State Governance and Protest Fragmentation: A Critical Inquiry into Veterans’ Activism in China

This article is a critical inquiry into the dynamics of state governance and protest fragmentation in contemporary China. Drawing on a case analysis of veterans’ activism and evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2019 and 2024, it argues that three commonly adopted approaches to social governance—localization, categorization, and individualization—systematically fragment veteran constituency and shatter broad-based solidarity. However, each of the three approaches generates unintended consequences. Local governance, which is structurally incapable of resolving national grievances, often provokes cross-regional mobilization; categorized governance, by institutionalizing differential treatment for different veteran subgroups, fuels sustained contention through relative deprivation; and individualized governance encourages transactional activism, whereby veterans extract personal concessions beyond the scope of legitimate grievances. By framing state-society interactions as a dynamic process, this inquiry advances theories of contentious politics and authoritarianism, revealing how the routine operation of social governance can intentionally or unintentionally reshape the landscape of contention it seeks to manage.