Spaces of Action and the Rights of Students in Chinese Universities

This book takes students’ responses to grievances as a platform for exploring the construction of students’ rights against the backdrop of China’s shift to mass higher education and move to rule of law. Specifically, the study reconstructs the spaces of action involved in seven major responses to student discipline, with special emphasis on the role of law in students’ action and in social change. Data for this book came from interviews with students and other key players in landmark cases as well as focus-group interviews and surveys of ordinary college students at ten universities located in four geographically different cities.

The study offers an interesting example of integrated bottom-up and top-down policy/legal changes in Chinese higher education. By comparing college students to other emerging rights-claiming populations such as peasants and workers, the study also addresses a gap in the extant literature on rights, citizenship, and resistance in China and has important implications for the understanding citizenship development in China.