This book takes students responses to grievance as a platform for exploring the construction of students rights against the backdrop of Chinas shift to mass higher education and move to rule of law. Specifically, the study reconstructs the spaces of action embedded in seven major responses to student discipline, with special attention given to the role of law in students action and in social change. Data for this book came from interviews with students and other key players in landmark cases as well as focus group interviews and surveys of ordinary college students at ten universities located in four geographically different cities.
The study offers an interesting example of integrated bottom-up and top-down policy\legal changes in Chinese higher education. By comparing college students to other emerging rights-claiming populations such as peasants and workers, the study also addresses a gap in the larger scholarship on rights, citizenship, and resistance in China and has important implications for understanding citizenship development in China.
