Social Science Talk - Accommodating Power: Pastors, Lawyers and NGOs in Today’s China

There have been social and political changes in China, and some pastors, lawyers and NGOs are neither resisting the changes nor withdrawing from the public sphere, but instead are finding ways to adapt. Coping strategies include: being transparent about their activities and maintaining close communication with the authorities; cultivating allies in the government and giving credit to officials for their achievements; keeping the size of their organizations non-threatening and consenting to a heightened Party presence; staying a safe distance from red lines and focusing on less controversial issues, among others. The hope is that cooperation and exhibiting an understanding view of the Party’s motives will preserve space to operate and suggest a path toward long-term co-existence. Accommodating pastors, lawyers and NGOs take the regime as a given and work with the state rather than against it. By doing so, they retain some agency, even as deepening control blurs the line between accommodation and co-optation. Potentially restive professionals are directed away from activities and ways of thinking that the authorities do not like, and toward organizing themselves and acting in a manner that is deemed acceptable. They learn to avoid confrontation while they are steered to a safe place and rewarded (or at least tolerated) if they stay there.