Outsourcing Repression: Everyday

State Power in Contemporary China

Lynette H. Ong
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Outsourcing Repression
Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were
inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new
research on modern and contemporary East Asia.
 Outsourcing Repression
Everyday State Power in Contemporary China

LYNETTE H. ONG
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ong, Lynette H., author.
Title: Outsourcing repression : everyday state power in
contemporary China / Lynette H. Ong.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021056065 (print) | LCCN 2021056066 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197628768 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197628775 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780197628799 (epub) | ISBN 9780197628782 (UPDF) |
ISBN 9780197628805 (Digital-Online)
Subjects: LCSH: Political persecution—China. | Social control—China. |
Government, Resistance to—China. | Power (Social sciences)—China. |
Urbanization—Political aspects—China. | Gangs—Political
aspects—China. | China—Politics and government—2002-
Classification: LCC JC599.C6 O58 2022 (print) | LCC JC599.C6 (ebook) |
DDC 323/.0440951—dc23/eng/20211210
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056065
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DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197628768.001.0001
To all those who received the short end of the stick in the state’s
ambitious scheme
 Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments

1 Bulldozers, Violent Thugs, and Nonviolent Brokers

1.1 The Puzzle: Balancing Coerced Compliance with Minimized
Backlash
1.2 The Theory and Arguments: Outsourcing Repression to
Augment Everyday State Power
1.3 Challenges to Conventional Wisdom: State Power,
Repression, and Authoritarian Control
1.3.1. Reimagining State Power
1.3.2. Cost-Minimizing Repression
1.3.3. A New Tool in the Autocrat’s Toolkit
1.4 Empirical Strategy
1.5 Roadmap

2 The Theory: State Power, Repression, and Implications for

Development
2.1. Everyday State Power
2.1.1. Operationalizing State Strength
2.1.2. Everyday State Power and the Dictator’s Toolkit
2.2. When Everyday State Power Can and Cannot Be Exercised
2.2. The Arguments in Brief
1. 2.2.2. Scope Condition
 2.3. Everyday Repression and Thugs-for-Hire
2.3.1. Benefits of Everyday Repression via TFH
2.3.1.1 TFH as Perpetrators of Illegal or Illegitimate
Acts
2.3.1.2 Nonstate Identity Offers Pretense of Plausible
Deniability
2.3.2. Costs of Outsourcing Violence to TFH
2.3.2.1 Agency Problems and Accountability
2.3.2.2 Risks Usurpation of State Authority
2.4. Mobilizing the Masses and Brokers
2.4.1. The Octopus and Its Tentacles: State, Brokers, and
Society
2.4.2. The Masses as Internal Security Agents
2.5. Theoretical Contribution
2.5.1. Reimagine the Contours of State Power
2.5.2. Novel Contribution to the Repertoire of State
Repression and Authoritarian Control Strategy
2.5.2.1 Everyday Repression and Sticks Wielded by a
Third Party
2.5.2.2 Mobilizing the Masses and Persuasion
2.5.3. Social Control in China
2.6. Temporal Distribution of Carrots, Sticks, and Persuasion, and
Preemptive vs. Ex-Post Measures
2.7. Implications for the State’s Role in Economic Development
2.8. Alternative Explanations

3 Outsourcing Violence: Everyday Repression via Thugs-for-Hire

3.1. Conceptualizing Everyday Repression
3.1.1. Everyday Repression and Everyday Forms of
Resistance
 3.1.2. What Incentivizes Everyday Repression?
3.2. Outsourcing Violence to Thugs-for-Hire
3.2.1. Benefits and Costs of Outsourcing Violence
3.2.1.1 Benefits
3.2.1.2 Costs
3.2.2. Thugs-for-Hire in China
3.3. Repertoire of Violence: Agents and Violent Strategies
3.3.1. Methodology and Datasets
3.3.1.1 Media Sources and Potential Biases
3.3.2. Descriptive Statistics
3.3.2.1 Distribution of Violent Cases by Year
3.3.2.2 Repressive Agents—Violent Actions
3.3.3. Propensity for Violence: The Effects of Agent Type on
Repressive Strategies
3.4. How Agent Types Affect Citizen Mobilizational Responses
3.4.1. Nonviolent Citizen Responses
3.4.2. Violent Citizen Responses
3.4.3. Discussion of Findings
3.5. Conclusion

4 Case Studies: Thugs-for-Hire, Repression, and Mobilization

4.1. Situating Case Study Evidence in a Broader Theoretical
Context
4.1.1. Temporal and Regional Variations
4.1.2. Agency Problems
4.1.3. Plausible Deniability and Evasion of Accountability
4.1.4. Outsourcing Violence and State Capacity
4.1.5. Interactions Between the Strategies of Everyday
Repression and Mobilizing the Masses
4.2. Case Studies of Thugs-for-Hire and Other Agents at Work
 4.2.1. Arson and Violent Demolition in the Former French
Concession in Shanghai in 2005
4.2.2. Violent Land Grab and Housing Demolition in a
Kunming Village in 2011
4.2.3. Massive Demolition and Violent Land Grabs in
Zhengzhou in the Mid-2010s
4.2.3.1 Demolition Revolution (拆迁革命)in Sunzi
Village
4.2.3.2 The People vs. District Government in Lunar
Village
4.3. Intercepting Petitioners and Black Jails
4.4. Conclusion

5 Networks of State Infrastructural Power: Brokerage, State

Penetration, and Mobilization
5.1. Brokerage
5.2. Brokers in Chinese Society
5.2.1. Political Brokers
5.2.1.1 Shequ, Residents’ Committees, Residents’
Small Groups, and Block Captains
5.2.1.2 Village Committees, Villagers’ Small Groups,
and Production Team Leaders
5.2.2. Social Brokers
5.2.2.1 Volunteers and Village or Community
Enthusiasts
5.2.2.2 The Chaoyang Masses (朝阳群众)
5.2.3. Economic Brokers
5.3. Brokered State–Society Relationship
5.3.1. How Brokers Connect State and Society
5.3.2. Functions of Brokers
5.3.2.1 Intimate and Personal Information Collection
 5.3.2.2 Mobilizing Vehicle for the State
5.3.2.3 Conflict Manufacturing, Mediation, and
Resolution
5.3.2.4 Legitimating Vehicle for State Actions
5.3.2.5 Legitimate State Repression to Induce
Compliance
5.4. Government Agents and Brokers in Demolitions: Distribution,
Strategies, and Citizen Responses
5.4.1. State Strategies: Positive and Negative Inducements
and Persuasion
5.4.1.1 Negative Inducements: Lianzuo, State
Employment Termination, Hukou, Pensions,
and Tax Audits
5.4.1.2 Positive Inducements: Material Incentives and
“Carrot-Shaped Sticks”
5.4.1.3 Persuasion: Thought Work or Emotional
Mobilization
5.4.2. Quantitative Data: Government Regulations and
Media-Sourced Data
5.4.2.1 Content Analysis of Government Regulations
5.4.2.2 Media-Sourced Data Analysis
5.5. Conclusion: Brokerage and Networks of Infrastructural
Power

6 Brokers in Harmonious Demolition: Mass Mobilizers, Mediators,

and Huangniu
6.1. The Strategy of Mobilizing the Masses
6.1.1. The Mass Line (群众路线)
6.1.2. Mass Mobilization (群众动员)
6.2. Persuasion as a State Control Strategy: Guanxi and
Emotional Mobilization
 6.3. Mobilizing the Masses in Housing Demolition
6.3.1. Self-Governed Renovation Committee or Zigaiwei (自
治改造委员会/自改委)
6.3.1.1 The Case of Caojiaxiang (曹家巷) in Chengdu
6.3.1.2 Reminiscent of Mass Line Politics
6.3.1.3 National Breakthrough in Demolition
Governance: Outsourcing Repression
6.3.1.4 Failed Zigaiwei Case 1
6.3.1.5 Failed Zigaiwei Case 2
6.3.2. Simulated Demolition
6.4. Mediation: Conflict Prevention and Resolution
6.4.1. People’s Mediation (人民调解)
6.4.2. Mediation in Preemptive Conflict Resolution
6.4.3. Mediation Case Study
6.4.3.1 Case Study: Family with Deceased Father had
Diverging Views on Settling Ancestral Property
6.4.4. Persuasion and the Grammar of Human Compassion
6.5. Huangniu: Professional Profit-Seeking Brokers
6.5.1. Nature of Bargaining
6.5.2. Huangniu’s Profile, Credentials, and Functions
6.5.3. Huangniu Case Study: Mechanisms that Make
Economic Brokerage Succeed or Fail
6.6. Conclusion

7 Comparative Context: South Korea and India

7.1. South Korea
7.1.1. Authoritarian Era (1948–1987)
7.1.1.1 Relations Between the State and Criminal and
Civil Society
7.1.1.2 Eliminating Shantytowns and Urbanization
 7.1.2. Democratized South Korea (1987–)
7.1.2.1 Demolition Service Companies with Violent
Agents
7.1.2.2 Housing Movements and Civil Society
7.1.2.3 Rapid Urbanization Came with Strident
Discordance
7.2. Contemporary India
7.2.1. Stalled Urbanization
7.2.2. Goondas and Violence
7.2.3. Brokers and Informal Networks
7.2.4. National and Regional Land Resistance Movements
7.3. Conclusion

8 Conclusion
8.1. Main Findings
8.2. Application of Outsourcing Repression Beyond Urbanization
8.3. Generalizability of Arguments Beyond China
8.4. Xi Jinping’s Sweeping Black Campaign
8.5. Implications for China’s Political Future
8.6. Future of Field Research in China

Appendices
Appendix A: Content Analysis of Government Regulations
Appendix B: List of Interviewees
Appendix C: Media-Sourced Event Dataset
Appendix D: Additional Tables and Graphs for Chapter 3
Notes
Bibliography
Index
 Figures

1.1 Agents and Mechanisms that Lead Outsourcing Repression to

Augmentation of Everyday State Power
1.2 Field Research Sites and Year of Visits
2.1 Practicing Everyday State Power
2.2 Capacity for Violence and Public vs. Private Force
2.3 Mechanisms of Outsourcing Repression
2.4 How Outsourcing Repression Enhances State Power
2.5 Strategy Types in Central Government-Issued Land Taking and
Demolition Documents
2.6 Stability Maintenance Measures in Central Government-Issued
Land Taking and Demolition Documents
3.1 Severity of Repressive Acts vs. Financial Cost of Deployment
3.2 Distribution of Violent Land Taking and Demolition Cases by
Year (1992–2017)
3.3 Number of Times Present for Each Agent Type (N = 5,067)
3.4 Comparing the Marginal Effects of Agent Types on Repressive
Strategies (Panel A = Disrupt; B = Injure; C = Kill; D =
Restrict; and E = Covert)
3.5 Comparing the Marginal Effects of Agent Types on Nonviolent
Citizen Responses (Panel A = Protest; B = Petition; and C =
Legal Mobilization)
3.6 Comparing the Marginal Effects of Agent Types on Violent
Citizen Responses (Panel A = Damage Property; B = Self-
harm; and C = Harm Agent)
3.7 Frequency of Self-Immolation and Deadly Attacks on Agents
(1998–2017)
4.1 Chen’s Residence in Shanghai’s Xuhui District
4.2 Sit-In by Flower Villagers to Prevent Demolition
4.3 Red vs. White Banner War in Sunzi Village, Zhengzhou
4.4 Villagers’ Poster Titled, “Don’t You Dare to Cheat the People!!!
(莫以百姓可欺)” in Lunar Village, Zhengzhou
5.1 Brokered State-Society Relationship in China
5.2 Schematic Representation of Brokerages
5.3 Agents vs. Strategies in Demolition
5.4 Modes of Promoting Land Taking and Demolition in
Government-Issued Documents (as proportions of total
documents in the category)
5.5 Modes of Citizen Participation (as proportions of total
documents in the category)
8.1 Electronic Signboard Spotted at a Four-Star Hotel in Shanghai
Promoting the Sweeping Black Campaign
 Tables

2.1 State and Nonstate Agents vs. Observability of Repressive

Actions
3.1 Organizational Capacity vs. Target of Repression and
Resistance
3.2 Heatmap of Cross-Tabulation: Repressive Strategies vs. Agent
Types
4.1 Location, Year of Field Visits, and Time of Violent Demolitions
5.1 Central and Municipal Government-Issued Documents on Land
Taking and Demolition: Themes and Subthemes
5.2 Rural vs. Urban Distribution of Nonviolent Strategies
5.3 Heatmap Distribution of Nonviolent Strategies by Agent Types
5.4 Cases of Citizens’ Compliance or Resistance Depending on
Agent Strategies
6.1 Mass Mobilization as a Political Strategy
6.2 Conceptual Rubric of Mobilizing the Masses
7.1 The State’s Relations with Criminal and Civil Society, and
Everyday State Power in South Korea (1945–Present)
7.2 The State’s Relations with Criminal and Civil Society, and
Everyday State Power in India (1967–Present)
A.1 Keywords used in Content Analysis of Government Regulations
D.1 Number of Counted Presence for Each Agent Type (N = 5067)
D.2 Cross-Tabulation: Repressive Strategies vs. Agent Type
D.3 Repressive Strategies Given Agent Type
D.4 Citizen Nonviolent Responses Given Agent Type
D.5 Citizen Violent Responses Given Agent Type
D.6 Citizen Responses Given Repressive Strategies
D.7 Marginal Probability Effects of Agents on Repressive Strategies
D.8 Marginal Probability Effects of Agents on Violent and
Nonviolent Citizen Responses
D.9 Distribution of Nonviolent Strategies by Agent Types
(Percentages in parentheses)
 Preface

Outsourcing Repression addresses strategies put in place by the

state to seize farmland and demolish houses when its actions lack
legitimacy. The strategy of outsourcing repression to nonstate violent
and nonviolent agents has proven expedient and largely effective.
Authorities in China have figured out that by hiring street hoodlums
and patron-trusted local influentials, they can get the job done
expeditiously. Thus, Outsourcing Repression is a study about how to
repress the right way—and minimize the costs of backlash and
resistance at the same time. Examining these issues empirically,
using urbanization as a window of observation, I elaborate on how
they can be further applied to other areas similarly devoid of legality.
At a fundamental level, I demonstrate the ways that outsourcing
repression redraws the boundaries between state and society and
the topography of state power, surpassing state repression or even
social control—and animating a new creature of the state.
This research has brought to the fore the prominence of violent
and nonviolent repressive strategies in different times. As I moved to
field sites in the inner core of metropolitan cities over time, I gained
an appreciation of the increased salience of nonviolent coercion
under the guise of the official discourse of “harmonious demolition.”
From 2011 to 2019, I conducted on-the-ground ethnographic
research before and after President Xi Jinping’s ascendancy to
power. The case studies speak to the unique challenges a field
researcher faced in the respective periods. While those in disciplinary
and China studies conscientiously debate how future field research
can and should be carried out in this rapidly deteriorating political
environment, this book offers the fruits of my labor in the not-so-
distant past.
 Research conducted in the early 2000s for my last book, Prosper
or Perish, provided the basis for this book, in which I analyze the
search by local authorities in China for alternative revenue sources
to meet unfunded mandates created by a semireformed fiscal
system. When revenue from township and village enterprises dried
up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, local authorities
enthusiastically bet on land sales and urban development as new
revenue sources. Even though the end product of this monograph
involves repression and state power instead of the political economy
I initially envisioned, I draw implications in appropriate places
throughout the book for what this type of coercive distribution
means for the state’s role in economic development.
 Acknowledgments

Given the long and arduous process that research entails, this book
would have been impossible without the many people who have
accompanied me at various stages of this journey. I stand on the
broad shoulders of scholars and colleagues who have contributed to
the field of authoritarian politics, the study of the state, and China
studies.
My China-based colleagues and friends have helped me
tremendously in understanding the country—both its allures and
idiosyncrasies. With wise advice and good humor, many went out of
their way to open doors for me and helped me navigate the field.
Their tenacious capacity to survive, and even thrive, in an
increasingly challenging environment has always been a source of
inspiration.
I extend my gratitude to Dave McBride, my editor at Oxford
University Press, who has enthusiastically supported this project
from the outset, steering it in the right direction.
Over the decade during which this research was conducted,
numerous colleagues and friends have taken time to discuss ideas
and invited me to conferences, workshops, and seminars to present
working papers, from all of which I have benefited tremendously.
Among them were Ben Hillman, David Goodman, Shan Wei, Qian
Jiwei, Peter Lorentzen, Xiaobo Lü (Columbia), Mary Gallagher,
Christian Davenport, Yuen Yuen Ang, Cai Yongshun, Ray Yep, Feng
Cheng, Ting Gong, Chen Chih-Jou, Jean Hong, Li Lianjiang, Pierre
Landry, Stephen Noakes, Elena Meyer-Clement, Jesper Zeuthen,
Genia Kostka, Patricia Thornton, Xin Sun, Kerry Brown, Hyun Bang
Shin, Tim Hildebrandt, Federico Varese, Jean Oi, Andy Walder, Lizhi
Liu, Melanie Manion, Dan Slater, Kimberly Marten, Sheena Greitens,
Suzanne Scoggins, Dimitar Gueorguiev, Victor Shih, Kristen Looney,
Jenn Pan, Iza Ding, Blake Miller, Peng Wang, Yanhua Deng, and
Yang Zhong.
I am thankful for the support of the Weatherhead Center for
International Affairs at Harvard University under the leadership of
Michelle Lamont and subsequently Melani Cammett for generously
offering me a fellowship to host my writing for this book.
I have also drawn on the generosity of colleagues and friends who
provided insightful comments on earlier drafts and chapters,
including those circulated at a book manuscript workshop. They are
Liz Perry, Kevin O’Brien, Ben Read, Meg Rithmire, Jenn Earl, Brian
Taylor, David Cunningham, Xu Xu, Martin Dimitrov, Xiaobo Lü (UT
Austin), John Fitzgerald, Anita Chan, Andy Kipnis, and Charles
Crabtree. My colleagues at the University of Toronto, including Ed
Schatz, Seva Gunitsky, Lucan Way, Yoonkyung Lee, Yiching Wu, and
Adam Casey, also offered critical comments on earlier versions of
this manuscript.
Carolina de Miguel, my department colleague who passed away in
2020, was someone who always made time to chat, read my work,
and discuss it over lunch or coffee. Her generous and humane spirit
remains a source of inspiration and is sorely missed. The intellectual
communities of scholars in political science, global affairs, and Asian
studies at the University of Toronto have provided me with the
inspiration and advice I needed: Antoinette Handley, Ryan Balot,
Peter Loewen, Ron Levi, Joseph Wong, Rachel Silvey, Diana Fu, Sida
Liu, Greg Distelhorst, Tak Fujitani, Frank Cody, Melissa Williams,
Aisha Ahmad, Phil Triadafilopoulos, Ludovic Rheault, and Kenichi
Ariga.
I would have been unable to write this book without the team of
dedicated students who have given me incredible support, often
under tight deadlines. Although naming them all would be
impractical, the following are a few whose help was critical in the
final stages of the writing: Kevin, Alex, Alissa, Hao, Zhouyang,
Minghan, Brodie, Jasper, Yifan, and Yitian.
Much of the writing was done during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Weaving together the stories my interlocutors shared over the
course of the research provided much comfort and ameliorated to
some extent the toll taken by the extended lockdown in Toronto. I
am most grateful for the trust of my interviewees and interlocutors,
allowing me to tell their stories. This book is dedicated to them.
Lynette H. Ong
Toronto
July 1, 2021
 1
Bulldozers, Violent Thugs, and Nonviolent
Brokers
The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they
force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in
their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own
execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.
—Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

In July 2010, I stood at the Shanghai Expo’s main national pavilion

on the banks of the Huangpu River, marveling at the grandiosity of
the architectural juggernaut before me. Much like the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, the ostentatious Shanghai Expo was intended to display
China’s raw economic and political ambitions as well as to mark its
arrival on the world stage. The Expo’s theme of “Better City—Better
Life” underscored these messages, intended for domestic and global
consumption.
Fast forward six years. In the summer of 2016, my field research
for this book led me to interview a group of Shanghai residents who
had lost their homes because of the Expo. “My home was situated
right where the main national pavilion stood!” an evictee in his 60s
told me.1 After his forced removal in the early 2000s, he was never
properly resettled or compensated. He and a group of other evictees
from Shanghai have paid monthly visits to the Beijing Petition
Bureau for nearly two decades in the hope of having their housing
grievances addressed. Nevertheless, all efforts to reassert their
property rights and regain their dignity have been nearly futile.
That summer I interviewed another group of Shanghai residents,
who shared with me their experience engaging with market brokers
to bargain with local governments for even more lucrative
compensation over and above the brand-new apartments and
handsome cash payments they had been promised and given.2 The
juxtaposition of the two groups of Shanghai residents, who faced
similar eviction pressures, albeit at different times—but ended up
receiving diverging treatments by the state—is instructive. Their
stories encapsulate in miniature the varied configurations of the
power of the state and the distinctive means through which it
coerces compliance.

1.1 The Puzzle: Balancing Coerced Compliance

with Minimized Backlash
Economic growth necessitates the redistribution of resources—
including land, labor, and capital—from one group to another.
Autocracies may be more effective than democracies in forcibly
redistributing resources by means of coercion or the imposition of
rules and subsequently withstanding the pressure exerted by the
losers (Wintrobe 1998),3 yet wielding the stick comes with a cost.
Persistent coercion may invite backlash, provoke resistance, and
delegitimize the regime (Davenport and Inman 2012). If a regime
bent on growth enacts a policy that redistributes resources and
subsequently causes dissent among the losers, how the regime
balances coerced compliance with minimized backlash remains a
question.
In this book I use urbanization as a window of observation for
state policies that entail immense resource reallocation to study the
practice of state power to gain compliance and mute dissent. Rapid
urbanization, by its very nature, involves vast population relocation
and resource redistribution among groups. In China, property
owners have been coerced into compliance, their voices muffled as
the state tries to fast track the urbanization process. To be sure,
popular resistance has arisen against land taking and housing
demolition,4 yet no country has ever pulled off the spatial
transformation and relocation of people on the scale achieved by
China while simultaneously maintaining social stability.
To capture the essence of the monumental scale of China’s
urbanization, consider this: an estimated total of no fewer than 52
million peasants were displaced between 1987 and 2010 (Han 2009;
Shengsan Jiang, Liu, and Li 2010). An estimated increase of 10.4
million acres in land used for urban construction purposes occurred
from 2010 to 2017—equivalent to 125 percent of the land mass of
the U.S. state of Maryland.5 If we compare China with India, another
large developing country similarly fixated on pursuing growth
through industrialization and urbanization, the contrast is stark.
State efforts to requisition farmland in India are frequently met with
strong peasant resistance and are mediated by a range of brokers
who hold significant bargaining power.6
In this book China serves as a case study to exemplify a state that
practices vigorous everyday state power over society by outsourcing
repression to nonstate agents who use violent and nonviolent
strategies to extract compliance and stifle dissent. The authoritarian
nature of China’s political system, led by the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP), serves to strengthen this power; but it is not a
necessary condition. Theoretically, everyday engagement of third-
party agents by the state to coerce pushes the boundary on what
scholars currently understand as state repression. Because the
repressive capacity of the state is a central element of its strength, I
also invite readers to reimagine what constitutes the notion of state
power.

1.2 The Theory and Arguments: Outsourcing

Repression to Augment Everyday State Power
Advancing two major arguments, this book presents a theory about
outsourcing repression which lies at the core of everyday state
power over society.7 First, the state implements unpopular policies
effectively and swiftly by using the “everyday repression” of
outsourced violence.8 Carried out by “thugs-for-hire” (TFH), it is an
expedient state strategy to impose its will on society.9 Although
violent repression usually incurs costs, outsourcing violence to third-
party agents provides the pretense for plausible deniability and
evasion of political accountability. Second, the state extracts citizen
compliance and resolves state‒society conflicts by mobilizing the
masses (MTM), which involves marshalling a small segment of
society—the brokers—to gain acquiescence from the larger society.
Because mass mobilization is conducted through social networks,
brokers with social capital legitimate state repression, in turn
minimizing resistance and backlash.
An unconventional autocratic tool, outsourcing violence to TFH
serves as a proverbial stick. When outsourced to third parties,
however, violent repression is a stick with no identifiable wielding
agent, allowing for plausible deniability and the evasion of political
accountability that is a major cost of violent repression. I call this
strategy “everyday repression,” denoting the banal, low-grade violent
repressive acts of coercion, deployed when formal state coercive
acts are impractical (Ong 2015b). It is most effective in minimizing
costs when the hiring authority can effectively distance itself from
the illegitimate violent acts and serious casualties caused by it.
Meanwhile, MTM is a political strategy that shapes citizen behavior
through persuasion, an authoritarian tool independent of the
proverbial carrots and sticks, often carried out alongside rewards
and punishments with the similar intention of extracting compliance.
MTM via persuasion is carried out by political, social, and economic
grassroots brokers, who persuade citizens through mobilization of
affective emotions like love, trust, and respect. Critically, because
persuasion is lubricated by social relations and their attendant
emotions, it is not commonly perceived as state repression—thus
allowing for lower-cost state extraction of consent.
Figure 1.1 Agents and Mechanisms that Lead Outsourcing Repression to
Augmentation of Everyday State Power

Figure 1.1 illustrates the agents and mechanisms through which

outsourcing repression augments everyday state power. The
nonstate agency of TFH and brokers enables the state to exercise
low-level violent everyday repression and to mobilize the masses
with socially embedded emotions. The elusive private identity of TFH
makes possible plausible deniability and the evasion of state
accountability, and brokers with social standing legitimize the state’s
mass mobilization. Collectively, these strategies minimize the
resistance and backlash typically associated with state repression.
Everyday state power is not, however, a guaranteed outcome of
engaging nonstate agents. Outsourcing repression works to the
state’s advantage only under certain conditions, leading to variation
in the successful practice of everyday state power over society, the
outcome variable of this study. Untrained TFH can exert
undisciplined violence that results in excess casualties, making the
evasion of responsibility a challenge. When government officials are
seen as endorsing TFH explicitly, the agents’ illegitimate violence is
then associated with state sponsorship. As with brokers, they bring
net benefits to the state insofar as they remain legitimate in the
citizens’ eyes. When they are corrupt or prioritize personal interests
at the citizens’ expense, they cease to legitimate state mobilization.
Under these circumstances, outsourcing repression is costly, and
everyday state power is diminished accordingly.
I illustrate these arguments through a study of the Chinese state’s
efforts to spearhead urbanization as an engine of growth. Most
governments face formidable challenges in land redistribution, but
the Chinese state has been far more successful in imposing its will
on society and forcing citizens to acquiesce to state orders—thanks
to its engagement of nonstate agents. Beyond urbanization, the
state also engages TFH in areas of illegitimate or illegal actions, such
as the rural exactions of the 1990s, and the intimidation of
protestors, petitioners, dissidents, journalists, and other
troublemakers. To appreciate how ubiquitous the strategy of
mobilizing the masses is, simply consider the role of neighborhood
committees and the nationwide army of volunteers in controlling
people’s movements during the fight against SARS and the COVID-
19 pandemic. Grassroots brokers not only contribute enormous
manpower to state pursuits, but they also invoke affective emotions
to persuade citizens, a strategy that is often overlooked.
In addition, temporal and regional variations in China are
noteworthy. In general, the prevalence of violent repression by TFH
diminished from the 2000s to 2010s, the period covered by this
study; but nonviolent, brokered mass mobilization has increased in
prominence over time. In a regional variation, people living in the
inner core of metropolitan cities, such as Shanghai and Chengdu,
tend to see significantly less or no violence, whereas those in the
city peripheries and the rural areas still experience violent
repression. Using in-depth case studies, I show that the violent
repression prevalent in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of the mid-
income Henan province, in the mid-2010s had already occurred in
metropolitan Shanghai a decade earlier in the mid-2000s. By the
mid-2010s, however, Shanghai had “progressed” into the nonviolent
mass mobilization era.
Despite these variations, outsourced violent coercion can be
deployed alongside nonviolent mobilization. As the case studies will
illustrate, much depends on the availability of thuggish agents and
trustworthy local volunteers willing to do the state’s bidding and the
extent to which they can effectively repress or mobilize the society.
These considerations are location specific.
In this book, the state refers to the Party‒state, notwithstanding
the occasional bifurcation of the central‒local state interest.10 Using
“state” in this volume, I refer to local governments that have direct
agency, not the central leadership. But some of the outsourced
repressive strategies, such as mobilizing the masses, have been
actively promoted by the central government as in the “Fengqiao
Experience” (Z. Zhu 2018). Overall, local governments’ outsourcing
of repression has been either explicitly promoted or tacitly approved
by the central authority. Condonation by the center is palpable in the
case of “black jails,” where petitioners are illegally detained.11
To what extent do these arguments apply beyond China? Everyday
state power is the state’s exercise of power through society, or via
society itself. To exercise this power, the state must be strong
enough to control the behavior of the violent agents or nonviolent
brokers with whom it engages. In the absence of state domination
over agents, the latter should normatively believe that doing the
state’s bidding contributes to the collective public good.
Furthermore, that authoritarianism is not a necessary condition for
the outsourcing of repression deserves emphasis. The arguments
advanced here could be applied to other autocracies as well as
democracies, subject to the scope condition that I will elaborate in
Chapter 2. I illustrate in Chapter 8 the prevalent use of criminals and
gangsters by the authoritarian South Korean regime under Park
Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan to conduct mass evictions. This
violent practice continued after the country transitioned to a
democracy in 1987, albeit less blatantly and more tacitly. In
democratic India, goondas, or neighborhood gangsters, lend their
“muscle power” to local politicians to intimidate political rivals,
gather campaign budgets, and win elections in return for political
protection for their illegal business pursuits.
1.3 Challenges to Conventional Wisdom: State
Power, Repression, and Authoritarian Control
1.3.1 Reimagining State Power
What constitutes state power? I consider its three key dimensions—
state‒society relations, state capacity, and obedience to state power
(vom Hau 2015)—and appraise outsourcing repression for its
capability to shine new light on the traditional construct and
contours of the power of the state.
The repressive strategies discussed in this book reconstruct state‒
society relations because they allow the state to mobilize nonstate
actors to pursue state objectives.12 When TFH are engaged in state
projects, they become part of the state’s army of foot soldiers,
whose goal is to intimidate and coerce citizens. Similarly, when
brokers are mobilized, they are effectively transformed into state
extensions that conduct persuasion or “thought work” on the
citizenry. State‒society boundaries are then blurred and shifted
against the society. In other words, TFH and brokers become
complicit in the state’s repression of society, using violent and
nonviolent strategies, respectively.
Outsourcing repression to nonstate actors heightens the presence
of everyday state power throughout the society. This augmented
state power is not acquired through repression in the conventional
sense; instead, it involves a two-step process. First, the voluntary
participation of proxies—impossible with brute repression—must be
secured. Second, the elusive nonstate nature of violent proxies
(TFH) or legitimation by nonviolent proxies (brokers) then allows the
state to control society, simultaneously managing dissent and
minimizing backlash. Brokers who serve as legitimizing vehicles help
to change the perception of repressive acts, thereby blunting
resistance to them. In Outsourcing Repression I invite readers to
reimagine state power—the state occupies new ground with
augmented penetrative capacity, through which it can
unconventionally acquire societal approval of its very power.
 1.3.2 Cost-Minimizing Repression
State repression typically involves trade-offs between increased
control and loss of loyalty, giving rise to what Ronald Wintrobe
(1998) called the “dictator’s dilemma.” This is the reason that no
regime can survive through naked coercion alone. I argue, however,
that reconstituted everyday state power makes possible the state’s
enforcement of compliance, which is met with minimal backlash.
Thus, I theorize a counterintuitive form of repression—when carried
out by nonstate agents, outsourced repressive acts lower the costs
of state repression.
This book is a study of outsourced violent and nonviolent
repressive acts, the former conducted by TFH, such as street
gangsters, hooligans, or hoodlums, who render their muscle power
as a for-profit service. As opposed to armed state coercive agents,
namely the military, paramilitaries, or the police, capable of
committing massive violence (Alvarez 2006; Geddes, Wright, and
Frantz 2018; Mazzei 2009), TFH deploy low-level violence or threats
of violence to carry out coercion. They are an integral part of the
state’s “everyday repression,” denoting banal, ordinary repressive
acts expediently imposed on marginalized citizens who defy
everyday state directives (Ong 2015b). Critically, the concealed
identities of TFH allow the state to maintain an arms-length
relationship with them and their illegitimate violent acts. This
provides the pretense for plausible deniability and evasion of
accountability, which lowers the costs associated with violent
repression accordingly. As untrained agents, TFH may, however,
commit undisciplined violence in excess of what is necessary to
execute the tasks assigned to them. The latitude for deniability
improves when serious casualties, including deaths, are absent and
when the hiring authority can effectively distance itself from the
agents.
In contrast, outsourced nonviolent repression is exercised through
the engagement of brokers who mobilize the masses for state
pursuits. By connecting the two disparate parties of state and
society, brokers facilitate information gathering, surveillance, public
goods provision, and mobilization (Baldwin 2013; Koter 2013; Mares
and Young 2016, 2019; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Stovel and
Shaw 2012). I divide brokers into political brokers, whose brokerage
power stems from the state, namely residents and village
committees; social brokers, who draw on social capital to exercise
brokerage, such as volunteers and community enthusiasts; and
economic brokers, who have connections with political insiders and
who have gained the trust of state and society, allowing them to use
their informational advantage to seek profits by bridging trust
deficits, such as the huangniu in my case study.
In general, MTM is a political strategy that mobilizes the people for
state pursuits. When organized into a movement, it becomes a
state-organized social movement (Ekiert, Perry, and Yan 2020) like
Mao’s Red Guard Movement or Nashi, the youth movement
organized by Putin (Hemment 2020). In the present context, MTM
refers to mobilization on an individual basis to gain citizens’
compliance. Because ideology holds less appeal in post-Mao China
than it once did, contemporary brokers mobilize through emotion-
lubricated social relations or guanxi networks, cultivated over a
lifetime to serve the dual purposes of sentimentality and
instrumentalism (Kipnis 2002). In effect, social brokers who invoke
guanxi for the purpose of persuasion serve to legitimate the state’s
mobilization of society for statist goals. Because of social capital they
possess, brokers’ actions are not usually perceived as state
repression; hence, nonviolent brokered repression is more likely to
be accepted by society, significantly reducing the likelihood of
resistance and backlash.

1.3.3 A New Tool in the Autocrat’s Toolkit

I also introduce some tools new to the autocrat’s toolkit—third party-
wielded sticks and persuasion—and argue that they enhance state
control of society largely without the fear of backlash.13 Both falling
under the ambit of outsourced repression, they correspond to
everyday repression via TFH and MTM through brokers, respectively.
Sticks wielded by private agents allow for plausible deniability insofar
as the hiring authority can effectively distance itself from the TFH
and the illegitimate violence does not result in severe casualties. If
these conditions are met, outsourcing violence is superior to the
conventional stick of violent state repression because it allows the
state to keep perpetrators of violent acts at arm’s length.
Meanwhile, persuasion is an autocrat’s tool, wielded by brokers
who command social capital, with which they mobilize the masses
for state pursuits. Social brokers thus legitimize the repression and
blunt the resistance and the backlash that would have otherwise
occurred. Even though persuasion can serve as an independent tool,
it is often facilitated by carrots (inducements) and made credible by
sticks (emotional coercion). With the declining traction of ideology,
the Party‒state sometimes uses carrots to induce the participation of
brokers to extract acquiescence from the larger society, which in
turn, as the target of mass mobilization, is coaxed by inducements,
cowed by psychological coercion, or simply admonished by thought
work ( 思 想 工 作 ) in the parlance of Chinese politics. Brokered
persuasion thus serves an important legitimating function to state
repression.
Like propaganda, persuasion is a mass communication tool
designed to influence people and change their behavior (Jowett and
O’Donnell 2014; O’Shaughnessy 2016). Notably, persuasion and
coercion are often nondichotomous; “even as some forms of
coercion are more or less violent, some forms of argument are more
or less coercive” (Crawford 2009). Put differently, persuasion can
have the intended and actual effect of coercing acquiescence from
message recipients. Although propaganda has received much
attention in the literature of authoritarian politics, persuasion has not
received nearly as much. The effectiveness of persuasion in
enforcing obedience underscores the primacy of legitimacy. This
stands in contrast to the much celebrated Ambiguities of Dominance,
in which Lisa Wedeen argues for the symbolic effects of propaganda
in bolstering the Asad regime even though few Syrians bought into
the actual messages behind the grandiose spectacles (H. Huang
2015; Loveman 2005; Wedeen 2015).14 In Wedeen’s words, “Asad’s
cult is a strategy of domination based on compliance rather than
legitimacy” (2015, 6). In contrast, persuasion—unlike propaganda—
does not produce the spectacle effect; and thus, without
legitimation, it is nothing more than empty words.
When is the autocrat more likely to use persuasion vis-à-vis
carrots and sticks? Broadly speaking, persuasion and carrots are
nonviolent means of control; sticks are violent measures. Regimes
adopt nonviolent repressive measures if given an underlying
normative preference15 or when violent measures become too costly.
Persuasion is the least costly of all the tools in material terms and in
backlash minimization. Carrots draw directly on material resources,
and as citizens’ income levels rise, the threshold for material
inducements also increases. What constituted carrots to the urban
citizenry in the 2000s would certainly not qualify as financial
inducements to the urban middle class in the 2010s. Meanwhile,
sticks impose the highest costs in terms of the potential resistance
and backlash they may invite; therefore, we should expect
persuasion to be deployed when one of the following conditions is
met. First, the material costs of carrots are too high; second, carrots
have lost their appeal to the targeted citizens; third, the costs of
sticks are unbearably high; or fourth, legitimacy is of utmost
importance to the state.
Condition 1 accurately describes the Maoist period, during which
the scarcity of financial resources meant that Mao could not dole out
carrots to induce compliance. In other words, the masses, that is,
the people, who were in relative abundance—not guns or money—
became Mao’s greatest resource. Mao’s revolutionary experience of
drawing on the relatively abundant resource gave rise to the
tradition of relying on the masses to act as internal security agents.
This stands in contrast to the secret police institutions in other
socialist countries, such as the KGB in the former Soviet Union and
the Stasi in East Germany. In contemporary China, however,
persuasion is deployed because compliance from the targeted
citizenry cannot be easily bought with material inducements
(Condition 2) and in some regions, especially in metropolitan cities,
and the cost of using sticks or overt repression is too high for the
regime (Condition 3). Critically, persuasion assumed primacy in
China under Mao and continues to dominate under Xi because both
political leaders recognized the importance of preserving legitimacy
amidst the regime’s widespread suppression of the society
(Condition 4).
This study is inspired by the existing literature on repression in
China. Notably, Yanhua Deng and Kevin O’Brien’s (2013) “relational
repression” and Elizabeth Perry’s (2002b) “moving the masses” have
informed much of my understanding of how mobilizing the masses
works. Separately, Ching Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang’s (2013)
“bargained authoritarianism” underscores the state buying stability
from aggrieved citizens. This book, however, diverges from the
existing work on state repression in that it is the first to bring
together the gamut of violent and nonviolent strategies (or sticks,
carrots, and persuasion) and demonstrate their temporal and
regional variations.
This book builds on my earlier work on the state’s outsourcing of
violence to TFH as a means of implementing unpopular everyday
policies and dealing with protestors and dissidents.16 It is the first
book-length manuscript that devotes attention to the use of thugs
and criminals as repressive agents, an important area of state
repression that has received little attention.17 State-sponsored
violence no longer takes place in the metropolitan cities of China on
an everyday basis today. Why and the conditions under which
nonviolent measures are substituted for violent repression is a key
inquiry of this research. To that end, I have carefully assembled and
analyzed the outsourced violent and nonviolent repressive measures
that have been previously unexamined or have hitherto been studied
separately in the existing literature.
 1.4 Empirical Strategy
I have employed various methodological tools, including field
interviews, quantitative media-sourced data, and content analysis of
government regulations, to capture temporal and regional variations
in state repressive actions and the ensuing conflicts. My first
empirical strategy drew on more than 200 field interviews conducted
annually over the span of nearly a decade from 2011 to 2019 with
householders, petitioners, activists, Party cadres, and lawyers in both
rural and urban areas in China.
I visited a total of eight provinces or provincial-level municipalities
that encompassed dozens of rural farming villages, villages-in-a-city
(城中村), and residential compounds on the outskirts of cities as well
as urban communities in the inner-city cores. As illustrated in Figure
1.2, the field research locations were Anhui’s provincial capital,
Hefei; Beijing municipality; Yunnan’s provincial capital, Kunming;
Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu; Henan’s provincial capital,
Zhengzhou; Shanghai municipality; Guangdong’s provincial capital,
Guangzhou; and Tianjin municipality. I also visited Mumbai and New
Delhi in 2015 to interview activists, lawyers, and academics whose
work delved into land conflicts in India. All the interviews are
annotated in Appendix B.
Figure 1.2 Field Research Sites and Year of Visits
Note: Square markers represent locations of detailed case studies in Chapters 4
and 6. Circle markers identify visited sites not covered in the case studies but are
the sources of interview quotations, sprinkled throughout the book.
 Each of these field research trips typically lasted between two and
four weeks. I had the opportunity to participate in the everyday
activities of the communities, observe activists’ speeches and rallies,
and interact with village and urban grassroots cadres on a daily
basis. These largely semistructured interviews were conducted in
paddy and corn fields, teashops, public squares, street-level
corridors of shophouses, private residences, and community and
grassroots government offices as well as half-demolished villages
with debris surrounding me and my interviewees.
In each of the interviews, I adopted a common structure that
began with warm-up questions about the interviewees’ basic
household information, occupations, and economic conditions before
broaching relatively sensitive topics, such as their encounters with
government repression and activism. This interview technique
allowed me to build the trust of the interviewees over the course of
one lengthy session, and, not infrequently, over multiple sessions in
repeated follow-up visits. Some interviewees, nevertheless, still
preferred to deflect my queries and regurgitate government
propaganda. I attempted to corroborate controversial evidence from
multiple sources instead of accepting it at face value. Sometimes, for
reasons of personal safety, I could not revisit the field sites for
follow-up investigations as I had desired. Some of the field
interviews yielded sufficient data to weave together detailed case
studies as covered in Chapters 4 and 6, but others amounted to
scattered data, in which case the interview quotations are sprinkled
throughout the manuscript.
The long decade over which the field research was conducted has
provided me with some unique observations. At the beginning of the
research in the early 2010s, I encountered the pedestrian nature of
thuggish violence in forced land grabs and housing demolitions. Over
time, as I moved to field sites in the inner core of metropolitan
Shanghai and Chengdu, I discovered the increased prominence of
mobilizing the masses as a state strategy under the guise of the
official discourse of “harmonious demolition.” Without a doubt, the
preponderance of violent repression has declined over time, but that
of nonviolent coercion has risen correspondingly. Another deeply felt
observation is the changing nature of field research in China—
certainly a turn for the worse—particularly the challenges posed by
increased self-censorship, state surveillance, and even outright
prohibition of the subjects of intellectual inquiries. The number of
red lines has increased, and what used to be grey zones of research
has moved into the space defined by the red lines. Not accidentally,
the progression from grey to red was also marked by the
ascendancy of Xi Jinping’s presidency. I offer my thoughts on the
issue of field research in China in the concluding Chapter 8.
To complement field observations, my second empirical strategy
was the construction of an event dataset, consisting of forced land-
taking and demolition cases sourced from Chinese and English
media. The dataset contains more than 2,000 cases from the 1990s
through to the late 2010s. The data quality is subject to the usual
caveats associated with media-sourced data favoring large-scale,
violent, newsworthy incidents. To address the selection-bias issue, I
triangulated alternative sources, including smaller civil society-run
websites that draw on reports filed by independent citizen‒
journalists and victims throughout the country. The independent
reporting complements the large and widely publicized cases
reported by commercial media. Quantitative data analyses are
covered in Chapters 3 and 6. A detailed discussion of the dataset
construction and its caveats is elaborated in Appendix C.
Furthermore, to supplement these two largely society-centric
methodologies, I collected regulations on land-taking and housing
demolitions issued by the central government and the Shanghai,
Chengdu, and Zhengzhou municipalities from the 1990s through to
the 2010s. These cities hosted the detailed case studies in this book.
I applied content analysis to the regulations to analyze discernible
patterns in government discourse and changes in state strategies to
gain compliance, resolve conflicts, and promote social stability. The
findings from content analysis appear in Chapters 2, 3, and 6. Taken
together, the varied empirical strategies were designed to address
the research questions from the perspectives of both the state and
society. They also complement each other because in-depth
contextual case studies reveal what statistical analyses do and do
not inform.

1.5 Roadmap
The next chapter situates the book’s findings in the relevant bodies
of theoretical literature on repression, state power, and authoritarian
politics. The findings push the boundaries of the traditional
conception of state repression held by political scientists and
sociologists. When outsourced to third-party agents, state repression
can realize the intended effect of extracting compliance while
minimizing dissent and backlash. Thus, when state‒society
boundaries blur and relationships change, everyday state power is
reconstituted and augmented. This book therefore reenvisions the
traditional conception of state power. Even though this study does
not center on the question of growth, I draw implications for the
state’s role in economic development at the chapter’s end.
Important temporal and regional variations occur in the use of
rewards, coercion, and persuasion in urbanization projects. Incidents
of forced evictions by thuggish violence have declined over time and
are less common in urban than in rural areas. Concomitantly, the
frequency in the use of nonviolent strategies, particularly persuasion,
has risen over time; these strategies are more prevalent in
metropolitan than in smaller inland cities. Evidence for these
temporal and regional patterns is borne out in qualitative case
studies and media-sourced quantitative data from Chapters 3
through 6. Chapters 3 and 4 cover the violent strategy of everyday
repression; Chapters 5 and 6 pertain to the nonviolent strategy of
mobilizing the masses. Relevant literature about China and context-
specific information are engaged and discussed in these four
empirical chapters while the intent of Chapters 1 and 2 is to speak to
broader disciplinary readers.
In Chapter 3 I conceptualize a novel form of repression—everyday
repression carried out by TFH—as a state response to foot-dragging
and banal noncompliance captured in what James Scott called
“everyday forms of resistance.” It provides quantitative evidence
from media-sourced data to support the argument that everyday
repression is a lower-cost repressive strategy, pointing to its negative
or lesser effect on the likelihood of street protest and violent
backlash, particularly in comparison with police and government
officials.
Chapter 3 presents quantitative and qualitative data to detail the
profile of typical TFH and the conditions under which they operate,
but the chapter that follows does the opposite. Drawing on detailed
primary case studies, I turn in Chapter 4 to exceptional cases of
outsourced violence that resulted in death or large-scale contention
or that received official government sponsorship. Under those
circumstances, TFH were no longer a lower-cost repressive measure;
instead, they became a liability to the hiring authority. The case
studies also demonstrate the negative consequences for governance
when the relationship between local governments and thugs
transformed from principal‒agent to patron‒client, heightening the
risk of usurpation of government authority by criminal groups. In
effect, they demonstrate the rare practical consequences of violating
the unspoken conditions of outsourced violence.
Chapter 5 covers nonviolent brokers who are part of the state’s
networks of infrastructural power. Political brokers, such as members
of urban residents’ committees and rural village committees, who
derive their brokerage power from state appointments, are perceived
as grassroots state or quasistate agents. Social brokers, such as local
elders, community enthusiasts, or long-time volunteers, derive their
brokerage power from the social capital they possess in the
community, drawn from years of relationships, or guanxi, cultivated
with members with attendant emotional ties, or ganqing. Economic
brokers are private individuals but with connection to political
insiders. They are trusted by both the state and society and who
seek profits by bringing the two parties closer in negotiations and
facilitate deal-making between them. Compared to the political
brokers, social brokers who exploit their social capital to mobilize the
masses encounter significantly less resistance. Their standing in the
community helps to legitimate the repressive acts, thereby blunting
resistance, enforcing compliance, and lowering the cost of state
repression.
Drawing on thick case-study evidence, I demonstrate the
repression-legitimating social brokers in action in Chapter 6. Their
use of persuasion as a control instrument, underpinned by guanxi
and ganqing, helps to reduce citizen resistance to state policy. In
practical terms, their social standing legitimates their repressive acts
and reduces the likelihood of backlash. This chapter also illuminates
how economic brokers help resolve state‒society disputes by
bringing together disgruntled citizens and government officials to
negotiate an agreement. This prevents disputes from becoming
protracted and contributes to the maintenance of social stability.
Nonviolent repressive measures have gained prominence as the
costs of violent coercion have escalated over time particularly in
metropolitan cities, yet as the case studies illustrate, even though
they are nonviolent in nature, they are not necessarily less coercive
than violent repression.
In Chapter 7 I contextualize the experience of China with two
comparative cases: South Korea (the most similar case study) and
India (the most dissimilar case). I trace how the changes in state‒
criminal and state‒civil society relationships affect the exercise of
everyday state power in these two countries. Authoritarian South
Korea in the high-growth era most closely resembles that of
contemporary China, where the principal‒agent relationship meant
that the state wielded power over criminal groups, allowing it to
engage and direct violent agents’ behavior to its advantage. After its
transition to a democracy in 1987, overt state-sponsored violence
might have disappeared; but the state still turns a blind eye to
covert private violence insofar as it attains societal compliance. In
the post-1987 era, the increased strength of organized civil society
has posed the greatest challenge to state power in South Korea.
In contrast, the Indian state and criminals are entangled in a
patron‒client web. Criminals or goondas become informal sovereigns
who provide public services in housing settlements and deliver vote
banks to local politicians because of the state’s lack of penetrative
capacity into slums. The state’s interactions with rural society are
also mediated by local influential brokers, hampering the state’s
capacity to penetrate and influence voting or political behavior
directly. State power in India is further checked by a raucous
organized civil society. The cases of democratic South Korea and
India demonstrate that authoritarianism is not a scope condition for
my argument of outsourcing repression even though autocracies can
generally exercise tighter control over society.
Chapter 8 concludes the book, and in it I draw implications for
thinking about state‒society relations in China and the country’s
political future under President Xi Jinping. I also discuss the
ramifications for field research in China, given the tightening political
environment.
 2
The Theory
State Power, Repression, and Implications for
Development
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment
and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand
times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear
of punishment.
—Mahatma Gandhi

This book is about how an authoritarian state acquires power

through society. The state does not exercise power through naked
coercion or brutal oppression that sparks revolts and hardens
aboveground or underground rebellion. It is a form of state power
attained by outsourcing coercion to nonstate agents and mobilizing
society through the masses. Critically, exercising this form of state
power minimizes backlash and thus lowers the cost of repression.
This book engages and contributes to bodies of literature on state
power and repression, and it draws implications for the state’s role in
economic development. It prompts readers to revise their traditional
conception of state repression and reimagine new ground that state
power can credibly and actively occupy at the society’s expense.
This research has broader implications for the study of
comparative politics. My argument brings scholars of repression and
state power into closer dialogue with one another, generating
significant new insights for both. On one hand, this study impels
scholars of state control to reconsider what constitutes repression
when nonstate agents are engaged to do the state’s bidding. On the
other hand, it urges scholars of authoritarian politics and the state in
general to grapple with new boundaries and topography of state
power when the Leviathan could penetrate deeply into the society to
mobilize the masses within.

2.1 Everyday State Power

Everyday state power is the quotidian exercise of state authority to
lead, govern, and rule society, but how it is manifested in a state
with strong capacity deserves attention. Although state capacity is
recognized as essential for development, democratization, and
political stability, what constitutes state power remains poorly
delineated (Albertus and Menaldo 2012; Bellin 2004; Gerschewski
2013). “State power” typically denotes the following: first, in
Weberian terms, it is the state’s monopoly of the legitimate use of
violence in its territory (Weber 1965). For example, “stationary
bandits” use violence to defend citizens from “roving bandits” (Olson
1993). Second, in Michael Mann’s (1993) conceptualization, despotic
power comprises the actions a single leader can take without routine
or institutionalized negotiations with other regime members,
whereas infrastructural power involves the capacity to implement
policies. Third, Joel Migdal (1988) has defined “state capabilities”
along the lines of the state’s ability to penetrate society, regulate
social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate resources in
determined ways.1 These definitions are, however, limited in
facilitating an understanding of the extent to which state power is
unopposed or accepted by society. One can say a strong state has
the capacity to get jobs A, B, and C done, and a weak state does
not; but saying so does not indicate whether the incapacity results
from a lack of state capability or the presence of societal resistance.
Although distinct, both are constitutive elements of state strength.
More broadly, writing about complex organizations, Amitai Etzioni
has argued for three types of power: coercive power, utilitarian
power, and normative power (Etzioni 1975).2 Different types of
power, Etzioni argues, in turn yield their corresponding compliance:
the use of physical force yields coercive compliance; the use of
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Daarop stond de hoofdverpleegster op, nam haar papieren bijeen en

draaide het licht boven haar tafel uit zoodat de zaal in het duister gehuld
was, met uitzondering van de rosse lichtplekken daar, waar de
surveillanten met hun lantaarns stonden.

Een hunner geleidde de hoofdverpleegster met haar lantaarn naar de

deur, terwijl de andere zich op haar plaats zette met de lantaarn voor
zich op tafel, om bij dit weifelend licht een avondblad te gaan lezen.

De andere surveillante richtte zich juist op dezelfde wijze in aan een

klein tafeltje vlak naast de deur, zoodra deze achter de
hoofdverpleegster gesloten was.

De taak van deze beide vrouwen bestond slechts hierin dat zij acht
moesten geven dat geen zieke de zaal zou verlaten en om in dringende
gevallen bij een plotselinge verergering den dienstdoenden geneesheer
te waarschuwen.

En voor de rest behoefden zij slechts aan [27]patiënten, die dit noodig
hadden, op gezette tijden geneesmiddelen ingeven.

Zij zouden om zeven uur in den morgen worden afgelost.

De groote zaal werd nu dus slechts verlicht door het flakkerend schijnsel
der beide kaarslantaarns en zij maakten een troosteloozen, bijna
somberen indruk op den man naast het bed van Beaupré, met al die
bedden, met hun vage witte omtrekken, en hier en daar een donkere
plek van een hoofd op een kussen.

Charly dacht nu niet meer aan borduren!

Integendeel—al zijn zenuwen waren gespannen en hij voelde nog eens

of zijn revolver nog wel op haar plaats zat.
Het onrustig schijnsel van de kaarsen in de lantaarns tooverde grillige
schaduwen op de gordijnen van de tien hooge ramen, die zich allen aan
één zijde bevonden,—dezelfde zijde waar het bed van Beaupré
geplaatst was.

Traag kropen de kwartieren, de halve uren—de uren voorbij!

De surveillanten waren blijkbaar ingedommeld boven hun kranten,

hetgeen menigmaal geschiedde als er geen ernstige gevallen waren.

En Charly zelf, hoezeer hij zich ook inspande, vocht slechts met moeite
tegen den slaap die hem dreigde te overmannen.

Ook den vorigen nacht had hij zeer weinig kunnen slapen—en hij
beschikte niet over de ijzeren wilskracht van een John Raffles, die
desnoods drie dagen en drie nachten zonder slaap kon blijven!

Maar eensklaps werd hij uit zijn halven dommel gewekt door een heel
licht geraas!

Hij hief het hoofd op—en eensklaps was hij klaar wakker, zoo wakker,
als hij zich in geen tijden gevoeld had, naar hij meende.

Hij luisterde met de grootste aandacht, maar het geluid herhaalde zich
niet.

Mogelijk had een van de surveillanten zijn lantaarn verschoven.

Maar toen onderging Charly een nieuwe, onverwachte gewaarwording—

hij gevoelde een kouden luchtstroom langs zijn voeten strijken.…

Langzaam, zonder het minste gerucht, stond Charly op.

Hij nam een lantaarn met een zeer sterk licht tik zijn zak, en bevestigde
deze met een haak voor op de borst.
In een oogwenk was het door zijn hoofd gegaan, dat de koude
luchtstroom, welken hij zooeven gevoeld had, onmogelijk verwekt kon
zijn doordat de deur open ging—want dat had hij stellig moeten hooren,
en bovendien, de surveillant zat daar nog altijd even rustig als daar
straks, met gekruiste armen, en het hoofd op de borst gezonken.

Charly liet zijn blikken langs de lange, linnen overgordijnen voor de

ramen dwalen—en toen bleef zijn blik op een enkel punt gevestigd.

Hij kon zich niet vergissen—een van die gordijnen had heel licht
bewogen alsof er een tochtje langs streek—of alsof daarachter iemand
het met de hand aanraakte.….

Onhoorbaar voortsluipend, zonder het minste gerucht te maken op zijn

gummizolen, ging Charly om het voeteneinde van het bed heen, en trad
op het gordijn toe—zijn revolver in de rechterhand, een vinger van de
linkerhand op den drukknop van de lamp.

Hij stond nu slechts een paar decimeter van het gordijn af.…..

Toen drukte hij op den knop van zijn electrische zaklantaarn, en een
onderdeel van een seconde later rukte hij het gordijn terzijde, hief zijn
revolver op, en beval mat gedempte, maar dringende stem:

—Handen op!

Dit bevel was gericht tot een man, met een bleek vertrokken gelaat,
waarin twee boosaardige oogen fonkelden, en die blijkbaar eenige
minuten te voren door het raam was binnengeklommen. Een hoog,
dubbel raam, dat bij wijze van een deur open ging, en evenals andere
ramen uitkwam op een smal bordes.

De man achter het gordijn liet een sissenden klank hooren, maar zijn
handen gingen de hoogte in.
De surveillanten waren wakker geworden, door het onverwachte, sterke
lichtschijnsel, en door het terzijde rukken van het linnen gordijn en
snelden nu in de hoogste verbazing en schrik toe.

—Wat moet dat beteekenen, Miss? riep een hunner, schor van
ontroering uit.

—Dat zult gij aanstonds zien, zeide Charly kortaf. Onderzoek zijn
zakken, maar doe het voorzichtig! Ik zal hem intusschen in bedwang
houden en ik zweer u [28]dat ik den kerel neerschiet als hij ook maar een
vinger durft verroeren. Hij had het gemunt op het leven van mijnheer
Dubois!

Terwijl Charly de revolver op het voorhoofd van den moordenaar gericht

hield, tastte een der surveillanten voorzichtig in zijn zakken, en haalde
daar een revolver, een vlijmscherpen dolk, en ten slotte een klein houten
étui uit, dat er uitzag als een dier kleine kokertjes, waarin men wel
dunne stiften voor vulpotlooden pleegt te verkoopen.

—Open het maar eens, gelastte Charly, zonder den schurk uit het oog
te verliezen, maar wees op uw hoede.

Het étui werd voorzichtig geopend, en bleek een vaccinatienaald te

bevatten, waarvan de punt met een weinig watten was omwikkeld.

—Houdt dat gevaarlijke ding maar hier en laat het onderzoeken! ging
Charly voort, ik ben er van overtuigd dat die naald gevuld is met een
snelwerkend vergif! Maar eerst zullen wij dezen ellendeling machteloos
maken! Snijd een stuk van het gordijnkoord af, en bind hem stevig de
polsen bijeen.

Het bevel werd opgevolgd en de surveillanten schenen hardhandig te

werk te gaan, want de schurk brulde van pijn en woede.

Charly snelde nu naar de telefoon en belde de politie op.

Daarop wendde hij zich weder tot de beide surveillanten en zeide
haastig:

—Gij zijt getuigen van dezen laaghartigen overval geweest en gij zult er
wel voor zorgen dat hij aan de politie wordt overgeleverd, welke ik
zooeven heb opgebeld, ik zelf ga aanstonds Madame Dubois op de
hoogte brengen en wat den patiënt betreft, als hij maar even vervoerd
kan worden, breng hem dan morgen onmiddellijk naar een vertrek, waar
dergelijke aanrandingen tot de onmogelijkheden behooren. Bewaak dien
kerel goed, want ik acht een sluipmoordenaar tot alles in staat! Ik geloof
dat ik zijn gezicht ken en de politie zal hem zeker ook wel kennen!

Met deze woorden snelde Charly weg en hij had het gebouw reeds
verlaten toen de politie daar aankwam om den moordenaar in ontvangst
te nemen.

Een uur later waren Raffles en Marthe Debussy—de ongelukkige vrouw

had onmogelijk kunnen slapen—van alles op de hoogte gebracht. [29]

[Inhoud]
HOOFDSTUK VII.
 De inbraak.

Den volgenden dag, omstreeks vier uur in den middag, hield er een
huurauto stil voor een prachtig huis in de Drury Lane, het verblijf van Sir
Roger Maxwell.

Daaruit stapte een eenvoudig gekleed man van omstreeks vijf-en-

veertig jaar, met een ernstig, donker uiterlijk, vlugge bewegingen en die
blijkbaar gewend was om te bevelen.

Hij belde aan, nadat de chauffeur was weggereden, en verzocht den

bediende zijn kaartje aan Sir Maxwell te willen brengen en deze mede te
deelen dat hij hem over een zeer ernstige zaak moest spreken.

De bediende wierp een blik op het kaartje en las daarop: „Filip

Greenwood”, „Particulier Detective”.

Hij wierp den bezoeker een verbaasden blik toe, maar haastte zich met
het kaartje weg, na hem te hebben verzocht plaats te nemen in de
prachtige marmeren hall.

Na eenige minuten keerde hij terug en vroeg den detective hem te willen
volgen.

Een oogenblik later stond Greenwood tegenover een man van een jaar
of zestig met een geel gelaat, dikke lippen, paarse wallen onder de
oogen en zoo goed als geheel kaal.

Die man was Sir Roger Maxwell, zeer bekend in de uitgaande wereld en
in sportkringen.

Hij wendde zijn waterige blauwe oogen naar Greenwood terwijl hij het
kaartje tusschen zijn vingers heen en weer draaide en vroeg, terwijl hij
zijn woorden als met een scheermes afsneed:
—Greenwood? Nooit van gehoord. Ga zitten. Wat wenscht gij? Zaak
van belang? Nooit iets met politie uitstaande gehad! Port? Madera?
Sigaren?

Greenwood was kalm gaan zitten en antwoordde, terwijl hij zijn heldere
grijze oogen op het schatrijke Hoogerhuislid vestigde:

—Ik zal geen misbruik maken van uw tijd, Sir! Sterken drank gebruik ik
niet, en ik rook ook nooit als er werk voor den boeg is. Ik zal zeer kort
zijn. Men komt hedennacht bij u inbreken!

De waterblauwe oogen knipperden eenige malen snel achtereen en

toen liet hun bezitter zich in een stoel vallen.

—Inbreken? Bij mij? Nog nooit voorgekomen! Hoogst merkwaardig!

Zullen van een koude kermis thuis komen! Tien man politie zeker wel
voldoende?

—Ruimschoots, Sir, antwoordde Greenwood rustig.

—Nadere bijzonderheden, alstublieft? Hoeveel bandieten? Hoe laat?

—Zij komen waarschijnlijk met vier of vijf man, zij zijn gevaarlijk en zij
komen om half twee!

—Heel snugger! Heel snugger! Dan is hier alles naar bed. Vervloekte
schurken! Hoe weet gij dit alles?

—Pardon, Sir Maxwell, dat zijn beroepsgeheimen, antwoordde

Greenwood.

—Ben niet nieuwsgierig! Hoofdzaak is dat schurken opgeknoopt

worden! Banditisme is sterk verspreid! Sterk verspreid, Sir! Sterk
verspreid! Zullen ons tot het uiterste verdedigen tegen rapaille! Maak u
mijn compliment! Zorgt gij voor alles?
—Ik zal zorgen, dat er hedennacht om twaalf uur tien man in de
vestibule verborgen zijn opgesteld, want de schurken denken binnen te
dringen door een der ramen die in de hall uitkomen, en die met een
ijzeren luik gesloten zijn. Ik vrees dat zij medeplichtigen binnenshuis
hebben, of anders moet er van te voren iets aan het luik geknoeid zijn!

De edele Lord stak den detective die hem aldus kwam waarschuwen,
twee vingers toe, welke deze echter niet scheen te zien.

Hij stond op, maakte een korte buiging voor het lid van het Hoogerhuis
en verliet het vertrek.

De huisknecht, door het bellen van zijn meester gewaarschuwd,

geleidde hem naar de deur en liet hem uit.

Op de stoep staande haalde Raffles—want hij was [30]het—zijn horloge

uit zijn zak en mompelde, na het geraadpleegd te hebben:

—Ik ben precies zeven minuten binnen geweest. Nu, die Sir Maxwell
mag een leeghoofdige, schatrijke en oude doordraaier zijn, hij is
tenminste geen kletsmeier. En ik moet tot zijn eer opmerken dat hij de
zaak tamelijk flegmatiek behandeld heeft. Wij zullen eens zien hoe onze
vriend zich vannacht houdt!

Juist toen het middernacht sloeg ging een deur in den muur van den tuin
achter het groote huis van Sir Maxwell open, en verleende doorgang
aan een tiental agenten, onder aanvoering van een inspecteur.

Een oude bediende, trillend van zenuwen, verzocht hen met schorre
stem hem te volgen en bracht hen naar de vestibule, terwijl de
inspecteur zich naar het werkvertrek van Sir Maxwell begaf dat op de
eerste verdieping was gelegen.
Binnen een kwartier waren alle maatregelen genomen, en wie onkundig
was van het veldtochtplan, zou, indien hij de vestibule ware
binnengetreden, zeker niet vermoed hebben dat er achter alle deuren,
achter een gordijn, en achter een zware pilaar, agenten verborgen
stonden, gereed om toe te springen!

De tijd verstreek langzaam, terwijl Sir Maxwell dien verdreef met het
drinken van eenige glazen rooden wijn, en het rooken van eenige fijne
import-sigaren.

De inbrekers mochten komen, zij zouden het niet eens tot aan de trap
brengen.

Zoo werd het half twee—en toen had iemand met een scherp gehoor,
beneden in de groote hall een zacht geklikklak van metaal op metaal
kunnen hooren en kort daarop het langzaam opengaan van een zwaar
ijzeren luik.

Een flauw schijnsel drong nu de hall binnen, afkomstig van een

straatlantaarn, die schuin tegenover het groote huis geplaatst was.

Langzaam klauterden vijf mannen zeer voorzichtig en geluidloos naar

binnen, nadat er vlug en behendig een ruit was uitgesneden.

En nauwelijks hadden zij een tiental schreden afgelegd, of de hall

baadde in het electrische licht, hetwelk de inspecteur had opgedraaid en
bevelend klonk de kreet:

—Geef u over of wij schieten!

En uit alle hoeken en gaten kwamen thans de agenten aanstormen.

Maar de bandieten schenen zich niet zoo voetstoots te willen

overgeven; er kraakten schoten, een agent werd aan den arm gewond,
en een der bandieten kreeg een kogel door den schouder.
Dr. Fox, die de inbrekers had aangevoerd, lichtte zijn revolver op en
wilde vuren, maar een schot klonk, de bandiet slaakte een rauwen gil en
viel voorover op den marmeren vloer.

De bandieten waren nu spoedig overmeesterd en geboeid en werden

weggevoerd.

Men tilde Dr. Fox, die blijkbaar zwaar gewond was, en die door een
kogel in het voorhoofd getroffen was, behoedzaam op en droeg hem
naar buiten waar een groote politieauto, die inmiddels gewaarschuwd
was, kwam aanrijden.

Maar juist toen het portier geopend was, en men den zwaargewonde
naar binnen wilde dragen, richtte Fox zich eensklaps overeind, rukte
zich los, schoot een der agenten neder die het dichtst bij hem stond met
een kleine revolver, welke hij in zijn mouw verborgen had gehouden, en
snelde zoo vlug zijn beenen hem wilden dragen, in de duisternis weg.

Voor de agenten van hunne verbazing bekomen waren, was de bandiet

reeds uit het oog.

Klaarblijkelijk had hij zich slechts bewusteloos gehouden, en het bloed,

dat uit een onbeteekenende wonde vloeide, over zijn voorhoofd
gestreken, terwijl hij voorover op den vloer van de hall lag.

Aan een achtervolging behoefde men niet te denken, want heel in de

verte klonk het geluid van een wegrijdende auto, die blijkbaar op de
terugkomst der inbrekers had gewacht.

Het gevecht met de bandieten had ternauwernood een kwartier

geduurd, en nu was het weder rustig in het groote heerenhuis.

De agenten hadden zich met hun gevangenen verwijderd, onder

aanvoering van een brigadier, en de inspecteur begaf zich nu maar de
werkkamer van Sir Roger Maxwell, ten einde dezen rapport uit te
brengen, en hem mede te deelen, dat alles veilig was, en hij zich wel ter
ruste kon begeven.

Het Hoogerhuis-lid ontving den politiebeambte met [31]de grootste

kalmte, en naar het scheen zelfs niet al te nieuwsgierig naar den afloop
van het gevecht.

Zijne lordschap vond het blijkbaar niet meer dan natuurlijk, dat een
inbraak in zijn huis iets onmogelijks was, en van te voren tot mislukking
gedoemd.

Hij klopte den inspecteur vaderlijk op den schouder, presenteerde hem

een sigaar, en verwaardigde zich zelfs, hem persoonlijk bij het afscheid
nemen naar de kamerdeur te begeleiden!

Daar wachtte een bediende die dien inspecteur zou uitlaten.

Sir Roger Maxwell keerde weder in zijn werkkamer terug om nog enkele
papieren te ordenen, toen hij plotseling als aan den grond genageld
bleef staan.

Tegenover de plek, waar hij zooeven aan zijn schrijftafel gezeten had,
aan de andere zijde van dit meubel, zat een man in een gemakkelijken
leunstoel, die heel op zijn gemak een sigaret rookte, blijkbaar zooeven
uit een zilveren doos genomen, die midden op de tafel stond.

Sir Maxwell herkende hem dadelijk als de detective, die hem

dienzelfden dag op de hoogte was komen stellen van de plannen om in
zijn woning in te breken.

Hij kwam verbaasd eenige schreden naderbij en zeide:

—Lang hier? Heb u niet gezien! Hoe komt dat?

—Ik zat in die kast daar, Sir Maxwell, antwoordde Raffles kalm.

—Kast? herhaalde Zijne Lordschap toonloos. Rare plaats! Waarom?

—Omdat ik liever niet gezien wilde worden! kwam het antwoord, op
denzelfden rustigen toon gegeven.

—Niet gezien? Eigenaardig! Bang voor uw eigen collega’s? Vreemd.

Hoogst merkwaardig. En—wat is nu het doel van uw komst?

—Ik kwam mijn honorarium halen! antwoordde Raffles koelbloedig, en

hij blies een groote rookwolk uit.

—Uw honorarium! herhaalde Mylord, met stijgende verbazing, en ook

een weinig ongerustheid in zijn stem. En Scotland Yard? Die betaalt u
toch zeker?

—O, zoo weinig! zeide Raffles glimlachend. Men mag het werkelijk geen
naam geven! Neen, de hoofdsom denk ik van u te ontvangen!

—Maar—dit is werkelijk een curieuse handelwijze! riep Sir Maxwell uit,

die zijn geduld begon te verliezen. Gij hadt dan toch morgen bij mij
kunnen komen, dan zou ik u gaarne een paar pond als belooning voor
uwen ijver en moeite hebben geschonken!

—Zeer vriendelijk! hernam Raffles spottend. Maar ik vind het wel wat
weinig!

—Weinig! riep sir Maxwell nu toornig uit. Hoeveel dacht gij dan wel te
vragen?

—Tien duizend!

—Tien duizend pond sterling? kwam Mylord, en hij werd vuurrood. Zeg
eens, mijnheer—ik vind, dat uw grapjes wat ver gaan!

—Het is geen grapje, Sir Maxwell, maar bittere ernst! zeide Raffles,
terwijl hij opnieuw een dichte tabakswolk deed opstijgen.

—Dus—een poging tot bedreiging! riep Mylord op heeschen toon, en hij

deed een stap in de richting van de telefoon.
—Als gij het zoo noemen wilt.….. zeide Raffles onverschillig. Neen—
ging hij haastig voort, blijf waar gij zijt! Ik maak geen gekheid! En laat uw
revolver ook maar met rust, want als gij haar zoudt nazien, dan zoudt gij
bemerken, dat de patronen er zijn uitgehaald. Dat heb ik gedaan terwijl
gij even de kamer verlaten hadt, en voor gij terugkwaamt, om uw
revolver uit de lade van uw schrijftafel te nemen! Men kan nooit te
voorzichtig zijn!

—Maar—wie zijt gij dan? riep Mylord, schor van drift nu, en een geheel
ander man, dan toen hij er zoo zeker van was, dat zijn bezit geen
gevaar liep.

—Mijn naam is John Raffles, Sir Maxwell! antwoordde de gentleman-

inbreker, en hij nam een versche sigaar uit de zilveren doos.

Het Hoogerhuis-lid verbleekte.

—Dus—bedrogen! stamelde hij. Ik moet zeggen—het is—het is bijna

geniaal!

Raffles maakte een lichte buiging met het hoofd en zeide:

—Dank u. Heel vriendelijk van u. En laat ons nu even de zaken regelen.

Goede rekeningen maken immers goede vrienden! Vlak naast u staat
uw brandkast, en de sleutels bevinden zich in gindsche lade, zooals ik
gezien heb. Open haar slechts met een oog op het slot, en het andere
op mijn revolver gericht, en betaal mij het bedrag hetwelk ik u zoo even
noemde. Hoe meer [32]haast, hoe liever het mij zal zijn! Tegenstreven
zou u niets baten, en mij alleen noodeloos ophouden. Ik zou dan
genoodzaakt zijn, de kast zelf te openen. Gij zijt nu in mijn macht,
bedenk dat! De bedienden hebben zich allen te ruste begeven—in mijn
zak zit de geluidontvanger van de telefoon, en de draad van de schel is
doorgeknipt! Kom, kom—bedenk u niet te lang, of ik maak er twintig
duizend van! Gij zijt waarlijk niet bekocht, want de bandieten, voor wie ik
u gewaarschuwd heb, hadden stellig uw geheele kast ledig gehaald!
Sir Maxwell scheen nog even te aarzelen!

Toen koos hij, zooals men dat noemt, eieren voor zijn geld, stapte op de
kast toe, na de sleutels te hebben genomen, opende de zware deur,
telde haastig een pak bankbiljetten af en stak het Raffles toe.

Deze ging vluchtig den inhoud van het kostbare pak na, stond op, en
wierp zijn sigaret in den aschbak.

—Mijn taak is gedaan, Sir Maxwell! zeide hij, op zijn gewone rustige
manier. Het spijt mij, dat ik u langer heb moeten ophouden, dan mijn
bedoeling was. En tot mijn leedwezen zal ik nu genoodzaakt zijn, u even
in uw eigen kamer op te sluiten—om begrijpelijke redenen! Gij zoudt het
mij nog al te warm kunnen maken! En wat het geld betreft, dat ik u
zooeven ontnomen heb—wees er zeker van, dat het een betere
bestemming zal krijgen, dan gij er met mogelijkheid aan zoudt hebben
kunnen geven!

Nog een hoffelijke buiging—en Raffles had het vertrek verlaten, na den
sleutel uit het slot te hebben genomen.

[Inhoud]

De volgende aflevering (No. 306) bevat:

Een avontuur van Koning Alfonso.

 Inhoudsopgave

I. Een Adellijke Bandiet. 1

II. Een nieuwe patiënt. 5
III. Een raadselachtig geval. 11
IV. Het verhoor van Big Billy. 17
V. Het plan wordt uitgewerkt. 20
VI. De dood achter het gordijn. 24
VII. De inbraak. 29
 Colofon
Beschikbaarheid

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Metadata

Lord Lister
Titel: No. 305: De
schijndooden
Theo von
Blankensee
[Pseudoniem
Auteur: Info https://viaf.org/viaf/8133268/
van Mathias
Blank (1881–
1928)]
Felix
Info
Auteur: Hageman
https://viaf.org/viaf/5168161211441040070000/
(1877–1966)
Kurt Matull
Auteur: (1872– Info https://viaf.org/viaf/56770919/
1930?)
Jan
Illustrator: Wiegman Info https://viaf.org/viaf/65074834/
(1884–1963)
2023-09-22
Aanmaakdatum
20:58:09
bestand:
UTC
Taal: Nederlands
(Spelling De
Vries-Te
Winkel)
Oorspronkelijke
[1920]
uitgiftedatum:
Detective
and mystery
Trefwoorden:
stories --
Periodicals
Dime novels
-- Periodicals

Codering

Dit boek is weergegeven in oorspronkelijke schrijfwijze. Afgebroken

woorden aan het einde van de regel zijn stilzwijgend hersteld. Kennelijke
zetfouten in het origineel zijn verbeterd. Deze verbeteringen zijn
aangegeven in de colofon aan het einde van dit boek.

Documentgeschiedenis

2023-09-21 Begonnen.

Verbeteringen

De volgende verbeteringen zijn aangebracht in de tekst:

Bladzijde Bron Verbetering Bewerkingsafstand

1, 18 [Niet in bron] , 1
1 Adelijke Adellijke 1
4 vergeellen vergezellen 1
4, 4, 5, 6,
14, 15,
16, 16,
dr. Dr. 1
16, 16,
16, 16,
17, 19
5 , [Verwijderd] 1
5 Schotland Scotland 1
6 gelieven geliefden 2
6 [Niet in bron] te 3
7, 26 [Niet in bron] . 1
8 opgengedaan opengedaan 1
9 Sedtr Sedert 2
10 , . 1
10 wij zij 1
11 cocaine cocaïne 1/0
12 verergde verergerde 2
14 Eduard Edouard 1
15 [Niet in bron] en 3
15 dr Dr. 2
16, 18 . : 1
bewuste-
17 bewustelooze 3
telooze
17 open de opende 1
17 Big-Billy Big Billy 1
17 . ? 1
18 [Niet in bron] — 1
18 plaatst plaats 1
19 haer haar 1
Scotland- Scotland
20 1
Yard Yard
20 Wal Wat 1
22 mecaniek mechaniek 1
23 zachjtes zachtjes 2
23 k Ik 1
24 bodschap boodschap 1
25 meemalen meermalen 1
26 mannen vrouwen 5
26 slecht slechts 1
28 .. . 1
29 alsublieft alstublieft 1
29 Bandietisme Banditisme 1
29 tSerk Sterk 2
30 kwarier kwartier 1
30 Maxwel Maxwell 1
32 [Niet in bron] in 3