China-4E: Eviction, Ethnicity, Environment and Economy

长期以来，研究一直警告说，由于农民抗议和罢工等社会冲突的增加，中国共产党国家的“终局”。相反，党国对社会的控制只增不减；自习政府上台以来更是如此。有压倒一切的社会经济和地缘政治原因来研究中国党国及其制度的稳定性。然而，这项研究受到两个因素的阻碍。首先，由于缺乏衡量争论的综合工具，研究进展缓慢。此外，该主题本身对民族志田野调查和数据收集提出了相当大的挑战。China-4E通过一个关键问题解决了这一不足：中国党国的可信度是什么？它与崩溃的可能性有何关系？这个问题将以一种全面的、跨学科的方式进行：首先，将当代中国研究的方法与发展社会学、地理学、人类学和经济学结合起来，研究“4e”或冲突的关键领域，即驱逐、种族、环境和经济。其次，通过使用新的冲突分析模型（CAM）和正式、实际和目标（FAT）制度框架来评估党国的可信度，该框架评估了国家声称其机构所做的事情与这些机构实际所做的事情以及人们认为它们应该做的事情之间的分歧。PI在ERC的支持下开发的这两种新型分析工具已经进行了广泛的实地测试，尽管尚未应用于评估、监测和预测党国的可信度。因此，它们有望产生重要的新见解。通过将中国作为一个实证案例，本项目的研究结果将有助于研究和理解世界各地的政治制度，包括它们的崛起、崩溃以及有时自相矛盾的持续存在。

Research has for long warned for an "endgame" of the Communist Party-state in China due to a rise in social conflict ranging from farmers' protests to labor strikes. Contrarily, the Party-state's grip over society has only grown; even more so, since the Xi administration's rise to power. There are overriding socio-economic and geo-political reasons to study the stability of the Chinese Party-state and its institutions. Yet, this research is hampered by two factors. For one, research has been slowed by a lack of integrated tools to measure contention. Moreover, the topic itself poses considerable challenges to ethnographic fieldwork and data collection. China-4E addresses this shortfall through a crucial question: What is the credibility of the Chinese Party-state and how does that relate to the likelihood of its collapse? The question will be pursued in a comprehensive, inter-disciplinary manner: First, by marrying approaches from the contemporary China Studies with development sociology, geography, anthropology and economics to examine the "4 E's" or key arenas of conflict, i.e. Evictions, Ethnicity, Environment, and Economy. Second, by assessing the credibility of the Party-state with the use of the new Conflict Analysis Model (CAM) and the Formal, Actual and Targeted (FAT) Institutional Framework, which assesses divergences between what the state professes its institutions do versus what these actually do, and what people believe they ought to do. Both novel analytical tools - developed by the PI with ERC support - have been widely field-tested, although not yet been applied to assess, monitor, and forecast the credibility of the Party-state. As such they are expected to yield significant, new insights. By using China as an empirical case, the findings of this project will have relevance for the study and understanding of political regimes around the world, their ascendance, collapse, and at times, paradoxical persistence.