In the aftermath of the crackdown in Tiananmen, China’s political landscape has witnessed a new protest cycle. Unrest has escalated as a consequence of the reconfiguration of the Party-state, which has to deal with an increasingly restive society. The protest politics since the 1990s has unfolded with a set of distinctively different patterns, dynamics and consequences alongside with the transformation of the Party-state. This paper gives an account of the emerging new contentious sequence, with an emphasis on how the transformation of the Party-state has facilitated the conditions for popular resistance. The distinctiveness of the new sequence rests in the ambivalent relationship and strategic engagement with the decentralised Party-state, which has increasingly accommodated mass protest to recapture regime legitimacy. Profound changes in state governance and state–society linkages, the central–local divide, as well as the socialist tradition have all combined to reshape the conditions for contemporary popular struggle in China.