The Unknown Terrain of Social Protests in China: ‘Exit', ‘Voice', ‘Loyalty', and ‘Shadow’

As many as 180,000 social protests may take place in China every year. How should we conceptualize and explain the widespread phenomenon of social protests that take place in a situation where civil society is generally described as contained? An investigation of the Wukan incident, a specific protest that caught worldwide attention in 2011, shed new light on this paradox. The findings theorized in line with Albert Hirschman's concepts of ‘voice', ‘exit', and ‘loyalty’ point to the existence of a fourth strategy and condition, ‘shadow', introduced to better understand the actually existing non-registered groups that operate in the unofficial civic domain.