The scholarly literature on Chinese youth and contentious politics largely claims that in the post-Tiananmen period, university students are apathetic, materialistic and have been successfully co-opted by the regime. They also claim that university campuses are no longer hot beds of political activism. Rather, the regime has made a concerted effort to institutionalize political indoctrination, enhance its monitoring capacity, and limit the political autonomy of students. As such, scholars assert that oppositional mobilization is unlikely to come from students. My study challenges these perspectives by examining the emergence of "unregistered" student clubs, specifically those that focus on LGBTQ and women's-based issues. This phenomenon challenges the idea that young people are not concerned with social and political issues. Focusing on large-scale political demonstration obfuscates the fact that non-compliance by students do occur, but in less overt ways. My study on the emergence of unregistered student clubs is a lens through which to examine a back-and-forth dynamic that occurs in authoritarian regimes between the regime and citizens. The former develops an extensive set of rules and norms to induce political conformity and the latter devises ways to circumvent those very rules. Rather than seeing open contestation against the regime, we observe that citizens are more likely to perform loyalty in the public arena, and in private spaces, non-compliance unfolds in subtle forms. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]