Political machinations in a rural county

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 62, 2009, Pages 29-59

  Smith, Graeme ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADMINISTRATIVE FRAMEWORK; CAPITALISM; POLICY IMPLEMENTATION; POLITICAL ORGANIZATION; POLITICAL REFORM; RURAL AREA; STATE ROLE;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 70349337055     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/tcj.62.20648113     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. The first major instance of this practice of blaming local cadres, rather than central policies, occurred after the Great Leap Forward. See Xiaobo Lü, Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist Party (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 98-106.
2. A recent article goes further, arguing that "divided state power" has become a strategy for improving the CCP's resilience and legitimacy. While this is an intriguing thesis, the interpretation of causality is problematic. Cai Yongshun, "Power Structure and Regime Resilience: Contentious Politics in China", British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 38 (2008), pp. 411-32.
3. There is a considerable literature examining the operations of county-level governments, most notably A. Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967) and
4. Marc Blecher and Vivienne Shue, Tethered Deer: Government and Economy in a Chinese County (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
5. While it is difficult to construct a universal, cogent definition of what constitutes corruption, a persuasive set of criteria for when an action (or non-action) may be deemed corrupt is provided by Leslie Holmes, Rotten States? Corruption, Post-Communism and Neoliberalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 30. Of relevance are the criteria that it must be "carried out by actual or aspiring officials" and "perceived by significant sections of the population as corrupt".
6. See Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, "Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China", Comparative Politics, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1999), pp. 167-86;
7. Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lü, Taxation Without Representation in Rural China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
8. Maria Edin, "State Capacity and Local Agent Control in China: CCP Cadre Management from a Township Perspective", The China Quarterly, Vol. 173 (2003), pp. 35-52; and
9. Linda Chelan Li, "Working for the Peasants? Strategic Interactions and Unintended Consequences in Chinese Rural Tax Reform", The China Journal, No. 57 (January 2007), pp. 89-106.
10. Due to the need to protect sources, Benghai is a pseudonym. The county is located in central China and GDP per capita in 2009 was slightly higher than the provincial average. Benghai ranks in the top five in the province in terms of government revenues, meaning that the county government is in a position to provide services to rural residents, if it chooses to do so. Industrial output accounted for nearly two-thirds of GDP by the year 2000. This shift to an industry-centered economy means that the recent national abolition of agricultural taxes has not affected the income of the county government as seriously as it has in neighboring counties. When these taxes were abolished in 2004 they accounted for less than ten per cent of county government revenue.
11. Unger notes that "the performance of officialdom varies significantly across regions, dividing China into 'poor marginal agricultural regions', 'prosperous industrializing districts', and the 'agricultural heartlands'". Benghai, despite being a "national-level impoverished county", largely exhibits the characteristics of the latter two categories. See Jonathan Unger, The Transformation of Rural China (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), pp. 204-13.
12. David Stark, "Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 101, No. 4 (1996), p. 995.
13. Barbara Harriss-White, India Working: Essays on Society and Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
14. "Core tasks" are a common feature of Leninist mobilization campaigns. They denote assignments which override regular government work. See Kenneth Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 56.
15. The principle that key posts must be held by non-local cadres applies to the county Party secretary and the county head, and for key posts such as the heads of the Organization and Finance Bureaus.
16. Local governments spruiking the fengshui of industrial parks is noted in Ole Bruun, Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2003), pp. 157-58.
17. This project was stalled for over a year by a group of retired cadres. Facing the demolition of their houses, they successfully petitioned the provincial government to intervene on the grounds that it was a "vanity project". The old cadres were rehoused and, with the central government giving the green light to massive infrastructure spending in late 2008, this vanity project is back in favor with the provincial government. Provincial governments have earmarked projects worth 29 trillion yuan for inclusion in the central government's stimulus package. See "White Elephant Projects a Waste of Stimulus Cash", South China Morning Post (3 February 2009).
18. Dali Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), Chapter 8.
19. Bringing local People's Congresses to heel is more difficult in wealthier regions. See Oscar Almén, "Authoritarianism Constrained: The Role of Local People's Congresses in China" (PhD dissertation, Göteborg University, 2005).
20. There is considerable local literature on the problems posed by the concentration of power in the hands of Party secretaries. See especially Jian Da, "Wei 'yi ba shou' ma shou shi zhan de fubai" (Corruption from Following the Leader's Example), Cai zhi (Intelligence) (2003), p. 55.
21. Chen Ge, Yi shou gai tian: 18 ming xianwei shuji kuadiao de jingshi (One Hand to Cover Heaven: 18 Cautionary Examples of Fallen County Party Secretaries) (Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 2006).
22. Ibid., p. 39. Chen Ge, Yi shou gai tian: 18 ming xianwei shuji kuadiao de jingshi (One Hand to Cover Heaven: 18 Cautionary Examples of Fallen County Party Secretaries) (Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe, 2006).
23. Maria Edin, "State Capacity and Local Agent Control", pp. 42-50.
24. Xitong can be roughly translated as "functional portfolio", and refers to an official's primary area of responsibility. More powerful leaders, particularly the county Party secretary, effectively have a say in all portfolios. Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2004), pp. 218-33.
25. Later subject to extralegal detention (shuanggui), and eventually convicted on corruption charges, see below.
26. This exceeds the six-month limit for extra-legal detention. See Flora Sapio, "Shuanggui and Extralegal Detention in China", China Information, Vol. 22 (2008), p. 15.
27. See also Melanie Manion, Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland China and Hong Kong (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 128-40.
28. Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lü, Taxation Without Representation, pp. 109-14.
29. The influence of corrupt personal assistants at the centre has long been noted, see Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China, pp. 212-15. Chen Xitong's secretary, Chen Jian, provides a recent example of personal assistants acquiring influence in Beijing, but little has been written on their role in sub-provincial politics.
30. Zhang Peiyuan, "Mofei you lundao mishuzhang 'luoma'?" (Could it be Time for Personal Assistants to "Fall off the Horse"?), Gongren ribao (Worker's Daily), 12 December 2005. This article lists a string of corruption cases involving personal assistants, from wealthy coastal regions to poorer inland areas.
31. Although it is a sensitive topic, an occasional article outlining this phenomenon does appear in the mainland press. See Zhang Jianwen, "Xinxi yu mishu fubai" (Information and the Corruption of Personal Assistants), Guanming ribao (Guanming Daily), 23 November 2005.
32. The increasing influence of mishu at the county level is paralleled at the township level by the growing influence of Office Managers (bangongshi zhuren), who control access to township Party secretaries. In one township where government offices were generally deserted, the office manager had eight staff working under him, and even had his own car.
33. One Chinese writer notes similar behavior from personal assistants and drivers, where one driver in Henan accumulated two million yuan. Jiang Zengpei, Tanguan de siji yu mishu (The Drivers and Personal Secretaries of Corrupt Officials), 18 December 2006 (cited 17 March 2007). Available from: http://pinglun. eastday.com/eastday/news/node47824/node95768/node95843/ node95845/node97831/index.html, last accessed 17 March 2007.
34. "Anhui quxiao sheng xia shi xian lingdao zhuanzhi mishu" (Anhui Province Abolishes Fulltime Personal Assistants for Prefectural and County Leaders), Zhongguo qingnian bao (China Youth Daily) (2005), http://zqb.cyol.com/ gb/zqb/2005-08/13/content-48279.htm, accessed 18 May 2009.
35. Barbara Harriss-White, India Working, p. 81.
36. Kathy Le Mons Walker, "'Gangster Capitalism' and Peasant Protest in China: The Last Twenty Years", Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2006), pp. 1-33.
37. See, for example, an account of villagers colluding with cadres to embezzle poverty alleviation funds. Tan Tongxue and Liu Qin, "'Pao fupin' guocheng zhong de guanliao luoji yu siren wangluo" (The Role of Bureaucratic Logic and Private Networks in Chasing Poverty Alleviation Funds), Sannong Zhongguo (Rural China), No. 3 (2006), pp. 132-39.
38. See Huang Yasheng, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 123-24.
39. Ben Hillman's study of local government in Yunnan similarly divides government bureaus into four categories: "Big budget", "engaged with the private sector", "quiet earners" and "veto players". See Ben Hillman, "Politics and Power in China: Stratagems and Spoils in a Rural County" (PhD dissertation, The Australian National University, 2005), pp. 141-48.
40. The prefectural and provincial levels directly control an increasing number of bureaus. Banks, taxation bureaus, insurance companies and tobacco bureaus all answer to higher levels.
41. The crucial role of the Organization Bureau in local government is a notable continuity from the Maoist era. See especially A. Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power, pp. 181-83.
42. See comments from Li Junru, Vice President of the Central Party School, Reuters: "Beijing Anxious to Avoid Chaos of Political Reforms", South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 11 March 2006.
43. Other researchers concur that the buying and selling of positions is "widespread and severe". See Li Lianjiang, "Direct Township Elections", in Elizabeth J. Perry and Merle Goldman (eds), Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 116.
44. James C. Scott, Comparative Political Corruption (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972).
45. Shi Fei, "Fubai shuji mai guan, zuzhi bumen yao fuze" (If a Corrupt Party Secretary Sells Positions, the Organization Bureau Is Responsible), Xinhua, 21 October 2006.
46. Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 102-03.
47. Ben Hillman ("Politics and Power") surveyed the owners of five different restaurants to gauge the relative wealth of different bureaus. In Benghai this was less fruitful, due to the Balkanization of dining practices. Each bureau had its own preferred restaurant, run by relatives of a senior staffer.
48. Service organizations are government agencies without an administrative or profitmaking function. They include agencies involved in education, research, sport, health, culture and social welfare. See Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, "Institutional Reform and the Bianzhi System in China", The China Quarterly, Vol. 170 (2002), pp. 361-86.
49. Guanyu yinfa Benghai xian 2009 nian bumen yusuan bianzhi fang an de tongzhi (Notification Concerning the Initiation of Budgetary Allocations to Benghai County Departments in 2009).
50. The principle of first feed the staff, then build the government (yi yao chifan, er yao jianshe-is referred to as a "guiding principle" in government documents.
51. Li Changjin, "Nongji tuiguang zhi tong" (The Difficulties of Agricultural Technology Extension), Sannong Zhongguo, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2006), p. 137.
52. The funding situation of staff within the same bureau can be tremendously complex: it is common for staff of the same rank, working in the same office, to belong to completely different categories. Some may be fully-funded personnel, some partially-funded, some entirely self-funded and others working "off budget". This gives rise to severe tensions among staff.
53. See also Kenneth J. DeWoskin and Ian J. Stones, "Facing the China Corruption Challenge", Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 169, No. 7 (2006), p. 37.
54. A. Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power, pp. 58-60.
55. Nongjiyuan (An Agricultural Technician), "Ting dang de hua-cuo le ma? Yige jiceng nongjiyuan de xinsheng" (Were We Wrong to Obey the Party? Thoughts of a Grass-roots Agricultural Technician) (webpage), Zhongguo nongcun yanjiu wang (Chinese Rural Studies Website), 19 October 2005, http://www.ccrs.org.cn/article-view.asp?ID=442, accessed 7 August 2006.
56. Li Bobai and Andrew Walder, "Career Advancement and Party Patronage: Sponsored Mobility into the Chinese Administrative Élite, 1949-1996", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 106, No. 5 (2001), pp. 1371-408.
57. Marc Blecher and Vivienne Shue, Tethered Deer, p. 214.
58. For a detailed description of the formal assessment system, see Susan Whiting, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 100-20;
59. Maria Edin, "State Capacity and Local Agent Control".
60. See, for example, Lang Youxing, "Zhongguo ganbu kaohe zhidu zai bianlian" (The System of Cadre Annual Assessment is Changing), People's Daily, 24 March 2008.
61. X xian zhen jisheng fenguan lingdao yu jisheng ban zhuren kaohe renyong banfa (shixing) (The Trial Annual Assessment Method for Township Leaders in Charge of Family Planning and Directors of Family Planning Offices), issued by County X Party Organization Bureau, 2005.
62. Previously, the main technical task of family planning was female sterilization. With a shift to less drastic birth control methods (Norplant or IUDs), greater follow-up and monitoring is required. See M. Giovanna Merli, Zhenchao Qian and Herbert L. Smith, "Adaptation of a Political Bureaucracy to Economic and Institutional Change under Socialism: The Chinese State Family Planning System", Politics and Society, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2004), pp. 231-56, especially pp. 243-44.
63. David Bandurski, "China's Yellow Journalism", Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 169, No. 5 (2006), pp. 49-51, and
64. Wang Xiangwei, "Newshounds Leave Sopranos in the Shade", South China Morning Post, 9 April 2007.
65. "Anhui sheng jiguan, shiye danwei gongzuo renyuan lianghua ceping biaozhun biao, 2005" (Table of Quantifiable Criteria for Administrative and Service Staff in Anhui Province, 2005).
66. Cynthia Joanne Brokaw, The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
67. Maria Edin, "State Capacity and Local Agent Control", p. 51.
68. Elizabeth C. Economy, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), Chapter 1.
69. Wu Licai and Zhu Hongxuan, "Xiangzhen gaige: xiangzhen ganbu de suo si suo xiang-dui Hubei sheng xiangzhen ganbu de wenjuan diaocha" (Township Reform: What Township Cadres Think-A Survey of Hubei Province), Zhongguo nongcun jingji (China Rural Economy), No. 11 (2005), pp. 61-67;
70. Yu Meng, "Cong gong, jian, fa 'gai hang' zhao shang yin zi shuo qi" (Musing on Why My Classmates in the Police and Judiciary Are Seeking Investment), People's Daily Online, 16 May 2004 (accessed 13 September 2006; no longer available on the People's Daily site, but the article can still be found on Sina's finance page at http://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/20040518/0356764150. shtml, accessed on 18 May 2009). A People's Daily reporter was contacted by former classmates seeking investment. He was told, "There's no bottom line. Land, tax, everything can be negotiated. good projects are hard to attract, as everyone else is offering preferential deals, but energy-intensive, heavilypolluting industries are easier to bring in. The projects no one wants, we'll take them all."
71. Author's interviews, Anhui Academy of Social Sciences, November 2008.
72. One local reporter visited Siyang County in southern Jiangsu to investigate their "name and shame" policy of publicizing the "worst work unit" and "worst cadre". He found that rankings were largely based on tasks related to attracting investment, and noted a large number of incomplete projects and deserted government offices. He was assured by a local brothel owner that "the county leadership is going all out to attract investment, so the police never come here on inspections. So it's very safe! Relax!" See Tao Jianqun, "Siyang, ni weihe pa caifang?" (Siyang, Why Are You Afraid of Reporters?), Shidai chao (Contemporary Tide), No. 8 (2003), pp. 12-13.
73. This is known as the "green card" (lü ka), offered by county and township leaders to potential investors, including the author, who respectfully declined.
74. The mill owner s saga did not end there-before the police would release the money, they demanded that he pay a 100, 000-yuan "cracking-the-case fee" (po'an fei). As no such fee existed anywhere in government financial regulations, 80, 000 yuan was paid in kind: the Police Department received a new vehicle.
75. Susan Whiting, Power and Wealth in Rural China, pp. 110-16;
76. see also Kevin O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, "Selective Policy Implementation", pp. 171-76.
77. See Kellee S. Tsai, Back-Alley Banking: Private Entrepreneurs in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 232-38.
78. Benghai is far from unique. Wuwei County, which consistently ranks among Anhui's ten wealthiest counties, retains its poverty hat to this day. These irregularities have led to a shift towards targeting poor villages, rather than the designated counties. Nick Young, "Government Embraces 'Participation', Pledges More Poverty Funds and Better Targeting", Beijing: China Development Brief, 2005.
79. Anhui's provincial governor, Wang Jinshan, conceded that county-level statistics on peasants' incomes were falsified to keep their "poverty hats" in place. Irene Wang, "Central Edicts 'Not Right for All Regions'", South China Morning Post, 24 April 2006. The arbitrary nature of poor county designations has been noted by previous researchers.
80. See Albert Park and Sangui Wang, "China's Poverty Statistics", China Economic Review, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2001), pp. 396-97.
81. Beijing boasts over 5000 such lobbying houses, representing local industries and governments. Tao Ran, personal communication, October 2008.
82. I am unaware of any academic studies, but a trilogy of novels has brought these offices considerable popular attention. See Wang Xiaofang, Zhu jing ban zhuren (Local Government Lobbyist in Beijing) (Beijing: Zuojia Chubanshe, 2008).
83. For more detail on the development of output-obsessed audit cultures in local government, see Zhao Shukai, "Rural Governance in the Midst of Underfunding, Deception, and Mistrust", Vol. 39, Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, edited by Andrew Kipnis and Graeme Smith (2007), pp. 64-73.
84. See Susan Whiting, "Central-Local Fiscal Relations in China", in China Policy Series (New York: National Committee on US-China Relations, 2006), pp. 8-11, and
85. Zhou Feidan, "Sheng cai you dao: Tudi kaifa he zhuanrang zhong de zhengfu yu nongmin" (Playing the Market: Government and Peasants in Land Development and Transfer), Shehuixue yanjiu (Sociology Research), No. 1 (2007), pp. 49-82. By 2008, land transfers were estimated to be worth 1.2 trillion yuan, and there were calls for the use of these funds to be made public, amid concerns that they were fueling local government corruption. See Wu Ruidong, "Wanyi tudi churang jin yongtu ying xiang gongzhong gongkai" (The Use of One Trillion Yuan in Land Transfer Fees Should Be Public), People's Daily, 23 April 2008.
86. See especially Huang Yasheng, "The Microeconomic Rise of India", Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 169, No. 2 (2006), pp. 31-33.
87. Barbara Harriss-White, India Working, p. 89.