In a previous post I argued that the future of China’s public sphere and non-profit infrastructure is uncertain at best. But the momentum surrounding health care reform — and one must add, the foreign NGOs that are coming to China as a result — should both help, and be helped, by this vital yet struggling grassroots development.

A recently published book “Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China” edited by Elizabeth J. Perry and Merle Goldman both enriches and expands our perspective on this notion. When the editors look historically at grassroots reforms in China they conclude that, while the picture is mixed,

“China’s grassroots politics — in rural villages and urban residential districts — has experienced significant transformation in recent years. Although some of these changes are the product of conscious top-down state engineering and some a result of the unintended consequences of state policy, others have been generated by bottom-up social initiatives as well as international influences.” (my emphasis)”

One reason why some of these bottoms-up grassroot organizations have been able to grow and survive has to do with their unique and paradoxical strategy of what one of the book’s authors calls “protest opportunism.” In this strategy “troublemaking” tactics and “obedient” tactics are engaged in at the same time. Typically these groups make use of authorized channels of communication to air grievances with a strong tendency to overstep officially prescribed bounds. They employ the rhetoric of the powerful as they seek to locate and exploit divisions among the them. And they use strong symbolic tactics while employing finely tuned disruptions of business-as-usual. AIDS activism, as I have brought up before, is case in point.

The Chinese people feel deeply about the problems in health care that they are experiencing, and thus the government’s serious intention to do something meaningful. But should the government take its eye off the ball, or declare victory where none has been achieved, these organizations will undoubtedly make their voices heard.