Studies of Central-Provincial Relations in the People's Republic of China: A Mid-Term Appraaisal

The China Quarterly

Volumn 142, Issue , 1995, Pages 487-508

  Chung, Jae Ho ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84972234877     PISSN: 03057410     EISSN: 14682648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0305741000035025     Document Type: Article

References (113)

1. See James J. Heaphey, “Spatial aspects of development administration” in James J. Heaphey (ed.), Spatial Dimensions of Development Administration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1971), p. 4;
2. Mark O. Rousseau and Raphael Zariski, Regionalism and Regional Devolution in Comparative Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1987), p. 2.
3. Chalmers Johnson, “Political science and East Asian Studies,” in Lucian Pye (ed.), Political Science and Area Studies: Rivals or Partners? (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), pp. 78–97.
4. See, for instance, Clifford Geertz, “The integrative revolution,” in Clifford Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New York: Praeger, 1964), pp. 105-157; and
5. Leonard Binder, “National integration and political development,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 58, No. 3 (September 1964), pp. 622 631.
6. Examples are Dorothy Solinger, Regional Government and Political Integration in Southwest China,1949–1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977) and
7. David S.G. Goodman, Centre and Province in the People's Republic of China: Sichuan and Guizhou, 1955–65 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For the more recent period and especially concerning the area of foreign economic policy.
8. see Peter Ferdinand, “Regionalism,” in Geral Segal (ed.), Chinese Politics and Foreign Policy Reform (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1990), pp. 135–158 and
9. Gerald Segal, China Changes Shape: Regionalism and Foreign Policy (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1994).
10. See Richard H. Yang and others (eds.), Chinese Regionalism: The Security Dimension (Boulder: Westview, 1994), which contains 13 interesting articles on military regionalism, including those on six regions and provinces. For a perceptive study on coastal identities of Guangdong, Taiwan and Hong Kong, see
11. Lynn White and Li Cheng, “China coast identities: regional, national and global” in Lowell Dittmer and Samuel S. Kim (eds.), China's Quest for National Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 154–193.
12. Also see Edward Friedman, “China's north-south split and the forces of disintegration,” Current History, No. 575 (September 1993), pp. 270-274;
13. Maria Hsia Chang, “China's future: regionalism, federation, or disintegration,” Studies in Comparative Communism, Vol. 25, No. 3 (September 1992), pp. 211-227;
14. David S.G. Goodman, “Provinces confronting the state?” in Kuan Hsin-chi and Maurice Brosseau (eds.), China Review 1992 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1992), pp. 3.2-19; and
15. Arthur Waldron, “Warlordism versus federalism: the revival of a debate,” The China Quarterly, No. 121 (March 1990), pp. 116–128. For Chinese publications, see a contribution by a professor of the Central Party School, “Dalu shehui maodun yu Deng Xiaoping hou zhengju yuce” (“Contradictions in Mainland society and some predictions about post-Deng politics”) in Jiushi niandai (The Nineties), March 1994, pp. 49-57; and
16. Wu Guoguang and Wang Zhaojun, Deng Xiaoping zhihou de Zhongguo (China after Deng) (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1994), 181–282. For a contrasting assessment to many “imminent-disintegration”
17. theses, see John Fitzgerald, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated: the history of the death of China,” in David S. G. Goodman and Gerald Segal (eds.) China Deconstructs: Politics, Trade and Regionalism (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 21–58.
18. See, for instance, Rousseau and Zariski, Regionalism and Regional Devolution in Comparative Perspective, chs. 1 - 2 ;
19. Brian C. Smith, Decentralization: The Territorial Dimension of the State (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985); and
20. Moses N. Kiggundu, Managing Organizations in Developing Countries: An Operational and Strategic Approach (West Hartford: Kumarian Press, 1990), ch. 7.
21. For the distinction between systemic and partial decentralization, see David A. Dyker, “Decentralization and the command principle: some lessons from the Soviet experience,” Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1981), pp. 144-45.
22. Regarding budgetary figures as an imperfect indicator, see Ronan Paddison, The Fragmented State: The Political Geography of Power (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), p. 40.
23. Harold Wolman, “Decentralization: what it is and why we should care,”.
24. Robert J. Bennett (ed.), Decentralization, Local Governments, and Markets: Towards A Post-Welfare Agenda (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 40–41.
25. See, for instance, Lawrence J.O'Tool, Jr. and Robert S. Montjoy, “Interorganizational policy implementation,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 44, No. 6 (November-December 1984), pp. 491-503; and
26. Kenneth Hanf and Fritz W. Scharpf (eds.), Interorganizational Policy Making: Limits to Coordination and Central Control (London: Sage Publications, 1978).
27. Lieberthal and Oksenberg, Policy Making in China, ch. 7;
28. Susan L. Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), part 3; Lampton, Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China;
29. David M. Lampton, “Chinese politics: the bargaining treadmill,” Issues and Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3 (March 1987), pp. 11-41; and
30. Kenneth Lieberthal and David M. Lampton (eds.), Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
31. A notable exception is Lieberthal and Lampton, Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao China which intentionally selected most of its issue areas from those unrelated to resource allocation.
32. See Lieberthal, “Introduction: the ‘fragmented authoritarianism’ model and its limitations,” pp. 1–30.
33. For exemplary lists of these variables, see Lieberthal and Oksenberg, Policy Making in China, pp. 330, 335-39;
34. Goodman, Centre and Province in the People's Republic of China, p. 193; and
35. Frederick C. Teiwes, “Provincial politics in China: themes and variations,” in
36. John M.H. Lindbeck (ed.), China: Management of A Revolutionary Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971), pp. 149–177.
37. Examples include Ezra Vogel, Canton under Communism: Programs and Politics in A Provincial Capital, 1949–1968 (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1969);
38. Donald H. McMillen, Chinese Communist Power and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949–1977 (Boulder: Westview, 1979); and
39. Keith Forster, Rebellion and Factionalism in A Chinese Province: Zhejiang, 1966–1976 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1990).
40. Harry Harding, “The study of Chinese politics: toward a third generation of scholarship,” World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 2 (January 1984), pp. 291–92.
41. See, for instance, Paul E. Schroeder, “Territorial actors as competitors for power: the case of Hubei and Wuhan,” in Lieberthal and Lampton, Bureaucracy, Politics and Decision Making in Post-Mao China, pp. 283-307;
42. Penelope B. Prime, “Central-provincial investment and finance: the Cultural Revolution and its legacy in Jiangsu province,” in
43. William A. Joseph, Christine P.W. Wong and David Zweig (eds.), New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 197-215;
44. David Zweig, “Peasants, ideology, and new incentive systems: Jiangsu province, 1978-1981,” in William L. Parish (ed.), Chinese Rural Development: The Great Transformation (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1985), pp. 141-163;
45. Lynn T. White III, “Local autonomy in China during the Cultural Revolution: the theoretical uses of an atypical case,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 70 (1976), pp. 479-491; and
46. Alfred L. Chan, “The campaign for agricultural development in the Great Leap Forward: a study of policy-making and implementation in Liaoning,” The China Quarterly, No. 129 (March 1992), pp. 52–71.
47. See Keith Forster, “Factional politics in Zhejiang, 1973-1976” in Joseph et al., New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution, p. 108.
48. Also see Heath B. Chamberlain, “Transition and consolidation in urban China: a study of leaders and organizations in three cities, 1949 - 53,” in Robert A. Scalapino (ed.), Elites in the People's Republic of China (Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1972), pp. 245–301. For a Chinese study that compares three provinces of Shandong, Hubei and Sichuan, see Ma Lieguang, Zhongguo geshengqu jingji fazhan bijiao (Comparison of Economic Development in China's Provinces) (Chengdu: Chengdu keji daxue chubanshe, 1993), ch. 5.
49. See Kenneth Lieberthal, “China and political science,” Political Science, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter 1986), p. 70; and
50. Yung Wei, “Social science and the methodology of contemporary Chinese studies: a critical evaluation” and David S. G. Goodman “The methodology of contemporary Chinese studies: political studies and the PRC,” in Yu-ming Shaw (ed.), Power and Policy in the PRC (Boulder: Westview, 1985), p. 328 and p. 343, respectively.
51. See Huo Shitao, “Regional inequality variations and central government policy, 1978 - 1988” in Jia Hao and Lin Zhimin, Changing Central-Local Relations in China, pp. 181-206;
52. David L. Denny, “Provincial economic differences diminished in the decade of reform,” In Joint Economic Committee (ed.), China's Economic Dilemmas in the 1990s: The Problems of Reforms, Modernization, and Interdependence (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), pp. 186-208;
53. Kai Yuen Tsui, “China's regional inequality, 1952-1985,” Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 15 (1991), pp. 1-21;
54. James Tong, “Effects of fiscal reforms on interprovincial variations in medical services in China, 1979-1984,” In Donna L. Bahry and Joel C. Moses (eds.), Political Implications of Economic Reform in Communist Systems (New York: New York University Press, 1990), pp. 109-130; and
55. David M. Lampton, “The roots of interprovincial inequality in education and health services in China,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 73 (1979), pp. 459–477
56. For the need of a hybrid strategy, see Charles C. Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 70. Examples of studies based on this hybrid research design include Huang Yasheng, The Politics of Inflation Control in China: Central Investment Control and Provincial Investment Behavior, 1981–89, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Government, Harvard University, 1991 ; and
57. Jae Ho Chung, The Politics of Policy Implementation in China: Central Control and Provincial Autonomy under Decentralization, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, 1993.
58. Examples include John P. Bums, “Strengthening central CCP control of leadership selection: the 1990 Nomenklatura,” The China Quarterly, No. 138 (June 1994), pp. 458 - 491 ;
59. Melanie Manion, “The behavior of middlemen in the cadre retirement policy process,” in Bureaucracy, Politics and Decision Making in Post-Mao China, pp. 216 - 244 ;
60. Xiaowei Zang, “Provincial elite in post-Mao China,” Asian Survey, Vol. 31, No. 6 (June 1991), pp. 512 - 525 ;
61. Cheng Li and David Bachman, “Localism, elitism and immobilism: elite formation and social change in post-Mao China,” World Politics, Vol. 42, No. 1 (October 1989), pp. 64 - 94 ;
62. Tong, “Fiscal reform, elite turnover and central-provincial relations in post-Mao China”;
63. William deB Mills, “Leadership change in China's provinces,” Vol. 34, No. 3 (May-June 1985), pp. 24 —40;
64. David S.G. Goodman, “Provincial Party first secretaries in national politics: a categoric or a political group?” in David S. G. Goodman (ed.), Groups and Politics in the People's Republic of China (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1984), pp, 68–82, “Li Jingquan and the south-west region, 1958 - 1966,” The China Quarterly, No. 81 (March 1981), 66–96, and “The provincial first Party secretaries in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1978: a profile,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 10, No. 1 (January 1980), pp. 39-74; David L. Shambaugh, The Making of a Premier: Zhao Ziyang's Provincial Career (Boulder: Westview, 1984);
65. Dorothy J. Solinger, “Politics in Yunnan Province in the decade of disorder: elite factional strategies and central-local relations,” The China Quarterly, No. 92 (December 1982), pp. 628-662;
66. Parris Chang, “Shanghai and Chinese politics: before and after the Cultural Revolution” and
67. David S.G. Goodman, “The Shanghai connection: Shanghai's role in national politics during the 1970s,” in Christopher Howe (ed.), Shanghai: Revolution and Development in an Asian Metropolis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 66–90 and 125-152;
68. Robert A. Scalapino, “The CCP's provincial secretaries,” Problems of Communism, Vol. 25, No. 4 (July-August 1976), pp. 18-35;
69. Peter Moody, “Policy and power: the case of T'ao Chu, 1956-66” and Gordon Bennett, “Military regions and provincial Party secretaries: one outcome of China's Cultural Revolution,” The China Quarterly, No. 54 (April-June 1973), pp. 267–293 and 294-307; and
70. Victor C. Falkenheim, “Provincial leadership in Fukien: 1949-66,”
71. Lynn T. White III “Leadership in Shanghai, 1959-69” and Parris H. Chang, “Provincial Party leaders’ strategies for survival during the Cultural Revolution,” in Elites in the People's Republic of China, pp. 199–244, 302–77 and 501–39.
72. Kenneth Lieberthal, Central Documents and Politburo Politics (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1978);
73. Michel Oksenberg, “Methods of communication within the Chinese bureaucracy,” The China Quarterly, No. 57 (January-March 1974), pp. 1–39, and “Local government and politics in China, 1955-58,” Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (October 1967), pp. 25-48
74. Godwin C.Chu and Francis L.K. Hsu, “Integration in China: the post-Mao years,” in Godwin C. Chu and Francis L. K. Hsu (eds.), China's New Social Fabric (London: Kegan Paul International, 1983), pp. 251-286; Michael Schoenhals, “Elite information in China,” Problems of Communism, Vol. 34, No. 5, (September-October 1985), pp. 65-71; and
75. Marlowe Hood, “The use and abuse of mass media by Chinese leaders during the 1980s,” in Chin-Chuan Lee (ed.), China's Media, Media's China (Boulder: Westview, 1994), pp. 37–57.
76. For studies on budgetary and fiscal dimensions see n. 10. Also see Christine P.W. Wong, “Material allocation and decentralization: impact of the local sector on industrial reform,” in Elizabeth Perry and Christine P.W. Wong (eds.), The Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 253-281; and
77. Nicholas R. Lardy, “Dilemmas in the pattern of resource allocation in China, 1978-1985,” in Victor Nee and David Stark (eds.), Remaking the Economic Institutions of Socialism: China and Eastern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 278–305.
78. see Chan, “The campaign for agricultural development in the Great Leap Forward,” pp. 54—55,70;
79. Teiwes, “Provincial politics,” p. 172; and
80. Benedict A. Stavis, The Politics of Agricultural Mechanization in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 121.
81. See Dali Yang, “Reform and the restructuring of central-local relations”;
82. Wang Shaoguang, “Central-local fiscal politics in China” in Jia Hao and Lin Zhimin, Changing Central-Local Relations in China, pp. 91-112;
83. Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China, chs. 9-13; Wong, “Central-local relations in an era of fiscal decline”; and Huang, The Politics of Inflation Control and Provincial Investment Behavior.
84. See Merrilee S. Grindle (ed.), Politics and Policy Implementation in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980);
85. George C. Edward III (ed.), Public Policy Implementation (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1984); and
86. Dennis J. Palumbo and Donald J. Calista (eds.), Implementation and the Policy Process: Opening up the Black Box (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).
87. For the desirability of multiple-case designs in implementation studies, see Robert K. Yin, “Studying the implementation of public programs,” in Walter Williams et al., Studying, Implementation: Methodological and Administrative Issues (Chatham: Chatham House, 1982) pp. 50, 55. For studies exploring interprovincial variation in implementing central policy
88. see Teiwes, “Provincial politics in China”; Goodman, Centre and Province in the People's Republic of China; contributions by Solinger and Zweig in Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China; Huang, The Politics of Inflation Control and Provincial Investment Behavior, and Chung, The Politics of Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China.
89. See, for instance, Douglas Durasoff, “Conflicts between economic decentralization and political control in the domestic reform of Soviet and post-Soviet systems,” Social Science Quarterly Vol. 69, No. 2 (June 1988), pp. 388–89.
90. Wong, “Central-local relations in an era of fiscal decline,” p. 701; and Contemporary China's Finance, Vol. 1, pp. 309–311.
91. See Contemporary China's Finance, Vol. 1, p. 311;
92. Wong, “Central-local relations in an era of fiscal decline,” p. 701; and
93. Song Xinzhong, Zhongguo caizheng tizhi gaige yanjiu (Study of China Cs Fiscal Reform) (Beijing: Zhongguo caizheng jingji chubanshe 1992), p. 64. For the case of Guangdong.
94. see Peter Tsan-yin Cheung, “The evolving relations between the center and Guangdong in the reform era,” in Jia Hao and Lin Zhimin, Changing Central-Local Relations in China, pp. 226–27. For a detailed analysis of the 1994 fenshuizhi reform, see Chung, “Beijing confronting the provinces.”
95. see Bums, “Strengthening central CCP control of leadership selection,” pp. 470–74. Policy mechanisms are becoming increasingly important as more localities seek for more preferential and special policies. The central government, as the sole provider of such policies, can reward or punish the provinces with the designation or withdrawal of these selective incentives.
96. See R. A. Rhodes, “Power dependence theories of central-local relations: a critical assessment,” in Michael J. Goldsmith (ed.), New Research in Central-Local Relations (Aldershot: Gower, 1986), pp. 4–5.
97. See Max O. Stephenson, Jr. and Gerald M. Pops, “Conflict resolution methods and the policy process,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 49, No. 5 (September-October 1989), p. 467;
98. O'Toole and Montjoy, “Interorganizational policy implementation,” p. 492; and
99. Ruth Hoogland DeHoog, “Competition, negotiation or cooperation? Three alternative models for contracting for services,” in Miriam K. Mills (ed.). Conflict Resolution and Public Policy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 155–176.
100. See Susan Barrett and Michael Hill, “Policy, bargaining and structure in implementation,” in Goldsmith, New Research in Central-Local Relations, pp. 50–52.
101. Brian W. Hogwood and Lewis A. Gunn, Policy Analysis for the Real World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 206, 213-14; and
102. Merilee S. Grindle, “Policy content and context in implementation,” in Grindle, Politics and Policy Implementation in the Third World, p. 9.
103. See, respectively, Schroeder, “Territorial actors as competitors for power: the case of Hubei and Wuhan” and Tyrene White, “Postrevolutionary mobilization in China: the one-child policy reconsidered,” World Politics, Vol. 43, No. 1 (October 1990), pp. 53–76.
104. See, respectively, Lieberthal and Oksenberg, Policy Making in China, ch. 6;
105. Chung, “Beijing confronting the provinces”;
106. Barrett L. McCormick, “Leninist implementation: the election campaign,” in Lampton, Policy Implementation in Post-Mao China, pp. 383–413.
107. See, for instance, Paul A. Sabatier, “Top-down and bottom-up approaches to implementation research: a critical analysis and suggested synthesis,” Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 6 (1986), pp. 21 48.
108. see Yong-Nian Zheng, “Perforated sovereignty: provincial dynamism and China's foreign trade,” The Pacific Review, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1994), pp. 316-320; and South China Morning Post, 20May and 23 August 1994. A series of annual meetings held among the 14 (reduced to six in 1994) “central economic cities” were also designed to devise concrete strategies to deal with the centre on a collective basis. For this information, I am indebted to Dorothy Solinger, “Decentralization in Wuhan” (draft), prepared for the “Decentralization in China” project of the World Bank, September 1994, p. 15.
109. see Jude Howell, China Opens Its Doors: The Politics of Economic Transition (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993);
110. David Zweig, “Internationalizing countryside: the political economy of exports from rural industry,” The China Quarterly, No. 128 (December 1992), pp. 716-741;
111. Schroeder, “Territorial actors as competitors for power”;
112. Dorothy J. Solinger, “City, province and region: the case of Wuhan,” in Bruce L. Reynolds (ed.), Chinese Economic Policy (New York: Paragon, 1988), pp. 233–284, and “The place of the central city in economic reform: from hierarchy to network?” in China's Transition from Socialism: Statist Legacies and Market Reforms 1980–1990 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), pp. 205–222.
113. See, for instance, Marc Blecher and Wang Shaoguang, “The political economy of cropping in Maoist and Dengist China: Hebei province and Shulu county, 1949-90,” The China Quarterly, No. 137 (March 1994), pp. 63–98.