Central Control and Local Discretion in China

Central Control and Local Discretion in China PDF Author: Chae-ho Chŏng
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198297772
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
"Theoretically, this study contends that the overall scope of local discretion is circumscribed by the dominant norms and incentive relations embedded in the implementation dynamics. Methodologically, the book employs a combination of aggregate analyses and comparative case studies. Empirically, on the basis of newly available materials (including classified documents) and interviews, it challenges the 'peasant-power' school which has somehow allowed local governments to evaporate in its descriptions of post-Mao decollectivization."--BOOK JACKET.

Assessing the Balance of Power in Central-Local Relations in China

Assessing the Balance of Power in Central-Local Relations in China PDF Author: John Donaldson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317205332
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
How do we understand the evolution of central-local relations in China during the reform period? This book addresses this question by focusing on eight separate issues in which the central-local relationship has been especially salient – government finance, investment control, regional development, administrative zoning, implementation, culture, social welfare and international relations. Each chapter introduces a sector and the way the center and various local governments have shared or divided power over the different periods of China’s reform era. The balance of power is gauged dynamically over time to measure the extent to which one level of government dominates, influences or shares power in making decisions in each of these particular domains, as well as what is likely to occur in the foreseeable future. The authors assess the winners and losers of these changes among key actors in China’s society. The result provides a dynamic view of China’s changing power relations.

Centrifugal Empire

Centrifugal Empire PDF Author: Jae Ho Chung
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154068X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
Despite the destabilizing potential of governing of a vast territory and a large multicultural population, the centralized government of the People's Republic of China has held together for decades, resisting efforts at local autonomy. By analyzing Beijing's strategies for maintaining control even in the reformist post-Mao era, Centrifugal Empire reveals the unique thinking behind China's approach to local governance, its historical roots, and its deflection of divergent interests. Centrifugal Empire examines the logic, mode, and instrument of local governance established by the People's Republic, and then compares the current system to the practices of its dynastic predecessors. The result is an expansive portrait of Chinese leaders' attitudes toward regional autonomy and local challenges, one concerned with territory-specific preoccupations and manifesting in constant searches for an optimal design of control. Jae Ho Chung reveals how current communist instruments of local governance echo imperial institutions, while exposing the Leninist regime's savvy adaptation to contemporary issues and its need for more sophisticated inter-local networks to keep its unitary rule intact. He casts the challenges to China's central–local relations as perennial, since the dilution of the system's "socialist" or "Communist" character will only accentuate its fundamentally Chinese—or centrifugal—nature.

Local Governance Innovation in China

Local Governance Innovation in China PDF Author: Jessica C. Teets
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317751671
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
Despite a centralized formal structure, Chinese politics and policy-making have long been marked by substantial degrees of regional and local variation and experimentation. These trends have, if anything, intensified as China’s reform matures. Though often remarked upon, the politicsof policy formation, diffusion, and implementation at the subnational level have not previously been comprehensively described, let alone satisfactorily explained. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book explores how policies diffuse across China today, the mechanisms through which local governments actually arrive at specific solutions, and the implications for China’s political development and stability in the years ahead. The chapters examine how local-level institutions solve governance challenges, such as rural development, enterprise reform, and social service provision. Focusing on diverse policy areas that include land use, state-owned enterprise reform, and house churches, the contributors all address the same overarching question: how do local policymakers innovate in each issue area to address a governance challenges and how, if at all, do these innovations diffuse into national politics. As a study of local governance in China today, this book will appeal to both students and scholars of Chinese politics, comparative politics, governance and development studies, and also to policy-makers interested in authoritarianism and governance.

China's Local Administration

China's Local Administration PDF Author: Jae Ho Chung
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135203717
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
The remarkable changes in China over the past three decades are mostly considered at the national level, whereas local government – which has played and continues to play a key role in these developments – is often overlooked. The themes of China’s local administrative hierarchy, and its historical evolution, have until now received scant attention; this book fills that gap, and presents a comprehensive survey of China’s local administration, from the province down to the township. It examines the political and functional definitions and historical origins of the nine local administrative levels or categories in contemporary China: the province, the centrally-administered municipality, the ethnic minority autonomous region, the special administrative region, the deputy-provincial city, the prefecture, the county, township and urban district. It investigates how each of the different levels of China’s local administration has developed historically, both before and after 1949; and it explores the functions, political and economic, that the different levels and units carry out, and how their relationships with superior and subordinate units have evolved over time. It also discusses how far the post-Mao reforms have affected local administration, and how the local administrative hierarchy is likely to develop going forward.

China's Local Administration

China's Local Administration PDF Author: Jae Ho Chung
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135203725
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive survey of China’s local administration. It considers all kinds of local government units and their administrative functions, both historically and in the present day: ranging from the provinces, centrally-administered municipalities and autonomous regions to prefectures, counties, townships and urban districts.

Assessing the Balance of Power in Central-Local Relations in China

Assessing the Balance of Power in Central-Local Relations in China PDF Author: John Donaldson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317205324
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
How do we understand the evolution of central-local relations in China during the reform period? This book addresses this question by focusing on eight separate issues in which the central-local relationship has been especially salient – government finance, investment control, regional development, administrative zoning, implementation, culture, social welfare and international relations. Each chapter introduces a sector and the way the center and various local governments have shared or divided power over the different periods of China’s reform era. The balance of power is gauged dynamically over time to measure the extent to which one level of government dominates, influences or shares power in making decisions in each of these particular domains, as well as what is likely to occur in the foreseeable future. The authors assess the winners and losers of these changes among key actors in China’s society. The result provides a dynamic view of China’s changing power relations.

Educating Migrant Children in Urban Public Schools in China

Educating Migrant Children in Urban Public Schools in China PDF Author: Bo Hu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811311471
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 115

Book Description
This book investigates the implementation of the education policy for migrant children, arguing that it has been selectively implemented: while some policy themes have been effectively implemented, others have not. Four factors underlie this selective implementation: specificity of policy goals, funding for education, local incentives in an exam-oriented education system, and intergroup relationships between migrant and urban children.

Mao's Crusade

Mao's Crusade PDF Author: Alfred L. Chan
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191554014
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
During 1957 and 1958 Mao was seized by a vision that the Chinese economy could develop rapidly in leaps and bounds by relying on intuition and mass spontaneity. As a consequence, he single-handedly launched a colossal mobilization campaign called the Great Leap Forward, which featured many radical policy innovations, including the people's communes. This book is the first in-depth and original study of policy formulation and implementation during the Leap to link the roles of Mao, the central leaders, the ministries, and the province of Guangdong. Rejecting the theory that the Leap was an outcome of bureaucratic politics and competition, the study establishes beyond doubt the supreme and dominant position of Mao in initiating and commanding the Leap. Alfred L. Chan goes further than propounding a Mao-dominant model by documenting the strategic and tactical moves made by Mao in order to neutralize all opposition and to carry the day. He also discusses in detail the policy roles and input of other top leaders on whom the improvising Mao relied to feed his imagination and to flesh out his policies. In the chapters on the implementation of the Leap, Dr Chan explores how the ministries of Metallurgy and Agriculture were transformed from bureaucratic agencies into agents of mobilization, and how impossible targets forced them to keep up appearances by focussing on the rituals of mass mobilization. Similarly, other chapters on Guangdong show the simultaneously fervent, ritualistic, and desperate attempts to implement every hunch and intuition emanating from the centre. Exhaustive research using new material made available in the post-Mao era, as well as archives from the 1950s and 1960s, has yielded novel and original insights into the leader Mao, central decision-making, and policy implementation in the communist hierarchy.

Remaking the Chinese State

Remaking the Chinese State PDF Author: Jianmin Zhao
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 041525583X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Examines topical issues of China's reform process from a political science perspective.