Apathy is not Enough: Changing Modes of Student Management in Post-Mao China

Chinese campuses have been remarkably calm since the post-1989 repression. Yet, absence of contention masks profound changes in party-state’s campus management tactics, exemplifying different approaches authoritarian regimes employ to regiment students. Based on fieldwork before and after Xi Jinping’s rise power (2012), we analyse move from a ‘corporatist’ ‘partification’ strategy campus. Contrary literature that sees apathy depoliticisation as goal campuses, argue these reveal regime’s apprehension about student alienation official political channels constitute an effort reverse it.