面對轉型期日益增加的社會群體性衝突，中國大陸公部門當前大力提倡和推進黨內民主建設和依法治國，以期解決社會矛盾。然而僅僅通過司法、行政和傳統的人民調解等方式已經難以解決各類問題。因此，政府不斷積極探索多元化的新機制來對矛盾糾紛進行協調和處理。大調解是一種應運而生的機制，近來得到黨和政府的大力推廣。本文通過對中國大陸正在推行大調解的城市進行案例分析，期望來探索大調解在緩解社會矛盾和減低民眾對政府的不滿中的功能，由此進一步分析其在當前與增強國家合法性基礎和實現社會和諧穩定的關係和作用。

Democratic development and rule of law in the authoritarian China is still in a preliminary stage with serious collective incidents increasing drastically during the social transformation. It is hard to solve all the problems through judicial system, administrative way, or even the traditional people’s mediation respectively. Therefore, new and diversified conflict resolution mechanisms which can coordinate various parties and deal with different kinds of disputes are strongly needed. Grand mediation (GM) has a special advantage in this respect and it’s been highly promoted by the Party-state in Mainland China. Using cases in urban China, it explores GM’s role in defusing social unrest and reducing people’s hostility towards local government so that it, to a large extent, can enhance the legitimacy of the central government whose paramount goal is to maintain political stability and social harmony.