From Right Protection to Monetary Bargaining

This chapter dives into investigating the rationale embedded in the compensation distribution to settle medical disputes, drawing on evidence from people’s mediation committees of medical disputes. This chapter argues that the People’s mediation committee has performed as a centralized bargaining channel to promote compensation distribution systematically to settle the dispute. Through the mediation channel, the focus of the dispute resolution also shifted from rights discourse to responding the monetary compensation claims raised by the disputants, which also de-politicized the nature of the social disputes. By reviewing medical dispute case files empirically, I find that compensation outcomes may be influenced by a series of interactions of distributive justice, political stability reasons, and economic concerns. Through the mediation channel, the Chinese government could resort to a non-coercive and preventive approach to manage social disputes flexibly.