Differentiated actors: Central-local politics in China's rural tax reforms

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 151-174

  Li, Lind Chelan ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DECISION MAKING; POLITICAL ECONOMY; POLITICS; TAX REFORM;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 33646906443     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X06001855     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. A sample of major works in this genre include Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Okensberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures and Processes (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988)
2. David Lampton, ed., Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987),
3. Kenneth Lieberthal and David Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Politics and Decision-Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)
4. David S. G. Goodman and Gerald Segal, eds., China Deconstructs: Politics, Trade and Regionalism (London: Routledge, 1994)
5. as well as earlier classics like A. Doak Barnett (with Ezra Vogel), Cadre, Bureaucracy and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967),
6. Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968),
7. Audrey Donnithorne, China's Economic Systems (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967)
8. and David S. G. Goodman, ed., Groups and Politics in the People's Republic of China (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1984).
9. For a succinct review of the recent trends of the implementation literature, see Michael Hill and Peter Hupe, Implementing Public Policy: Governance in Theory and in Practice (London: Sage Publications, 2002).
10. A group of literature in this genre is the three volumes published as a result of a series of annual workshops between 1995-8 under the project 'China's Provinces in Reform', exploring the complexities of continental China and the role of the provinces and subprovincials as generic actors in the polity. The project was organized by the Institute for International Studies at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and later by the Centre for Research on Provincial China, a joint institution of UTS and the University of New South Wales. The Centre publishes the journal Provincial China first started by UTS in 1996. The three volumes are: David Goodman, ed., China's Provinces in Reform,
11. Hans Hendrischke and Feng Chongyi, eds., The Political Economy of China's Provinces,
12. and John Fitzgerald, ed., Rethinking China's Provinces, all published by Routledge, in 1997, 1999, and 2002 respectively.
13. David Goodman, 'Power, Policy and Process', British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 19 (July 1989), 425-44.
14. Linda Chelan Li, Centre and Provinces: China, 1978-1993. Power as Non-Zero-Sum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
15. The group of articles on the 'Open Up the West' campaign/policy appears as Vol. 178 (June 2004) The China Quarterly. Authors include David Goodman, Heike Holbig, Nicolas Becquelin, Eduard Vermeer, Christopher McNally, Lijian Hong, and Tim Oakes.
16. For earlier works on the need to disaggregate China, see Goodman and Segal, eds., China Deconstructs,
17. and Goodman, 'Centre and Periphery after Twenty Years of Reform: Redefining the Chinese Polity', China Perspectives, 31, 2000, 4-18.
18. Heike Holbig, 'The Emergence of the Campaign to Open Up the West: Ideological Formation, Central Decision-Making and the Role of the Provinces', The China Quarterly, Vol. 178 (June 2004), 335-57.
19. A similar observation along this line was made in other contexts. For instance, over the discussion of philosophy of social sciences, Roy Bhaskar and Tony Lawson noted that a major reason for the continuing survival of the positivist conception of social sciences was 'the inability of its opponents to sustain in a sufficiently coherent manner' (the key components of the critique). Margaret Archer pointed out that the Collectivist Account of the structure-agency question is kept defensive against, and supplementary to, the Individual Account due to a failure to advance coherently an independent ontology of social structure. See Roy Bhaskar and Tony Lawson, 'Introduction', in Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie, eds., Critical Realism: Essential Readings (London and NY: Routledge, 1998), 3
20. Margaret Archer, Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 46-9.
21. Some examples of recent work adopting a dualistic framework, sometimes implicitly, are: Maria Edin, 'State Capacity and Local Agent Control in China: CCP Cadre Management from a Township Perspective', The China Quarterly, 173 (March 2003), 35-49
22. Kai-yuen Tsui and Youqiang Wang, 'Between Separate Stoves and a Single Menu: Fiscal Decentralization in China', The China Quarterly, 177 March (2004), 71-90
23. and Fubing Su, 'Agency, Incentive, and Institutional Design: Bureaucracy control and Evolution of Governance in Contemporary China', Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 2002.
24. For an extensive critique of the dualistic approach and an argument for the non-dualistic alternative, see Linda Chelan Li, 'Towards a Non-Zero-Sum Interactive Framework of Spatial Politics: The Case of Centre-Province in Contemporary China', Political Studies, 45, 1 (March 1997), 49-65.
25. In a further development, Li attempts to locate endogenous forces of change in 'Understanding Institutional Change: Fiscal Management in Local China', Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2005): 87-108.
26. In early 1993 tens of thousands of villagers in Xie-an Township, Yanshou County in Sichuan Province protested against the imposition of local levies of some 70 yuan per person to pay for the construction of a road connecting the county to Chengdu, the provincial capital. Local officials staged a clamp down, resulting in persistent resistance from the peasants for some time, and subsequently drew the attention of the central government and the international community to the heightening tension between peasants and local cadres in China. See http://bjzc.org/ bjs/bc/02/6320/8/2004 for an account of the 1993 events,
27. and Pou Wenchong, 'What can a representative of peasants' interests achieve in China?', Zhongguo Gaige (China Reform), (the rural version), 3 (2003), 42-3, for an interview of the peasant leader of the 1993 resistance.
28. According to official income statistics, rural to urban income per household widens from the lowest at 1:1.86 in 1985 to 1:3.11 in 2002. The widening gap was reversed briefly during 1995-1997, when the ratio dropped from 1:2.86 in 1994 to 1:2.47 in 1997. The ratio was 1:2.57 in 1978. See National Bureau of Statistics of China, China Statistical Yearbook, 2003 (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2003), 344.
29. In 2003, the gap widened further, as rural income per capita increased by 4.3% in 2003, against 9.3% for urban dwellers. China Daily 28 April 2004.
30. An estimate purportedly by the Party Central in 2002, as reported in a Hong Kong source, put daily demonstrations, rallies, and other collective activities in cities at an average of 120 cases, and 160 cases in the countryside, excluding visits to the 'Receiving the Public' section of the various government departments. See The Trend 4 (2002), 12-14. A semi-official study on the subject gives a long list of 'direct causes': Heavy peasants' burden; reform to state enterprises (and the consequent massive urban unemployment); maladministration over land, finance and enterprises; malpractices in village elections; tensions over lineage, religion and ethnic groups; and general law and order issues. The report quotes also an equally handsome list of deep-seated causes: Bureaucratism, breakdown in grassroots level governance structures, poverty, transitional problems in economic development and reform, implementation failures, and the absence of 'self-corrective' mechanism in the political system.
31. Chinese Public Administration Society Project Group, 'A study on social clashes in transitional China: Main features, causes and policy recommendations', Chinese Public Administration, 203, 5 (2002), 6-9. A body of literature has emerged to study this phenomenon.
32. See for instance Kevin O'Brien, 'Rightful resistance', World Politics, 45, 1 (1996), 31-55
33. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, 'The politics of lodging complaints in rural China', China Quarterly, 143 (Sept 1995), 757-83.
34. The year 1998 saw two major developments in political development in China's vast countryside. Village elections were formalized and given a strong boost from the top vide the amendment to the 'Village Committee Elections Organizing Law', in trial since 1987 (see the 1998 Law at http://www.npcnews.com.cn/big5/paper12/1/class001200006/hwz64679.htm). Not only were elections prescribed, the operation of village-level administration should also follow rules of transparency and democratic management, vide Central Committee of Party and State Council, 'A Notice on the implementation of transparent administration and democratic management institutions in village level', No. 9 (1998), at http://202.99.23.199/home/begin.cbs, assessed on 8 September 2004.
35. For discussion on the background and pre-2000 developments, and assessment of the significance, of the elections, see a group of articles in The China Quarterly, 162 (June 2000) by Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, Robert A. Pastor and Qingshan Tan, and Jean C. Oi and Scott Rozelle.
36. Data obtained from surveys of some 6000 rural households in 10 provinces indicate that rural extraction in terms of formal agriculture taxes, local administrative fees and education charges increased in all provinces since 1993, the year of peasant resistance in Sichuan. For instance, well-off Guangdong sees the proportion of total fee burden to rural household income rise from 7.95% in 1993 to 9.67%, whilst poorer provinces rose even more from 9.85% to 13.05% (Shanxi in West China), and from 10.83% to 18.7% (Sichuan). In Anhui where pilot reform started in a few localities since mid-1990s, the rise was from 9.71% to 13.9%. See Tao Ran, Liu Mingxing, Zhang Qi, 'Zhongguo Nongcui Shuifei Fudan: Yige Zhengzhi Jingjixue di Kaocha' (The peasants' burden in China: A political economy analysis), at http://jlin.ccer.edu.cn/download/ 2002926522340.doc, assessed on 30 May 2003.
37. Nevertheless, new initiatives were attempted recently to make the political approach work. See a document jointly issued in July 2004 by the Central Committee of the Party and State Council, 'On enhancing and improving the institutional arrangements on transparency and democratic management in village level governance', at http://202.99.23.199/home/ begin.cbs, assessed on 8 September 2004. New institutional details were prescribed to clarify the respective jurisdiction of the local party branch and elected village committees, and to regulate the operational details of transparent administration.
38. For the announcement, see 'A Decision of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee on Important Issues on Agriculture and Rural Affairs', passed at the Third Plenum of the Fifteenth Central Committee, 14 October 1998. The Third Plenum was explicitly referred to in the Central Document No. 7 (2000) announcing the launch of national pilot reform.
39. Also see Wen Jiabao, 'A speech at the Rural 'tax-for-fee' reform mobilization meeting in Anhui', 13 April 2000, in Zhang Ping, ed., A Practical Manual, 211.
40. The three members are Xiang Huaicheng, then Minister of Finance, Chen Yaobang, then Minister of Agriculture, and Duan Yingbi, then Director of Central Leading Group on Finance and Economics. State Council Office, 'A notice on formulating reform packages for the rural 'tax-for-fee' reform', 20 November 1998, in Office of State Council Rural 'Tax-for-Fee' Reform Working Group, ed., Nongcun Shuifei Gaige Gongzuo Shouce (A Manual of Rural 'Tax-for-Fee' Reform), (Beijing: Jingji kexue chubanshe, 2001), 91.
41. Wen, 'A speech at the Rural 'Tax-for-Fee' reform mobilization meeting', 211-12.
42. Ray Yep, 'Can "Tax-for-fee" Reform Reduce Rural Tension in China? The Process, Progress and Limitations', The China Quarterly, 177 (March 2004), 43-70.
43. Thomas Bernstein and Xiaobo Lu, Taxation Without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
44. Interestingly, the wider institutional roots of the peasants' burden have been well noted by mainland researchers, though this recognition has not been translated into reform design. See for instance Chen Xiwen, ed., Zhongguo Xianxiang Caizheng Yu Nongmin Zengshou Wenti Yanjiu (A Study of County and Township Finance and Issues Around Increasing Peasants' Income), (Taiyuan: Shanxi Jingji chubanshe, 2002), 135-7.
45. He Zhenyi, 'Shenhua nongcui shuifei gaige xinfanglui di tansuo' (Exploring new strategies of deepening the rural 'tax-for-fee' reform), Shuiwu Yanjiu (Taxation Affairs Research), 204, 5 (2002), 2-5
46. and Zhang Jun, 'Xiangzhen caizheng jidu cuixian yu nongmin fudan' (Institutional defects of the township public finance and peasants' burden), China Rural Survey, 4 (2002), 2-13. Chen Xiwen is the vice-director of the State Council Development Research Center, and the Secretariat of the Central Leading Group on Economics and Finance, and thus a key figure in the formulation of central rural policy. He and Zhang are both scholars at the influential Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
47. Under the 'Target Responsibility System' of cadre appraisal first instituted in the mid-1990s, specific indicators were designed to assess job performance. Jobs that were regarded as the highest priority would cause the officials their position if they failed on these. Reduction of peasants' burden was added to fertility control as jobs on that 'pass or perish' list, as per State Council Notice No. 5 (2001), 'On further improving the pilot work of the rural 'tax-for-fee' reform', 24 March 2001, section 5. For discussion of the Target Responsibility System, see Maria Edin, 'Market Forces and Communist Power: Local Political Institutions and Economic Development in China', doctoral dissertation at Uppsala University, Department of Government, 2000.
48. Guangdong reportedly achieved the highest burden reduction rate amongst all provinces in 2003. See a report in Guangzhou Daily, 9 February 2004, 'Guangdong's peasants' burdens cut by 74%, topping the list in the country'.
49. Author's interviews with central officials involved in the formulation and implementation of the reform package, Beijing, 2003-4.
50. This is obtained from author's interviews with central officials on establishment control at Beijing, and with the 'targets' of the exercise, local officials at the township and county levels in Hubei and Anhui, 2003-4. The 20% figure is stated in Central Committee and State Council, 'An opinion on consolidating the establishment at the city/ county/township levels', Document No. 30 (2000), 26 December 2000.
51. These include 39.6 billion yuan of designated transfer payments announced in the 2004 Budget by Finance Minister Jin Renqing in March 2004 (http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/ 2004-03/18/content_1371660.htm, assessed on 7 September 2004), an additional 10 billion yuan of direct subsidies to grain growers, and additional subsidies (of unspecified amount subject to central-local negotiation) to selected provinces piloting the stepped up reduction/ suspension of Agriculture Tax in 2004.
52. An example was a July 2004 report by the National Development and Reform Commission, which reported 20,000 cases of illegal rural fees, totaling over 400 million yuan, discovered during a national survey of rural fees in the first half of 2004. The survey focused on fees on education, marriage registration, fertility control and immunization of pigs, as reported in China Youth Daily (Beijing), 23 July 2004, assessed on 20 August 2004 at http://www.ccrs.org.cn/NEWSgl/ReadNews.asp?NewsID= 8374&BigClassID=8&SmallClassID=9&SpecialID=0
53. 'Opinions on policies to enhance the income growth of peasants', jointly issued by Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and State Council on the last day of 2003. The formulation and drafting process kicked off in a Politburo meeting in September 2003, producing the first draft in mid-November and the main contents nailed down by mid-December. See a report in Liaowang (Beijing), 13 January 2004, at http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2004-01/13/content_1273182.htm, assessed on 6 September 2004.
54. Total budgetary outlay from the central coffers to agriculture and rural areas was planned to increase by 20% in 2004 over 2003, to a total of around 150 billion yuan, as stated in Finance Minister's Budget Speech 2004 to the National People's Congress, March 2004. This purportedly would include the 10 billion yuan of direct subsidies to grain-growers, and the additional transfer payments to provinces compensating for lost revenue from stepped up reduction/suspension of Agriculture Tax. Ministry of Finance Notice No. 77 (2004), 'A notice on some issues on the further reduction of Agriculture Tax and suspension of Agriculture Tax collection in selected piloting provinces', 6 April 2004.
55. The direct impact of the lowering of Agriculture Tax rate and the suspension of tax collection in selected provinces is estimated to lower total extraction by 11.8 billion yuan. See Finance Minister's Budget Speech 2004 to the National People's Congress, March 2004.
56. Author's interviews, Beijing, April 2004.
57. Author's interviews, Beijing, April 2004.
58. Lianjiang Li, 'Political Trust in Rural China', Modern China, 30, 2 (April 2004), 228-58
59. Lianjiang Li and Kevin O'Brien, 'Villagers and popular resistance in contemporary China', Modern China, 22, Jan (1996), 28-61
60. Kevin O'Brien, 'Collective Action in the Chinese Countryside', China Journal, 48 (July 2002), 139-54
61. Bernstein and Lu, Taxation Without Representation in Contemporary Rural China
62. and Jonathan Unger, The Transformation of Rural China (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 215.
63. For example, Li, 'Political Trust', 248-9 and the literature cited therein.
64. Other reliefs are (1) exempting peasants' turnover of sales of agricultural produce of less than 5000 yuan per month (or 200 yuan daily) from value-added tax and (2) exempting 'mobile' rural petty traders without a fixed trading venue from registration with the tax authorities. See National Taxation Bureau Document No. 13 (2004), 'A notice on further implementing, the tax relief policy to enhance peasant income growth', 20 January. 2004, full text at http://www.chinatax.gov.cn/view.jsp?code=200402101421438335, assessed on 5 September 2004.
65. A second notice was issued in March to launch a nationwide examination to monitor the implementation, suggesting the complexities and difficulties in implementation. See http://www.chinatax.gov.cn/ view.jsp?code=200404131640496998.
66. Author's interviews, Wuhan, 2004.
67. Chen proceeded on elaborating some of his ideas of the new system in the interview, as reported in Zhongguo Paodao Zhoukan, assessed at http://www.mlcool.com/html/ns001679.htm, on 14 August 2003.
68. One such proposal is in Li Zhengzhong, 'Tiaozheng guomin jingji shuoru fengpei guanxi, zhuanjian xindi nongmin shuifei fudan jidu' (Adjust redistributive relations in national income, Create a new tax system for peasants), China Rural Economy, 2 (2003), 35-40.
69. Author's interviews, Beijing, April 2004.
70. Taking Agriculture Tax and Special Product Tax together, tax revenues dropped from the high point of 4.23% of total national budgetary revenue in 1996 (31.3 billion out of 740.8 billion yuan), to 2.57% in 1999, 2.23% in 2000, 1.75% in 2001, and 2.23% in 2002. In absolute terms, total national budgetary revenue increased by 155% between 1996 and 2002, to nearly 1900 billion yuan, whilst tax revenue from agricultural products stagnated, even decreasing by almost 9% from 1996 to 2001 before seeing a rise in 2002, when many provinces started implementing the tax-for-fee reform and thus channeling formerly extrabudgetary fee revenue to tax revenues. See China Finance Yearbook 2003, 338, 344.
71. For an example of an analysis of the 'affordability' of phasing out Agriculture Tax, see Chen's interview, footnote 38.
72. Central Document No. 7 (2000), Section 3, clause (1), gives a list of: (1) the 5 township 'coordination' (tongchou) fees, (2) the 3 village 'retention' (tiliu) fees, (3) education levies and surcharges, and (4) all other kinds of administrative fees, charges and government funds that targeted specifically peasants. The first 3 categories had been introduced incrementally since 1980s, with central endorsement, to supplement the inadequate budgetary funds at township and village levels. The fourth was a diverse group with origins at central/ provincial/local levels.
73. Ministry of Finance Notice No. 10 (2000), 'On the subject of peasant-related fees in the regions piloting the rural fee-to-tax reform', 4 July 2000. In addition to administrative fees, the notice also elaborates guidelines on the imposition of user charges, which are supposedly market-regulated and do not form part of government revenue. In practice the boundary is ambiguous and abuses abound.
74. The list was contained in a tiny pamphlet supposedly sent to villagers with the title, 'The Second Open Letter to Peasant Friends in Hubei', by Hubei Party Committee and the Provincial Government, dated 23 October 2002. The 9 departments are: Agriculture, forestry, public security, education, family planning, land, construction, civil affairs, and water. The list was confirmed to be still up-to-date in 2004. Author's interviews, Wuhan, 2004.
75. For reports on the resurgence of rural fees after reform, see for instance http://www.ccrs.org.cn/newsgl/ReadNews.asp?NewsID=3986, and http://www/aweb.com.cn/2003/7/8/20037883858.htm, assessed on 14 September 2003.
76. The urgency of abolishing rural fees and stamping out abuses was a common theme in various central documents issued since 2000.
77. State Council Notice No. 50 (2003), 'On Approving a notice by the Ministry of Agriculture, etc. on the issue of reducing peasants' burden', 29 May 2003.
78. This is the observation obtained from a search through internet of provincial responses. For a typical example, see a notice by the Beijing Municipal Government issued on 2 July 2003, assessed at http://www.china.org.cn on 22 August 2003.
79. All alteration of fee levels should be approved by the Provincial Fiscal Bureau and Price Bureau. Yet in practice the departments often made their own decisions. Author's interviews, Wuhan, 2004.
80. The reference to decentralized decisions is found towards the end of the first major section of the Document, which addresses the 'significance' of the reform.
81. The Agriculture Tax Regulation 1958 specifies the tax rates for various provinces and a national average of 15.5% and has remained in force nominally until fee-to-tax reform sets in. The effective tax rates have seen a continuous decline to some 2.9% by year 2000, due to a combination of factors. See He Kaiyin and Sun Li, eds., Zhongguo Nongcun Shuifei Gaige Chutan (A Preliminary Analysis of the Tax and Fees Reform in Chinese Villages), Beijing: Zhongguo Zhigong chubanshe, 2000, 131-2.
82. The regime consisted of three components: (1) a raise of tax rate from a de facto national average of 3% to a cap of 7%; (2) provincial discretion on taxes on 'special products'; and (3) up to 20% of local surcharge on agricultural tax to compensate for the abolition of traditional village levies. See Central Document No. 7 (2000), section 3.
83. State Council Document No. 143, 'A regulation on the imposition of Agriculture Tax on agricultural special products', 30 January 1994.
84. Ministry of Finance Notice No. 94, 'On the details of implementation of the Agricultural Special Products Tax', 24 March 1994, clause 8. The phrase 'where Agriculture Tax normally applies' implies the existence of areas where the Tax does not normally apply. This usually refers to newly formed land or peripheral pieces of land newly brought under cultivation, and have yet to be brought under the tax system, or areas that for various reasons are excluded from agricultural taxes. Agricultural produce from these lands goes untaxed.
85. Shunde City Government Notice No. 35 (2002), 'The implementation plan of rural tax for fee reform in Shunde', section 2, clause (5). Fish and flowers were two major agricultural products in Shunde.
86. Aquatic products and flowers attracted a flat tax rate of 8% under the Agricultural Special Products Tax, whilst the upper ceiling of Agriculture Tax (regular) was only 7%. When 20% local surcharge was added, the difference would be 9.6% versus 8.4%.
87. One exception is tobacco, the tax rate of which remains 20%. Anhui Provincial Government Notice, 'On the pilot scheme of shifting the Special Products Tax to Agriculture Tax', 31 March 2003.
88. 'Wen Jiabo emphasized to continue the rural 'tax-for-fee' reform', 3 April 2003, Xinhua News, assessed on 5 August 2003 at http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/ 2003-04/03/content_814822.htm.
89. Ministry of Finance and National Taxation Bureau Notice No. 136, 'On a few issues relating to the Agricultural Special Products Tax in rural 'tax-for-fee' reform areas', 10 June 2003.
90. 'The rural 'tax-for-fee' reform plan in Guangdong', Guangzhou Daily, 7 July 2003.
91. Richard E. Matland, 'Synthesizing the implementation literature: The ambiguity-conflict model of policy implementation', Journal of Public Administration Research and Policy, 5 (April 1995), 145-74.
92. For a similar, but weaker, attempt in the Chinese context, see Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, 'Selective policy implementation in rural China', Comparative Politics, 31, 2 (January 1999), 167-86.
93. Margaret Archer reviews the Individual account, the Collectivist account and the Structuration Theory, which conflate the structure-agency relation in different directions in Realist Social Theory. For a similar argument against conflation, without using the language, see Robert Grafstein, 'The problem of institutional constraint', Journal of Politics, 50, 3 (August 1988).
94. Another attempt to meet the theoretical challenge is made in the context of the local political economy of Tianjin, in Linda Chelan Li and Hongyan Qin, 'Sorting out the details: Structure, agency and interactions in China's local political economy', paper presented at the 2004 Annual Conference of the British International Association, December 2004, Warwick, U.K.
95. See John Brehm and Scott Gates, Working, Shirking, Sabotage: Bureaucratic Response to a Democratic Public, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), for an example of implementation studies employing the principal-agent framework outside the China context.
96. For more on this point, see Li and Qin, 'Sorting out the details'.