***Outsourcing Repression:***
***Everyday State Power in Contemporary China***
(Oxford University Press & Columbia Weatherhead East Asia Series, 2022)
*Publication Date: May 13, 2022 (US); May 27, 2022 (Canada)*

How do states coerce citizens into compliance while simultaneously minimizing backlash? In Outsourcing Repression, Lynette H. Ong examines how the Chinese state engages nonstate actors, from violent street gangsters to nonviolent grassroots brokers, to coerce and mobilize the masses for state pursuits, while reducing costs and minimizing resistance. She draws on ethnographic research conducted annually from 2011 to 2019--the years from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, a unique and original event dataset, and a collection of government regulations in a study of everyday land grabs and housing demolition in China. Theorizing a counterintuitive form of repression that reduces resistance and backlash, Ong invites the reader to reimagine the new ground state power credibly occupies. Everyday state power is quotidian power acquired through society by penetrating nonstate territories and mobilizing the masses within. Ong uses China's urbanization scheme as a window of observation to explain how the arguments can be generalized to other country contexts.
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**Reviews**:
*China Quarterly*, Online Firstview, February 2024.
*Europe-Asia Studies*, vol. 75, iss. 9, November 2023.
*The* *National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR)’s Asia Policy*, Book Review Roundtable, January 2023.
*Perspectives on Politics*, Critical Dialogue, June 2023.
*Foreign Affairs*, Capsule Review, August 2023.
政治科學新書介紹：《外包式鎮壓》在中國，菜市场政治学，July 11th, 2022.

AWARDS

American Sociological Association (ASA) Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship in Political Sociology, Co-Winner, 2023

American Political Science Association (APSA) Human Rights Best Book Award 2023

American Sociological Association (ASA) Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award 2023

International Studies Association (ISA) Human Rights Section, Best Book Award 2023

American Political Science Association (APSA) Comparative Politics Section, Gregory Luebbert Best Book Award, Shortlist, 2023

Routledge Area Studies (Impact) Award, Shortlist, 2023

ADVANCED PRAISE

"A granular, documented, and persuasive analysis of how authoritarian control is maintained on a quotidian basis in Xi's China. Lest we ever doubt that all authoritarian regimes operate 'outside' even their own hand-tailored, legal order, this fine study closes the case. A discerning examination of the atomization, perversion, and cooptation of what might otherwise be a mobilized, autonomous civil society." ―James C. Scott, Yale University
"Ong provides what's likely to be the definitive account of socialized repression in contemporary China. That the state uses third parties to extend its power down to the grassroots (and to avoid backlash) is one of the key features of China's hardening authoritarianism, and a development of great importance to China scholars and comparativists alike." ―Kevin J. O'Brien, University of California, Berkeley
"Outsourcing Repression is a fascinating study of an important but underexplored issue about state control in China-outsourcing state repression to non-state actors. Analytically rigorous, this book uncovers how the state exercises its everyday coercion by securing the collaboration of social actors, mainly thugs-for-hire and brokers. This is an important book that sheds new light on the coercive power of authoritarian states." ―Yongshun Cai, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
“Lynette Ong has written a book that at once makes important conceptual breakthroughs and provides readers with rich descriptions and analysis of the mechanisms for what she calls “everyday forms of repression.” … This book provides an important piece of the authoritarian longevity puzzle. (It) will inspire many follow-up studies not just on China but also on other authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes.” – Victor C. Shih, University of California, San Diego (Perspectives on Politics)
"China’s rapid growth in the first decade of the twenty-first century was produced partly by municipal governments seizing massive areas of suburban farmland and older urban residential areas to sell to developers. Ong’s penetrating fieldwork over this period revealed how officials were often able to evict residents from their housing without triggering a massive backlash..." -- Andrew Nathan, Columbia University (Foreign Affairs)

BOOK RELATED TALKS

Academia Sinica, Institute of Political Science, Taipei, March 2024.

University of Louisville, Center for Asian Democracy, February 2024.

University of Pennsylvania, Center for the Study of Contemporary China, February 2024.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Security Studies Program, February 2024.

Columbia University, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, January 2024.

Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, October 2023.

American University, School of International Service, October 2023.

Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, July 2023.

Asia Society, New York City, In-Person Book Talk, June 2023.

HKBU, CEIBS, NUS, NTU, Joint Online Political Economy Seminar Series, March 2023.

University of Concordia, Department of Political Science, March 2023.

Council on Foreign Relations, China’s Zero-Covid Virtual Roundtable, February 2023.

Wilson Center and McGill University, China’s Political Challenges and US-China Relations, December 2022.

Stanford University, China Program, Shorenstein APARC, October 2022.

University of California, San Diego, 21st Century China Center, October, 2022.

University of California, Irvine, October, 2022.

APSA Urban Politics Workshop, Montreal, September 2022.

National University of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, July 2022.

Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, June 2022.

University of Ottawa, May 2022.

Georgetown University, Initiatives for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues, February 2022.

PODCASTS

Democracy Paradox with Justin Kemp

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New Books Podcast with Peter Lorentzen

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UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy, 21st Century China Center

Listen Here
NüVoices with Joanna Chiu

Listen here
Departures with Robert Amsterdam

Listen here
Conversation Six with Carl Minzner

Listen here
Pekingology with CSIS Freeman Chair

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不明白播客，袁莉主持

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Rocking Our Priors with Alice Evans

Listen Here

OPINION PIECES:

ZERO-COVID POLICIES, REPRESSION

Full text here.

Chinese Translation: 风传媒，「白紙革命」快速延燒！學者：中國的「維穩制度」正在失去效果。

Full text here.

Chinese translation: China Digital Times 中国数字时代

MEDIA MENTIONS/INTERVIEWS

New York Times,

Editorial Board Opinion, December 3, 2022.

PBS NewsHour with

Judy Woodruff

Video: China’s Abrupt Covid-Zero Reversal, December 27, 2022.

“Covid-Zero has been President Xi’s signature policy from Day One. A year into the pandemic, it has ceased to become a public health issue, and become a political issue instead — it is about showcasing the superiority of China’s model in protecting lives and controlling people’s movement leading up to the 20th Party Congress. This about-face has left the hospital system unprepared for the surge in cases.”