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Differentiated Actors: Central–Local Politics in China's Rural Tax Reforms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2006

LINDA CHELAN LI
LINDA CHELAN LI
Affiliation:
Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong Email: salcli@cityu.edu.hk
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Extract

How decisions and policies are made and implemented? This classical question in political science has attracted a considerable literature amongst observers of realpolitik in China, with its continental size, 1.3 billion population and five layers of government. Mirroring the move away from the traditional dualism of ‘top-down’ versus ‘bottom-up’ approaches in the general implementation literature, recent literature on Chinese central–local politics emphasizes the co-participation of central and local actors in decision-making and the dialectical interactive relationship between central and local power. Goodman recognizes, for instance, that central and local actors have differentiated roles to play in decision-making. Li makes the case of interactive central–local power, calling for a reconceptualization of central-local relations in a non-zero-sum schema. Recent studies on the ‘Open Up the West’ national policy augment the claim for ‘disaggregating’ China, and the relevance of the provincial, regional and local as levels and foci of analysis. Against the traditional emphasis over central predominance versus provincial power, this body of literature, adopting a ‘non-dualistic’ approach to power, highlights the co-existence of central and local power in a diffuse, complex decision-making process.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , February 2006 , pp. 151 - 174
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper is part of a larger research programme on China's fiscal reform and institutional change supported by a research grant of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council (CityU 1064/02H). Fieldwork on the research was conducted at central, provincial, county and township levels at Beijing, Hubei, Anhui and Guangdong. This paper draws on part of this work as well as documentary research. Some case materials were presented in a paper at International Conference on ‘Theoretical Issues in the Study of Rural and Small-Town China’, 14–15 November, 2003, University of California, Berkeley. An earlier version received constructive and insightful comments from the conference participants and a number of anonymous reviewers, and the current version from Paul Wilding.Bibliographical note:Linda Chelan Li teaches Chinese politics and public administration, and approaches in political analysis in City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include intergovernmental relations and spatial politics, politics of public finance, governance issues in transitional economies, and institutional theory. Her work has focused on the contemporary period of Chinese history, as well as the evolving relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing. She earned her doctorate in politics at Soas, London in 1995. She is author of Centre and Province: China. Power as Non-Zero-Sum (by Clarendon, 1998), a number of articles in Political Studies, China Quarterly, China Information, Provincial China, and Journal of Contemporary Asia, and chapters in edited volumes. Her article in Political Studies (1997) was awarded the Harrison Prize as the best paper published in PS in the year.