How is the government responding to protests over land rights, pollution, and corruption?
While not necessarily changing its policy or allowing genuine democratic reforms and the rule of law to respond to these social and political problems, the Chinese government has nevertheless tried different tactics to deal with them. It occasionally punishes local officials to show that it cares about public opinion and wants to solve these problems. It has increased its spending on environmental protection as well—though the problem is so huge that even greater spending will be required. While the legal framework protecting property rights remains patchy, rising civic activism has made it harder for local officials to confiscate land or relocate urban residents by force, as they did before. Corruption remains a serious challenge to the party. Its current approach to this scourge is a mix of selective prosecution and technocratic fixes, tightening some regulations and improving the techniques of detection. But the party has resisted more radical approaches, such as further liberalizat
