Lynette H Ong

• Professor (Full) at University of Toronto

China, the world's largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter, appears to have contradictory climate policies. While aggressively pursuing a renewable energy policy, Beijing is weak on a commitment to emissions reduction. The "paradox" can be reconciled on the basis of China's priority for growth, which is critical in ensuring the Communist...

This article examines the rationale behind municipal and local governments’ pursuance of urbanization, and the political and socio-economic implications of the policy to move villagers from their farmland into apartment blocks in high-density resettlement areas, or “concentrated villages.” It provides evidence of an increasing reliance by municipal...

The main purpose of this study is to shed light on the nature of social unrest in China, the grievances that are at the heart of social unrest and the counterpolicies launched by the Chinese government and to discuss the implications for EU policy. The study is based on English- and Chinese-language sources comprising official documents, newspaper...

Understanding the logic of Beijing’s economic coercion will be critical for Canadian security moving forward. This chapter evaluates the nature of the economic interdependence that exposes trading nations like Canada to trade coercion from a larger trad-ing partner like China. It starts by explaining how China uses eco-nomic coercion in response to...

The recent authoritarian turn in Chinese politics under Xi Jinping has invigorated interest in the concept of “public security,” a metamorphosis of the term “weiwen” (stability maintenance) fashioned by his predecessor Hu Jintao. Both concepts emphasize a preventive repression that involves a whole-of-society approach to preserving social order. Dr...

Review Article

How do state leaders use crisis management to strengthen state infrastructural power? What explains the strategic choices of a state’s selective institutionalization of crisis measures? Crises offer unique opportunities for state-building, yet the role of crisis management in consolidating state power is underexamined. This paper explores these imp...

The introductory chapter succinctly summarizes a theory about outsourcing repression, in which the state engages nonstate actors—violent thugs-for-hire and nonviolent grassroots brokers—to implement unpopular policies. Outsourcing violence to thugs-for-hire allows for plausible deniability and the evasion of political accountability. Grassroots bro...

How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing Repression, Lynette H. Ong examines how the Chinese state engages nonstate actors, from violent street gangsters to nonviolent grassroots brokers, to coerce and mobilize the masses for state pursuits, while reducing costs and minimizing resistance...

How do discontented masses and opposition elites work together to engineer a change in electoral authoritarian regimes? Social movements and elections are often seen as operating in different terrains – outside and inside institutions, respectively. In this Element, I develop a theory to describe how a broad-based social movement that champions a g...

Both China and India have witnessed extensive land expropriation by the state from farmers for use in industrialisation and urbanisation projects. Land conflicts have ensued from these developments. This article poses two questions: (i) Why do we see a similar escalation of land dispossession in both countries, despite their distinctively dissimila...

A strong authoritarian state such as China has a range of institutions and instruments at its disposal to resolve social conflicts. This study proposes a new mechanism-citizen's engagement of a profit-seeking intermediary-that helps to facilitate state-society bargaining, resolve conflicts and thereby absorb social contention. This form of state-so...

One of the key obstacles of democratization in “competitive authoritarian” regimes is the formation of an electoral coalition of opposition parties that could pose a credible challenge to the incumbents. This paper develops a theory to illustrate how a broad-based social movement can build support across political elites and the society. Over a rei...

Both China and India have witnessed extensive land expropriation by the states from farmers for use in industrialization and urbanization projects. Land conflicts have ensued from these developments. This paper poses two questions: 1) Why do we see a similar escalation of land dispossession in both countries, despite their distinctively dissimilar...

Why does the Chinese government—which is known for its strong-arm tactics—need or desire to use non-state actors to carry out coercion and social control? In this piece, I argue the government seeks to deploy non-state actors to perform coercive acts or exercise social control for a wide range of reasons, such as reducing the cost of repression and...

This article examines “thugs-for-hire” in state repression. Local governments regularly deploy third-party violence to evict homeowners, expropriate land from farmers, manage illegal street vendors, and deal with petitioners and protestors in China. Violence is effective in implementing unpopular and illegal policies and also allows local authoriti...

Using violence or threat of violence, “thugs-for-hire” (TFH) is a form of privatized coercion that helps states subjugate a recalcitrant population. I lay out three scope conditions under which TFH is the preferred strategy: when state actions are illegal or policies are unpopular; when evasion of state responsibility is highly desirable; and when...

What drives people to protest in an authoritarian country? Drawing from a rich set of individual-level data from the China General Social Survey 2010, we address the question of protest participation by focusing on the factors of resources, and rewards vs. risks, that might be unique to protestors in an authoritarian state. We find strong evidence...

A Discussion of Daniel A. Bell’s The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy - Volume 14 Issue 1 - Lynette H. Ong

This paper examines “thugs-for-hire” as a form of state coercion and everyday repression. Third-party violence is commonly deployed by the state to evict homeowners and to deal with petitioners and protestors in China. This study contributes to the state repression literature by elaborating the role of thugs and gangsters as a repressive measure. V...

Rural credit cooperatives have become increasingly commercialized over the last decade. However, this does not spell the end of cooperative finance in rural China. Various new cooperative credit organizations have sprung up in recent years with endorsement from the central and local governments. They are designed to meet the wide-ranging credit dem...

Social unrest is on the rise in China. Few incidents of public demonstrations, disruptive action or riots occurred in the 1980s, but the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square marked a turning point. In 1993, there were already 8,700 ‘mass incidents’ recorded. By 2005, the number had grown tenfold to 87,000. Unofficial data estimated by a resear...

China, the world's largest energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter, appears to have contradictory climate policies. While aggressively pursuing a renewable energy policy, Beijing is weak on a commitment to emissions reduction. The “paradox” can be reconciled on the basis of China's priority for growth, which is critical in ensuring the Communist...

The official banking institutions for rural China are Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs). Although these co-ops are mandated to support agricultural development among farm households, since 1980 half of RCC loans have gone to small and medium-sized industrial enterprises located in, and managed by, townships and villages. These township and village e...

This chapter examines rural credit cooperatives (RCCs) in the context of China's rural financial landscape, with particular emphasis on their significance to the rural economy and households. China's rural financial system serves roughly 800 million people, who live in large swaths of hinterland in the central and western provinces and in rural and...

This book examines the bias in lending toward local government-related enterprises in rural China. It investigates why the mobilization of rural savings has contributed to successful industrial development in some locales but not in others. Focusing on rural credit cooperatives (RCCs), the official banking institutions for rural China, the book loo...

This paper investigates the changing nature of state-business relations in China based on its recent privatization experience. Drawing on an analytical framework based on statist literature, this study seeks to explain why pervasive governance problem occurred during the privatization of local government-owned firms. The two contributing factors ar...

China has been held up as a modern-day exemplar of “market-preserving federalism”. This study challenges this popular belief by showing that its local governments face soft budget constraints. Fiscal indiscipline among subnational governments, which risks national indebtedness and macroeconomic instability, can pose serious dangers to federations....

China has been held up as a modern-day exemplar of ‘market-preserving federalism.’ This article challenges this popular belief by showing that its local governments face soft budget constraints. Fiscal indiscipline among subnational governments, which risks national indebtedness and macroeconomic instability, can pose serious dangers to federations...

This paper investigates the changing nature of state-business relations in China based on its recent privatization experience. Drawing on an analytical framework based on statist literature, this study seeks to explain why pervasive governance problem occurred during the privatization of local government-owned firms. The two contributing factors ar...

This article is about China's agricultural banking since 1978.

This article is about China's Agricultural Policy since 1978.

Although the Rural Credit Cooperatives are the only formal credit providers to millions of households in rural China, empirical evidence suggests that they do not serve the interests of member households very effectively. This study examines how far the recent institutional reforms have addressed the problems of insider control and collective actio...

This paper sheds light on the ways in which township governments had mobilized resources from local financial institutions, and how failure to repay many of these loans had given rise to sizable local government debt. Mobilization of resources was done through loans to collective enterprises whose de facto owners were township authorities. Though t...

Ample empirical evidence suggests that Rural Credit Cooperatives (RCCs), which are the core credit institutions in rural China, are not accountable to their member households. This article argues that this conundrum can be explained by an institutional analysis of the credit cooperatives using the multiple principals-agent framework: the credit coo...

Thesis (doctoral)--Rand Graduate School, 1999. Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-138).