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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Yu Jianrong, carefully outspoken expert in Rural/Conflict Studies at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

The Australian Centre of China In the World ran a good introduction and a piece of translation of Yu Jianrong (于建嵘) in the beginning of 2013: "In November 2012, Foreign Policy named Yu Jianrong one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers and described the famous scholar who works in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing as a ‘rare Chinese academic who has taken up the challenge of defining how exactly China could change course’. In his recent writings, Yu reflects both upon social stability 社会稳定 and reform – two equally beloved concepts of the Chinese party-state."

As of now, this popular scholar has over 1.9 million of followers on Sina Weibo


The article translated at the The Australian Centre of China In the World examined the disadvantages and destructiveness of China's "rigid stability" implemented ruthlessly by the authoritarian state and instructed a four-step recipe for "resilient stability". I think it is an article worth reading. It was firstly published in Aisixiang on October 2012.


Yu seems to be a critical and outspoken scholar who is smart at writing sensitive issues like "petitioning", "rioting" and "social stability" without getting himself into trouble. Maybe one way of achieving this was by not talking to foreign media, which he clearly announced on his Sina Weibo account in 2011/12.


The World Security Institute, an European research NGO published a series of articles related to China Security and the first article was Yu's Social Conflicts in Rural China. It was published in 2007 and some of the contents and ideas are a bit outdated. This NGO is new to me and I thought it was good to know their existence after all. For the other article in this link, Emerging Trends in Violent Riots (2008), Yu also softly advocated a more balanced control on social stability. It seems Yu has become more pushy over the years. 


Here is Yu Jianrong's collection of articles in Chinese in Aisixiang.

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