Tourism Association in Suopo township, Danba county, Sichuan. It examines its organization, internal structure and objectives, and explores the concerns of Tibetan elites and villagers and their strategies for advancing their political and other goals in an officially sanctioned framework. The research shows that the association resembles a “state-led civil society” as its membership and agendas exhibit the strong will of the local state; nevertheless, it still manages to carve a space for expressing negative opinions towards the local authorities, pursuing the “Eastern Queendom” cause and following its own agendas. The dynamic and nuanced interactions between the association and township show that state–society relations in China are situated in a complex and convoluted landscape which has not yet been fully explored in the China field. Furthermore, the article brings to light the divergent interests and positions of the association members as well as the heterogeneity of Suopo society proper. It concludes with a brief discussion of the prospects for an enhanced engagement of ethnic research with broader China studies.

This article analyses citizen–police relations in the marginalised Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa. It demonstrates that despite predominantly negative perceptions about and experiences with the police, local residents do not abandon state institutions as security providers. The article claims that as formal and informal access to the legal and coercive powers of the police provides an important resource for local residents needing to resolve individual or collective security problems and conflicts in their favour, local police forces continue to be addressed and imagined by residents as relevant security actors.