Abstract: Buying stability has become a typical strategy for the local government to safeguard stability in resolving grassroots conflicts.It is a way in which the local government exchanges the stability it needs with the compromise of economic interests so that the disputing party will stop creating continuous unrest.This strategy，embedded in the baby-sitter relationship between the government and the individual in China，is the game result between government’s logic of non-accident and the individual’s logic of being good at intimidating.In practice，more and more local governments have taken it as a panacea in conflict resolution and it does work somehow.However，this should not be a good way to resolve conflicts because of the obvious negative effects.Thus，we should learn to get out of the vicious cycle of “buying stability”.

Key words: &ldquo, buying stability&rdquo, ；conflict resolution；local government