Governing Neighborhoods in Urban China: Changing State-Society Relations 9781501769276

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GOVERNING NEIGHBORHOODS IN URBAN CHINA

GOVERNING NEIGHBORHOODS IN U ­ RBAN CHINA Changing State–­Society Relations Beibei Tang

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ​ ​I THACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2023 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress​.­cornell​.­edu. First published 2023 by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tang, Beibei, author. Title: Governing neighborhoods in urban China: changing state-society relations /   Beibei Tang. Description: Ithaca [New York]: Cornell University Press, 2023. |   Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022025610 (print) | LCCN 2022025611 (ebook) |   ISBN 9781501769269 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501769276 (pdf) |   ISBN 9781501769283 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: State-local relations—China. | Urbanization—Political   aspects—China. | Social control—China. | Power (Social sciences)—China. |   China—Politics and government—2002– Classification: LCC JS7353.A3 T36 2023 (print) | LCC JS7353.A3 (ebook) |   DDC 320.80951—dc23/eng/20221026 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025610 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022025611 Cover photograph by Beibei Tang.

Contents

Acknowl­edgments Introduction: The Strength and Flexibility of Neighborhood Governance in Urban China

vii

1

1.

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

23

2.

Intermediary Governance Space

45

3.

Neighborhood Conflict Resolution

66

4.

Neighborhood Ser­v ice Provision

88

5.

Participation in Neighborhood Governance

Conclusion: The Party-­State, Civil Society, and Neighborhood Governance Appendix: Summaries of Neighborhoods Notes References Index

110

132 149 151 153 165

Acknowl­e dgments

This book is based on research conducted during the past de­cade, for which I received much research support from several institutions and many colleagues. The Australian National University (ANU) where I worked previously and Xi’an Jiaotong-­Liverpool University (XJTLU) where I work now both offered generous support, an encouraging research environment, and an inspiring intellectual community for the research proj­ects I undertook. The research proj­ects that I conducted during my time at ANU (2010–2015) contributed to half of this book. At vari­ous stages of my research, I received valuable mentoring, encouragement, inspiration, and help from my colleagues in China studies, sociology, and po­liti­cal science. My heartful gratitude goes to John S. Dryzek, Luigi Tomba, and Jon Unger for their guidance and support over the years, which contributed to the intellectual foundations of this book. I would also like to thank my colleagues Nattakant Akarapongpisak, Ed Aspinall, Greg Fealy, Tamara Jacka, Ben Kerkvliet, Andrew Kipnis, and Sally Sargeson for their intellectual and professional inspiration. In 2015 I moved to XJTLU in Suzhou, China, and joined the Department of China Studies. Thanks to David Goodman’s invaluable mentoring and academic leadership, I managed to further develop and complete this book. ­Under his leadership, the Department of China Studies at XJTLU has become an exciting multidisciplinary research hub. This book would have been impossible without our stimulating intellectual community and the research funding support provided by XJTLU. Over the years, I received valuable constructive comments and suggestions from other colleagues around the world: particularly Baogang He, Yingjie Guo, and Dorothy J. Solinger. I also benefited enormously from the encouraging and constructive comments received from the three anonymous reviewers, which helped me refine and strengthen my arguments. This book includes excerpts from several of my articles and book chapters, reprinted with permission: “Grid Governance in China’s Urban Middle-­Class Neighborhoods,” China Quarterly 241 (2020): 43–61; “Intermediary Governance Space in Relocation Neighbourhoods,” China Perspectives 2 (2019): 57–65; “Deliberation and Governance in Chinese Middle-­Class Neighborhoods,” Japa­nese Journal of Po­liti­cal Science 19, no. 4 (2018): 663–677; “Neighborhood Aged Care and Local Governance in Urban China,” China Journal 79 (2018): 84–99; “ ‘Not vii

viii

Acknowl­e dgments

Rural but Not Urban’: Community Governance in China’s Urban Villages,” China Quarterly 223 (2015): 724–744; “Deliberating Governance in Chinese Urban Communities,” China Journal 73 (2015): 84–107; “The Discursive Turn: Deliberative Governance in China’s Urbanized Villages,” Journal of Con­temporary China 24, no. 91 (2015): 137–157; and “Wujiang in Transition,” in Suzhou in Tran­ sition, ed. Beibei Tang and Paul Cheung (London: Routledge, 2020), 214–232, reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa PLC. I would like to thank Jim Lance at Cornell University Press for his belief in this book and his tremendous encouragement, guidance, and support throughout the w ­ hole pro­cess. I am grateful too for Clare Jones’s detailed and clear instructions and help in the production pro­cess. My m ­ other has been the cornerstone of our f­ amily. This book is for her.

GOVERNING NEIGHBORHOODS IN URBAN CHINA

Introduction

THE STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE IN URBAN CHINA

At 10 a.m. on January 23, 2020, two days before the Chinese New Year, the Chinese government announced a lockdown of the city of Wuhan, with a population of more than ten million due to the frightening emergence and spread t­ here of COVID-19. Within a short time, pandemic prevention and control became a nationwide priority for all levels of government. The entire country applied tough mea­sures to control population movement and prevent social gatherings. In the next two months, most Chinese cities became isolated from each other with the temporary closure of public transportation and highways. They canceled public cele­brations for the Chinese New Year, closed shops and restaurants, postponed the start of schools and work, and forbade all kinds of social gatherings. All ­those living in China at the time experienced six to eight weeks of mandatory isolation at home imposed by the government. How did the government manage to apply all t­ hese restrictions on its population of 1.4 billion? The answer lies in the most local and basic governance unit of Chinese society: residential compounds and neighborhoods. In Chinese cities, it was the residential compounds (shequ) that carried out pandemic prevention and control mea­sures, together with local police and staff from government offices. Across the country, government employees accompanied by property management com­pany (wuye gongsi) staff went to individual apartments to check residents’ information and body temperature. They also monitored residents’ outdoor activities, checking p ­ eople and cars coming into the residential compounds and denying the entry of visitors. Resident volunteers and resident Communist Party members joined them to facilitate ser­vice deliveries to the residents and to pass 1

2 INTRODUCTION

on information about government policies and regulations to individual residents (CCTV News 2020; The Economist 2020). Neighborhoods, as always, became the frontlines of complicated urban governance in the ­People’s Republic of China (PRC). Through an analy­sis of new trends and dynamics of urban neighborhood governance in China since the 2000s, this book examines the key mechanisms currently operating at the grassroots level that contribute to the regime survival of an authoritarian state. A ­ fter more than four de­cades of China’s economic reform, the party-­state’s control of po­liti­cal power shows no signs of weakening. Rising in­equality, corruption, social tensions, a crisis of ideology, and po­liti­cal repression observed during this period have led to heated debates, especially among scholars outside China, on ­whether and to what extent China is ­going through a regime crisis. Surprisingly, to date most studies show that the Chinese party-­ state still manages to receive strong public support from the majority of the Chinese ­people (e.g., Nathan 2003; Chen 2004; Chen and Dickson 2010; Chen 2011; Tang 2016). Empirical studies adopting dif­fer­ent analytical approaches have revealed the consistent finding that Chinese citizens are generally satisfied with the Chinese central government. And this satisfaction, to a large extent, is the source of public support for the current regime, despite their discontent or anger t­ oward local governments. For the Chinese party-­state, as noted, the pervasive reach of the state is considered an effective way to interact with citizens and avoid large-­scale social unrest that may jeopardize the economic development and the stability of the regime. As a result, the state apparatus extends to all levels, from the national parliament to workplaces to the private realm such as residential compounds. At the grassroots level, both workplaces and residential compounds ­house agencies of government offices and party branches. The abstract concept of “the state” is encountered, felt, and experienced daily in urban work units (danwei) and neighborhoods. Since the 2000s, China’s development of a market economy and urbanization of the countryside have profoundly transformed the ways through which the Chinese party-­ state reaches, responds to, and interacts with its citizens. Overall, with the demise of the public sector’s control of urban housing, dif­fer­ent types of urban residential communities associated with the economic means of their residents have become the common scenario in Chinese urban life since the late 1990s. Chinese grassroots governance, in turn, has experienced unpre­ce­dented changes in institutional setting, personnel structure, work tasks, and governance dynamics. During this pro­cess, urban neighborhoods have gradually become the cornerstone for new state–­society relations and the most influential and basic government unit (Bray 2006; Heberer and Göbel 2011; Read 2012; Tomba 2014).



THE STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

3

Focusing on new trends of neighborhood governance in urban China, this book introduces the thesis of hybrid authoritarianism to illustrate how and to what extent impor­tant social and po­liti­cal mechanisms play out through everyday politics and generate public support for the Chinese party-­state at the grassroots level; it also explores what impacts ­these mechanisms have on Chinese po­liti­cal life in general. In this book, I define and elaborate on hybrid authoritarianism by (1) emphasizing the unchanged ruling style of authoritarianism; (2) focusing on grassroots-­level governance practices characterized by diversity, variability, and adaptability, especially relating to the involvement of non-­state actors and dif­fer­ent forms of governance practices; and (3) highlighting the effects of ­t hose practices/mea­sures in generating regime legitimacy and popu­lar support ­under tightened po­liti­cal control. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis developed in this book addresses the topics of state–­society relations and governance in reform-­era China systematically, rather than exploring the isolated governance “innovation” practices documented by most existing studies. Hybrid authoritarianism is situated in an intermediary governance space connecting the state and the society. It accommodates both state and non-­state actors, deals with a wide range of governance issues, employs flexible governance strategies, and, at the same time, strengthens the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It operates through everyday politics within a defined po­ liti­cal territory at the grassroots level. In Chinese cities, that defined territory is the neighborhood—­usually translated as xiaoqu (small residential area) or shequ (residential community)—­marked by both geographic and administrative bound­aries. Depending on the number of residents, one shequ can cover one or several residential compounds. In other words, residential compounds are spatial units with physical bound­aries, whereas shequ are administrative and governance units for the urban population residing within a defined residential space. In this book, the concepts of neighborhoods and residential communities are used interchangeably to refer to the territorial features of residential complexes and the po­liti­cal functions of shequ. The unique po­liti­cal functions carried out by urban neighborhoods include implementing policy and government programs, carry­ing out administrative duties, establishing social networks, and exercising social control among the residents (Bray 2006; Heberer and Göbel 2011; Read 2012). Po­liti­cal life in Chinese urban neighborhoods is largely or­ga­nized by a Residents’ Committee (   jumin wei­ yuanhui or juweihui), the agent of the party-­state at the grassroots level; it is supervised by the Street Office (  jiedao), which is the lowest level of government in the urban state apparatus. Through this kind of governance neighborhoods, the party-­state has established and enhanced what Heberer and Göbel (2011) call

4 INTRODUCTION

“state infrastructural power” at the grassroots level. In the past two de­cades, along with changes in social, economic, and po­liti­cal life in the PRC, neighborhoods in Chinese cities have become a more complex po­liti­cal arena accommodating not only the agents of the party-­state such as Residents’ Committees but also emerging non-­state actors and organ­izations, such as market groups, which include property management companies and remaining village collective organ­izations; neighborhood ser­v ice providers including social organ­izations (shehui tuanti or shehui zuzhi); and civil groups including homeowner associations, resident groups, and resident volunteers. Altogether they constitute impor­ tant po­liti­cal intermediaries that are positioned in between the party-­state and society and that facilitate interactions, negotiations, and sometimes collaborations between the two. As this book shows, neighborhood governance in the past two de­cades has incorporated key ele­ments of hybrid authoritarianism that embrace governance issues directly or indirectly, use both authoritarian and relatively more demo­cratic methods, and work to achieve governance outcomes aiming at both the party’s domination and the growing participation of civil society. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis is born from the increasing complexity of Chinese society produced by two major economic and social transformations since the 2000s: the further development of Chinese market reforms that began in the 1990s and the urbanization of the Chinese countryside, which has become a nationwide initiative in the past two de­cades. Marketization and rural urbanization have transformed not only economic operations but also the social interactions and po­liti­cal participation patterns of Chinese society. As a direct result, ­t hose reforms produced two substantial social classes in Chinese urban society ­today: the m ­ iddle class and landless farmers. Th ­ ese two groups have new economic, social, and po­liti­cal interests ­because of dramatic changes in property owner­ship; their interactions with the party-­state are critical in shaping both state-­society relations and regime stability. In turn, they form impor­tant class bases for po­liti­cal life in Chinese urban society, which is characterized by “a mixed form of po­liti­cal rationality” combining both conventional po­liti­cal conditions and new governing apparatuses (Sigley 2006). To date, ­there has been an impor­tant trend in most English-­language studies of the PRC that is rooted in a framework of contentious politics and considers the state and Chinese society as two opposing ends of the po­liti­cal spectrum. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis takes a dif­fer­ent analytical ­a ngle: it focuses on ­everyday politics taking place at the grassroots level in the form of nonconfrontational daily interactions between the party-­state and citizens. China’s intensive economic and social reforms have resulted in a remarkable change in state–­society interactions in which citizens have begun to negotiate directly with the grassroots



THE STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

5

government presence (Cai 2010 Chen 2011; Tang 2016). This has significantly influenced mechanisms of grassroots governance, which in the previous socialist period had exerted control largely through work-­unit governance (Walder 1986; Lü and Perry 1997). This book investigates how the Chinese party-­state responds to new governance issues stemming from marketization and urbanization at the local level by carry­ing out governance in dif­fer­ent ways for dif­fer­ent groups of the urban population while securing the CCP’s leadership role across society. This is not to deny the importance of regime-­level analy­sis or the study of contentious politics. Instead, it aims to increase understanding of con­temporary China by showing how public support is generated at the grassroots level. Neighborhood governance shapes institutional settings, produces po­liti­cal actors, develops po­liti­ cal actions and strategies, and generates po­liti­cal participation, all of which are very impor­tant for higher-­level politics and regime legitimacy at large.

Marketization, Urbanization, and Urban Governance In this book I explore t­ hese key research questions: What strengthens an authoritarian regime’s resilience at the grassroots level during economic liberalization? How does the Chinese party-­state respond to governance challenges and secure its governance legitimacy at the local level? How do citizens experience and interact with the state in a socialist market economy? Th ­ ese questions gain urgency from the increasing heterogeneity of the urban population and their relations with the party-­state produced by a series of critical reforms regarding property owner­ship, such as urban housing reforms and rural land expropriation. During the 1990s and the early 2000s, privatization and commercialization of urban public housing produced a nation of homeowners who purchased apartments heavi­ly subsidized by their socialist work units. Official statistics reported that the homeownership rate in urban China reached 89 ­percent in 2010 (NBS 2011c), and another Chinese survey estimated that it was 85.4 ­percent in 2011 (Yang and Chen 2014). Studies in the Pearl River Delta found that in the mid-2000s, lower-­income ­house­holds owned their homes at nearly the same rate as middle-­class ­house­holds (88.9% versus 91.4%). Nearly 11 ­percent of middle-­class ­house­holds owned two or more properties (Liu 2018). In 2017 sales of residential buildings made up around 85 ­percent of the total sales of commercialized buildings in the country (NBS 2018). Around the same time, urbanization of the Chinese countryside occurred with the expropriation of rural land for commercial and urban residential proj­ects. Official statistics suggest that China’s urban built-up areas expanded 4.6-­fold from

6 INTRODUCTION

1985 to 2015 (NBS 1986, 1996). The national urbanization rate r­ ose from 18 ­percent in 1978, to 36 ­percent in 2000, to 59 ­percent in 2017 (NBS 2018). This urbanization came at a cost, producing at least 52 million landless villa­gers between 1987 and 2010 (Ong 2014), and by 2014, this number was estimated to reach 112 million (Zhao 2015). The Blue Book of Cities in China (2013) argues that the landless villa­ gers made up nearly 30 ­percent of China’s urban population by 2012. An official report showed that the permanent urban population increased three times between 1978 and 2015, reaching 770 million in 2015, 56 ­percent of the w ­ hole population (Gu 2017, 4). As a direct result of marketization and urbanization, Chinese urban life has experienced diversification of the urban population with varying socioeconomic statuses, which determine the neighborhoods they reside in. ­Those social and economic transformations have been accompanied by rapidly increasing and widespread social tensions across the country. Th ­ ere has been an impressive surge of “collective incidents” (quntixing shijian) since the early 1990s and in vari­ous types of disputes (Shen 2007; Tang 2009; Gallagher and Wang 2011). According to the Ministry of Public Security, ­t here w ­ ere 10,000 incidents of social unrest and protests in 1994 (French 2007), 87,000 in 2005, and 180,000 in 2010 (Orlik 2011). In 2010, around 11 ­percent of the total population lived in protest-­ affected regions, of whom about one-­t hird w ­ ere directly or indirectly involved in some form of protest (Tang 2016, 109). Chinese urban neighborhoods have become a contested ground for new governance issues, a variety of governance actors, and governance strategies and methods. How the party-­state responds to ­t hose new governance issues and how ­t hose responses are communicated to the society on a daily basis are essential for regime survival and sustainability. As Wenfang Tang correctly points out, this type of situation requires a highly responsive government: “in an authoritarian po­ liti­cal system where competitive elections are missing, the government strug­ gles to maintain its po­liti­cal legitimacy by responding to public demand more quickly than in an electoral cycle.” (Tang 2016, 2). Since the 2000s, the party-­state’s responsiveness has expanded from regime institutionalization (Yang 2004; Tsai 2006; Landry 2008; Shambaugh 2008) in terms of “adaptability, complexity, autonomy and coherence of state organ­izations” (Nathan 2003, 6) to a wide range of governance practices and discourses that can also significantly help produce social stability and regime survival, particularly in authoritarian regimes (Art 2012). ­Those include adapting globalization (Nathan 2006), increasing foreign direct investment (Gallagher 2005), keeping corruption ­under check (Manion 2004), employing informal institutions to facilitate formal institutional change (Tsai 2007b), co-­opting cap­i­tal­ists (Chen and Dickson 2008), switching governance strategies from restricting movement of the rural population to subsidizing the countryside



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7

(Wallace 2014), and policy changes addressing protesters’ grievances (Heurlin 2016). This book expands existing national and subnational level analyses to explore ­whether the party-­state’s responsiveness at the grassroots level indicates relatively more tolerance on dif­fer­ent issues, is more inclusive of participating groups, and is more efficient or­gan­i­za­tion­ally. For example, the discourse of “stability maintenance” (weiwen) has been facilitating local disputes ­because of inadequate and in­effec­tive l­egal conflict-­resolution methods and the state’s ambiguous attitude ­toward mediation (Benney 2016). Despite being a top-­down governance approach, the influential and widespread discourse and practices of “stability maintenance” are accompanied by an increasing freedom of local officials and, in turn, greater space for local autonomy and flexibility in employing diverse methods for conflict resolution. As a result, local experiments are becoming widespread, particularly at the neighborhood level. ­Every day, neighborhoods accommodate vari­ous actors and direct po­liti­cal interactions between citizens and the party-­state regarding unpre­ce­dented governance issues, yet China has not yet developed a strong civil society. On the one hand, neighborhood governance must deal with a high degree of diversity associated with specific living environments and varied individual and collective actors. On the other hand, neighborhoods are required to carry out standardized governance tasks requested by higher levels of government. To cope with t­hese sometimes contradictory challenges, new governance mechanisms and trajectories have emerged in Chinese urban neighborhoods. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis aims to capture key mechanisms of this complex polity by focusing on governing practices that reflect both key characteristics of local governance and more diverse perspectives on po­liti­cal change in con­ temporary China. Two types of neighborhoods emerging through marketization and urbanization are of par­tic­u ­lar interest to this book: middle-­class neighborhoods and newly urbanized neighborhoods. Urban middle-­class neighborhoods are gated communities of owner-­occupied apartments, whereas newly urbanized neighborhoods include “urban villages” (chengzhongcun) and “relocation communities” (huiqian xiaoqu) produced by the expropriation of rural land for urban development proj­ects. Urban villages ­house ­t hose who manage to stay in their original village ­house sites (zhaijidi) despite expropriation of their farming land; relocation communities are new urban residential compounds established to ­house displaced farmers who ­were relocated from their home villages due to the loss of both their farming land and ­house sites. Unlike most socie­ties where urban gated communities are usually exclusive to a small group of wealthy ­people, gated communities in urban China are the major form of urban middle-­class housing consumption (Zhang 2010; Tang

8 INTRODUCTION

2018). ­There have been heated discussions on ­whether and to what extent the rising Chinese m ­ iddle class are expected to become a driving force for liberal democracy like their Western counter­parts. Some scholars argue that the Chinese ­middle class can enhance its po­liti­cal prospects by participating in neighborhood governance and that the gated residential space can contribute to the emergence of a more autonomous ­middle class (Read 2003, 2007; Tomba 2005; Rocca 2013). This expected autonomy, to a large extent, has been associated with homeowner activism observed in Chinese cities, especially among middle-­class homeowners. The development of homeowner activism has accompanied a “rights defending” (weiquan) discourse, which emphasizes upholding the ­legal rights and interests of property ­owners and occupants. The marketization of urban housing introduced not only business actors into the pro­cess of developing and constructing urban housing but also market actors such as real estate development companies and property management companies. Most housing disputes in urban middle-­class neighborhoods have been caused by the infringement of homeowners’ rights by developers or property management companies (Read 2003; Tomba 2005; Shi and Cai 2006; Cai 2008). Since the 2000s, increasing homeowner activism has been observed nationwide in the rising frequency and severity of conflicts between middle-­class homeowners and property management companies and associated real estate developers, with protests led by self-­organized homeowner associations (yezhu weiyuanhui or yeweihui) among the middle-­class residents (Yip 2014). In contrast to the long-­ standing government-­run neighborhood organ­izations, homeowner associations can be highly autonomous neighborhood organ­izations that negotiate with market actors and the state. Benjamin Read (2007, 150–151) considers homeowner associations as a potential “new model for private association in the PRC as well as an attractive laboratory for activists who have ambitions for far-­reaching po­ liti­cal change.” The increasing number and effectiveness of homeowner associations and growing conflicts associated with homeowner activism in the country have become impor­tant constraints on local governments. This book analyzes the party-­state’s systematic responses to new conflicts, actors, and governance dynamics in emerging middle-­class neighborhoods: both general approaches to ensure social stability and the party’s leadership and par­tic­u­lar strategies to balance the interests of vari­ous groups in middle-­class neighborhoods. China’s urbanization has also produced a new group of urban residents who have entered urban life not through migration but through the transformation of nearby rural residents into urban residents in an or­ga­nized and managed way as cities expand and spread. The production of urbanized neighborhoods took place through a top-­down pro­cess of administrative transition, the “transforming villages to (urban residential) communities” (cun gai ju), which granted



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9

­ rban ­house­hold registration (hukou) to the farmers in exchange for rural land. u Despite local variations, this pro­cess has consistently separated villa­gers from their farming land, provided urban ser­vices and social security to landless villa­ gers, and instituted urban grassroots governance structures in the former rural residential communities. As a result, a new type of urban neighborhood—­t he (newly) urbanized neighborhood—­has emerged that accommodates landless farmers, a new group of urban residents. Compensation deals have varied greatly throughout the country, which has caused stratification among the landless farmers (Song, Du, and Li 2020). In areas in which they received inadequate compensation, they became a new group of urban poor (He et al. 2009; Liu et al. 2010); in other places, such as in some big cities and certain coastal areas, they ­were more adequately compensated, especially in the late 2000s and the 2010s (Chung and Unger 2013; Wen 2013). The rise of newly urbanized neighborhoods has blurred China’s long-­standing rural–­urban bound­aries geo­graph­i­cally and institutionally: as a result, grassroots governance in China is no longer characterized by a rural–­urban dichotomy. Existing studies on urbanization in China overwhelmingly address the impact of urbanization on Chinese rural society, with a focus on land expropriation, the villages’ collective economy (Lin 2009; Hsing 2010; Sargeson 2013), and transformation of the rural governance structure (Yang 2014; Wu 2017). Studies to date across dif­fer­ent disciplines have examined the outcomes of bottom-up institutional reforms, rural–­urban integration, the continuity of rural p ­ eople’s lived experiences, and the legacy of previous collective economic activities. Th ­ ose studies have well illustrated the simultaneous disruptions and continuities of rural economic, social, and po­liti­cal life ­under China’s urbanization. In contrast, this book examines the impacts of urbanization on urban society caused by the influx of the former agricultural population. It explores what impacts have had on governance dynamics at the urban grassroots and explains the po­liti­cal impacts of urbanization on Chinese urban society. As pointed out by vari­ous scholars, regime legitimacy rests on an implicit contract between the party-­state and the population (Tang and Parish 2020; Wright 2010; Wallace 2014). To a large extent the contract aims to produce wealth and preserve order. Urban neighborhoods serve both goals well. An orderly neighborhood that has a good reputation should experience increases in real estate values, which become a part of the neighborhood’s brand. As presented in this book, neighborhood governance plays a role in maintaining order and thereby upholding the social contract. Since the 1990s t­ here have been significant changes in neighborhood governance both structurally and practically in both formal arrangements and informal operations, both authoritarian and non-­authoritarian practices, and both state-­led proj­ects and citizen initiatives. Th ­ ose governance

10 INTRODUCTION

practices can significantly affect the CCP’s ability to rule and the regime’s legitimacy. As Luigi Tomba (2014, 3–4) points out, “The social and spatial landscapes of residential areas contain and reproduce specific power relations, define discrete spatial patterns crucial to the classification of society, determine and recast identities, produce networks, define the limits of new economic interests, and foster or contain conflicts. As such, they are an incubator of po­liti­cal pro­cesses that have significant implications for our understanding of Chinese politics, both local and national.”

The Flexibility and Strength of Neighborhood Governance To date, many studies of state-­society relations in China emphasize the state-­ society dichotomy, in which interactions between the party-­state and society are a zero-­sum game in which the gain of one side brings a loss to the other side (Saich 2000; Ho and Edmonds 2008; Unger 2008). Through an inductive approach, this book develops a thesis of hybrid authoritarianism that analyzes changing state–­society relations in China from a dif­fer­ent approach. Hybrid authoritarianism is a governance mechanism employed in an authoritarian state to produce governance legitimacy, public support, and regime sustainability at the grassroots level. It largely reflects the resilient features of the party-­state system (Nathan 2003) by focusing on po­liti­cal and social functions of governance flexibility and strength. As claimed by a 2011 study by Xi Chen, pervasive and routinized popu­lar contention in China does not necessarily indicate the instability of the w ­ hole po­liti­cal system. Instead, it shows the surprising flexibility of the party-­state due to contradictions and ambiguities existing in state ideologies and institutions that enable it to accommodate or even facilitate widespread and routinized popu­lar collective action. Similarly, this kind of remarkably resilient and elastic feature of the Chinese party-­state has also provided incentives, encouragement, possibilities, and favorable conditions for neighborhood governance structures, strategies, and mechanisms that differ from ­those observed at higher levels of government. Hybrid authoritarianism is flexible b ­ ecause of its adaptability and variability. The adaptability is demonstrated by the party-­state’s accommodation and use of new governance strategies and mechanisms required by changing social conditions. Its variability is expressed by the diverse governing tactics that have emerged during China’s marketization and urbanization. Not being ­limited to one fixed, rigid governing method ­adopted by all neighborhoods, the party-­state has made room for vari­ous forms of “governance innovations.” Its flexibility—as adaptive



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and variable as it is—­operates hand in hand with increasing po­liti­cal control through strengthened party leadership at the grassroots. Hybrid authoritarianism features new mechanisms of interactions between the state and society in response to diverse governance needs associated with a heterogenous urban population, horizontal social relations associated with a diversified local po­liti­cal economy, and hierarchical po­liti­cal power associated with continuing party-­building activities. It explains the responsiveness and adaptiveness of authoritarianism through an actor-­centered approach focusing on the pro­cesses of po­liti­cal life. Heilmann and Perry (2011) highlight the ability and willingness of individual and collective actors to define the regime’s resilience through a pro­cess of continual adjustment during which the actors innovate or break from the “rules of the game” and engage in po­liti­cal activities that may produce new solutions to existing prob­lems. Hybrid authoritarianism seeks new perspectives that expand views of po­liti­cal life and governance in China through the participation of vari­ous actors, the use of diverse practices. and multiple pro­cesses and dimensions that all contribute to China’s ongoing po­liti­cal evolution. By incorporating flexibility into an authoritarian regime, state–­society relations are negotiated and renewed, yielding increased public support, social stability, and governance capacity. More specifically, as elaborated in this book, hybrid authoritarianism includes (1) diverse governance issues and actors; (2) an intermediary governance space at the neighborhood level that produces newly negotiated relationships between the party-­state and society; (3) unconventional mechanisms used to h ­ andle governance issues in dif­fer­ent neighborhoods; and (4) new interactions between vari­ous governance actors and participants that shape the governance discourse and mindset. Beginning with an analytical focus on the diversification of neighborhood governance in chapter 1, the hybrid authoritarianism thesis developed in this book embraces new governance structures including new governance actors and organ­izations (chapter 2), a “deliberative turn” for neighborhood conflict resolution (chapter 3), dif­fer­ent ways of neighborhood ser­v ice provision across dif­fer­ent neighborhoods (chapter 4), and new experiences and perceptions of neighborhood po­liti­cal participation (chapter 5). ­These dif­fer­ent aspects echo what Shue and Thornton (2017, 32) consider to be “the very richness and expansiveness of the repertoire of diverse practices enmeshed in dif­fer­ent dimensions of governing China ­today.” The hybrid authoritarianism presented in this book highlights and elucidates the distinct types of governing practices observed at the most local level of Chinese society ­today and explores how ­t hose practices are currently at work in the con­temporary Chinese polity. In the context of neighborhood governance, the hybrid authoritarianism thesis focuses on vari­ous groups of actors including both state and non-­state actors,

12 INTRODUCTION

individual and collective actors, and existing and new actors in Chinese po­liti­cal life. Business actors are increasingly playing an impor­tant role in urban renewal and city construction; the formation of new groups of urban residents as a result of marketization and urbanization has also redefined the actors, structure, content, and dynamics of neighborhood governance. Urban neighborhoods in Chinese cities ­today are structurally complex in their formal and informal governance structures, state po­liti­cal apparatuses, and societal organ­izations. This book examines the “grid governance” structure in middle-­class neighborhoods—­which divides governance personnel and tasks according to geographic and administrative bound­aries of neighborhoods—­and the new administrative structure in urbanized neighborhoods. Situated in the special intermediary governance space in urban neighborhoods, this book explores in what ways and to what extent the party-­state, civil groups, and citizens interact to produce public support for, as well as control of, an authoritarian regime at grassroots level. Strength and flexibility are exercised through several key aspects of po­liti­cal life at the local level. Neighborhood conflict resolution is achieved through a paradoxical but practical governance strategy at the local level. Despite its uneven and ­limited development, neighborhood deliberation as a state-­led participatory “social management innovation” (shehui zhili chuangxin) has become a popu­lar means to resolve conflicts and retain social stability at the neighborhood level. The development of deliberative politics in China in recent years is closely associated with a po­liti­cal scenario that tolerates more space for grassroots-­level governance by endorsing the participation of social organ­izations in local governance and encouraging “self-­governance” (zizhi) of residents in urban neighborhoods. Th ­ ese practices have helped provide mutual benefits among residents and between the state and the public with re­spect to neighborhood decision making; it also strengthens the sense of legitimate governance. In addition, neighborhood ser­v ice provision implements state programs at the local level in an unconventional way, such as by government purchases of ser­vices in middle-­class neighborhoods and incorporation of the village corporations to provide ser­vices in newly urbanized neighborhoods. Social organ­izations and market groups become involved in ser­v ice provision, so that the socialist state is no longer the sole actor in implementing national government programs such as care for the aged and “citizenization” (shiminhua) of landless farmers. Instead, a collaborative partnership between the state, market, and society is gradually being developed to enhance citizens’ satisfaction with governance per­for­mance. The “innovative” practices of conflict resolution and neighborhood ser­v ice provision have led to diverse experiences and perceptions of non-­state actors (including market groups, social groups, and residents) and their participation in neighborhood governance. As this book suggests, daily interactions and expe-



THE STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

13

riences have ­shaped urban citizens’ views and values about to what extent and in what ways they should participate, how to deal with state actors, and how to strategically balance their long-­term goals and short-­term plans. In this context, the hybrid authoritarianism thesis interprets Foucault’s (1991) idea of “governmentality,” which emphasizes the importance of the ­mental constructs of the subjects over whom power is exercised in shaping and interpreting real­ity through their own self-­regulation (Jessop 2008). Through multilateral interactions between the state, intermediate actors, and residents, the party-­state seeks to influence citizens’ po­liti­cal participation by using practical and flexible mechanisms, procedures, and practices through which the state seeks to guide and shape the po­liti­cal be­hav­ior and decisions of its citizens. The strategies used to deal with governance m ­ atters in neighborhoods derive from state-­led resident mobilization and party-­building activities. As chapters 2–5 illustrate, the neighborhood governance flexibility centers around the neighborhood party organ­izations’ efforts to indirectly strengthen the party’s control and leadership at the grassroots level. I argue that coordinative flexibility in social relations is exercised through the active adaptation of non-­authoritarian governance means and a use of traditional communist po­liti­cal strategies in modified forms, which take place through top-­down party organization-­building and social control. The two mechanisms are brought together to reinforce the party-­state’s po­liti­cal legitimacy. It is impor­tant to point out ­here that phrases such as “governance innovation,” “self-­governance,” and “citizenization” that this book uses h ­ ere are a­ dopted from the official narratives for analytical con­ve­nience. It does not mean that they are interpretations of real­ity, nor are they promoted in this book as effective. Instead, the analy­sis in this book reveals the gap between the official narratives and ­actual practices at the local level. Similarly, the thesis of hybrid authoritarianism presented h ­ ere is not meant to support or promote authoritarian rule nor conversely to predict the downfall of communist leadership. The “hybrid” ele­ ments discussed in this book are not definitive features of a new concept of authoritarianism. Instead, they exhibit the responsiveness and adaptiveness of authoritarianism that are largely missing at higher levels of government. Hybrid authoritarianism goes beyond the scholarly debates that have overwhelmingly concentrated on distinctions between governing institutions in demo­cratic and nondemo­cratic regimes. This is not to deny the importance of dif­fer­ent regime types nor the key roles played by institutions in preserving stability, order, and regularity. Instead, it aims to generate intellectual explanations and discussions on how an authoritarian regime secures its regime legitimacy during dramatic economic and social changes and how it generates public support from the most local level of society.

14 INTRODUCTION

Evolving Neighborhood Governance in Urban China As pointed out by vari­ous scholars (Nathan 2003; Chen 2011; Tang 2016), authoritarian regimes can respond to public demands more readily than demo­ cratic regimes, due to the po­liti­cal contract between the state and the citizens. But the cost of sustaining governmental hyper-­responsiveness is very high. Thus, the governance and management of the population at the local level are of g­ reat importance. The Chinese way of governing the urban population was largely carried out through urban work units and neighborhoods u ­ ntil the mid-1990s. Work units dominated the organ­ization of Chinese urban life and defined the spatial settings of Chinese cities. They provided all-­encompassing welfare and benefits to urban employees, including lifetime employment, social security, and public housing (Bian 1994; Lü and Perry 1997; Zhou 2004). The units ­were the economic foundation of the residents’ lives (Naughton 1997) and also served as basic, distinct spatial units (Bray 2005) of urban China. Walls and gates separated each work unit from its surrounding environment, which created a unique social and governance space in Chinese cities. Housing provision through work units reinforced the workplace-­based territoriality of urban governance. As a reflection of socialist ideology, employees paid very l­ittle or no rent, and work-­ unit residential compounds ­were the dominant form of housing. Work units managed affairs ­there, mobilized residents, and engaged in the promotion of po­ liti­cal propaganda. At the same time, the key agent of the party-­state at the grassroots level, the Residents’ Committees, or­ga­nized only the small proportion of urban residents who ­were not affiliated with a work unit. Along with the development of marketization in the 1990s, urban governance dominated by work units was gradually replaced by a top-­down institutional pro­ cess that emphasized neighborhood governance (Bray 2006; Heberer and Göbel 2011). In the second half of the 1990s, the bankruptcies of a large number of state-­ owned enterprises resulted in the collapse of social welfare provision through work units (Lee 2007). The remaining work units gradually withdrew from social welfare provision and from overseeing the residential compounds that had been privatized into employee hands. In most cases, work units no longer handled neighborhood management ser­vices, such as security, maintenance, and property management; the organ­ization of residents’ social and po­liti­cal activities was largely carried out by Residents’ Committees or the residents themselves. Thus, as a substitute for the work unit, urban neighborhoods have become the major venue where most citizens encounter, experience, and interact with the party-­state. Compared to their counter­parts in Western socie­ties, Chinese urban neighborhoods t­ oday represent bound­aries for territory and population management



THE STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

15

­ nder a municipal administration. As marketization and urbanization prou ceeded in the 1990s, Chinese urban neighborhoods became more fragmented and disintegrated, compared to the previous work-­unit residential compounds. As a result, previous mechanisms of neighborhood control over urban residents became weakend. In response, the party-­state introduced “community construction” (shequ jianshe) as an orga­nizational innovation, which shifted grassroots-­ level administration and welfare provision from work units to residential communities (shequ), especially in urban working-­class neighborhoods (Bray 2006, 537; Shieh and Friedmann 2008, 185). Through this nationwide scheme, residential communities became the most basic urban administrative units, and Residents’ Committees began to assume the responsibility on behalf of the city government for addressing welfare needs. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (2018), the number of shequ in Chinese cities increased from 79,947 in 2005 to 106,491 in 2017. One essential component of the community construction scheme was “community self-­governance” (shequ zizhi). It was designed to replace the previous paternalistic fashion through which the government addressed social prob­lems (Heberer and Göbel 2011). In middle-­class neighborhoods, community self-­ governance was introduced as a new governance tool that in princi­ple encourages urban citizens to be the decision makers and responsible for neighborhood affairs (Tomba 2014). For newly urbanized neighborhoods, the extent to which neighborhood governance operates, and the residents behave like their urban counter­parts, is a major concern of the local government when evaluating the outcomes of urbanization. In par­tic­u­lar, the nationwide “citizenization” (shim­ inhua) campaign led by the State Council (2016) had the clearly stated goal of incorporating the former agricultural population, which included both mi­grant workers and landless farmers, into the economic, social, and po­liti­cal life of cities. Th ­ ese strategies ­were also justified as means to “stability maintenance,” an effort that infiltrates almost all aspects of Chinese life. Social management innovation is a governance technique through which Chinese state officials seek ways to promote their work and improve their per­for­ mance by implementing demonstrable, practical, problem-­solving policies (Heberer and Göbel 2011). Aiming at achieving social stability and strengthening the legitimacy of CCP’s leadership, key areas of social management innovation are improving efficiency, coordination, and capacities through the development of diverse governance actors. One typical example is the use of new public ser­vice delivery models, such as contracting ser­vice delivery to private firms and nonprofit organ­izations (Teets 2012). In more recent years, calls for social management innovation also emphasized the development of new neighborhood governance mechanisms, resulting in a shift from a government-­dominated administration

16 INTRODUCTION

mode to a co-­governance mode involving diverse actors and non-­state organ­ izations. From the government’s perspective, the innovation derives from residents’ self-­governance through which citizens are empowered to make decisions regarding neighborhood affairs, it operates through co-­governance in which multiple actors (including both state and non-­state actors) participate, and it eventually aims at achieving effective governance in society (Wei 2014). Community construction, community self-­governance, and social management innovation are good examples of how the party-­state has responded to governance challenges associated with economic and social changes by flexibly introducing supplementary institutions that complement traditional governance structures. Through hierarchical social control, the community construction scheme extended the reach of the administrative apparatus and enhanced governance capacity to manage urban life. Through social coordination at the horizontal level, the self-­governance scheme aimed at co-­opting non-­state actors into neighborhoods’ governance structure and practices, which would generate support for the regime. The top-­down strength-­building and parallel flexibility exercises together ensure the party-­state’s control over the society. As this book shows, the party-­state has introduced a series of changes that have altered the governance structure, personal practices, and mindsets of the neighborhoods. Focusing on t­ hose innovations in neighborhood governance, this book examines in what ways and to what extent new practices are used to deal with practical governance ­matters and to shape grassroots-­level governance mechanisms in general.

Studying Governance in Chinese Urban Neighborhoods This book adopts an inductive approach to explain how the flexibility and strength of hybrid authoritarianism are produced through neighborhood governance. It examines in what ways and to what extent the party-­state exercises flexibility, tolerates relative local autonomy, and embraces ­limited local diversity. How the party-­state maintains its strength is explored through the ways it implements efficient social control by per­sis­tently embedding party-­building functions and effectively supervising civil organ­izations. Chinese urban middle-­ class neighborhoods and newly urbanized neighborhoods offer ideal research sites to explore ­t hose mechanisms ­because of their dif­fer­ent governance needs and responses. Both middle-­class and urbanized neighborhoods have separated the work life and private life of Chinese citizens and produced a certain level of privacy and autonomy within their defined territories; in both neighborhoods,



THE STRENGTH AND FLEXIBILITY OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

17

marketization and urbanization have directly resulted in governance issues with practical needs requiring the response of the party-­state. Based on fieldwork research in the past de­cade, I identify four major categories of neighborhood governance issues in chapter 1: disputes regarding the living environment of the neighborhoods, conflicts over property rights and collective welfare distribution, disagreements with local policies affecting the neighborhood, and demands for provision of neighborhood ser­vices. ­Those governance m ­ atters are associated with the specific living environment of each neighborhood, but they also raise common governance concerns across dif­fer­ ent neighborhoods, such as social stability control and the involvement of non-­ state actors in neighborhood governance. By exploring a variety of crucial mechanisms and strategies used in dif­fer­ent situations, this study reveals how the party-­state penetrates neighborhoods of vari­ous social classes and manages dif­fer­ent groups of the population effectively. The analy­sis addresses an intermediary neighborhood governance space that involves both formal and informal governance structures, agents of the state, and non-­state actors and organ­izations. Its dynamics are examined through two impor­tant aspects of neighborhood governance: conflict resolution and neighborhood ser­v ice provision. Both have underwent significant changes during ­China’s marketization and urbanization pro­cesses. More specifically, this study examines how public deliberation is used to resolve local conflicts, highlighting the participation of dif­fer­ent interest groups, and the new dynamics in implementing government programs through the purchase of outsourced ser­vices. In addition to how the party-­state exercises its strength and flexibility in neighborhood governance, this book also examines the participation experiences of non-­state actors such as social organ­izations, civil groups, and volunteers in neighborhood governance. Through their experiences, perceptions, and strategies, this book analyzes the interactive mechanisms of the hybrid authoritarianism thesis to reveal in what ways and to what extent society is not only the receiver but also a participant in governance that reflects both the flexibility and strength of the party-­state. The empirical information reported in this book was collected during fieldwork and research conducted for more than a de­cade and a half. As part of my research on urban gated communities, I first witnessed how daily governance was carried out in urban middle-­class neighborhoods in the city of Shenyang. Although neighborhood governance was only a small component of my research proj­ect at the time, its impact on citizens intrigued me, encouraging me to explore how urban neighborhood governance was changing and operating in a new era of marketization. From 2009 to 2011, I was part of a research team working on urbanization mechanisms in the Pearl River Delta. That proj­ect highlighted

18 INTRODUCTION

a dif­fer­ent kind of neighborhood governance: villages that ­were transformed into urban neighborhoods as a direct result of urbanization. In contrast to urban middle-­class neighborhoods, which brought brand-­new homeowner activism to urban neighborhood politics, newly urbanized neighborhoods carried their former village collective economy to urban life. Yet both types of neighborhoods developed new practices to deal with relations with Residents’ Committees in the neighborhoods and with the local government. During 2011 to 2014, I conducted research on deliberative governance in urban China. I examined how it was used as a tool to resolve neighborhood conflicts, together with vari­ous governance structures established in dif­fer­ent neighborhoods. I also observed local variations during my research proj­ect on neighborhood aged care programs between 2015 to 2019. Along with t­hese developments, I consistently found strengthened party control in the vari­ous neighborhoods I studied over the years. My field research in the past de­cade covered not only dif­fer­ent types of urban residential communities but also dif­fer­ent localities in China. Data used in this book w ­ ere collected during my fieldwork in the northeastern city of Shenyang, the city of Wuhan in central China, the city of Suzhou in the Yangtse River Delta, and the southern city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta. Shenyang, Wuhan, and Guangzhou are the capital cities of Liaoning, Hubei, and Guangdong Provinces, respectively. Guangzhou and Suzhou are among the most prosperous cities in China, whereas both Shenyang and Wuhan have engaged in state-­owned enterprise reforms and explored urbanization proj­ects to boost the local economy. ­These regionally diverse cities not only illustrate local diversity ­under the control of the central government but also show consistency across the country in how nationwide reforms such as housing reforms and urbanization are carried out at the local level. Take urbanization as an example: in 2016, farming land made up 30 to 40 ­percent of the annual land expropriation in Shenyang, Suzhou, Guangzhou, and Wuhan. By 2018, as a result, the proportion of the urban population ­under the jurisdiction of Shenyang, Wuhan, and Guangzhou all reached more than 80 ­percent, and in Suzhou it reached 76 ­percent. In each city I carried out intensive ethnographic research. The empirical data ­were collected in twenty-­two middle-­class neighborhoods—­nine in Shenyang, two in Wuhan, eight in Suzhou, and three in Guangzhou—­a nd twenty-­four newly urbanized neighborhoods: three in Shenyang, six in Wuhan, eight in Suzhou, and seven in Guangzhou. Between 2009 and 2019 I visited ­t hese neighborhoods repeatedly and witnessed how governance was carried out over the de­cade. In total, I conducted more than two hundred in-­depth interviews with community residents, Residents’ Committee staff members, community ser­vice providers, and local government officials. I also conducted nine focus groups with village collective representatives and residents. The in-­depth interviews and



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19

focus groups provided detailed information about new governance structures established in the relocation communities and in what ways and to what extent an intermediary governance space was produced through the interactions among dif­fer­ent actors. Appendix 1 provides summary data for the neighborhoods analyzed in this book. Access to the field and in­for­mant recruitment are major challenges for researchers ­doing fieldwork in China. I was able to gain access and recruit in­for­ mants through a slow pro­cess of gradually building up contacts over the years. In each field site, I usually visited the local Street Office or supervisory city-­ district government office first, explained the purpose of my research, and requested approval to collect information in the neighborhoods. While asking for approval, I took the opportunity to interview relevant government officials about their plans, policies, and views of grassroots governance in their localities. Obtaining government approval is a complex pro­cess, involving much time and resources. Most often, it took several visits to their offices or sometimes a few pi­lot trips to get approval. Sometimes collaboration with a local university was very helpful, and sometimes personal networks helped. The longer I spent in the field, the larger the social networks and the more trust I developed. Once trust was established, return trips usually went much more smoothly, even if I visited dif­fer­ent kinds of neighborhoods in the same city. Of the more than two hundred interviews that I conducted, around 30 ­percent ­were with Residents’ Committee staff members and local government officials, 30 ­percent ­were with community ser­v ice providers, and 40 ­percent ­were with community residents. When d ­ oing fieldwork in China, especially in neighborhoods, once government approval and support are obtained, it becomes much easier to gain access to residents—­not only t­ hose close to the state but also t­ hose who are in disputes with the state or in conflict with other groups. ­Because conflicts in neighborhoods are not considered as po­liti­cally sensitive as other conflicts, as chapter 1 explains in detail, a diversity of resident interviewees can be guaranteed in most cases once government approval is obtained. With this approval in hand, I then approached the Residents’ Committees in each neighborhood to get a broad picture of what the neighborhood is like and its characteristics. Over the years, I interviewed more than fifty Residents’ Committee staff, who shared their evolving perceptions of their work, their interactions with the residents, and their relations with the local government. A ­ fter gaining a broad understanding of the neighborhoods, I then talked to residents. The first group of in­for­mants ­were always recruited from participants in residents’ groups, whom I approached ­after their group activities ended for the day. Usually, ­these in­for­mants w ­ ere active members in the neighborhoods, and they introduced me to some less-­active residents. In the neighborhoods, I also interviewed members

20 INTRODUCTION

of property management companies, village collectives, homeowner associations, and social groups or organ­izations involved in daily life. Unlike with the staff of Residents’ Committees, sometimes ­those contacts took place outside the neighborhoods; yet ­these conversations often helped me better understand the situation inside the neighborhoods. Moreover, I was invited, and sometimes invited myself, to social events or­ga­nized by the Residents’ Committees or by residents themselves. ­Those events provided good opportunities to observe neighborhood dynamics and to get acquainted with residents, property management companies, and Residents’ Committee staff. During my fieldwork, I also collected local government documents; unofficial documents of Residents’ Committees; internal publications of property management companies, social groups, and organ­izations; and relevant posts on social media. The use of social media helped me stay in touch with the neighborhoods and follow updates when away from the field. Since 2007, I have followed posts and publications first on QQ groups and then the WeChat groups1 of the neighborhoods I had visited. ­These are mostly resident-­run social media accounts without state intervention (though of course they may be subject to the general state censorship of social media in China). Following ­these accounts has enabled me to acquire a balanced knowledge of the situation of other neighborhoods in the area, which has helped me better understand the big picture.

Organ­i zation of the Book The chapters in this book highlight the complexity of interactions among the party-­state, the intermediaries, and citizens at the neighborhood level. More specifically, they examine the mechanisms of hybrid authoritarianism; the intermediate governance space that mediates the party-­state’s direct control over residents; and the intermediate actors who interact with residents with dif­fer­ent stakes in governance outcomes. Chapter 1 examines in what ways and to what extent economic transformations have produced the social and po­liti­cal conditions of hybrid authoritarianism. The emergence of urban middle-­class neighborhoods with property management companies and homeowner associations has transformed the dynamics of neighborhood politics through self-­governance and homeowner activism. In the meanwhile, the village-­to-­community transition has placed landless farmers u ­ nder urban administration and neighborhood governance. Chapter 1 identifies neighborhood governance issues and priorities ­under marketization and urbanization. ­Those include disputes regarding property management, conflicts associated with property rights and the distribution



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21

of collective benefits, disagreement with local government policies affecting neighborhoods, and increasing demands for neighborhood ser­v ice provision. Chapter 2 explores the intermediate governance space as the structural context of hybrid authoritarianism. This chapter highlights the complexity of the intermediate governance space with its interactions among diverse governance actors at the neighborhood level. The intermediary actors discussed in the chapter include social organ­izations, market-­based groups, and resident volunteers. In addition, “grid governance” in middle-­class neighborhoods and new governance structures in urbanized neighborhoods have been ­adopted and vari­ous types of neighborhood party-­building and mobilization have been consistently carried out, despite the flexible governance arrangements: ­t hese are examined in detail. Chapters  3 and 4 describe how the hybrid authoritarianism operates by focusing on two key aspects of grassroots governance: conflict resolution and neighborhood ser­v ice provision, respectively. In both arenas, unpre­ce­dented non-­authoritarian means have been a­ dopted, such as deliberation for conflict resolution and the government purchase of ser­v ices from community-­based groups and non-­state actors. Chapter 3 reveals two distinct features of authoritarian deliberation in Chinese urban neighborhoods. One is that despite the rigid po­liti­cal control of the party, deliberations are associated with a certain level of autonomy, which accommodates multiple (especially non-­state) actors and vari­ous forms of participation in searching for practical resolutions for neighborhood conflicts. The other feature is that neighborhood deliberation is one component of an overall local governance strategy. More specifically, this chapter examines the role of Residents’ Committees as the agent of the state in coordinating neighborhood deliberations. It explores how they are operated mainly by resident representatives and Residents’ Committee staff to maximize resident mobilization and coordination between the state and non-­state organ­izations. In addition, the chapter explores the impact of the leadership of party organ­izations at the grassroots level on neighborhood deliberation. Chapter 4 examines how nationwide government programs are implemented at the neighborhood level across the country through two case studies: the provision of neighborhood care for the aged and ser­vice provision in newly urbanized neighborhoods. The analy­sis of the first case highlights the government’s purchase of ser­vices, which outsources the provision of public goods and ser­vices such as education, healthcare, or infrastructure to private firms and civil society groups such as charities or other nonprofits. Neighborhood ser­vice provision in newly urbanized neighborhoods largely deals with the legacy and influence of previous

22 INTRODUCTION

village ser­vice provision. Both case studies suggest a trend of gradually increasing involvement of non-­state organ­izations in government programs as collaborators or partners. Yet, even though non-­state actors and organ­izations have gradually secured more flexibility in implementing government programs, they operate continuously ­under state control and government supervision. Chapter 5 takes the perspectives of non-­state participants, including social and market groups and residents, and examines the potential outcomes on hybrid authoritarianism of their willingness to participate in neighborhood governance. It describes their response strategies and how their experiences are ­shaped and guided by state-­led discourses. The chapter then argues that non-­ state actors and organ­izations are not necessarily in opposition to the party-­state all the time, nor is this a zero-­sum game. Instead, to a certain degree they perform as impor­tant po­liti­cal intermediaries through their multiple roles of participants, collaborators. and strategic players in neighborhood governance. The conclusion summarizes how hybrid authoritarianism shapes regime survival through governance operations and outcomes at the grassroots level. During this pro­cess, horizontal social coordination with society is negotiated among dif­fer­ent social groups while the party-­state’s control is strengthened at grassroots level in shaping China’s evolving state-­society relations in ways that produce public support for the party-­state and strengthen regime legitimacy.

1 DIVERSIFICATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

Since China’s economic reforms began in the 1980s, Chinese citizens have experienced a new social contract that has redefined their relationship with the socialist state. The changing social contract reflects the increasing diversity in urban employment, the commercialization of social welfare and urban housing, and varying governance arrangements and strategies for social groups. The further development of the market economy, which began in the 1990s, has intensified this diversification as the marketization pro­cess has extended to affect almost e­ very aspect of Chinese economic and social life. Since the early 2000s, two phenomena have become most prevalent in Chinese urban society. One is the increase in the number of urban middle-­class homeowners whose social status attainment has been tied to their access to urban housing (Huang 2005; Li and Huang 2006; Tomba 2010). As a public good that used to be provided by the socialist state, urban housing went through a dramatic pro­cess of commercialization and privatization in the late 1990s, producing a nation of homeowners who largely constitute the urban ­middle class ­today. Around the same time, urbanization of the Chinese countryside has changed land politics in rural areas and transformed the urban landscape (Lin 2007; Chan 2010; Ong 2014; Gu 2017). In so ­doing, this pro­cess has blurred territorial and administrative bound­aries between Chinese cities and the countryside, which had been previously determined by the ­house­hold registration (hukou) system; a new group of residents in Chinese cities are landless farmers who have left their villages to reside in urban administrative zones.

23

24 CHAPTER 1

As a direct result of t­ hese changes, Chinese urban society in the reform era moved from a local governance system based on work units (Nathan 1997) to one in which neighborhood communities have become the key units controlling all aspects of Chinese residents’ lives (Walder 1986; Bian 1994; Zhou 2004). As Tianjian Shi (1997, 15) noted, this institutional change indicated that the critical point of decision making for low-­level politics had been transferred from the central government to grassroots organ­izations. Since the 1990s, Chinese urban society has gradually departed from the previous “unit system” (Nathan 1997) through which work or residential units controlled all functions of Chinese residents’ lives (Walder 1986; Bian 1994; Zhou 2004). China’s grassroots governance ­today has a high degree of heterogeneity in the classification of urban groups with vari­ous socioeconomic statuses, new experiences of social life that did not exist in Mao’s or Deng’s era, and dif­fer­ent governance trajectories according to the practical needs of local situations. Along with the diversification of the urban population, two new urban classes—­middle-­class homeowners and landless farmers—­are making increasing demands that their collective interests be met; t­hese demands are being expressed largely at the neighborhood level. I suggest that social stratification and mobility primarily shape their collective interests and demands, which become key governance issues and priorities in the neighborhoods. Th ­ ese social pro­cesses also have introduced new actors to urban neighborhood po­liti­cal life, such as property management companies in middle-­class neighborhoods and village collectives in newly urbanized neighborhoods. With a greater variety than the previous work-­unit residential compounds, urban neighborhoods since the late 1990s have transformed from state-­led po­liti­cal campaign grounds to arenas where the state, market, and residents constantly interact with each other regarding community affairs that are closely associated with the specific living environment of the residential communities. This chapter explores the socioeconomic and po­liti­cal f­ actors that shape governance strategies and responses at the grassroots level. It shows that urban neighborhood governance is characterized by diversification, as reflected in varied groups of residents, dif­fer­ent structures of neighborhood governance, and new issues dominating neighborhood affairs. Accordingly, varied governance mechanisms are needed to address ­t hose new issues. The next section focuses on the plurality of social and po­liti­cal life in Chinese cities, which are the key socioeconomic and po­liti­cal context of hybrid authoritarianism. I next identify four key areas of neighborhood governance issues and priorities that shape the rationale and practical needs for hybrid authoritarianism. Chapters 2 through 4 then analyze the structural and operational strategies a­ dopted to address and

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

25

respond to ­those issues, which constitute the key mechanisms of hybrid authoritarianism. Chapter  5 examines in what ways and to what extent society responds to and interacts with the party-­state by dealing with ­these neighborhood governance issues within the framework of hybrid authoritarianism.

The Rise of Urban Middle-­C lass Neighborhoods The continuing growth of the Chinese ­middle class has been predicted and forecasted by scholars inside and outside China. The Chinese Acad­emy of Social Sciences calculated that the m ­ iddle class accounted for 15–23 ­percent of the population in the early 2000s (Lu 2002, 2010). By 2010, the size of the ­middle class in China was projected to reach 30 ­percent of the population (Zhou 2005, 1), and it is forecasted that the Chinese ­middle class ­w ill constitute the majority of the population—­more than 70 ­percent of the population by 2030 (Kha­ras and Gertz 2010, 43). During the 1980s and the 1990s, China’s nationwide housing reforms began to transform the nature of urban housing from a public good provided through socialist work units to a commodity. As the pace of housing commercialization and privatization accelerated in the 2000s, the f­ ree housing market replaced work units as the largest housing provider in Chinese cities. Official statistics show that around 40 ­percent of urban homeowners acquired their housing as a result of commercialization and privatization during the 1980s and 1990s, and 38 ­percent purchased from the housing market (NBS 2011c). Since then, Chinese urban society has gone through a pro­cess of “spatialization of class” (Zhang 2010), through which urban residents have been sorted into dif­fer­ent neighborhoods according to affordability and urban neighborhoods have become diverse. In par­t ic­u ­lar, newly emerged urban middle-­class gated communities accommodate public servants, professionals and private business ­owners (Tomba 2004; Tang 2013). One distinct feature of Chinese homeownership is modern gated communities—­which in western socie­ties are usually exclusive to well-­to-do residents—­have become a major form and most popu­lar choice of urban middle-­class homebuyers. They offer a status symbol of “middle-­ class paradise” characterized by private space and exclusion based on the affluence of the residents. In addition to their spatial and social exclusiveness, middle-­class neighborhoods usually accommodate a large number of residents—­ ranging from two or three thousand to more than ten thousand residents in one residential compound—­who are not from the same work units. The gated residency separates neighborhood life from work-­unit life, which previously had

26 CHAPTER 1

been largely overlapping before the housing reforms. The physical and psychological segregation between middle-­class residential compounds and work units, to a certain extent, has weakened the state’s penetration into citizens’ private life. In addition to residents of urban middle-­class neighborhoods enjoying increasing personal privacy and autonomy, another key feature of middle-­class neighborhoods is that they have introduced professional ser­vices to manage community facilities provided by property management companies. In middle-­class neighborhoods ­today, property management has become the norm. Property management companies have replaced work units to provide paid ser­vices to perform communal functions in relation to security, cleaning, general ­house­keeping. and maintenance of the buildings and common areas in the residential complex. According to the National Estate Management Industrial Development Report for 2018, the number of estate management companies reached 118,000 across the country, with more than nine million employees. Guangdong and Jiangsu had the largest number of estate management companies (Ding 2018). Typically, once a housing compound is complete, its developers and builders hire the property management com­pany, with the expectation that it ­w ill operate freely without competitors. Such companies then are well positioned to reap extra profits from management fees and are often accused by the residents of corruption. Chinese media reported that in 90 ­percent of real estate proj­ects the property management companies ­were using common facilities to make extra profits (BEEJ 2006). Conflicts arise when residents are dissatisfied with poor maintenance of housing-­estate facilities, excessively high management fees, and poor quality of ser­vices. Middle-­class homeowners worry that incompetent management ­w ill devalue their ­houses and lower the status of their neighborhood. In response, in middle-­class gated communities, resident-­representative organ­ izations have emerged in the form of homeowner associations, which ­were absent in ­earlier urban residential communities. Homeowner associations are rooted in residents’ collective interest in maintaining their privileged lifestyle and status associated with living in a gated community; they are self-­organized groups through which middle-­class homeowners collectively seek protection of their real estate property rights. They are staffed by volunteers elected by homeowners and often or­ga­nize small-­scale collective actions within their neighborhood (Read 2003, 2007; Tomba 2005; Rocca 2013; Yip 2014). In some cases, collective platforms and alliances across dif­fer­ent neighborhoods have emerged through which homeowner associations support each other, share their collective resources, and form citywide co­ali­tions (Yip and Jiang 2011; Wang et al. 2013). In recent years, the demands of homeowner associations have gradually shifted in focus from the economic to the po­liti­cal (Wang et al. 2013). Although much homeowner activism was initially driven by self-­interest, engagement in homeowner activism has been

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

27

found to awaken rights-­consciousness and foster a sense of citizenship identity among middle-­class homeowners (Xia and Guan 2014). State policies give homeowner associations the right to fire the management com­pany and select another one to take care of maintenance and other functions in the housing complex. At the same time, they also require homeowner associations to be formed “­u nder the direction of the housing administrative agencies” and to be approved by state authorities (the city district-­level government) on a case-­by-­case basis. The “Regulations on Property Management” issued by the State Council in 2003 provide operational guidelines, specify responsibilities for homeowner associations, and place them ­under the supervision and monitoring of Residents’ Committees. Despite the state regulations, some homeowner associations manage to be more empowered and demo­cratically run than o ­ thers. Studies found that about half of homeowner associations have ­adopted bottom-up governance structures, which are not specified in the regulations (Wang, Yin, and Zhou 2012). In most of the cases observed during my fieldwork, residents formed homeowner associations without registering them with the local government, despite the state requirements. This is partly due to residents’ re­sis­tance to state interference in their neighborhood life and partly ­because the pro­cess of electing members for homeowner associations varies across dif­fer­ent communities. As a new neighborhood governance mechanism, homeowner associations have growing pains, and their elections and operations have generated some controversy. Some homeowner associations are merely fronts for the property management companies and development companies. ­Others are dominated by a small group of residents or are sabotaged by property management companies (Read 2007; Wang et al. 2013; Tang 2018). In addition, Residents’ Committees have manipulated the formation and operation of some associations. Homeowner associations that rely on the Residents’ Committee’s network in the neighborhoods to reach most of the residents sometimes risk their autonomy by involving t­ hose committees in their activities. Although they are labeled as the residents’ “self-­governance” organ­ization, most homeowner associations have shown more accommodation than in­de­pen­dence in their interactions with Residents’ Committees.

“Self-­G overnance” in Urban Middle-­C lass Neighborhoods The rise of urban middle-­class neighborhoods to a large extent has gone hand in hand with what Heberer and Göbel (2011) call “the retreat of the state,” illustrated by the following three trends: separation of the residents’ work life and

28 CHAPTER 1

social welfare from their residence, the emergence of professional property management, and the establishment of self-­elected homeowner associations. ­Those new governance mechanisms in middle-­class neighborhoods result in changing governance demands and dynamics in urban residential communities. The spatial segregation of gated communities and the desire of middle-­class residents for privacy and social exclusion are barriers to the state’s penetration into residents’ private lives. According to my fieldwork, in many cities Residents’ Committees, serving as the agent of the state, are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain frequent contact with residents. This is particularly true for middle-­class residents, who perceive the Residents’ Committee’s administrative duties and its community ser­vice role as a social welfare provider as very distant from their needs. Some also see the committee as violating their privacy. Staff of Residents’ Committees in the past few years report that most middle-­class residents are not willing to provide personal information and are irritated by their home visits to collect such information; wealthy residents, in par­tic­u­lar, showed no re­spect to the staff, even refusing to open the door to them. The high level of security provided by management companies in gated communities also makes it difficult for Residents’ Committee staff to approach residents. The lack of frequent contact with residents and the resulting lack of awareness of their situations make it difficult for Residents’ Committees in middle-­class neighborhoods to complete their duties. Moreover, Residents’ Committees also experienced unpre­ce­dented challenges and disagreements from the residents regarding how to deal with community affairs. In contrast to previous situations when the Residents’ Committee staff always informed the residents what the current policies ­were and what the residents ­were required to do ­under t­ hose policies, ­today in middle-­class communities Residents’ Committee are feeling pressure from the better-­off well-­educated residents. Middle-­class residents are more likely to challenge the Residents’ Committee’s implementation of government policies; they tend to question why the Residents’ Committees need to take par­tic­u ­lar actions, and why something is done one way but not the other, and to criticize the staff for not complying with policies. Residents’ Committee staff said in interviews that residents’ conviction that they themselves are “high-­quality” citizens makes the staff’s work more difficult: “They all know the policies and they are all good at expressing their own opinions. And they always give us lectures on what we do wrong. It was much easier to manage them when they ­didn’t know any policies.”1 Although the party-­state has endorsed and encouraged property ­owners to form interest groups in the neighborhoods, and “self-­governance” campaigns foster the participation of residents in governance ­matters regarding community affairs, studies suggest that Residents’ Committees tend to intervene in and manipulate conflicts between homeowners and property management companies, to the detri-

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

29

ment of homeowners’ best interests. In fact, monitoring, preventing, and controlling homeowner activism are key criteria for per­for­mance evaluations of Residents’ Committee staff in middle-­class neighborhoods, which are now the frontlines of “stability maintenance” in Chinese cities. At the grassroots level, stability maintenance work seeks a balance between the top-­down approach and bottom-up spontaneous local strategies. This balance to a large extent is negotiated at an intermediary governance space that is elaborated in chapter 2. Concerns for local stability and pos­si­ble declining social control at the local level have led to a series of party-­state responses to address ­those governance issues and challenges. As chapter 2 explains in detail, the responses mainly include new strategies to increase contact between Residents’ Committees and the residents, to establish and maintain the party-­state’s leadership in property management and homeowner associations, and to monitor and report collective incidents in neighborhoods.

The “Village-­t o- ­C ommunity” Transformation and Remaining Village Collectives The rise of urban middle-­class neighborhoods is not the only local governance challenge faced by Chinese cities in the past two de­cades. Since the 2000s, the expropriation of rural land has introduced a large group of landless farmers to urban society. In most places, local governments used the promise of urban ­house­hold registration status and its accompanying privileges as a power­ful bargaining tool when urging villa­gers to accept land expropriation deals. Indeed, most of the time, land expropriation went hand in hand with the transfer of villa­ gers’ ­house­hold registration status from rural to urban. This so-­called village-­ to-­community transition was carried out as a top-­down administrative task that sometimes literally took place overnight. One villa­ger told me, “I went to bed as a farmer. But I woke up with an urban hukou. I was two dif­fer­ent types of p ­ eople before and ­after 12 o ­ ’clock that night!”2 Their new urban h ­ ouse­hold registration, in princi­ple, enables the villa­gers to access the urban employment and welfare system and come u ­ nder the urban administration and governance domain. This shift is reflected in the decrease in the number of Village Committees from 629,079 in 2005 to 554,218 in 2017 and the concomitant increase in the number of Residents’ Committees from 79,947 to 106,491 (NBS 2018). In Jinan City, for example, t­ hose who participated in the “village to community” transition made up one-­quarter of the Residents’ Committees in the city (Li 2014). In some cases, however, the expropriation pro­cess only applied to farming land, and villa­gers ­were able to keep their h ­ ouse sites and residence in the village,

30 CHAPTER 1

as occurred in the Pearl River Delta (Hsing 2010; Chung and Unger 2013). ­Because of the territorial autonomy of ­those villages, they ­were called “urban villages.” Hsing (2010, 123) found that urban villages made up more than 20 ­percent of Guangzhou and 60 ­percent of Shenzhen’s planned areas. The city of Shenzhen had 1,877 urban villages in 2017 (Chen 2018). In other regions such as the Yangtze River Delta and the northeast, land expropriation usually took place in a more comprehensive form through acquisitions of both farming land and the villa­gers’ ­house sites. The villa­gers ­were then offered alternative residence arrangements and moved to newly built urban residential compounds—­the “relocation communities”—­comprising multistory apartment buildings, with common areas and property management and maintenance ser­v ices. The provision of relocation housing usually is part of the compensation deal offered to farmers whose ­house sites ­were expropriated. In the first six months of 2018, Suzhou began the pro­cess of relocating ninety-­four villages or rural communities (Suzhou Municipal Government 2018). Both urban villages and relocation communities constitute new forms of urban neighborhoods that are home to landless farmers and are incorporated into the urban governance system. For newly urbanized neighborhoods, it is their switch to the urban administration and governance system and practices that m ­ atters, rather than the change in ­house­hold registration status. This is largely ­because of dif­fer­ent ways in which urbanization has been carried out across the country. In princi­ple, residents in urbanized neighborhoods are u ­ nder an urban administration ­because of their newly granted urban ­house­hold registration, as observed in Guangzhou and Shenyang. In real­ity, the picture is more complicated. For example, in some places in Suzhou, the village-­to-­community transition did not change the villa­gers’ ­house­hold registration status. ­Under this “incomplete” transformation of villages to communities (bu wanquan cun gai ju), residents still maintained their rural ­house­hold registration, but they are now covered by urban forms of social security, such as old-­age insurance and medical insurance. This is largely ­because the decade-­long, ongoing land expropriation pro­cess is not yet complete, and a large proportion of the land and collective assets are still owned by the village collectives. Despite their residents’ rural ­house­hold registration status, ­those neighborhoods all ­adopted urban administration and governance arrangements like other urban residential communities. Therefore, although newly urbanized neighborhoods have more diverse resident population in terms of h ­ ouse­hold registration status, the key features they have in common is that they are displaced, landless farmers and they are now all u ­ nder the urban neighborhood governance system regardless of their ­house­hold registration status. Another distinctive feature of urbanized villages is that the residents’ economic and social life is tightly connected to the remaining village collectives,

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

31

which do not exist in Chinese urban neighborhoods. The village collective economy serves as the backbone of the socioeconomic well-­being of the villa­gers. It is deeply embedded in village governance, which involves extensive responsibilities associated with the management of land rights and control over major production assets. The village collectives, closely associated with local lineages, formally and informally bind together villa­gers’ economic, social, and po­liti­cal interests (Po 2008; Zhou 2012; Chung 2013). They continue to function in t­ hose villages that managed to maintain some degree of autonomy by keeping part of their land ­after being compensated for the expropriated land. This is particularly the case in ­those villages located on the urban fringes in the Pearl River Delta, where land resources w ­ ere centralized when villages w ­ ere incorporated into urban areas (Hsing 2010; Po 2011; Chung and Unger 2013), continue to have functioning village collectives. ­There, village leaders converted the village’s collective landholdings, along with the land expropriation compensation funds given by the district or municipal government, into a de facto village shareholding com­pany, which then offered shares and bonuses to the villa­gers. Th ­ ose shareholding companies serve the functions of economic and po­liti­cal organ­izations, controlling accumulation and distribution systems within the village (Hsing 2010, 123). For example, village UGZ1 in Guangzhou established its shareholding com­ pany and started distributing shares to the villa­gers around 1997. In 2002, the villa­gers ­were able to carry their shares over to their urban ­house­hold registration. In contrast, in Wuhan, the shareholding com­pany of village RWH1 was established to help the original villa­gers retain their substantial collective property and benefits ­after the administrative transition and their relocation in 2005. As a result, its villa­gers became shareholders and urban residents at the same time. Suzhou and Shenyang pre­sent a dif­fer­ent picture. ­Because of Suzhou’s land expropriation policies and compensation arrangements, only a proportion (10–30%) of the compensation fund was distributed to individual villa­gers by 2014. An investment com­pany associated with the local government maintains and manages the rest of the compensation fund and distributes interests and investment profits to villa­gers ­every year, who are all shareholders. It pools and manages resources and organizes investment proj­ects for the entire relocation neighborhood area. In Shenyang, RSY1 village lost almost all its farming land, and the villa­gers ­were relocated to newly built urban residential communities in 2010. Thus, instead of continuing to generate collective income through new investments in properties, the RSY1 village shareholding com­pany was set up mainly to look a­ fter the unallocated compensation funds from land expropriations. This and other similar village collectives then are not directly involved in the operation of development proj­ects but ­handle the annual interest and bonus distribution to the relocated community residents. The former Village Committee members, as

32 CHAPTER 1

the representatives of their village collective economy—­made up of unappropriated land, assets, and property rental income—­serve as a communication channel between relocated villa­gers and the investment com­pany. Across dif­fer­ ent localities, most village collectives that remain ­ a fter ­u rbanization—in the form of village collective corporations or shareholding companies—­invest in property on behalf of the villa­gers and rent out portions of collective land and buildings to the local city government and investors for industrial proj­ects. In this scenario, although the residents in newly urbanized neighborhoods fall u ­ nder the administration of urban governance, they still have collective benefits through their connections with their village corporation that are exclusive to this type of neighborhood. As a result, t­ hese village collectives have become a new actor in urban neighborhood governance. In urban residential communities, po­liti­cal governance is separated from the residents’ economic activities and focuses on administering local affairs. In urbanized neighborhoods, however, t­ here is no such separation ­because of the presence of both the urban administrative system and the village collectives.

Village Collectives and Governance in Urbanized Neighborhoods The fieldwork for this book uncovered two predominant ways through which village collectives interact with the newly established urban administration in urbanized neighborhoods. One common way is to extend the village governance structure to the urban setting in the guise of village corporations. For instance, in Guangzhou, five former village officials formed the board of the UGZ1 village shareholding com­pany. Two of the other core members of the Village Committee became the director and party secretary of the new Residents’ Committee. The district government hired ten villa­gers to serve as Residents’ Committee staff on two-­year fixed-­term contracts. The village shareholding com­pany operates in parallel to the newly formed UGZ1 Residents’ Committee but only looks a­ fter its shareholders. The Residents’ Committee is in charge of the community’s administrative affairs not only for the villa­gers but also for mi­grant worker residents. Similarly, the former party secretary of RWH1 village in Wuhan became the chair of the board of the RWH1 Development Shareholding Com­pany; he is also the party secretary of the newly established RWH1 Residents’ Committee. Although instituted formally as the city government’s agent, the Residents’ Committee was not given any office space or facilities by the local government. The two shareholding companies(Guangzhou and Wuhan) then provide office space for the new Residents’ Committees.

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

33

Where villages have lost their control of collective income, such as in Suzhou, or have few or no collective assets to generate continuous income, as in Shenyang, the village collectives tend to act as assistants to the local government—­facilitating the management of compensation funds or the remaining collective income, as well as resident management. In Shenyang, the local government allocates compensation funds on a periodic basis to the village collective, rather than to individual villa­gers. The collective then passes most of the funds on to the village ­house­holds. Villa­gers call this system a “transitional organ­ization,” which w ­ ill dis­ appear when the last mu of their land is expropriated and the entire compensation fund has been paid out to them. Village collectives in Suzhou have similarly become an extension of the newly established urban administration and facilitate the district government in distributing interest and unallocated compensation funds to the villa­gers. Thus, village collectives have not dis­appeared with urbanization. Instead in many cases they have evolved into an active player in Chinese urban society. They continue to exert impact on the everyday life of the former villa­gers, including the everyday politics of their new neighborhoods. As in urban middle-­class neighborhoods, Residents’ Committees also faced low level public awareness and recognition in the newly urbanized neighborhoods. On the one hand, the newly established Residents’ Committees are an unfamiliar concept to the residents that they are unlikely to recognize or accept. On the other hand, residents retain strong attachments to their village collectives and their former village governance institutions. For the residents of urbanized neighborhoods, the urban administrative system and their identity of being an urban citizen have been contested through their everyday life in relocation communities. Interviews with the residents suggest that residents are more likely to recognize their urban citizen status due to their urban residence and social security entitlements, even when their h ­ ouse­hold registration status remains rural. Yet, they still show strong attachment to their village collectives due to the continuing existence of village collective income generated through remaining land and collective assets. For them, their village collectives continue to be the governing body in their community life. In addition to their changing economic activities, residents in newly urbanized neighborhoods find themselves experiencing changes of lifestyles and dif­fer­ent patterns of social interactions in the community. They now deal with new groups and organ­izations in their neighborhoods, such as Residents’ Committees and property management companies, as well as residents from other villages or mi­grant residents. In my interviews with local officials, Residents’ Committee staff, and former Village Committee members, one frequently expressed theme was that the change of ­house­hold registration or moving into residential communities alone does not make the landless farmers “urban citizens”: it is necessary is to change villa­gers’

34 CHAPTER 1

“mindset” and “be­hav­iors” to fit the official portrait of “urban citizens” (shimin). The official term for the integration of residents in urbanized neighborhoods into Chinese urban society is “citizenization” (shiminhua). The state-­sponsored discourse of citizenization, of “the agricultural population u ­ nder transformation (nongye zhuanyi renkou)” (State Council 2016), is targeted at landless farmers and rural-­to-­urban mi­grant workers: it calls for increased integration of ­those groups into urban life in terms of social welfare, economic activities, public ser­vices (particularly schools), urban administration, and their relationships with remaining village collective property. In the past few years, local governments have installed vari­ous governance programs to facilitate the social and po­liti­cal production of the new urban citizens. Yet, research studies on urbanization in China have paid insufficient attention to this group of new urban residents. With China’s urbanization reaching 63.89 ­percent by 2020, it is both timely and necessary to explore the influences of urbanization of the Chinese countryside on Chinese urban society, which has experienced social and po­liti­cal changes b ­ ecause of the influx of former agricultural population.

Transformation of Residents’ Committees Along with the diversification of neighborhood governance in Chinese cities has come the transformation of Chinese neighborhood organ­izations, especially Residents’ Committees. As previous studies have revealed, Chinese neighborhood organ­izations are varied in their po­liti­cal orientation, ranging from Leninist mass organ­ization to in­de­pen­dent civil groups (Read 2012): they are structurally positioned “in between” official institutional settings and civil society (Audin 2015) and engage in some governance activities (Tomba 2014). U ­ ntil the early 1990s, neighborhood governance was an extension of the governance tasks of work units that provided housing for their employees. Work units took care of maintenance of the residential complexes, or­ga­nized community activities, mediated conflicts between the residents, and monitored neighborhood security, as well as residents’ social and po­liti­cal activities. Work-­u nit residential compounds also became a key site of po­liti­cal campaigns in which work units disseminated state propaganda and mobilized residents. For urban residents, ­there was no clear division between the workplace and their private space b ­ ecause their work units oversaw governance at both places. As a result, Residents’ Committees played a highly marginalized role before the early 1990s. Their work was carried out primarily by female el­derly volunteers who ­were not elected. Th ­ ese volunteers peered into the private lives of residents for

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

35

breaches of birth control regulations, violations of residency laws, illegal cohabitation of unmarried ­couples, and other issues of public security (Heberer and Göbel 2011, 3). ­Because they lacked the resources and po­liti­cal authority that work units enjoyed, Residents’ Committees for most of the time w ­ ere functioning only as surveillance cameras in the neighborhoods. As Heberer and Göbel (2011, 3) noted, “Although they functioned as the extension of China’s public security system, they did not have any po­liti­cal powers and did not enjoy much social prestige, generally.” The interviewees for this study summarized their impressions of Residents’ Committee staff at the time as “old ladies who liked to get into ­others’ business.” As an essential component of the “community construction” scheme that began in the late 1990s, Residents’ Committees went through a dramatic restructuring pro­cess of their tasks, type of personnel, and recruitment. As suggested by fieldwork for this book and other studies (Bray 2006; Heberer and Göbel 2011; Read 2012; Tomba 2014), the work carried out by Residents’ Committees t­ oday includes, but is not l­ imited to, three main areas. The first is in the social welfare arena: they facilitate the social-­welfare applications of unemployed residents; provide assistance to el­derly, sick, and disabled ­people; manage community sanitation; or­ga­nize educational programs and recreational activities; collect statistical data; and then prepare reports for their supervisory Street Office, the administrative agency of the district government. In addition, Residents’ Committees are also required to strengthen local social stability by monitoring and resolving neighborhood conflicts, as well as reporting to higher-­level government on conflicts that could escalate into larger-­scale collective incidents. In recent years, their ability to perform this function has become a key per­for­mance evaluation criterion for Residents’ Committee staff. The third major arena of action—­which is more commonly observed in newly emerged neighborhoods—is in neighborhood governance: the goal is to promote the primacy of Residents Committees in neighborhood governance among other neighborhood governance actors increasing in influence. This is a direct response to the growing diversity in neighborhood governance and concerns about the weakening of the state’s control in urban neighborhoods. As the following chapters show, vari­ous methods and strategies have been used in middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods to move Residents’ Committees from a management role to a leadership role. As the party-­state’s agent at the urban grassroots, Residents’ Committees have a list of work tasks that constantly grows as new items are added according to changing governance priorities associated with the dramatic socioeconomic transformations that continue unabated. For example, the context and scope of community conflicts have changed from trivial quarrels between residents to increasingly complicated social and po­liti­cal m ­ atters: thus, effective resolution

36 CHAPTER 1

now requires transparency and diplomatic skills. To play a more decisive role in neighborhood governance, Residents’ Committees have younger and more skilled staff compared to the previous resident volunteers. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs (2018a), the number of Residents’ Committee staff nationwide by the end of 2016 was 540,226, of whom 263,024 ­were female and 291,917 ­were CCP members; 16 ­percent had received a university or higher education, 29 ­percent w ­ ere younger than thirty-­five years old, and 41 ­percent w ­ ere between the ages of thirty-­five and forty-­five. In Wuhan and Shenyang, each staff member serves 300–500 h ­ ouse­holds. In Suzhou, the number of Residents’ Committee staff is equivalent to 15 ­percent of the registered resident population. In 2014, Shenyang had more than nine thousand Residents’ Committee staff members, almost all of whom ­were ­u nder the age of forty and had completed tertiary education. Since the restructuring pro­cess, recruitment of Residents’ Committee staff has been carried out through a public hiring pro­cess carried out by the municipal government. ­After passing written exams, shortlisted candidates attend interviews or­ga­nized by the Bureau of Civil Affairs. Successful applicants are then assigned to specific communities of which they may or may not be the residents. Each Residents’ Committee has one party secretary and a director (in most cases the two positions are occupied by the same person), up to two vice directors, and a number of office personnel depending on the neighborhood’s population. Neighborhood party branches are structured in the same way to fulfill their role of organ­izing resident CCP members. Usually ­t here is a big overlap between the personnel of the two organ­izations: in most cases that I observed in the field, the director of a Residents’ Committee is also the party secretary of the neighborhood party branches, and the vice party secretaries are ­either the vice directors or key member of the Residents’ Committee staff. Even though they receive a salary from the government, Residents’ Committee staff are not considered to be public servants or permanent employees of the government. Each staff member normally serves a three-­year contract. The contracts of a party secretary/director and office staff can be renewed for another three years if they receive sufficient support from residents during the Residents’ Committee election. Although local governments claim the elections are competitive, in most cases the nomination of the party secretary/director needs to be approved by the local government, and a candidate with strong support from higher-­level government rarely is challenged. Similarly, even if office staff are elected for a second term, ­whether their positions are extended depends on their work evaluation and the bud­get of the local government. Despite the official discourse that considers Residents’ Committees a self-­governance organ­ization in accordance with the “self-­governance” status of the shequ, their staff whom I interviewed all feel differ-

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance

37

ently. They consider themselves more as government employees: “The government policy says we (Residents’ Committees) are residents self-­ governance organ­ izations. But in real­ity, we are not. We are a dispatched agency of the government. We work for the government, and we do the work assigned by the government.”3 Residents’ Committees ­today have a distinctive position between the residents and the state authorities: on the one hand, they represent the state through their daily administrative duties; on the other hand, they have very ­limited authority or resources to enforce government policy implementations. Unlike local governments, Residents’ Committees do not have control over the local police (although they are in frequent contact with them), nor do they have the power to force residents to comply with their decisions. Instead, Residents’ Committees carry out their day-­to-­day work by building close personal relationships between staff and residents. In most of the cases I observed, Residents’ Committee staff use their personal networks in the community to recruit local volunteers to facilitate their daily work. In line with the findings of other studies (Heberer and Göbel 2011; Read 2012; Tomba 2014), my field research suggests that Chinese urban residents in general do not fear their Residents’ Committee. Interviews with residents and Residents’ Committee staff indicate that the fact that its staff members are almost all female makes the Residents’ Committee seem less threatening. When staff go to individual ­house­holds to collect information, residents are more willing to open their doors and respond to female staff than to male staff, especially in the eve­nings. The fact that Residents’ Committees in general enjoy substantial public support, despite their po­liti­cal surveillance function, is critical in enabling Residents’ Committees to move from a marginalized position to the center stage of neighborhood governance. As chapter 3 shows, residents most often prefer to turn to Residents’ Committees to mediate conflicts b ­ ecause of their semi-­official status. In this scenario, Residents’ Committees serve as an intermediary actor between the residents and the government in neighborhood governance, which connects the horizontal and vertical governance space. Vertically, the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of neighborhood governance and transformation of Residents’ Committees have extended the reach of the party-­state to the urban grassroots, by increasing what Heberer and Göbel (2011) call “the infrastructural power” of the party-­state at ­urban neighborhood level. Horizontally, ­t here is a relatively more autonomous ­governance space in urban neighborhoods t­ oday than the previous work-­unit ­residential compounds. Working with growing neighborhoods with plural governance demands, Residents’ Committees face the need to adopt new strategies to maintain social control in urban neighborhoods while exercising a ­limited degree of autonomy. Heberer and Göbel’s (2011) enlightening study suggested that the increased “infrastructural power” of the party-­state was mainly targeted at urban

38 CHAPTER 1

underclass neighborhoods and is an alternative to the work units that had carried out “paternalistic governance.” This book expands that research scope to urban middle-­class neighborhoods and newly emerged urbanized neighborhoods by demonstrating the strengthening power of the party-­state in t­ hose neighborhoods with local flexibilities. ­Those new mechanisms of neighborhood governance constitute the key dynamics of hybrid authoritarianism, as well as contributing to a new era of grassroots governance in urban China.

New Governance Issues and Priorities The diversification of urban life has led to an increasing number of social conflicts at the neighborhood level. According to national statistics, in both 2016 and 2017, conflicts in neighborhoods comprised one-­quarter of total civil disputes. Around 8.8 million cases of civil dispute across the country ­were recorded in 2017, of which 2.2 million cases took place in neighborhoods (NBS 2018). The other major conflicts reported w ­ ere marriage and ­family issues (1.6 million cases), damage and compensation issues (700,000 cases), and housing property issues (500,000 cases), which all have close ties to neighborhood life. As discussed e­ arlier, both urban middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods have encountered governance challenges caused by the weakening of the party-­state’s penetration. In middle-­class neighborhoods, residents feel that the Residents’ Committees’ work does not address their needs, and they also question and challenge their authority. In urbanized neighborhoods, residents are more attached to their village collectives than the Residents’ Committees, which appear to be a new concept to them. In addition, the two types of neighborhoods both have encountered pluralization of governance demands, which is new for neighborhood governance in Chinese cities. The party-­state needs to put in place new neighborhood governance strategies and mechanisms in response to ­these features of urban neighborhoods, which are closely associated with residents’ specific living environment, socioeconomic status, and residential history. The focus of interactions between the party-­state and society has shifted from workplace-­centered to neighborhood-­centered and is characterized by diverse interest groups and neighborhood governance issues. My years of fieldwork have enabled me to categorize major neighborhood governance issues into four types: (1) disputes regarding property management in the neighborhood, (2) conflicts associated with the use and distribution of public/ collective funds, (3) disagreements with local government’s policies that affect the neighborhood, and (4) increasing demands for the provision of neighborhood ser­ vices. ­Those issues are particularly common in middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods. Rather than examining government response to one

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governance issue, this book explores general, systemic governance mechanisms: their content, structure, design, practices, strategies, and interactions ­adopted to strategically deal with ­those issues as a ­whole. Identification of major governance issues in urban neighborhoods helps explain the socioeconomic context and po­ liti­cal rationales for hybrid authoritarianism stemming from changes in urban life in China.

Disputes regarding Property Management in the Neighborhood Two of the most common governance issues in urban residential communities ­today are quarrels and disputes regarding their living environment between residents or between the residents and property management companies. ­These highlight differences in property management styles and the dynamics of neighbor interactions. In both middle-­class and newly urbanized neighborhoods, especially relocation neighborhoods, complaints about noise levels, community hygiene, and occupation and use of common spaces arise most often. The Property Rights Law enacted in 2007 formally endorses collective property rights, including collective owner­ship of common areas in a neighborhood, and offers strong ­legal support for homeowners who seek to litigate against the infringement of their property rights. But ­t here is a lack of evidence for its effectiveness in dealing with property rights-­related disputes. Chinese middle-­class homeowners to a large extent are still facing inadequate ­legal, institutional, and cultural protections for their private property. For example, in middle-­class community MSZ1, 10 ­percent of its residents are pet ­owners—an indicator of a middle-­class lifestyle in t­ oday’s China. A pet store rented one of the property management offices and operated in the compound, including providing temporary shelters for pets when their o ­ wners w ­ ere away. For pet owner residents, the pet store provided a con­ve­nient way to look a­ fter their pets. However, another group of residents complained about the noise and hygiene issues created by the pet store. They also feared the potential risk that the dogs would attack the c­ hildren in the community when they w ­ ere walked ­every day by pet store staff. In response to ­t hese residents’ request that the pet store move, the pet store o ­ wners argued that they held a valid contract with the property management com­pany. The property management com­pany insisted on discussing the issue with residents on the grounds that the lease terms had to be recognized. A group of residents visited the pet store multiple times, but ­these visits usually degenerated into verbal insults and confrontation. In the end, the residents and the property management com­pany asked the Residents’ Committee to step in and mediate the situation.

40 CHAPTER 1

In relocation community RWH2, the residents experienced a difficult transition to urban life when they ­were relocated from their traditional village ­houses into a modern urban gated community made up of twenty-­seven-­story buildings. At the time of relocation, the villa­gers’ original ­house sites w ­ ere expropriated, but their farmlands remained intact and w ­ ere scheduled to be expropriated at a l­ ater time. Therefore, some villa­gers ­were continuing to farm their land even ­after they moved into their new apartments. However, they had no place to put their livestock and farm tools, which used to be stored at their housing sites. Some villa­gers then started bringing their cows and all sorts of farm tools to their new residential community, b ­ ecause they ­were worried that they might be stolen if left outside the community. The presence of livestock and farming tools caused both internal and external conflicts. Within the community, farming tools ­were stored in communal spaces within the neighborhood, such as corridors in the buildings and small public parks. Some residents complained about the thoughtless and selfish be­hav­ior of t­ hose who had occupied the communal space. Other villa­gers ­were strongly against turning their urban community into a farm shelter ­because of their concerns about community sanitation. On the other side, the new urban lifestyles promoted by the local government encountered re­sis­tance from villa­gers ­because they ­were no supplementary policies and programs to meet their practical needs. The villa­gers complained to the local ­media that the local government bullied them by making them relocate while not providing space for them to store their belongings.

Conflicts about the Use and Distribution of Public/Collective Funds In contrast to disputes regarding specific living environments, conflicts about the use and allocation of public funds are new to Chinese urban neighborhoods. Across the country, homeowner activism has become a key governance issue in urban middle-­class neighborhoods: disputes frequently occur between property management companies and the residents represented by their self-­elected homeowner associations. The crux of ­t hese disputes is often the use of the so-­called Public Repair Fund. In princi­ple, the Public Repair Fund is to be used for restoration and maintenance of the common facilities in the residential compound, and expenditures need to be approved by the homeowner association. However, in most cases, homeowner associations argue that the property management com­pany should pay for the repairs and take the lead in carry­ing out the work. For their part, property management companies often refuse to do that and expect the homeowner association to take on the repair responsibilities. Thus, residents feel their property rights and collective interests are v­ iolated by the

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41

greedy and irresponsible property management com­pany, and collective discontent among the residents tends to spread quickly. For instance, in community MSY2, the residents requested to use the Public Repair Fund to fix the elevators in two buildings and leaking walls in five buildings. But the property management com­pany argued that the prob­lems only occurred in a small proportion of the neighborhood buildings, and thus the Public Repair Fund should not be tapped ­because it is supposed to be used for common prob­lems identified in the community. The residents w ­ ere infuriated by the suggestion that residents of the affected buildings should bear the repair costs. They started organ­izing collective actions such as petitions, protests, and even violent confrontations. Protests, petitions, and even lawsuits are frequently used strategies in urbanized neighborhoods nationwide, particularly by villa­gers who feel they ­were unfairly treated during the (re)distribution of collective wealth. Indeed, one of the major internal conflicts observed in the field is disputes waged by “returned villa­gers”: t­ hose who transferred their rural ­house­hold registration from rural to urban before the shareholding cooperative system was established in the village and who then returned to their village to claim a rural status for financial gain. This conflict occurred in relocation community RWH2 in Wuhan and in urban village UGZ2  in Guangzhou. In the 1980s when obtaining urban ­house­hold registration was still a dream for the majority of rural residents, some villa­gers managed to transfer their rural h ­ ouse­hold registration to an urban ­house­hold registration through their personal networks or under-­the-­table purchases (about 6,000–10,000 Yuan per hukou). L ­ ater when land expropriation was underway and the village collective economy started to develop, they returned to their village with their urban h ­ ouse­hold registration and identified themselves as part of the collective owner­ship of the village collective property. However, the villa­gers who had stayed usually did not recognize the “returned villa­gers” as members of the village, and they refused to include them in the distribution of any collective income. Other studies have documented a similar situation for t­ hose w ­ omen who married out of the village and then came back to claim their collective benefits in their natal villages (He 2014b).

Disagreement with Local Policies Affecting the Neighborhood The governance autonomy observed at the neighborhood level usually does not travel beyond the neighborhood territory. Yet neighborhood life, to some extent, does take place beyond the physical bound­aries of the residential communities, especially when it comes to local policies affecting the collective interests of the residents. In middle-­class neighborhoods, one major issue is the location

42 CHAPTER 1

of environmental unfriendly proj­ects. This concern is part of growing environmental activism that is expressed online (­Sullivan and Xie 2009), locally (Deng and Yang 2013), nationally, and transnationally (Chen 2010), especially regarding ­water and air pollution. For instance, in several recent cases, a PX (P-­Xylene) proj­ ect that was planned to be located in a neighborhood caused panic, rumors, and collective re­sis­tance from the middle-­class residents. In addition to the potential health h ­ azards, residents I interviewed worried about the negative impact on real estate values. Often the spread of rumors was not remedied by adequate communication or the provision of accurate information by the local government. Between 2006 and 2014, re­sis­tance from residents in Xiamen, Dalian, Ningbo, Kunming, Jiujiang, and Maoming led to cancellation or delay of a PX proj­ect. Urbanized neighborhoods also face prob­lems that need long-­term government policy adjustment. For instance, at the time when UGZ3 village’s collective economy was just starting to develop beyond agricultural use, the zoning policy at the time only allowed land classified as industrial land to be used for industrial activities. To attract investment into the local economy, the local government issued regulations to rezone certain portions of agricultural land as industrial land, yet the initial paperwork was incomplete. Despite that, the Village Committee built temporary factory workshops on ­t hose lands. In recent years, the local government has wanted to rezone ­those lands as agricultural land to attract more villa­gers to come back to farming. However, this policy initiative has received strong re­sis­tance from the village cooperatives and the villa­gers. For them, changing the land back for agriculture means the loss of the current properties on ­those lands and, in turn, the loss of collective income. They also worry that ­these lands, even if rezoned for agricultural use, are no longer suitable for farming ­because of the industrial pollution: rezoning the land, in the villa­gers’ and villa­ger cooperative’s view, would be simply a waste of land resources.

Increasing Demands for the Provision of Neighborhood Ser­vices In addition to conflict resolution, another priority of neighborhood governance is public ser­vice provision a­ fter the retreat of the work units from providing welfare ser­vices to urban residents. T ­ oday, neighborhood public ser­vices not only include ser­vices that used to be provided by the work units, such as maintenance and repair of neighborhood facilities, but also alternative arrangements to replace the previous employer-­based care for retired urban residents. In almost all cases that I observed, the neighborhood life of the urban el­derly, regardless of w ­ hether they stayed put or moved a distance away from their workplace, is no longer overseen by their work unit but instead has been entirely separated from the workplace.

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This is at a time when the el­derly comprise an increasing proportion of the urban population: 16 ­percent by the end of 2017 (NBS 2018). For example, in Wujiang District in Suzhou, in its traditional town center, one-­quarter of the population is older than sixty years old, and nearly 4 ­percent of the total population is older than eighty. The country’s socioeconomic and demographic circumstances put new neighborhood ser­vices for the el­derly in g­ reat demand. In urbanized neighborhoods, who, and how, to provide collective welfare to the landless farmers is a major governance issue. In many cases, their transfer to urban administration has not brought ­t hese former farmers the social welfare and public ser­vices provided to urban residents. They also have encountered prob­lems with property management ser­v ices, which is a new concept to them. As a result, how to provide urban residents with public ser­v ices that used to be provided by the work units has become a practical and urgent governance issue. Although the government has attempted to establish a new ser­vice provision system, the reluctance of the central government to dramatically increase funding means that authorities have turned to encouraging local support for neighborhood ser­v ice provision. During this pro­cess, neighborhood governance in urban China has a­ dopted a series of practices to respond to the growing demands for public ser­vice provision caused by withdrawal of the work units, as discussed in detail in chapter 4.

Diversification and Responsiveness of Urban Neighborhood Politics This chapter outlines the socioeconomic and institutional context of hybrid authoritarianism u ­ nder a socialist market economy by examining neighborhood governance issues arising during pro­cesses of marketization and urbanization. Since the founding of the PRC, two predominant institutions have governed Chinese urban socie­ties: the h ­ ouse­hold registration system and the work-­unit system. Market development and urbanization of Chinese countryside have weakened the governing power of both institutions. Marketization has transformed the work-­units’ functions from welfare provision and social control to increasing productivity and profit. The top-­down pro­cess of urbanization caused by rural land expropriation has further blurred the long-­standing bound­aries between Chinese countryside and cities by granting urban ­house­hold registrations to rural residents and relocating villa­gers to the cities. The changing landscape of neighborhood governance since the 1990s is dotted by new urban residential complexes, one result of rapid marketization and urbanization. The Chinese urban population has changed from being largely

44 CHAPTER 1

public sector employees to comprising diverse socioeconomic groups, including the newly emerged urban m ­ iddle classes who are private property o ­ wners and former peasants who lost their farmland during urbanization. New urban residential complexes have redefined bound­aries of urban neighborhoods, which are largely marked ­today by residents’ socioeconomic status rather than their work-­ unit affiliation. In addition, the new urban neighborhoods accommodate more residential complexes, which generates multiple demands from the residents and multiple governance tasks. Although Residents’ Committees have experienced transformation, they are no longer the sole players in urban neighborhood governance. The emergence of urban middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods has resulted in new actors and participants at the urban grassroots. In middle-­class neighborhoods, property management-­related issues are key governance ­matters. In urbanized neighborhoods, residents’ neighborhood life is still closely attached to their collective assets and economic activities. The diversification of local communities and the need to be responsive to ­these changes are practical governance issues related to the living environment and the trajectories of the formation of ­t hose new neighborhoods. This chapter has identified four types of major conflicts in neighborhood life to reveal both opportunities and challenges for hybrid authoritarianism that focus on practical governance issues. Th ­ ese issues have usually led to collective petitioning, protests, and lawsuits and constitute governance priorities in urban neighborhoods. To avoid further social unrest in the neighborhood, local Street Offices call on Residents’ Committees to step in and find effective solutions for the disputes; their primary governance concern is to gain public support and maintain social stability in the neighborhoods. As chapters 2 through 4 demonstrate, vari­ous governance structures, conflict-­resolution strategies, and neighborhood ser­v ice provision arrangements have been introduced to middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods to maintain social order and reinforce the CCP’s control and legitimacy at the grassroots level.

2 INTERMEDIARY GOVERNANCE SPACE

The growing diversification of neighborhood life and grassroots governance during marketization and urbanization requires that the party-­state respond in practical ways to secure public support at local level. Although Chinese urban life and neighborhood politics have changed as part of the country’s economic, social, spatial, and administrative transformation, neighborhoods in urban China have continuously served essential governance functions in terms of population management and social control. With an increasingly diversified population comes the need for more varied governmental interventions and more flexible governmental practices at the neighborhood level (Tomba 2008; Heberer and Göbel 2011). For example, residential segregation has been employed as a governance strategy that perceives dif­fer­ent social groups as distinct governance targets associated with par­tic­u­lar governance practices (Tomba 2014, 16). Other responses include not only the adoption of new mechanisms dealing with new governance actors in the neighborhoods, such as market actors, but also changes and adaptation of existing governance actors such as Residents’ Committees, which have been part of Chinese neighborhood politics since the 1950s. Situated in the economic and social context elaborated in chapter 1, this chapter explains in what ways and to what extent adaptive governance structures have been introduced to middle-­class and urbanized neighborhoods as the party-­ state’s major institutional response. ­These governance structures—­w ith their mix of designs, actors, and practices—­are directly responding to new and varied governance needs and priorities. They include both traditional neighborhood

45

46 CHAPTER 2

organ­izations and new grassroots organ­izations that have emerged in ­t hose neighborhoods. They embrace a mixture of both state actors and non-­state actors, include governance characteristics of both urban and rural socie­ties, and have features of both the socialist state and the market economy. ­Those hybrid neighborhood governance structures, as this chapter shows, serve as a key venue—an intermediary governance space—­where the responsiveness of the party-­state is institutionalized, practiced, and negotiated at the urban grassroots. Lee and Zhang’s study (2013) clearly pointed out that this kind of venue provides the space for local authorities to develop and practice tactics for “buying order” or social stability. Identification of the intermediary governance space complicates the ste­reo­typical understanding of the Chinese party-­state as an authoritarian regime characterized by rigidity and total uniformity. Instead, it recognizes the diversity and flexibility of the state at the local level and emphasizes a series of dialectical relationships between the state, market, and society. The intermediary governance space is a critical site for po­liti­cal exchanges at the Chinese urban grassroots: it is the grassroots-­level response to the national call for “social management innovation” that aims at achieving social stability and securing the CCP’s leadership through improving governance efficiency, coordination, and capacity. In June 2004, the Report of The Fourth Plenum of the 16th Party Congress called for “strengthening social construction and management, advancing social management system innovation.” Since then, the establishment of a new social management system has become a governance priority at dif­fer­ent levels. For example, in 2007, the Report of the 17th Party Congress called for developing a functional social management system. In 2009, the National Po­liti­cal and L ­ egal Work Tele­vi­sion and Telephone Meeting identified social management innovation as a key working task. To implement new national policy initiatives or government programs, it is common practice first for the district or Street Office to select a few “experimental sites” to run pi­lot proj­ects and collect feedback at the grassroots level, before introducing the policies or programs to the rest of the country. Thus, neighborhoods serve as the contested ground for the party-­state to implement and adjust the “innovative” practices. Across dif­fer­ent types of neighborhoods, social management innovations have been characterized by flexibility in their governance structure, dynamics, and strategies. As field research demonstrates, middle-­class neighborhoods have widely a­ dopted the grid governance (wanggehua zhili) scheme, whereas in urbanized neighborhoods ­t here is a combination of rural and urban governance features. The role of the intermediary governance space in Chinese po­liti­cal life echoes what communitarianists in the West see as the “third space [community]” be-



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47

tween state, the market, and the individual (Rose 1999, 167–168). According to communitarianism, many government functions of government, such as the provision of social ser­v ices and the maintenance of social stability, can be much better provided by the community. In addition, self-­governance enables community members to transform themselves from passive subjects into self-­ empowered and responsible citizens. Communitarian scholars argue that this third space, while being both the object and the target for the exercise of po­liti­ cal power, needs to remain autonomous, in­de­pen­dent, and counterbalanced. Given the CCP’s mono­poly of po­liti­cal power and the top-­down characteristics of “community building,” some scholars consider shequ in China to be a kind of “authoritarian communitarianism” (Heberer and Göbel 2011, 8). While not denying that the party-­state’s control and leadership are associated with the authoritarian communitarianism thesis—­and acknowledging that the intermediary governance state in China does not enjoy the same autonomy, in­de­pen­dence, and counterbalance as “the third space” promoted by the communitarian scholars, the intermediary governance space I describe ­here focuses more on the interactions between state and non-­state actors in this constructed and contested ­middle ground. In addition to its role as a po­liti­cal venue, another distinct feature of the intermediary governance space is its hybrid nature. It stands between the ­earlier work-­unit governance model (Walder 1986; Nathan 1997), in which citizens interacted with state authorities through an or­ga­nized, paternalistic relationship led by the work units, and a government–­citizen model with more direct, in­de­ pen­dent state–­society interactions as the dominant patterns of state–­society relations. As mentioned, the intermediary governance space includes both state and non-­state actors. Some are newly emerged such as property management and homeowner associations. Some evolved from existing neighborhood organ­ izations, such as Residents’ Committees and village collectives. And some remained the same, such as residents’ groups, especially state-­mobilized residents’ groups or organ­izations. In the intermediary governance space, ­t here is a mix of bottom-up and top-­down governance structures and practices. This space also embraces mixed practices of rural and urban governance, a blend of formal and informal po­liti­cal arrangements, and a combination of features that exist both within and outside the formal po­liti­cal system. The intermediary governance space shapes po­liti­cal life at China’s grassroots by creating an arena of interactions where the bound­aries between the party-­state, market, and citizens become blurred: it is in this arena that bargaining, mediation, and contestation of governance legitimacy are carried out on a daily basis.

48 CHAPTER 2

Establishing Grid Governance in Middle-­C lass Neighborhoods As chapter 1 points out, Residents’ Committees have experienced difficulties intervening in middle-­class neighborhood life due to a lack both of neighborhood contacts and of authority; t­ hese difficulties are especially evident when conflicts between residents and the property management com­pany arise. New actors such as property management companies and homeowner associations are now involved in urban neighborhood governance. Having to deal with multiple actors and vari­ous issues has raised practical challenges for the party-­state in maintaining and extending social control in urban neighborhoods. In response, as a structural and orga­nizational “innovation” in local governance, a grid governance mode has been widely established to enhance the role of Residents’ Committees. Grid governance extends the concept of the grid (wangge) as a geometric term to a spatial governance system intertwined with the existing administrative structure of shequ. It builds on a comprehensive governance structure at the grassroots level, which combines municipal administration, public security, and social ser­ vice management into one wide-­ranging governance network covering district-­ level government, Street Offices, and shequ. ­Under this scheme, Street Offices and residential communities are divided into grids according to their geo­graph­i­cal and administrative bound­aries, with each grid assigned government personnel from all three levels. The party-­ state identifies grid governance as a shift from a government-­ dominated administration mode to a co-­governance mode (Wei 2014), in which multiple actors and social organ­izations carry out government programs at the grassroots level. It also incorporates a new system of per­for­mance evaluation of government administration staff. In urban neighborhoods, grid governance emphasizes public ser­vice provision and neighborhood governance capacity building through residential community grids that coordinate interactions and relations among the state, market actors, residents, and social organ­izations when dealing with practical governance affairs. This governance scheme continues the rationale and practices of the “community construction” scheme, which divides urban governance into smaller geo­graph­i­cal units to facilitate top-­down control: it enables the state to manage dif­fer­ent levels of government and neighborhoods through administrative platforms composed of coherent sets of grids. This scheme is expected to help prevent large-­scale social unrest and achieve social stability through improving governance efficiency, including efficient conflict resolution in the neighborhoods. The pi­lot experiment for the grid governance initiative began in 2004 in Beijing when digital maps w ­ ere introduced to allocate municipal administration



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tasks to vari­ous grids. In 2008 during the Beijing Olympics, Beijing extended the grid governance coverage to the domain of public security by establishing an online information platform that provided public security data collected from residential neighborhoods by grids. Since 2010, Beijing has expanded coverage to social ser­v ice management (Guangming Daily 2015). The pi­lot experiments in Dongcheng District in Beijing used grids as the basic governance units. With the use of information technology, the experiments divided 17 Street Offices and 205 residential communities in the district into 589 social management grids. Point persons from all three levels of the district, Street Offices, and neighborhoods ­were assigned to each grid, with the aim of achieving a more efficient way of delegating work tasks and developing a new evaluation scheme for local administrative personnel (China Daily 2011). Based on local pi­lot experiments, in 2013 the Report of the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress formally identified grid governance as “an innovative social management method” and promoted the construction of a comprehensive ser­vice management platform at the grassroots level. By 2014, Beijing had established a three-­layer grid governance system—­grids, shequ, and Street Offices—­and distributed all social ser­vice tasks into grids that covered 92 ­percent of the Street Offices in Beijing (He 2016). In 2015, this system began the pro­cess of bringing together the three arenas of municipal administration, public security, and social ser­vice management into one comprehensive grid governance network that would cover all of Beijing by the end of 2017 (He 2016). Nationwide, dif­fer­ent cities have been implementing grid governance as one of their local governance priorities. For example, the Civil Affair Bureaus of Shenyang, Suzhou, Wuhan, and Guangzhou published local guidelines for carry­ing out grid governance in vari­ous districts. Figure 2.1 displays the general structure of grid governance observed in the field.

FIGURE 2.1.  General structure of grid governance in neighborhoods. Source: Author’s fieldwork notes.

50 CHAPTER 2

As a nationwide initiative, grid governance shares several impor­tant features. Its goal is to obtain firsthand information of the local situation so local governments can more effectively monitor targeted groups. Th ­ ese targeted groups of residents are broadly defined. Generally speaking, they are residents whom the local government considers as having the potential to be involved in social conflicts that may lead to larger-­scale social unrest; such targeted residents vary in dif­fer­ent neighborhoods according to their collective interests and actions. For example, in residential communities with a large number of rural-­to-­urban mi­grants, neighborhood security and management of the mi­grant population are the main concerns of the local government, and mi­grant residents are more likely to be considered as the targeted group. In contrast, in middle-­class neighborhoods where the residents’ collective interests and disputes associated with property rights are the governance priority, the targeted group usually includes residents (including homeowner association members) who are in dispute with their property management companies, their homeowner associations, Residents’ Committees, and other residents. By pinpointing t­ hose residents in the grids, grid governance aims to reduce the incidence of collective re­sis­tance and petitioning and further enhance social stability control at the neighborhood level. In addition, grid governance aims to faciliate the transformation from neighborhood administration to neighborhood ser­vices, from top-­down campaigns to more bottom-up daily activities, and from government-­dominant governance to more participation of diverse citizen groups. Across dif­fer­ent localities, grids have five key components: p ­ eople (residents and other interest groups), localities (neighborhoods), issues (governance m ­ atters), objects (targeted group of residents), and organ­izations (both state and non-­state organ­izations). Grid governance has gradually become a more institutionalized grassroots governance mechanism that coordinates dif­fer­ent levels and sections of government, organizes citizen participation and mass mobilization, and manages collaboration between state and non-­state actors and organ­izations. The grid governance mode has been ­adopted as a popu­lar governance strategy in Chinese urban neighborhoods, in par­tic­u­lar, to ease tensions between multiple interest groups and to promote the government’s goal of achieving more harmonious, functional governance dynamics. Take Tianhe District in Guangzhou as an example (Liu and Yin 2018): t­ here, 2,337 grids have been established with 21 Street Offices. Between January and September 2018, the grid governance system in Tianhe District was claimed to receive around 2.6 million cases of neighborhood conflicts and to resolve 99 ­percent of them. The grid governance system also promotes efficiency in the management and evaluation of Resident Committee staff, ­because each staff member has responsibility for his or her own grid.



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Construction and Operation of the Grids ­ nder the grid governance structure, the basic unit of the grid usually consists U of two to five residential buildings, approximately 300–600 h ­ ouse­holds. Although the grid is established in a top-­down pro­cess, its operation draws on the leadership of Residents’ Committees and residents’ initiatives and volunteering; it thus echoes the concept and existing practices of “residents’ self-­governance” in urban neighborhoods. Grid governance operates ­under the firm leadership of the Residents’ Committees, which mobilize resident volunteers in the grids and aims to “dissolve small disputes within the grid and big conflicts within the community” (xiaoshi buchu wangge, dashi buchu shequ).1 A wide base of diverse interest groups is the key to the operation of grid governance. Without public support, Residents’ Committees can be in a very disadvantaged position when attempting to coordinate communication among dif­fer­ent interest groups and to mediate community disputes. For e­ very grid, as figure 2.2 explains, ­t here is a governance team comprising five to seven members: they normally include resident volunteers from each building, Residents’ Committee staff and local police, representatives from residents’ social activity groups and from the homeowner association, and building man­ag­ers as representatives of the property management com­pany. Sometimes a team member may be both a resident volunteer and a representative of a social activity group. Within a grid, each building is considered as a resident group that has one resident group leader and one or two other resident volunteers. The resident volunteers are the glue that holds the grid together.

FIGURE 2.2.  Grid composition in urban neighborhoods. Source: Author’s fieldwork notes.

52 CHAPTER 2

Resident Groups and Residents’ Representatives ­ ere are three main types of resident groups and organ­izations in each grid. One Th type is the resident volunteers mobilized by the state, mainly through the Residents’ Committees. The resident volunteers primarily ­handle disputes between the residents and conflicts between residents and property management companies. Another type is the resident social group ( jumin shehui tuanti) or­ga­nized by the residents themselves and operating largely within the residential communities. The third type of resident organ­izations is the resident self-­empowered and self-­ organized neighborhood organ­ization that represents the collective interests of the residents, such as homeowner associations, which are discussed in the next section. In Chinese cities ­today, residents usually or­ga­nize dif­fer­ent kinds of social activities, including group dancing, choirs, physical exercise groups (for example, Taichi, basketball, and t­able tennis), and educational programs such as calligraphy, painting, and handicrafts. ­These informal associations play an essential role in participation and engagement in neighborhood affairs. Residents’ Committees are usually not directly involved in t­ hese group activities, but t­ hese groups provide a resource pool from which to recruit active resident participants to serve as volunteers to facilitate the daily work of the Residents’ Committees. In MSZ2 neighborhood in Suzhou, for example, ­there are 186 resident organ­izations on rec­ord. In MGZ1 neighborhood in Guangzhou, ­there are forty-­three resident organ­izations, of which more than 90 ­percent of the members are retiree residents and the ­great majority are female. The active members of the groups are in frequent contact with Residents’ Committee staff and help liaise between the residents, the Residents’ Committee, and property management companies. To better or­ga­nize the grid, Residents’ Committees are usually e­ ager to get involved in helping coordinate existing group activities. From the state’s perspective, resident social groups and resident volunteer groups both serve as starting points for citizen mobilization. Active members of the recreational activity groups usually are sought out to become resident representatives of each grid—­the “Resident Grid Workers” ( jumin wangge yuan)—­and some join the grid governance team as resident group leaders. For each recreational activity group, t­ here is a group leader elected by the members. The election is coordinated or or­ga­nized by Residents’ Committees from the nomination stage onward. In some situations, Residents’ Committee even solicit nominations and self-­nominations on behalf of the residents’ organ­ization. Then, Residents’ Committees usually or­ga­nize the election by sending out notices, setting up an election venue in their office building, and facilitating logistics on the election day. During this pro­cess, Residents’ Committees publicly express their candidate preference,



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which usually influences the election outcomes. In most cases, residents consider the Residents’ Committee to be trustworthy and would like to elect someone who can work with it and then obtain more support for their groups. As a result, elected team leaders are usually t­ hose with good reputations among the residents and so enjoy public support and trust, and they are experienced in team management. My interviews with middle-­class residents in dif­fer­ent cities suggest that more than half of the resident group leaders had retired from cadre positions at their previous workplace to become the key contacts of Residents’ Committees in the grid governance structure. The local government offers a small honorarium to the group leaders, usually less than 200 yuan a month.

Property Management Companies and Homeowner Associations From the state’s perspective, grid governance is based on the “self-­governance” of the residents in a form of “co-­governance” through which multiple actors and organ­izations are involved in dealing with community affairs. If the self-­ governance of the grid governance scheme places emphasis on the recruitment of resident volunteers, then its co-­governance highlights the participation of vari­ ous interest groups. In middle-­class neighborhoods, grid governance also involves representatives from homeowner associations and property management companies. Studies have shown that in many cases, Residents Committees in middle-­class neighborhoods are isolated from or are even involved in disputes with property management companies (Read 2007; Yip and Jiang 2011). In response, u ­ nder the grid governance structure, Residents’ Committees have extended their reach to include property management companies. By so ­doing, Residents’ Committees are in the position to provide guidance and support for the work of property management companies. As a result, property management companies normally have no alternative but to rely on the communication channels provided by Residents’ Committees to solve prob­lems. Especially when Residents’ Committees have established good contact with resident grid workers through whom they can extend their reach to other residents, property management companies have grown dependent on them for their governance network in the neighborhoods. In addition, by supporting the work of Residents’ Committees, the property management firm’s parent com­pany can establish better relations with the local government, which in turn may return the ­favor by helping it acquire more business in the immediate neighborhood area. Therefore, property management companies in general are willing to be part of the grid governance by cooperating with or even following the lead of Residents’ Committees. In some cases, the emerging “Red Property

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Man­ag­ers” (hongse guanjia) in neighborhoods are a clear indicator of strengthened CCP leadership in ­those companies. Chapter 5 discusses this trend in more detail. In contrast to property management’s cooperation, homeowner associations are usually more distant from the grid operations. Nor are the relations between homeowner associations and Residents’ Committees as close as t­ hose between resident volunteers and Residents’ Committees. Homeowner associations in general are more self-­empowered, with stronger, more clearly identified collective interests and agendas. Although they usually do not want Residents’ Committees to intervene in their election and activities, in a neighborhood in which grid governance is strong, the Residents’ Committee and grid governance teams can influence the election of representatives of homeowner associations by promoting their favored candidates or influencing the decision-­making of the homeowner associations. In ­those neighborhoods, homeowner association members expressed their frustration of “not achieving anything.” When conflicts arise between residents and property management companies, homeowner associations may see the intervention of Residents’ Committees as the suppression of the state, as this interviewee told me: “All they (the Residents’ Committee) want is to silence every­thing. They ­don’t want to see trou­bles (conflicts). If we are involved in a conflict, they think we are troublemakers.”2 To strengthen social stability, Residents’ Committees are keen on co-­opting homeowner association members into the grids. Although homeowner associations are supposed to have a representative in each grid, many have l­ittle contact with the resident volunteers in their grids. In a few cases, homeowner association members reported that they had never heard of the concept of a “grid” and did not know the resident grid worker in their building. For t­ hose homeowner associations whose members join the grid governance team, their participation is a double-­edged sword. One the one hand, homeowner associations can gain access to the resources and influence of Residents’ Committees to facilitate their work among the residents. On the other hand, they need to comply with the dictates of Residents’ Committees.

Residents’ Committees Both the state’s claims of “self-­governance” and “co-­governance” have continuously been made in the context of the leadership of Residents’ Committees. One key aim of grid governance is to gradually shift the Residents’ Committees’ role in neighborhood governance from focusing on specific work tasks to overseeing and leading the operation of the grids. In Suzhou, for example, Residents’ Committees are expected to be “in charge of which direction to go, not what specific jobs to do.”3 That is, the party secretaries of Residents’ Committees are expected to with-



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draw from direct involvement in solving specific prob­lems and instead to provide guidance to the governance team members of each grid so that the members themselves can resolve them. ­Under the grid governance structure, Residents’ Committee staff are less directly engaged in mediating conflicts as the key or even the sole mediator. Instead, a­ fter identifying which grid is the site of complaints or potential conflicts, they invite members of grid governance teams—­including representatives of residents’ volunteers, the homeowner association, and the property management com­pany—to establish a liaison committee. Then the committee members work together to respond to the disputes or complaints in their assigned grid, ­under the direction of the Residents’ Committee. In this scenario, Residents’ Committees have moved from ­handling specific situations to managing the governance team in urban neighborhoods. This practice also is responsive to the central government’s initiative to reduce the workload of Residents’ Committees (Ministry of Civil Affairs 2015). Thus, the party-­state’s reach to the neighborhoods, especially middle-­class neighborhoods, has been strengthened, and party leadership in middle-­class neighborhoods is consistently assured. For Chinese middle-­class homeowners, their pursuit of privacy and privilege lifestyle coexist with the CCP’s reach and leadership of their residential grids. In sum, grid governance has incorporated new participants in neighborhood politics, particularly non-­state actors such as property management companies and resident volunteers, into clearly defined basic governance units. It does not only apply to urban middle-­class neighborhoods but also has been widely ­adopted by newly urbanized neighborhoods and rural villages. But for newly urbanized neighborhoods, what is more “innovative” is how their new governance structure manages to balance both rural and urban governance components and characteristics. In many cases the village collectives, which used to focus exclusively on village governance, have successfully extended their reach into urban neighborhood governance.

New Administrative Structures in Urbanized Neighborhoods Within an institutionalized rural–­urban dichotomy, Chinese cities and countryside have a­ dopted two separate administrative systems. The “village-­to-­ community” transition and the introduction of urban administrative systems, in most cases, have led to operational challenges and re­sis­tance from the residents. In contrast to middle-­class neighborhoods where Residents’ Committees are a common practice in Chinese urban neighborhoods, they are a new concept for urbanized neighborhoods. During the first few years a­ fter land expropriation,

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residents in urbanized villages only recognized governance by their own Village Committees (cunweihui) and perceived the Residents’ Committee staff as “from the outside.” Moreover, the land expropriation pro­cess normally took a few years to a de­cade to complete. As a result, dif­fer­ent resident groups moved in at dif­fer­ent times, which led to their being insufficient numbers of residents—as required by government policies—to establish a new urban neighborhood governance structure led by a Residents’ Committee. The establishment of Residents’ Committees in ­those neighborhoods then became a priority for the local government.

Residents’ Committees in Urbanized Neighborhoods ­ ecause of the prob­lems just outlined, local governments have felt it necessary B to adopt dif­fer­ent solutions to reduce villa­gers’ re­sis­tance to the newly established Residents’ Committees. ­Those arrangements differ in structure, personnel, and operation, but they all feature frequent communication and close cooperation between the new Residents’ Committees and the Village Committees. One common practice is implemented in neighborhoods where neighborhood governance is dominated by the continuing existence of village collective economies that, for the most part, are managed by village collective corporations, such as village shareholding companies. In most of t­ hose neighborhoods, the staff of the former Village Committees went to work for the Residents’ Committees, thereby extending the former village governance structure to the urban setting. This arrangement is called “two titles, one administration” (liangkuai paizi, yitao banzi), which simply means that the newly established Residents’ Committees and the remaining village collective organ­izations share the same administrative personnel. In this scenario, the former Village Committees become the de facto leadership of the new governance structure in ­t hose urbanized neighborhoods. This is a common practice for villages that are able to autonomously manage their remaining collective land and assets, as in Guangzhou and Wuhan. In Shenyang, a reverse path was chosen in which newly hired urban Residents’ Committee staff members replaced the former village cadres. RSY2 neighborhood is a relocation neighborhood into which residents moved from seven villages. All the positions on the new Residents’ Committees in this neighborhood, including that of party secretary, ­were open to all urban residents from neighborhoods in Shenyang to apply. Through a public hiring pro­cess or­ga­nized by the municipal government, the new Residents’ Committees ended up selecting young, educated urban residents from dif­fer­ent areas of the city; none of the former Village Committee members w ­ ere selected to serve on the new Residents’ Committees. According to one municipal official, this was deliberately done to ensure that all the new Residents’ Committees would comply with the city’s existing “community



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construction” scheme and that the members would operate according to the rules, instead of being influenced by village ties and personal relations. Given the complicated residential situations in urbanized neighborhoods, especially in relocation neighborhoods, Residents’ Committees t­ here usually require a larger bud­get from the local government than do ­those in middle-­class neighborhoods. When t­ here is a strong village collective in the neighborhoods, such as in Guangzhou and Wuhan, the extension of village collectives could provide a solution to bud­get prob­lems by subsidizing the Residents’ Committees. When the remaining village collective economy does not generate substantial income, such as in Shenyang, Residents’ Committees then rely heavi­ly on government funds. In ­those cases, the extension of village governance is largely reflected in the social networks among the residents, as becomes clear in a ­later analy­sis.

Newly Established Urban Administration In Suzhou, a dif­fer­ent method was tried, in which urban administration was established without establishing formal institutionalized Residents’ Committees in relocation communities. As the largest villa­gers’ relocation proj­ect, RSZ1 neighborhood occupies an area of 44 square kilo­meters out of a planned construction area of 80 square kilo­meters. It is located in the heart of the largest new residential zone in Wujiang District in Suzhou. Designed along the lines of modern commercial housing, this residential zone is designated for relocated farmers in Wujiang. More than 80 ­percent of the residential developments in this area are relocation communities. It is a common practice for the local government to make a deal with the developers of the relocation neighborhoods by allowing a small proportion of the real estate development to be sold at market price instead of being used as relocation housing. This secures some profits for the developers. ­Today, RSZ1 neighborhood accommodates four relocation communities and 4,500 relocated h ­ ouse­holds. Its development began in 2008, and relocated farmer residents gradually moved in between 2010 and 2012. They w ­ ere able to select which relocation communities in the Wujiang District they would like to move into, and 70 ­percent chose to live in RSZ1 neighborhood, which has become the hub of relocated communities in Wujiang. T ­ oday, ­there are approximately 6,800 registered residents from more than ten surrounding villages in this neighborhood. In some cases, the residents in the same compounds are from the same village; in o ­ thers, they are grouped together with residents from dif­fer­ent villages. During the first c­ ouple of years a­ fter they moved in, the residents only recognized governance by their own Village Committees: they showed re­sis­tance to the Residents’ Committee staff “from the outside” who ­were assigned to the communities by the district government.4 As a result, Wujiang government de­cided

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to temporarily put the establishment of Residents’ Committees in this area on hold. Instead, they introduced a multifunctional Community Ser­vice Center led by the local Street Office in early 2015: its mandate was to set up an urban administrative apparatus in relocation neighborhood RSZ1. ­There are now two de facto Residents’ Committees—­called “working groups”—­under the supervision of the Community Ser­vice Center that carry out governance tasks in individual relocation communities. The two working groups have fifteen staff who are former Village Committee members, and they are directly supervised by the local Street Office. Through this arrangement, the former village governance structure has been extended to the urban setting. The two working groups, together with the Community Ser­vice Center, serve as intermediaries of the governance structure in the relocation communities. Th ­ ere is a deliberate de-­emphasis on the components of official urban administration while highlighting the “public ser­vice” function of ­those organ­izations. Yet, the involvement of former village cadres, who work together with the Community Ser­vice Center staff hired by the local Street Office, has extended the reach of the state into relocation communities. The new Community Ser­v ice Center relies heavi­ly on former village leaders to establish communication and build trust with the residents. For example, how best to keep a rec­ord of the residents’ information has been a major task and challenge for RSZ1 relocation neighborhood. The residents moved in at dif­fer­ent times, and many rent out one of their compensation ­houses to mi­grant workers to make extra income. Therefore, the local government is very dependent on the two working groups that have recruited resident volunteers to facilitate collecting and reporting of residents’ information. Typically, each resident volunteer covers forty to fifty ­house­holds. Their work is overseen by liaison officers designated by the working groups; each officer covers 150–170 h ­ ouse­holds. Liaison staff receive 3,000 yuan a year, and the resident volunteers each receive an annual honorarium of a few hundred to one thousand yuan from the local Street Office. The Community Ser­vice Center also provides designated space, facilities, and coordination for residents’ social activities—­these functions that w ­ ere largely absent in previous village setting. In general, the center has an open-­door policy, and residents can come and use the facilities any time. When the facilities are in ­great demand, the residents need to reserve them in advance. Like in other urban residential communities, recreational activities have gained popularity among residents in relocation communities and play an essential role in helping them adapt to their new living environment and expand their social networks. Engaging in recreational activities has become a primary way for them to get to know their fellow residents from dif­fer­ent villages. Two types of activities are the most popu­lar: group dance and choir, and t­ able tennis. Th ­ ose who



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join the group dance and choir group are mostly w ­ omen, whereas t­ able tennis mainly attracts men. Usually residents or­ga­nize ­these activities themselves, and Residents’ Committees assist them by providing space and facilities. ­Those who come frequently to the Community Ser­v ice Center have gradually become acquainted with the working groups and staff from local Street Office, and the new urban administration has become more acceptable during this pro­cess. Sufficient funding from the local government is needed to support public ser­ vices that have proven to be crucial in the transitional period in the development of relocation neighborhoods. The total expense for the RSZ1 Community Ser­vice Center has been around 25 million yuan to date. In contrast to other cities I observed that rely heavi­ly on the subsidy from village collectives to fund their ser­v ice centers, RSZ1 neighborhood is one of the rare cases where neighborhood administration has received sufficient funding from the local district government. The district government also requires that all relocation community Residents’ Committee offices allocate at least 500 square meters for administrative tasks and residents’ social activities. This is partly ­because Wujiang was already a wealthy area before urbanization. Another explanation is that the urbanization pro­cess in this area took off almost a de­cade l­ ater than in other parts of China, and the local government had learned from o ­ thers’ experience how to avoid potential conflicts with the villa­gers by strategically addressing their practical concerns and needs.

Party-­B uilding and Residents’ Mobilization In middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods, dif­fer­ent orga­ nizational structures have been ­adopted to carry out neighborhood governance by incorporating diverse governance actors in coordinating roles. Yet in both types of neighborhoods, the reach and control of the party-­state have been enhanced through party-­building and residents’ mobilization. The CCP has attempted to develop a pervasive orga­nizational structure in which party sub-­branches at the grassroots level serve as the foundation of the CCP’s po­liti­cal apparatus. According to Wenfang Tang (2016), ­there are two coexisting po­liti­cal trends in China: the declining popularity of Chinese authoritarian government and strong public support for the CCP. The intermediary governance space pre­sents a new form of social governance in which the party mediates the local state and a more diverse and mobile population through party-­building activities in urban neighborhoods. In the reform era, the CCP’s orga­nizational reach has been extended to non-­ state sectors (Han 2015; Thornton 2012). Since the 1990s, the CCP has deemed

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building the party organ­ization in urban residential communities as a key strategy at the grassroots level (Organ­ization Department of the Central Committee of the CCP 1996). CCP membership has increased from less than 4 ­percent of the population in 1978 to 5.2  ­percent in 2002, nearly 5.5  ­percent in 2008, and 6.6 ­percent in 2019. Nearly half of CCP members had tertiary education, around 24 ­percent w ­ ere u ­ nder the age of thirty-­five, and more than 28 ­percent w ­ ere older than age sixty. ­Under the CCP’s “comprehensive cover” and “big party” strategies, its member recruitment has been extended to new economic and new social organ­izations that emerged during China’s market reform (Dickson 2007; Shambaugh 2008). By the end of the 2000s, t­ here w ­ ere about 4.6 million grassroots-­level party organ­izations (Xin­hua 2020). According to the Organ­ization Department of the CCP Central Committee, by 2018, nationwide, 99 ­percent of the residential communities had established community party organ­izations. (Guangming Daily 2019). Of the 300,000 social organ­izations across the country, 61.7 ­percent have established CCP organ­izations. Statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs (2018a) suggest that, by 2016, more than 54 ­percent of Residents’ Committee staff ­were CCP members. If Residents’ Committees focus on managing horizontal relationships between dif­fer­ent interest groups in the grid governance structure, local party organ­izations mainly deal with vertical relationships to strengthen their top-­down po­liti­cal and social control. The basic structure of party organ­ization in urban neighborhoods has three components: the (neighborhood) Party Committee, which comprises the core leadership; party branches, which form the major organ­ization, and party member groups, which are the basic units. As vari­ous studies have shown, in most cases the positions of neighborhood party secretary and the director of Residents’ Committees are held by the same person, and ­there is a significant overlap between the Party Committee and Residents’ Committee membership.

Middle-­Class Neighborhoods In middle-­class neighborhoods ­under the leadership of a Residents’ Committee and its party branch, the grid governance structure aims to provide multiple communication channels for discussions and mediation of conflicts regarding community affairs and, ultimately, to establish a strong core leadership of the neighborhood Party Committee. Through mobilization of the grids, the local government aims to strengthen the leadership of neighborhood party branches and to make grids a basic informal unit of the neighborhood party-­building structure. The princi­ple is as follows: “The party branch is built in grids” (Dang zhuzhi jian zai wangge shang).5 Resident CCP members are allocated to grids and establish the party branch in each one. In Dongcheng District in Beijing, 822 grid



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party organ­izations ­were established among its 589 grids (He 2016). In the field sites researched for this book, the grid party organ­izations are ­under the supervision of the neighborhood party organ­izations, with the guideline “to ensure t­ here is party organ­ization in each grid, and to ensure e­ very CCP member serves as the pioneering models for the core leadership of the grid party organ­izations.” 6 The neighborhood party branches carry out party organization-­building through two major approaches. One is to consolidate existing neighborhood party organ­izations for local residents (­those whose h ­ ouse­hold registration is recorded in the residential community). Residents’ Committees target retired CCP members in the neighborhoods as the starting point for their snowballing recruitment of resident volunteers. Take neighborhood MGZ1, which I visited in Guangzhou: 16 ­percent of their resident group members and more than 50 ­percent of the resident group leaders are CCP members, and nearly 70 ­percent of neighborhood party branch members are retiree residents. In addition, the core leadership positions of neighborhood party branches led by Residents’ Committees are open to resident volunteers. In MSZ2 neighborhood in Suzhou, for instance, the leadership group of the neighborhood party branch has seven members: five Residents’ Committee staff and two residents who are the team leaders of two residents’ organ­izations and who are also members of the grid governance team. The other approach to party organization-­building is to grant new associational memberships to ­t hose who have party memberships in their previous workplace or former city of residence. In middle-­class neighborhoods ­today, it is common to find that more than half of the se­nior residents are “se­nior migrants/floating population” (lao piao), who moved to the current city of residence to live with their ­children. They sometimes do not possess a local h ­ ouse­hold registration. The concept of a “floating population” used to refer to the urban underclass who ­were rural-­to-­urban mi­grant workers. Now in urban middle-­class neighborhoods, it refers also to the lao piao residents, some of whom are “floating party members.” This group of se­nior residents have left their social networks and associational life b ­ ehind, and so their residential communities have become the key sites for them to start a new social life. In MSZ2 neighborhood in Suzhou, within the existing grid governance structure, the Residents’ Committee established a neighborhood party branch for t­ hese lao piao residents. This “relocation party branch” organizes CCP members among the lao piao residents to carry out regular po­liti­cal study sessions and other po­liti­cal activities. Through their associated membership with the relocation party branch, many lao piao residents actively stay in touch with the Residents’ Committee and have become new members of the grids and their organ­izations. Residents’ Committees lead the pro­cess of identifying existing party members and recruiting potential party members in each grid using a variety of methods.

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In some cases, they learn about them through resident group leaders and resident volunteers in each grid or from the local police who share residents’ registration information. More often, to attract the attention of potential party members, Residents’ Committees offer recreational activities, contact them through existing CCP members, and make public announcements in the neighborhood. No longer is mobilization of members carried out only through personal contacts: ­today the use of social media has become the primary method for communication in neighborhoods. Social media, especially WeChat, is widely used for all kinds of party activities in the neighborhoods. In MSZ2 neighborhood, ­there is an online discussion group for each grid, as well as multiple social media discussion groups for dif­fer­ent purposes. For instance, Ms. Xu wears many hats: she is a resident group leader, an association team leader, and a member of the core leadership of her neighborhood party organ­ization. According to Ms. Xu’s own estimation, she has more than two hundred contacts in her WeChat groups related to her neighborhood activities. The use of new technology helps increase the capacity and efficiency of ­human resources coordination in urban neighborhoods. In addition, the neighborhood party branch embedded in each grid is also trying to co-­opt representatives of homeowner associations and property management companies. Especially when homeowner association members work in nonpublic sectors, the neighborhood party organ­ization encourages them to apply for CCP membership through the neighborhood party organ­ization, instead of through the party organ­ization at their workplaces. In addition, when the ju­nior staff of the property management com­pany apply for CCP membership in their com­pany, recommendations from the Residents’ Committee and its neighborhood party branches are considered highly desirable. Chapter 5 further discusses this point.

Urbanized Neighborhoods In urbanized neighborhoods, the resident party members—­typically the former Village Committee members and the former production team leaders—­have become crucial in enabling the pervasive reach of neighborhood party branches a­ fter the rural-­to-­urban transition. In urban villages, ­because the residents still reside on their h ­ ouse sites, it is easier to identify resident party members than in middle-­ class neighborhoods and relocation communities where residents have moved from somewhere e­ lse. The former production team (shengchandui) leaders act like the grid leaders, and the resident party members facilitate the work of the management team of the village collective by coordinating communications and interactions among individual villa­ger shareholders. In relocation communities, the CCP member residents play multiple roles. Given that residents in ­those communities



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come from dif­fer­ent villages, village party members to a certain extent serve as the contact persons for the residents to connect with their former villages. CCP member residents also play an active role in bringing residents from dif­fer­ent villages together to participate in activities in their new neighborhoods. One key strategy for party-­building in urbanized neighborhoods is to mobilize party member residents living ­t here to monitor the situation of the neighborhood, disseminate information from the village collectives or the newly formed Residents’ Committees, collect opinions of the villa­gers (usually the former production team members), and report back or negotiate with the village collectives or Residents’ Committees. Especially for governance m ­ atters associated with collective interests or conflicts that emerge in the neighborhoods, the village party members have unique advantages—­t heir dense local social networks and the support and trust they receive from the villa­gers—­t hat the newly hired Residents’ Committee staff do not have. Village party members are usually welcomed when they approach individual h ­ ouse­holds to exchange information and collect opinions. They also manage to strategically mobilize certain groups in the village, such as well-­respected se­niors, the better educated, and key figures in the clan, to communicate with dif­fer­ent groups of villa­gers. Moreover, as their counter­parts have done in other urban neighborhoods, Residents’ Committees in urbanized neighborhoods have also gradually replaced older staff members with younger and better-­educated youth. In the past de­cade of my fieldwork, I saw a steady increase in the number of urbanized neighborhoods led by younger generation CCP members, who are predominantly male and in their thirties. Some are from the local village, whereas ­others are appointed by the district government from neighboring villages. Most grew up in the area and went to university in the larger cities. ­After graduation they returned to join the local district government and became public servants. Th ­ ese younger CCP members see as their mission to establish the leadership of the party branch in newly urbanized neighborhoods. Very often, they borrow the po­liti­cal and social capital of se­ nior villa­gers who are also CCP members to fulfill their mission; in many cases, the party secretary of the previous Village Party Committee was invited to sit on the de facto leadership group in urbanized neighborhoods, ­either as a formal member or a con­sul­tant. Despite the involvement of previous Village Committee members, the younger generation of village leaders are clearly gaining in influence. Their educational background, local knowledge and experiences, and visions of the f­uture development of the villages and the well-­being of the villa­gers are leadership qualities that the local district governments aim to cultivate in urbanized neighborhoods: they have become part of the state’s interpretation of citizenization of the leadership in villages in the post-­urbanization era.

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Intermediary Governance Space: Flexibility Meets Strength This chapter has explored the orga­nizational features of hybrid authoritarianism in terms of new governance structures a­ dopted in urban neighborhoods in response to governance needs associated with new actors in middle-­class and urbanized neighborhoods. The ability of the party-­state to be responsive to economic and social changes largely explains the rationale for hybrid authoritarianism. Yet the party-­state needs to maintain social control while carry­ing out its responses. The transformation of Residents’ Committees has largely determined the po­liti­cal nature of residential communities in urban China and enables the state to maintain its reach to urban neighborhoods while reducing its direct involvement. Since urban residents’ work life is separated from their private life in residential communities, Residents’ Committees focus exclusively on residents’ neighborhood activities that are separate from their economic activities. Rather than urban life being a private realm as in most other countries, Chinese urban neighborhoods have become the sites of urban administration and active governance in which citizens and the state interact on a daily basis through Residents’ Committees. In that context, the management of neighborhood affairs is not entirely up to the residents themselves. All the same, as this chapter shows, the transformation of Residents’ Committees since the 1990s has enabled them to play a more decisive role than ever in organ­izing urban community life and moderating local conflicts. As a direct result of marketization and urbanization, new governance actors in the neighborhoods include market groups (property developers, management companies, and village collectives) and resident self-­organized neighborhood organ­izations (homeowner associations and residents’ social groups), and both have transformed Residents’ Committees in the neighborhoods. To deal with the new neighborhood governance issues and priorities discussed in chapter 1, a new structure has been established through the interactions between t­ hose actors: it operates at an intermediary level between the local state and the residents. This intermediary governance space connects to the state through the agents of local government, such as Residents’ Committees and Community Ser­v ice Centers. It also relates to the residents through resident groups and volunteers, as well as market actors who interact with the residents on a daily basis. Although they still largely retain their functions as an extension of top-­down po­liti­cal control, Residents’ Committees are no longer the sole actor or decision maker in the intermediary governance space. Instead, they mobilize and balance the participation of and interaction between dif­fer­ent actors. At the same time, the pro­cess of building leadership by the Residents’ Committees is carried out through party-­



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building in the neighborhoods, which aims to ensure the CCP’s absolute leadership in the intermediary governance space. The intermediary governance space and actors provide the structural arrangements of hybrid authoritarianism, which exists between the state and society, between the official and non-­official realm, and between the government and the p ­ eople. In middle-­class neighborhoods, as one major “social management innovation” scheme, the grid governance scheme embraces diverse governance actors in neighborhood governance, including Residents’ Committees, property management companies, homeowner associations, residents’ groups, and resident volunteers. In urbanized neighborhoods, more flexible structures with mixed practices are employed to address the governance need for displaced farmers, village collectives, and newly established Residents’ Committees. Through ­t hose intermediaries, neighborhood governance embraces the interaction of non-­state actors with Residents’ Committees so as to secure public support for the party-­state. Hybrid authoritarianism allows a certain level of governance flexibility that does not exist in the po­liti­cal apparatus above the neighborhood level. Its function is to ensure the reach of the party-­state hierarchically to provide control over all neighborhood governance issues. Both party-­building and mass mobilization in middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods are used to co-­opt multiple interest groups to help Residents’ Committees maintain social control and order in urban neighborhoods. The functional interactions between state agents, market groups, civil organ­izations, and resident groups intersect to ­these ends. The structural functions of the intermediary governance space are largely reflected through dealing with key governance issues in the neighborhoods—­ conflict resolution and ser­vice provision—­which are examined in chapters 3 and 4, respectively.

3 NEIGHBORHOOD CONFLICT RESOLUTION

The territorial feature of the intermediary governance space in Chinese urban neighborhoods to a large extent facilitates the operation of its po­liti­cal functions. One key po­liti­cal function is to carry out social control and thereby maintain social stability. How to effectively resolve social conflicts at the neighborhood level has become a major component of the “social management innovations” and key criteria for per­for­mance evaluations of Residents’ Committee staff and local government officials. As mentioned in chapter 2, to “dissolve small disputes within the grid and big conflicts within the community” has become a priority for urban grassroots governance. In response, vari­ous strategies and methods have been used to deal with conflicts associated with neighborhood affairs; some use flexible means that are dif­fer­ent from conventional authoritarian governance methods. Yet the introduction of non-­authoritarian governance methods in daily governance does not preclude the use or exclude authoritarian governance methods that reflect and enhance the CCP’s mono­poly of po­liti­cal power and restrict citizen participation and empowerment. Instead, non-­authoritarian governance methods secure and continuously generate public support for the current regime through accommodation and implementation of diverse governance methods that do not challenge one-­party rule. Focusing on conflict resolution, this chapter analyzes the use of public deliberation in neighborhood governance. The emergence of neighborhood deliberation is part of the nationwide evolution of deliberative politics in Chinese local governance in the past two de­cades. Although studies to date often adopt diverse concepts of deliberation, they share four primary princi­ples of deliberative de66

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mocracy: reason-­g iving, reciprocity, publicity, and accountability. As Simone Chambers (2003, 309) summarizes, Deliberation is debate and discussion aimed at producing reasonable, well-­informed opinions in which participants are willing to revise preferences in light of discussion, new information, and claims made by fellow participants. Although consensus need not be the ultimate aim of deliberation, and participants are expected to pursue their interests, an overarching interest in the legitimacy of outcomes (understood as justification to all affected) ideally characterizes deliberation. Concepts of deliberative democracy and practices of consultative politics have played distinctive roles in Chinese politics. To a large extent, they reflect the CCP’s “Mass Line” tradition that emphasizes gathering ideas and concerns from the ­people and making decisions based on them. Since the early 2000s, the influence of the Chinese P ­ eople’s Po­liti­cal Consultative Conference on policy making (Yan 2011) has grown, and the party-­state has endorsed deliberative democracy as a distinct form of democracy that is relevant to the country’s experience (Xin­hua 2008). U ­ nder Xi Jinping’s administration, the theme of “strengthen(ing) socialist consultative democracy” has been emphasized alongside a tightening of po­liti­cal control (Xi 2014a). As a major governance “innovation” scheme at the local level, deliberation has become a practical instrument for decision making that has been endorsed and promoted by the party-­state. Th ­ ere have been tolerance of and even encouragement for local deliberations to address vari­ous kinds of issues, including participatory bud­geting (Wu and Wang 2012), village assemblies (Tan 2006), public consultations for selecting local leaders (He and Thøgersen 2010), price adjustments at the local level (Ergenc 2014), and local environment proj­ects (Mertha 2009; Han 2014). So far, most practices of public deliberations in China are ­limited to practical local governance m ­ atters. In par­tic­u­lar, deliberation and mediation in the past de­ cade have been widely a­ dopted for conflict resolution at the grassroots level. Th ­ ere has been a strong relationship between the number of social conflicts and the number of local official documents that aim to publicize, introduce, or­ga­nize, regulate, and report a diversity of deliberative practices (He and Wu 2017). Local governments have taken significant steps in developing formal deliberative institutions and using informal deliberations to manage and reduce social conflicts by experimenting with deliberation as a mechanism for managing social unrest (Hess 2009) and dealing with disputes associated with local governance affairs (He 2014a). In 2015, a comprehensive national policy laid out detailed guidelines for grassroots-­ level (urban neighborhoods and villages) deliberation (State Council 2015). Aiming at establishing an institutionalized deliberative system at the grassroots level,

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the policy encourages a wide range of participants, diverse formats of deliberation, standardized deliberation procedures, and implementation of deliberative outcomes. A government training program called “Neighborhood Deliberation Training Camp” has also been frequently implemented in recent years. Usually or­ga­nized by the Street Office, t­ hese training camps invite university professors, l­ awyers, and experienced social workers to deliver seminars on a regular basis on how to improve deliberation and mediation skills to Street Office and Residents’ Committee staff, social workers, and resident volunteers. Official statistics shows that by 2016, nationwide, ­there w ­ ere 780,000 mediation organ­izations led by 3.8 million government representatives, experts, and citizen volunteers serving as mediators (NBS 2018). The neighborhood conflicts discussed in this chapter include both civil disputes and disputes between citizens and the state, which fall into the four conflict types mentioned in chapter 1. All are closely related to specific conditions in citizens’ living environments and comprise an ele­ment of “rights defense” against violations of residents’ l­egal rights and interests. In this context, deliberation is analyzed as an instrumental tool for local governance per­for­mance, together with other nondeliberative activities such as mobilizing and co-­opting targeted groups of residents—­for example, resident volunteers and resident CCP members—to maximize their influence during the deliberation pro­cess. Based on information I collected during the past de­cade of fieldwork, I argue that, in its l­imited forms, public deliberation significantly characterizes neighborhood politics in Chinese cities ­today. More specifically, neighborhood deliberation operates ­under mixed governance structures that are elaborated in chapter 2, accommodating vari­ous interest groups in both formal and informal formats. While displaying flexibility, neighborhood deliberation at the same time indicates the party-­state’s increasing penetration and the leadership of the Residents’ Committees that coordinate and facilitate the pro­cess. The local state manages to safeguard social stability by keeping disputes and conflicts inside residential compounds.

Authoritarian Deliberation and a Systemic Approach to Deliberative Politics With its deep roots in h ­ uman history, deliberation is found t­ oday in many sorts of socie­ties throughout the world. Within established liberal democracies, theories of deliberative democracy arose as an expansion of the standard practices of representative democracy in the 1990s. In contrast to voting-­centric views that

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see democracy as the arena in which fixed preferences and interests compete via fair mechanisms of aggregation, compromise, or achieving a bargaining equilibrium, deliberative democracy emphasizes public discussion, reasoning, and preference formation and transformation among f­ ree and equal citizens (Habermas 1989, 1996; Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Dryzek 2000; Chambers 2003). It seeks legitimate po­liti­cal decision making through informed, respectful, and competent dialogues that produce justification and the mutual agreement of ­t hose affected by a decision (Bohman 1998; Gutmann and Thompson 2004). Given that its conception of democracy is “talk-­centric” (Chambers 2003) rather than “vote-­centric,” scholars argue that the “deliberative turn” in thinking about politics should be able to reach settings such as global politics and socie­ties where elections are not key or even pre­sent, such as China (Dryzek 2006, 2010). In 2011 Baogang He and Mark Warren introduced the concept of “authoritarian deliberation,” arguing that demo­cratic deliberation can take place and even be promoted in an authoritarian state as an effective local governance strategy, despite its one-­party rule and re­sis­tance to regime-­level democ­ratization. In “deliberative authoritarianism,” they argue, po­liti­cal elites “respond to persuasive influences, generated e­ ither among participants, or in the form of arguments made by participants to decision-­makers” (274). By focusing on specific prob­lems of governance and conflict resolution, authoritarian deliberation operates as a regime strategy for channeling po­liti­cal conflict away from regime-­ level participation into governance-­level participation. Authoritarian deliberation is a continuation of the CCP’s main po­liti­cal strategy in dealing with conflicts among the p ­ eople, which emphasizes persuasion. The party-­state considers “deep and delicate thought education work” as one of the basic methods of dealing with such conflicts (Zhu 1999). To date, studies on deliberation and governance are still “­limited in scope and focused on par­tic­u­lar prob­lems of governance” (He and Warren 2011, 269), and ­t here is inadequate research on general mechanisms “producing a systemic relationship between authoritarianism and deliberation” (271). In the context of Chinese urban neighborhoods, this chapter examines the interdependence and interaction of isolated deliberative practices and institutions within a neighborhood-­level deliberative system. This analy­sis reveals key mechanisms of the “systemic approach of deliberative democracy” (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012), which emphasizes deliberative functions served by diverse sites and kinds of deliberative practice and institutions within broader systems, even including imperfectly deliberative moments. According to this approach, when one deliberative site is overshadowed by purely strategic talks that lack deliberative quality, another site could, in princi­ple, provide the balance necessary for system-­level deliberative outcomes (Mansbridge et al. 2012).

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The mixed structures and actors in Chinese urban neighborhoods discussed in chapter 2 offer operational conditions for such deliberative systems: diverse (both formal and informal) deliberative gatherings, multiple kinds of actors, and vari­ous practices. The analytical focus of this chapter goes beyond a single practice, such as the leadership of Residents’ Committees or one single meeting that may not have been very deliberative, to look at ­whether and to what extent the interactions among vari­ous activities, dif­fer­ent participants, and diverse institutional settings contribute positively to an overall deliberative system for neighborhood conflict resolution. The following analy­sis examines three key aspects of Chinese neighborhood deliberation: participation, reasoning, and outcome. Most studies use similar criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of a deliberative system. For example, Dryzek (2009) argues that authenticity, inclusiveness, and consequentiality are three key assessment criteria for deliberative systems in comparative settings. Fishkin’s “four criteria for popu­lar control” (2018, 13–14) address the importance of inclusion and impact while elaborating the criterion of authenticity. More specifically, authenticity requires reflection on preferences in a noncoercive fashion to connect par­tic­u ­lar claims to more general princi­ ples and to exhibit communication with “reciprocity” (Gutmann and Thompson 1996). Inclusiveness emphasizes the opportunity and ability of all affected actors or their representatives to participate, and “being consequential” expects deliberation to exert an impact (directly or indirectly) on collective decisions or social outcomes (Dryzek 2009, 1381–1382). In addition, Fishkin (2018) highlights the importance of effectively motivating ­people to ensure they offer reasoning in a well-­informed setting of deliberation. In the context of Chinese urban neighborhoods, the rest of this chapter explores t­hese three issues: to what extent participation is inclusive, in what ways are public reasonings carried out, and what outcomes can be produced by neighborhood deliberation.

Participation, Inclusiveness, and Repre­s en­t a­t ion in Neighborhood Deliberation How to motivate citizens’ participation and ensure the quality of their po­liti­cal participation have been key questions in studies of democ­ratization. In research on deliberative democracy, discussions of participation focus on the inclusiveness and types of participation. Dryzek emphasizes the participation of equal and ­free citizens, whereas Fishkin highlights the availability of alternatives for public decisions. In the Chinese context, the core question is ­whether and to what extent residents and other non-­state actors can participate in neighborhood de-

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liberation taking place in the intermediary governance space, especially given the presence of Residents’ Committees as agents of the party-­state. The involvement of Residents’ Committees in neighborhood deliberation is a microcosm of the big picture of grassroots-­level deliberative politics in China carried out with the strong involvement of the party-­state. Both the “social management innovation” scheme and the 2015 national policy guidelines for grassroots-­level deliberation clearly outline the central position of the CCP’s leadership. In existing deliberative practices, key local officials typically play a decisive role in initiating and implementing t­ hese practices, and local government offices almost always or­ga­nize and facilitate the deliberative forums. A notable example is the annual Zeguo deliberative poll in the city of Wenling, whose outcomes determine the local government’s funding allocations for infrastructure proj­ects (Fishkin et al. 2010). Empirical evidence suggests that the local government’s ability to provide comprehensive local information and to deploy its rich administrative resources have enabled local governments to set agendas of deliberation meetings (Hess 2009; He and Thøgersen 2010; Ergenc 2014). Local officials have enhanced the success of deliberative forums on par­ tic­u­lar social prob­lems by providing background information to participants, hosting them in public facilities, publicizing them, and h ­ andling their logistics (Tong and He 2018). The leading role of local government in putting on ­t hese deliberative events helps ensure that deliberative outcomes are followed by practical policies and actions on the part of decision makers. In Chinese urban neighborhoods, my fieldwork suggests that both the party-­ state agent and the residents are motivated to participate in deliberation that aims for the resolution of conflicts. Th ­ ere are two major explanations for the appeal of deliberation. One is the nature of conflicts in Chinese urban neighborhoods: in general, they are linked to specific living environments rather than to general po­liti­cal claims. As chapter 1 summarizes, ­t here are four major types of neighborhood conflicts, all of which are closely associated with the residential circumstances of explicit neighborhoods and rarely address the issue of government or regime legitimacy. Even local policy-­related conflicts such as land use policies or environmentally unfriendly proj­ects are driven by residents’ concerns about their negative impacts on neighborhood life. This nature of neighborhood conflicts is the rationale for the creation and operation of neighborhood deliberation in an authoritarian regime. The other attraction is the practical orientation of deliberation. As Simone Chambers (2012, 95) has noted, “Deliberation is essentially practical . . . ​[and] involves giving, assessing and evaluating reasons for and against courses of action.” In the pursuit of conflict resolution in ­t hese communities, the interests of the citizens and the Residents’ Committees—on behalf of the state—­are articulated more in how specific and practical actions

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should be undertaken, rather than in relation to the substance of relevant social policies. This focus on practical m ­ atters offers opportunities and incentives for ordinary citizens to participate in deliberation regarding neighborhood affairs. In a nondemo­cratic setting, the biggest challenge for au­t hen­tic deliberation is for deliberation to be carried out in a noncoercive fashion; that is, one that is not dominated by the state in terms of repre­sen­ta­tion or reasoning. The Chinese state recognizes and addresses this potential pitfall by requiring that government officials “must solve contradictions at the initial stage, must not use ­simple and rude methods to escalate conflicts, and must not use ‘means of dictatorship’ to deal with ­people and the masses” (Zhu 1999). The role played by Residents’ Committees in neighborhood deliberation largely determines its degree of authenticity. Fieldwork suggests that, surprisingly, the involvement of Residents’ Committees does not necessarily introduce coercion to neighborhood deliberation. First, Residents’ Committees have no authority over the residents. When intervening in conflicts, they are positioned between residents and state authorities: although they represent the state through their daily administrative duties, they have very ­limited authority or resources to enforce final decisions. Second, Residents’ Committee staff are usually not residents of the neighborhoods. With no direct interest in t­hese disputes, they are more likely to be accepted by the residents as impartial, in­de­pen­dent mediators. Thirdly, through their everyday work Residents’ Committee staff members are in a position to know local conditions well and can identify all the relevant interest groups in the disputes. Thus, to a certain extent the inclusiveness and repre­sen­ta­tion that is absent in the formal po­liti­cal system, can be found in the intermediary governance space in urban neighborhoods. The accommodation of diverse governance actors in the intermediary governance space makes it empirically pos­si­ble for relatively inclusive neighborhood deliberations. In addition, Residents’ Committees also have practical incentives to want all affected parties in the disputes to be coordinated and included in the deliberation, in the search for agreement to the resolution of prob­lems. This may also ensure that all parties involved in the conflicts are monitored by Residents’ Committees. In this scenario, to a considerable extent, the Residents’ Committees’ direct involvement in neighborhood deliberation contributes to its inclusiveness. As mentioned in Chapter One, t­ here are vari­ous interest groups involved in the conflicts, including residents, their homeowner associations, the property management companies, the village collectives and other groups such as restaurants and pet stores in the neighborhood. So far, it seems that the Residents’ Committee is the only group that can get t­hose interest groups to participate in deliberation. This is largely due to the nature of the Residents’ Committees as the agent of state authorities, as well as their orga­nizational capacities

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developed through daily governance. In most of the cases observed for this book, the parties in disputes actually turned to Residents’ Committees and asked for its intervention. The participation of all affected parties u ­ nder the coordination of a Residents’ Committee is best reflected in conflicts regarding the living environment of the neighborhoods. Especially during the conflicts between property management companies and the residents, both sides turned to the Residents’ Committee. The Residents’ Committee collected opinions from the residents by distributing questionnaires to identify unsatisfactory ser­v ice provided by the management com­ pany, the residents’ suggestions of how to improve ­t hese ser­v ices, and ­whether the residents preferred to terminate the contract with the com­pany. When the residents and the management com­pany sat down for a formal meeting, the Residents’ Committee helped to keep the discussions focused on the most practical ­matters indicated by the questionnaire survey. The Residents’ Committee then set up a deliberation group, composed of representatives of property management com­pany, the homeowner association members and resident representatives. The resident representatives normally included resident group leaders of the grids and members of the neighborhood CCP branches. Through the extensive reach of grid governance structure, Residents’ Committees could ensure each building has at least one resident participating in the deliberation group.

Coordination and Leadership of Neighborhood Deliberation Situated in the grid governance structure, neighborhood deliberation ­today is built on grids and largely coordinated by Residents’ Committees. The coordination of Residents’ Committees is facilitated by their leadership role in the grids. Through their role as coordinator of neighborhood deliberation, Residents’ Committees exercise and strengthen their leadership capacities in neighborhoods. This leadership role alone does not pre­sent much deliberative quality. But from a systemic approach to deliberative democracy, it is impor­tant to examine what role Residents’ Committees play in neighborhood deliberation as a ­whole, rather than individual actions. Residents’ Committees play their role as the leading coordinator mainly through the following activities: approaching participants, collecting opinions, and organ­izing meetings. In middle-­class neighborhoods, Residents’ Committees make the most of the grid governance structure to coordinate neighborhood deliberation. ­After identifying the key issues, the Residents’ Committee mobilized resident volunteers in each grid to collect residents’ opinions and to accompany

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the building man­ag­er to participate in preparatory talks between the property management com­pany and the residents. In urban villages and relocation communities, the newly-­hired Residents’ Committee staff lack dense local social networks and recognition, and trust from the villa­gers regarding their authority or ability to solve “internal” conflicts. As a result, Residents’ Committees usually mobilize former village elites and divide them into several small groups to approach individual h ­ ouse­holds to exchange information and collect opinions—­similar to the practice of grid governance operation that occurs in middle-­class neighborhoods. As chapter 2 points out, the rural governance heritage has made pos­si­ble the strategic mobilization of certain resident groups, such as well-­respected se­ niors, better-­educated residents, and key figures in the clan: they can all be mobilized to communicate with dif­fer­ent groups of villa­gers. For disputes among the villa­gers, this type of communication is the most popu­lar and effective way to discuss issues with residents. Take middle-­class neighborhood MSZ1 in Suzhou as an example, where t­ here was a dispute between the residents and the pet store (as described in chapter 1). The Residents’ Committee sent several staff members to the pet store to investigate the prob­lem, especially the issues of hygiene, noise, and c­ hildren’s safety. During their multiple visits to the pet store, the Residents’ Committee staff chatted with the pet store o ­ wners regarding the possibilities of creating a cleaner and quieter environment, instead of having to move the store to a dif­fer­ent location. The pet store ­owners felt that the Residents’ Committee staff had no direct interests in the disputes and that they understood their difficulties; this perception encouraged the pet store ­owners to soften their tone and abandon their antagonism. The Residents’ Committee staff then presented the pet store ­owners’ messages to the residents. They explained the o ­ wners’ reasoning and suggested to the residents that they consider alternative solutions. Discussions with the residents w ­ ere carried out in a more causal and discursive manner than the e­ arlier conversations with the pet store o ­ wners. Sometimes ­these discussions took place when residents visited the Residents’ Committee offices for other business. Sometimes the Residents’ Committee staff dropped by during the break in residents’ social activities and had a quick chat with the residents. At other times they talked with residents who w ­ ere taking a walk in the residential compound. During t­ hose causal chats, residents discussed with each other and the Residents’ Committee staff w ­ hether they could reach agreement that the pet store could stay and, if so, how to improve the situation. This pro­cess coordinated by the Residents’ Committee provided an impor­tant knowledge and information base for opinion and ­w ill formation among dif­fer­ent parties. Residents’ Committees tend to be less directly involved in questions regarding the use of the Public Repair Fund and the financial transparency of property man-

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agement companies in middle-­class neighborhoods or the distribution of collective benefits in urbanized villages. Instead, they use their orga­nizational capacities to coordinate and mediate ­those deliberative talks, both formally and informally. In conflicts between residents and the state, the role of Residents’ Committees as state agents enables them to lead the deliberations in the “right direction” as instructed by the local state. For issues that have the potential to cause larger-­scale social unrest, Residents’ Committees report to their supervisory government offices. In this scenario, ­because Residents’ Committees do not have decision-­ making authority, their roles of coordinating deliberative talks and transmitting deliberative outcomes become more crucial. In Suzhou, residents in neighborhood MSZ3 lodged a collective petition and or­ga­nized several protests when they heard the local government was planning to build a PX proj­ect in the area. The Residents’ Committee started to or­ga­nize monthly regular meetings among resident representatives, resident group leaders, and CCP member residents to collect and exchange information. Nearly forty p ­ eople attended each meeting. ­After two months, the monthly meetings morphed into a more institutionalized form. A Community Deliberation Committee was formally established and registered as a civil organ­ization ­under the Residents’ Committee and its supervisory government office. It then became the key venue for the residents and local government to discuss the PX proj­ect. The number of residents involved in the discussions increased from ten to more than 150. The Residents’ Committee helped or­ga­nize direct communication, facilitated efficient discussion, and, more importantly, enabled the involvement of a much larger group of residents. During this pro­cess, the Residents’ Committees continued their function of monitoring residents’ activities but gradually shifted from decision making to issue identification and coordination. In this way, they gained more public support ­because the residents considered them to be more impartial and helpful.

Public Reasoning in Neighborhoods Two key topics in the field of deliberative democracy are how to differentiate deliberation from just conversation and, more importantly, how to turn talks into deliberation. Public reasoning is the key to opinion formation and transformation through t­ hose activities. For a functional deliberative system, public reasoning should not be l­imited to formal deliberation, such as occurs in conventional government assemblies: it can take place in more inclusive and informal deliberative gatherings among multiple actors and institutions, including civil society, media discussion, everyday talk, and internet exchanges (Dryzek 2010). This kind of “discursive deliberation” (Dryzek 2009) has influential impacts on the

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development of deliberative democracy in dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal contexts. It also echoes with some key findings in studies of regime survival and legitimacy of the Chinese party-­state, which suggest that informal institutions play a critical role in ensuring its survival by enhancing the perceived legitimacy and increasing responsiveness of the governing apparatus (Tsai 2006, 2007b). Especially in a context in which citizens are normally excluded from decision making within existing policymaking bodies, discursive deliberation offers relatively more inclusive opportunities for public reasoning. Observations from my fieldwork suggest that in Chinese urban neighborhoods, public reasoning emerges more frequently from informal conversations and small group meetings than from formal, large meetings. In most cases, t­ hose formal meetings are designed more for decision making than for an exchange of opinions. Both the grid governance scheme in middle-­class neighborhoods and the mixed governance structures in urbanized neighborhoods offer discursive sites for informal conversations and information dissemination. Xi Chen’s (2011, 80–82) study on social protests well documented the practical persuasion methods used to deal with social discontent: the explanation of facts and policies, explanation of the government’s difficulties, and emphasis on the importance of stability and economic development. All ­t hose methods have become key constituents of public reasoning in neighborhood deliberation. The mobilization of resident volunteers by Residents’ Committees is essential for creating opportunities for the flow of information and reasoning. During this pro­ cess, sympathy, understanding of the prob­lem, and the pursuit of practical resolutions are key to keeping the conversation g­ oing. In relocation neighborhoods, the use of common areas in the buildings and compounds is a common cause for disputes between the residents. One relocated villa­ger said, I had never lived in apartment buildings before, and I was very much used to the spacious yard of my old village ­house. They [the resident volunteers and Residents’ Committee staff] told me that other ­people ­were complaining about me [occupying too much space]. They said the corridor is not my yard, so I need to think about other ­people. A ­ fter talking to them, I realized that they had a point. If every­one e­ lse stores their stuff in the corridor, prob­ably I c­ ouldn’t open my door. So I told them that if they know some place I could store my farming tools, I would move immediately.1 Residents involved in conflicts are more willing to change their positions when reasons are provided (   jiang daoli), rather than demands issued by authorities (xia mingling).

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In addition to participation in conversations that are mobilized and coordinated by the Residents’ Committees, public deliberation is also facilitated by residents’ representative organ­izations. Representatives play an essential role in real-­world deliberation. In urban neighborhoods, it is almost impossible for all two or three thousand residents to come together to deliberate, so self-­appointed resident organ­izations normally act for t­ hose who are not participating. Strongly associated with the collective interests of certain resident groups, two kinds of resident representative organ­ization are often observed: homeowner associations in middle-­class neighborhoods and village collectives in urban villages and relocation communities. In most middle-­class neighborhoods visited for this study, the homeowner association had set up an online forum to deliberate on conflicts between residents, the management com­pany, and the Residents’ Committee. All participants ­were required to register with their true identities, including details identifying residence, management com­pany staff, and Residents’ Committee staff. Such online forums ­were particularly helpful in clarifying misunderstandings on a timely basis. For village collectives, village collectives have become the main communication channel not only among the residents but also between the residents and state authorities. Most often, this communication takes place in informal conversations.

Informal Talks As vari­ous scholars point out, reasoning is not exclusively determined by the form that it takes but rather by the function or purpose that it serves in discourse (Mansbridge 1999; Dryzek 2010; Chambers 2012). Informal talks within neighborhoods serve the purpose of what some scholars consider as “pre-­deliberative dialogue” through which p ­ eople can explore their differences in experience, attitudes, and beliefs and improve the level of mutual understanding needed for successful deliberation at a l­ater stage (Walsh 2007). In Chinese urban neighborhoods, although discussion in casual talks and informal group meetings among residents sometimes takes the form of straightforward practical claims or the pre­sen­ta­tion of detailed evidence, it more often consists of storytelling or anecdotes. Anecdotes and stories are particularly significant for public reasoning in the Chinese context, partly b ­ ecause of the lack of transparency in local policy making and implementation. All the observed conflicts regarding citizen–­ state disputes shared ­these obstacles that hindered au­then­tic deliberation: a lack of transparency of decision making, detailed information, or explanations or elaborations of government policies. For example, compensation deals for land expropriation are often negotiated directly between government representatives and individual h ­ ouse­holds. As a result, villa­gers have no collective knowledge

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of local compensation policies or how they are implemented. In addition, why a neighborhood was selected for a PX proj­ect or what kind of impacts t­ hose proj­ ects would have in the local environment is rarely explained to the residents beforehand. In addition, for urbanized villages where residents still collectively own a certain piece of land, ­there exist ambiguities about local land policies and their rationales. The lack of information is not the only cause of low-­quality deliberation. Inadequate sophisticated po­liti­cal vocabulary also jeopardizes the reasoning pro­ cess (Dryzek 2006; O’Flynn 2006). Especially in urbanized neighborhoods where the average education level is low, narratives and personal stories constitute a more impor­tant part of the reasoning process—­t he “pre-­deliberative” dialogue (Walsh 2007), as mentioned e­ arlier or the “social learning” (Kanra 2009) pro­ cess. ­Those conversations are impor­tant ­because they improve the mutual understanding that is needed for participants to deliberate together in real time. In Chinese urban neighborhoods, anecdotes of similar conflicts having emerged and been resolved in other places shape citizens’ preferences significantly. For example, compensation is often the core issue that generates collective re­sis­tance and discontent among landless farmers. Across dif­fer­ent places and at dif­fer­ent stages of urbanization, compensation deals have varied greatly, which ­causes antagonism among the landless farmers (Song, Du, and Li 2020). In RWH3 neighborhood in Wuhan, the residents w ­ ere relocated from seven villages in the area ­after their land was expropriated. In their new urban residential communities, some villa­gers found out that ­there w ­ ere substantial differences between the compensation amounts offered to ­people in neighboring villages. Thus, nearly a dozen villa­gers lodged petitions with the municipal government requesting higher and fairer compensation. Through their personal networks, the village collective members collected stories of how the compensation policy was carried out in other villages and discussed such information with the residents in small-­group meetings. Given the government’s perceived lack of transparency, stories or anecdotes circulating among the villa­gers formed the foundation for their collective claims on and requests to the government. For conflicts between citizens, informal talks can also enhance information circulation and clarify some misunderstandings. For example, in the conflicts associated with “returned villa­gers” discussed in chapter 1, one major claim they made involved so-­called employment compensation. In princi­ple, employment compensation would go to the new employer of the landless villa­gers. However, ­because most of the villa­gers could not find urban employment, many village cooperatives usually distributed the employment compensation among the villa­ gers. The returned villa­gers felt that they w ­ ere left out and requested a share of the employment compensation.2 But the villa­gers who had stayed considered the

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returned villa­gers as already having urban employment and that employment compensation should therefore be distributed only among t­ hose villa­gers who had stayed ­until the land expropriation was complete.3 Some returned villa­gers did not know about the employment compensation policy nor how it was distributed within the village, and ­others claimed that they ­were unfairly treated during the distribution pro­cess, simply b ­ ecause of the inadequate information they had received or ­because of peer pressure. ­After clarification, employment compensation issues w ­ ere no longer major debating topics in discussions among ­t hese villa­gers. ­These informal conversations serve as the foundation of neighborhood deliberation and improve the quality and authenticity of deliberation at formal meetings, despite their inclusiveness. For instance, in the early stages of the disputes regarding the returned villa­gers, the village collective and Residents’ Committee or­ga­nized large meetings and invited all the villa­gers to attend and discuss pos­si­ble solutions with the returned villa­gers. At the meetings, ­t hose villa­gers who had stayed throughout, returned villa­gers, and members of village collectives all expressed their opinions and debated with each other. However, the large meetings, which had hundreds of participants, seemed too intimidating for the returned villa­gers. As “unwelcome minorities,” they felt that their goal at the large meetings was just to let their voices be heard, rather than to exchange opinions with other residents.4 In an inclusive deliberative format but one that lacked au­t hen­tic deliberation in a noncoercive setting, most formal, large meetings resulted only in reinforcing existing disagreements and antagonism. In contrast, through informal communications, each side was able to develop a better understanding of the prob­lem and of the dif­fer­ent viewpoints that may l­ ater surface in the large deliberation meetings. ­Those informal talks sometimes are initiated by residents and sometimes or­ ga­nized by Residents’ Committees through their governance networks in the neighborhoods. The latter approach is more commonly observed in conflicts between the citizens and the state. In MSZ3 neighborhood where the planned PX proj­ect in the neighborhood led to collective petitions and protests among the residents, Community Deliberation Committee members approached some residents and explained to them why their neighborhood was selected to host the PX proj­ect and what harms this PX proj­ect could produce. Th ­ ose ­were key pieces of information the residents wanted to know but that ­were missing from the official announcement. The Community Deliberation Committee acquired this information from the local government through the Residents’ Committee. By sharing this information, the committee gradually gained trust among the residents, who considered it to be fair ­under the circumstances. Then the Community Deliberation Committee invited local government officials to meet the

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residents. At the meeting, the government officials explained that the proj­ect plan would not harm the residential environment, but the residents ­were not convinced. They provided a list of the potential environment damages that concerned them. The list was compiled at multiple small group gatherings and social media discussions among the residents and the Community Deliberation Committee held over the previous month. The government officials agreed to take the list back to their office and to provide feedback. In this case, the communicative outcomes ­were a better understanding of each other’s interests, arising from informal talks that w ­ ere meaningful for the overall public reasoning pro­cess.

Formal Deliberation Meetings and Collective Reasoning With the deliberative foundation built through informal conversations and meetings, formal meetings can focus on searching for an agreement or consensus within a ­limited time frame. ­These formal deliberation meetings are usually or­ga­nized by Residents’ Committees, which set the agenda and then mobilize dif­fer­ent groups to attend. For instance, in the pet store dispute in MSZ1 neighborhood discussed in chapter 1 and ­earlier in this chapter, based on pre-­meeting discussions with the residents, the Residents’ Committee invited representatives of the homeowner association and property management com­pany, the pet store ­owners, and two groups of resident representatives to attend the meeting: t­ hose living close to the pet store and suffering from the noise and hygiene prob­lems and ­t hose who would like the pet store to remain. In addition, the Residents’ Committee invited a l­ awyer who was also a resident volunteer to attend to provide ­free consultation regarding use and lease of the community space. At the meeting, the Residents’ Committee identified the discussion priorities: the noise and hygiene prob­lem w ­ ere first, then the safety issues, and fi­nally the use of community space. The resident representatives and the pet store ­owners ­were more respectful to each other this time. The pet store o ­ wners first apologized for the prob­lems and then explained the difficulties they w ­ ere facing, such as the high cost of installing noise-­proof glass. The residents then asked the homeowner association and property management com­pany w ­ hether they could cover some of that expense. The Residents’ Committee staff took the minutes of the meeting and then sent it to the residents’ group on WeChat. The use of social media made the deliberations more inclusive, reaching marginalized groups as well. Formal deliberation meetings are also helpful in developing collective reasoning and forming framing strategies, particularly for state–­citizen disputes. Based on the communication outcomes from informal talks, resident representative organ­izations can develop collective reasoning strategies to help increase

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the chances of residents’ claims and requests being honored. In line with most examples of “rightful re­sis­tance” in China, resident representative organ­izations typically frame citizens’ claims by reference to protections implied in ideologies or conferred by policymakers. In middle-­class communities, the most efficient way for homeowner associations to achieve their collective goal is to frame their reasoning according to the state-­endorsed discourse of defending the rights of homeowners. This kind of collective reasoning can help citizens attract the attention of higher-­level authorities without positioning themselves in opposition to local authorities. In middle-­class neighborhood MSZ3 where the residents provided a list of concerns regarding the PX proj­ect, the Residents’ Committee at the very early stage suggested that the residents follow the petitioning procedures accepted by the government, rather than using illegal modes according to the state, such as protests. In urbanized neighborhoods, strategic framing of villa­gers’ requests is very impor­tant due to their inherent disadvantages in po­liti­cal vocabulary. When residents petition against unsatisfactory compensation for land expropriation, the village cooperatives coordinate public reasoning by inviting staff members of the Residents’ Committees to pre­sent and explain local policies to the villa­gers and to discuss logistical details with them; that is, which government office to approach and how much extra compensation they are likely to receive. A former village committee member shared his thoughts on the pro­cess: “Some farmers overstate their compensation requests. Some government officials are bullies. If our villa­ gers communicate giving good reasons, they are more likely to achieve their goal. You need reasoning strategies to resolve conflict. That’s my interpretation of a harmonious society.”5 The lack of public reasoning by government officials is one of the biggest obstacles to public deliberation in China (Tang 2014). By helping villa­gers frame their requests strategically with reasons relevant to popu­lar discourses and government policies, neighborhood deliberation helps establish a stronger civic sphere that facilitates more effective public deliberation. In the case of land use conflicts mentioned in chapter 1, the village collective of UGZ3 urban village in Guangzhou drafted a letter that described villa­gers’ opinions in detail; a­ fter being passed around to e­ very h ­ ouse­hold to sign, it was sent to the local Street Office. On receiving the letter, the Street Office sent a consultation team to the village. During their meetings with Street Office representatives, villa­gers went beyond their ­simple disagreement with the government’s initiative to question how much profit the agricultural land would bring to the villa­gers, as well as what the Street Office would do to keep the local economy growing if the land transfer brought lower profits. In this case, the institutionalized neighborhood deliberation, which was u ­ nder the lead of Residents’ Committees and was engineered with resident volunteers, related neighborhood

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deliberations to other governance strategies, such as resident mobilization: this became an impor­tant dynamic that connected separate, informal deliberative outcomes with the formal decision-­making pro­cess. One feature crucial to the success of neighborhood deliberation is that deliberation and public reasoning do not end at the deliberation meetings. The intermediary governance space serves as a channel for opinion exchanges, especially between the residents and the local government. As elsewhere in the world, this exchange provides valuable lessons to develop the competence of citizens and to increase governance transparency and accountability. The questions arising at this stage benefited from ­earlier discursive discussion.

Outcomes of Neighborhood Deliberation The outcomes and impacts of public deliberation are considered crucial not only for a functional deliberative system but also for a more demo­cratic po­liti­cal system as a w ­ hole. According to John Dryzek (2009), “consequential” deliberations could directly or indirectly affect po­liti­cal decision making or social outcomes, even in authoritarian states in which t­ here is no regime-­level democ­ ratization. The outcome of a functional deliberative system, to a certain extent, echoes Mao’s description of the Mass Line: In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily from the masses, to the masses. This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study form them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain ­these ideas ­until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again take them to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. (Mao 1969, 316–317) Chinese neighborhood deliberation serves two very specific ends. First, the practical orientation of neighborhood deliberation attains realistic resolutions to specific conflicts. Second, it produces enduring influences by encouraging more demo­cratic operation within the intermediary governance space. From a practical point of view, the neighborhood deliberations discussed h ­ ere achieved “consequential” outcomes, not only in terms of consensus but, more importantly, also in changing preferences through public reasoning. Both dominant groups and marginalized groups changed their preferences. The more inclusive the deliberation

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and the more public reasoning involved, the more likely that the solution w ­ ill accommodate multiple parties—­especially non-­state actors—in operation and delivery. This outcome, in turn, ­will reinforce the hybrid nature and operation of the intermediate governance space in urban neighborhoods. All the case studies discussed e­ arlier involved non-­state actors in reaching solutions. In the case of returned villa­gers, all the villages de­cided to distribute partial collective benefits to them. UGZ2 urban village in Guangzhou de­cided to distribute the bonus dividend to the returned villa­gers based on the number of the years they had worked in the village, with one year equal to one share. In contrast, RWH2 relocation community in Wuhan gave lump-­sum compensation from the land requisition to all its returned villa­gers but excluded them from all ­future bonus dividend distributions. For the pet store dispute, it was agreed that the expense of buying and installing noise-­proof glass was to be shared by the pet store, the homeowner association, and the property management com­pany; the meeting also reached an agreement regarding the specific time (3–5 p.m.) for dogs to be walked. In middle-­ class neighborhood MSY2, the homeowner association managed to use the Public Repair Fund and to take the lead in organ­izing the repair proj­ect, while the property management com­pany agreed to be in charge of its implementation. One of the most impor­tant features of deliberative democracy is its dynamic capacity for self-­correction (Gutmann and Thompson 2004). Dennis Thompson (2006, 515) describes the pro­cess of iterated deliberation as occurring when a po­liti­cal body (which may or may not be deliberative) proposes a policy to a deliberative body, which then returns a revised version of the policy to the original body. The original body revises the policy again and submits it for further consideration to the deliberative body before it is enacted. Especially for state–­ citizen disputes, neighborhood deliberation has resulted in the revision of local policy or local government decisions. The involvement of non-­state actors and the collective reasoning of the neighborhood deliberation, to a certain extent, help drive local policy adjustment. This iterative pro­cess is illustrated by Suzhou residents’ dispute with the local government regarding the PX proj­ect. When the residents received feedback from the local government, the Community Deliberation Committee or­ga­nized a formal neighborhood meeting among the residents; its outcome was that the residents refused to accept the explanations provided by the government. The Committee Deliberation Committee then, on behalf of the residents, lodged a petition to municipal government offices. In the end, the government de­cided to place the PX proj­ect on hold, and the residents agreed to reconsider the proposal based on more information. It has been two years since then, and the local government has not reinitiated the proj­ect. Similarly, the village collective in UGZ3 village in Guangzhou has been advocating for local land-­use policy change by interacting with the local government

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through its “policy entrepreneur” activities. The Residents’ Committee, ­because of its dependence on the financial subsidy from the village cooperative, actively helped the cooperative collect residents’ opinions and liaise with the Street Office. The local government agreed to temporarily hold off the land-­use transfer but required village cooperatives to bring proposals for alternative policies addressing two major prob­lems. The local economy, which is based on current low-­tech and small-­scale factory workshops, is facing fierce market competition. In addition, b ­ ecause of loopholes in the regulations and poor management at the beginning of the investment, many villages de­cided to allow highly polluting factories to be in the neighborhood; the public has become increasingly aware of in the local area. To address the government’s request, UGZ3 village cooperatives or­ga­ nized shareholder meetings to establish two basic princi­ples for their ­future investors: no polluting industries and no dangerous chemical production in their village. The villa­gers also agreed to gradually stop renewing contracts with the existing environmentally unfriendly factory workshops. The impacts of neighborhood deliberation are not ­limited to local policy adjustment, but also include social outcomes. For instance, the po­liti­cal nature of the informal communications among villa­gers lies in the fact that the requests of the “returned villa­gers” are of larger collective concern and go beyond a small group of a few p ­ eople. The open, informal deliberation among villa­gers brought in new ele­ments to the existing dominant discourse of distribution in urbanized villages. When challenges to the dominant discourse started to receive wider attention, villa­gers also generated dif­fer­ent perspectives and formed new opinions. The informal communications not only facilitate deliberation meetings to reach an agreement on practical issues but also generate the wider concern of participants on relevant issues. For example, the “married-­out ­women” (the ­women who married into another village) have similar requests to ­those of the “returned villa­ gers” regarding their rights to enjoy the collective entitlement from their home villages (He 2012). Through the discursive discussions on the ­matter of the “returned villa­gers,” more and more villa­gers joined continuous discussions on the “married-­out ­women” with their fellow villa­gers, friends and relatives in other villages who ­were in the same situation. Discussions and settlement of the issues facing “returned villa­gers” now have become part of their reasoning and persuasion for discursive discussions on “married-­out ­women” issues. Through their daily practices, the villa­gers test new and old ideas against their daily realities and make small moves to put a par­tic­u­lar version of an idea into effect. At a larger scale, the consequentiality of neighborhood deliberation is a neighborhood deliberative system employed for conflict resolutions. This system embraces a transmission mechanism through a triangle of interrelations among the society, grassroots-­level administrative organ­izations and the local government.

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The triangle of interrelations offers inclusive opportunities for individuals to join discussions and exchange opinions, to establish non-­coercive settings for public reasoning and to mobilize communicative resources and communicative outcomes to generate discourse change. Through their institutional or informal connections to the state authorities, the grassroots-­level administrative organ­ izations and civil organ­izations can deliver the discursive outcomes to the local government. Moreover, they can also assist policy implementation with their orga­nizational, financial or managerial resources. In par­tic­u ­lar, influential neighborhood representative organ­izations can further advocate for policy adjustment using the policy feedback collected during their involvement in the policy implementation. By being involved in both the unstructured public deliberation and the empowerment of the deliberated outcomes, the triangle of interrelations forms an operational foundation for deliberative governance in China.

Authoritarian Deliberation and Neighborhood Governance This chapter explains what and how deliberation has been introduced and ­adopted as a popu­lar conflict resolution strategy in Chinese urban neighborhoods, through a systemic approach to princi­ples of deliberative democracy. The essence of this approach is that it allows assessment of the completeness and effectiveness of deliberative systems. During this pro­cess, deliberative capacity building, as Dryzek (2009) argues, can produce au­t hen­tic, inclusive and consequential deliberations that integrate micro-­level deliberative forums and macro-­ level communication in the public sphere into one dynamic system, which does not have to be l­imited to any par­tic­u ­lar kind of po­liti­cal institution. This systemic approach to deliberative democracy contributes significantly to the understanding of the formation and operation of deliberative politics in an authoritarian context. It allows and tolerates possibilities and complexities of how deliberative and non-­deliberative f­ actors coexist and interact with each other in an authoritarian setting to shape a deliberative system at large. In addition, t­ here is also more flexible space for deliberation at the neighborhood level, which offers multiple and divergent settings in which to deliberate in a decentered, plural complex of overlapping conversations. In contrast to the ­limited channels for citizen participation available in formal, or­ga­nized deliberation in China, urban residential communities provide diverse venues for residents’ deliberative participation, including everyday talk, informal group discussions, online communication, and or­ga­nized community meetings. All

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t­ hese deliberative activities are a crucial part of a larger deliberative system in which “­people come to understand better what they want and need, individually as well as collectively” (Mansbridge 1999, 211). Moreover, the interdependence and multiple sites of deliberation contribute to the sustainability of a deliberative system in a dynamic way: when one site lacks good-­quality deliberation, other venues can fill in (Mansbridge et al. 2012). Given China’s po­liti­cal setting, in which the party is always the final decision maker, it is very understandable that the agent of the party-­state is a significant ­factor in the success of any deliberative system. Yet a deliberative approach to neighborhood governance requires more than a committed Residents’ Committee or party secretary. Interaction and interdependence between vari­ous demo­cratic practices and institutions are also necessary. Th ­ ose activities, on the one hand, help coordinate and mobilize information flow and opinion formation and transformation. On the other hand, through t­ hose activities Residents’ Committees gradually enhance their leadership not only in neighborhood conflict resolution but also in neighborhood governance in general by acquiring comprehensive information about the neighborhood, staying in frequent contact with resident volunteers, mobilizing residents’ networks, and obtaining continuing public support. Although Residents’ Committees have the potential to lead one subsystem of deliberation by serving as moderators between deliberative actors, they alone cannot create a dynamic deliberative system in Chinese urban residential communities. A few points are impor­tant to consider about participation and choices in a functional neighborhood deliberative system. First, all affected parties need to be well informed and consulted before they meet. Th ­ ese information and consultation sessions seem to be more practical and effective when carried out informally. All interest groups then become more motivated to participate not only ­because they have a better understanding of the situation; more importantly, they see the availability of alternatives for solving the prob­lems that might other­w ise have been ignored. Second, by the time formal meetings are held, participants already have a fair amount of knowledge about each other’s demands and requests. Then the meetings can focus more on practical solutions, rather than on repeated complaints—­which ­w ill maintain the motivation and enthusiasm of residents’ participation in the long term. Third, participation is coordinated through organ­izations that have a connection to a higher authority but do not themselves possess authority or decision-­making power. Both Residents’ Committees and the remaining village collectives in urban villages are ­either representatives of or have a connection to the party-­state, but they do not have decision-­making power. And both organ­izations have a fair amount of public support. Their special connection to the party-­state differentiates ­t hose organ­

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izations from resident groups such as homeowner associations during the deliberation pro­cess. Neighborhood deliberations, as examined in this chapter, suggest that hybrid authoritarianism should incorporate revised authoritarian deliberation from a systemic approach. That is, deliberative activities alone do not make for deliberative democracy in an authoritarian regime. It is the dynamic interactions between deliberation and authoritarianism, between deliberative and nondeliberative features, and between formal deliberative meetings and informal deliberative talks that contribute to a functional deliberative system. The systemic approach of authoritarian deliberation includes a mix of deliberative ele­ments and other features of po­liti­cal culture, traditions, strategies, and institutions. For example, the CCP’s mass mobilization tradition and party-­building practices continue to be influential for deliberative activities in China. Authoritarian deliberation requires the involvement of the state authorities. Both formal and informal institution arrangements are crucial in conveying isolated discursive deliberative outcomes to the empowered space.

4 NEIGHBORHOOD SER­V ICE PROVISION

Neighborhood ser­v ice provision is another key task and pillar supporting the legitimacy of grassroots governance in Chinese cities. This chapter explores the changing dynamics of the provision of neighborhood ser­v ices, which used to be provided by the socialist state to urban residents as public goods. Neighborhood ser­v ice provision has always played a significant role in generating public support and securing governance legitimacy for the party-­state, largely ­because it is seen as carry­ing out the socialist ideology of the collective distribution of social welfare and ser­v ices. As discussed ­earlier, in Chinese cities, work units used to provide neighborhood ser­v ices ­because urban neighborhoods ­were an extension of the work unit. In the villages, village collectives functioned as both the organizers of economic activity organizers and the providers of village collective welfare. Vari­ous studies have pointed out collective welfare and public ser­v ices provision serves as the backbone of paternalistic governance, which is rooted in socialist distribution and constitutes the social contract between the Chinese party-­state and its population (Whyte and Parish 1984; Tang and Parish 2000; Wang 2008; Wright 2010). ­Under market reforms, this paternalistic governance has been continued through the “community-­building” scheme. Neighborhoods then have become a new contested ground for securing public support by renewing this “social contract” at the grassroots level (Heberer and Göbel 2011; Tomba 2014). ­Until the 1980s, urban work units largely managed neighborhood ser­vices on a daily basis, in association with providing housing. Despite their low wages, Chinese urban residents enjoyed housing and neighborhood ser­v ices heavi­ly 88

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subsidized by the socialist state. As China’s economic reforms and marketization deepened in the 1990s, ­those ser­v ices have gone through fundamental changes of providers or practices or both. For example, work units have largely withdrawn from maintenance and property management in urban neighborhoods, and market providers, such as professional property management companies, have taken over. In addition, ser­vices that used to be available exclusively in work-­unit residential compounds such as clinics, canteens, and bath h ­ ouses have been commercialized. Moreover, nationwide urbanization has added more complexity to the existing rural–­urban divide: bound­aries between welfare and ser­v ices provided to urban and rural residents have become blurred. As a direct result of the “village-­to-­community” transition described in chapter 2, residents in urbanized neighborhoods have experienced changes both in collective welfare provision and in lifestyles associated with urbanization trajectories. This chapter examines new mechanisms of neighborhood social governance for the provision of public welfare ser­v ices, in which non-­state actors are participating together with state actors. With full acknowledgement of the continuous existence of hierarchical administrative relations and lines of control, it focuses on the coordinative relationships negotiated between the local state and societal organ­izations. The formation and negotiation of t­ hose relationships largely take place in the intermediate governance space and seem to be of g­ reat importance yet have been inadequately addressed in studies on state–­society relations ­under the CCP’s one-­party rule. To date, most studies are situated in a framework of a state-­versus-­society dichotomy that considers the party-­state and societal organ­izations as opponents in a zero-­sum game in which a gain for one side means a loss for the other (Ma 2006; Ho and Edmonds 2008; Lu 2008; Unger 2008). The state-­centered approach emphasizes consistent domination by the party-­state in public life and argues that the authoritarian state has significant restraining power over non-­state actors and organ­izations. In contrast, the society-­centered approach argues that the increasing influence of societal actors on government decisions is promoting a more open local governance pro­cess and is gradually inducing changes in state–­society relations. Most of the lit­er­a­ture argues that the state’s domination and control of the NGO sector (e.g., Dickson 2000; Kang and Han 2008; Wu and Chan 2012) and orga­nizational differences between the two sectors (e.g., Froissart 2006; Fulda, Li, and Song 2012) are two key ­factors that explain the lack of mutual trust or incentives for both parties to engage in more meaningful collaborations. State corporatism is one major institutional mechanism for analyzing interplays between the state and NGOs regardless of po­liti­cal system (Unger and Chan 1995). In the Chinese context, this approach emphasizes the significance of local interests, diversity, and autonomy (Unger 1996; Goodman 2002, 2013). A local state

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corporatist framework elaborates how corporatist mea­sures function as an effective means for the local state when dealing with NGOs and how interests are balanced between NGOs and the local state as stakeholders, despite commonly observed practices of co-­optation (T. Lin 2007; Alpermannan 2010; Zheng 2011; Fulda, Li, and Song 2012). Hasmath and Hsu’s study (2014) suggests that the local state ­w ill be more willing to engage with NGOs when it becomes aware of the advantages for both parties brought about by better collaboration; for example, when working with NGOs relieves the state of some of its responsibilities for h ­ andling social issues and prob­lems. Collaboration also would allow NGOs to better engage with social concerns using their unique resources and capacities (Gazley and Brudney 2007; Guo and Acar 2005). Studies show that a growing number of NGOs are being sponsored and supported by local party committees (Thornton 2013). The new mechanisms of neighborhood ser­v ice provision examined in this chapter go beyond this state-­versus-­society dichotomy that tends to overemphasize ­either the domination of the party-­state or the relative autonomy of NGOs. They contribute to “develop(ing) explanations that allow for the shifting complexities of the current system, and the institutional fluidity, ambiguity and messiness that operate at all levels in China and that is most pronounced at the local level” (Saich 2000, 141). The analy­sis of changing neighborhood ser­vice provision in this chapter does not assess the degree and scale of the in­de­pen­dence and autonomy of civil society, although this issue is very essential to capturing the dynamics of state–­society relations in China. Instead, it focuses on the relationships coordinated in the intermediate governance space—­especially interactions, codependence, and collaboration between the state and societal actors. In recent years, a growing number of studies have provided empirical evidence suggesting that societal organ­izations and the state can work as partners rather than opponents when carry­ing out local programs, especially at the neighborhood level. The party-­state has worked with societal organ­izations such as volunteer associations (Luova 2011), local charities (Shue 2011), other civil society organ­izations (Fulda et al. 2012; Teets 2013), and business associations (Yu and Zhou 2013) as “multipurpose partners that act as mediators between the party-­state and society, provide community ser­v ices and influence values” (Luova 2011, 775). In turn, ­t hese societal organ­izations have responded to the requests of the state and the needs of the local neighborhood by providing needed ser­vices, in the pro­cess gradually strengthening their capacities to work as partners of the local state. Scholars consider this collaboration or partnership as a symbiotic relationship (Luova 2011), or mutual empowerment (Shue 2011), or consultative authoritarianism (Teets 2013), in which both local government and civil society pursue specific mutual goals through public welfare provision.

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To date, descriptions of this partnership approach have overwhelmingly focused on isolated practices l­ imited to one locale; they pay l­ ittle attention to nationwide policy implementation that incorporates local diversity and flexibility. This chapter addresses social governance in neighborhoods through a systematic analy­sis of the diversification of urban neighborhoods and practical needs, as well as dif­fer­ent categories of neighborhood ser­v ices. It focuses on two types of neighborhood ser­vice provision that address both expressed needs among the residents and continuing governance concerns in the past de­cade: care for the el­derly in middle-­class neighborhoods and collective welfare provision in newly urbanized neighborhoods. Neighborhood care ser­v ices for the el­derly used to be provided by work units, and new ser­v ice providers are in ­great demand ­after the collapse of the work-­unit welfare system. In urbanized neighborhoods, the changing administrative structures have generated ambiguity regarding who and how to provide collective welfare to displaced farmers who, on paper, should be receiving individual-­based urban welfare coverage. The two case studies examine in what ways and to what extent the state and the semi-­state and non-­state actors and organ­izations interact with each other to carry out social governance in the intermediary governance space in urban neighborhoods. The findings underline the diversity of state and non-­state actors, the plurality of supply and demand of governance resources, and the flexibility of local organ­izations to address practical governance needs.

Diversification of Neighborhood Ser­v ice Provision Since the late 1990s, China’s deepening market reforms have required alternative arrangements to provide neighborhood welfare ser­vices that used to be carried out and highly subsidized by urban work units. Despite the state’s attempts to establish a new welfare system, the reluctance of the central government to dramatically increase funding has led local governments to seek market or societal support for ser­vice provision. Nationwide, local governments have been experimenting with vari­ous neighborhood ser­vice provision systems, such as day-­care community centers for the el­derly, in-­home care, community kitchens, mi­grant schools, and mutual aid networks, especially through NGOs (Zhang and Goza 2006; Zhang 2007, 2009; Xu and Chow 2011). As a result, t­ here has been a growing diversification of providers of ­those neighborhood ser­vices in the past two de­cades. The Ministry of Civil Affairs is in charge of the registration and management of NGOs and has the authority to review their annual financial reports, issue warnings and ­orders, and cancel or change an organ­ization’s registration

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status. By 2017 more than 400,000 NGOs—­a dramatic increase from 150,000 in 2010—­had registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, among which 55 ­percent ­were registered as social groups at local levels (Ministry of Civil Affairs 2018b; Yin 2011). It is estimated that the number of unregistered groups is equal to or much larger than that of officially registered ones (Wang and He 2004; Xu and Zhao 2010). Two new types of ser­v ice providers have emerged during this pro­cess: market groups and social ser­v ice organ­izations. In urban neighborhoods, market groups mainly include property management companies in middle-­class neighborhoods, village collective corporations in urbanized neighborhoods, and companies offering neighborhood-­based commercial ser­v ices. Take property management companies as an example. They did not even exist in neighborhood life u ­ ntil the housing reforms of the 1990s. By 2002, the number of property management companies in China had already reached 20,000 (Cai 2005). Social ser­v ice organ­izations are usually registered as not-­for-­profit organ­izations (NPOs) ­under the municipal or district government, with a par­tic­u­lar mission to provide a public ser­v ice, such as schools, hospitals, and community ser­v ices, or to assist vulnerable groups; for example, by helping mi­grant worker ­children with their homework or reconnecting homeless p ­ eople with their families. Nationwide, NPOs have experienced rapid growth as barriers to their growth and establishment set by the government have gradually lessened (Teets 2013). The startup fund for NPOs, made up of donations and government funding for a specific proj­ect, is awarded through a bidding pro­cess. In Guangzhou, social ser­ vice organ­izations can register u ­ nder the local Civil Affairs Bureau without any financial startup fund, but in other cities initial funding is required, varying from 20,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan. Together with the local state, NPOs have become the key ser­v ice providers in Chinese urban neighborhoods t­ oday. With the growing diversification of ser­vice providers has come new practices of neighborhood ser­vice provision: the government purchase of ser­vices has rapidly gained popularity among local governments, particularly in eco­nom­ically better-­off cities like Suzhou and Guangzhou. Consider Wujiang District in Suzhou, for example. Based on pi­lot programs that had been operating since 2011, Wujiang published the first cata­log of its purchases of ser­v ices in July 2014: it included a wide range of community ser­v ices from assistance to low-­i ncome ­house­holds to social worker-­provided ser­v ices. From 2011 to 2015, the funding for purchased ser­v ices increased from 34 million to 270 million RMB. The proportion of this funding to purchase community ser­v ices ­rose from 3.45 ­percent in 2013 to 10.58 ­percent in 2014. The government periodically evaluates the quality of the purchased ser­v ices and makes payments based on the evaluation outcomes. ­After studying mi­grant

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schools, Jessica Teets (2012) claims that public good provision through “government purchase of ser­v ices” leads to increasing pluralism in local public policy and more transparency and accountability of government ser­v ices, without disrupting social stability: “Expanding citizen participation in both the provision and regulation of public goods and ser­v ices has the potential to change the relationship between state and society from a hierarchal relationship to more of a pluralistic one, where private groups possess a legitimate channel to participate in the provision of public goods and ser­v ices, and other relevant policies, with the responsible government agency” (16). During this pro­cess, the state manages to maintain social stability by contracting out only non-­core activities and leading administrative modernization t­ oward a regulatory state. The practices of government purchase of ser­v ices go hand in hand with the growing popularity of social ser­v ice organ­izations nationwide. As mentioned, the total number of neighborhood social ser­v ice organ­izations across the country reached 400,000 by the end of 2017 (Ministry of Civil Affairs 2018b) More and more NPOs in China receive the majority of their funding from the state—­ from governmental grants, subsidies, and fee for ser­v ices (Deng 2001). By 2016, 1.4 million ­people w ­ ere employed by neighborhood ser­vice organ­izations, among whom 300,000 worked for neighborhood aged care organ­izations and 11,483 ­were certified social workers (Ministry of Civil Affairs 2018a). In addition, the number of certified social workers increased from 2,858 in 2008 to 10,750 in 2011, 21,917 in 2013, and 55,115 in 2016; the number of certified assistant social workers increased from 16,965 in 2008 to 81,709 in 2016. By 2016, 33 ­percent of certified social workers worked for institutionalized care and ser­v ice organ­ izations, such as nursing homes, and nearly half worked for social organ­ izations. By 2016, ­there w ­ ere 116,335 neighborhood volunteer organ­izations and nearly 3.4 million registered neighborhood volunteers. The focus of government purchase of ser­vices depends on local governance priorities and so varies across localities. For example, in Guangzhou the so-­called Integrated ­Family Ser­vice is a priority. In 2007, the local Guangzhou government first purchased neighborhood ser­vices, which included proj­ects costing two million yuan supervised by three Street Offices in Haizhu District. Then Liwan District spent one million yuan purchasing f­amily ser­vices for the el­derly, teen­agers, the disabled, and low-­income residents in eight Street Offices. In Suzhou, the town center of Songling benefits significantly from Wujiang District’s Comprehensive City Management scheme, which is a local initiative to gradually reduce the government’s direct involvement in the provision of ser­vices by outsourcing to third-­ party ser­vice providers. ­Under this scheme, Wujiang government outsourced Songling’s city management tasks including cleaning, landscaping, and repairs to professional cleaning companies and property management companies. As part of

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the deal with the local government, t­ hese ser­vices extend to older residential communities in Songling; t­ hese private companies now maintain and repair the roads and streetlights and ­handle plumbing prob­lems. The rest of the chapter examines neighborhood care for the aged in middle-­ class neighborhoods and public ser­v ice provision in t­ hose urbanized neighborhoods where village collectives continue to be involved. The two cases studies are good examples of how and to what extent social governance in neighborhood accommodates vari­ous actors, including market groups and social ser­vice organ­ izations; how vari­ous practices are carried out across dif­fer­ent places; and which strategies have been put in place to secure the leadership of the party-­state among t­ hose actors in urban neighborhoods.

Changing Neighborhood Aged Care in Urban China In recent years, neighborhood care for the aged has become a major government-­ supported program in most Chinese cities, relieving the growing burden on families to provide aged care and to respond to the diverse needs of the still active aging population. China’s long tradition of family-­based aged care through intergenerational support has been seriously eroded by marketization, urbanization, rural-­to-­urban migration, the urban one-­child policy, and the demise of the work-­unit welfare system that provided community social ser­vices. China ­faces a demographic crisis due to a decreased birth rate (from 4.9 c­ hildren per ­couple in 1975 to 1.7 in 2007) and lengthened life expectancy (from sixty-­t hree years old in 1975 to seventy-­t hree in 2009 (United Nations 2010). According to the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs (2016), by 2015 the proportion of the population age sixty and older had reached 16.1 ­percent (according to the international standard, once this statistic reaches 10 ­percent, a country is considered an aging society). It is expected that 30 ­percent of the population ­w ill be over age sixty by 2050 (NBS 2011a). In both the cities and the countryside, the f­amily unit still plays a central role by providing intergenerational care, but it is becoming increasingly overloaded: many of the urban el­derly have had to rely more than previously on their own financial resources and care from their working-­age ­children. Yet the capacity of adult c­ hildren to provide care for the el­derly has significantly declined since the beginning of the 1980s as a direct result of the urban one-­child policy (Zhang 2009; You 2013). For ­those in the first generation born ­under the urban one-­child policy, each young c­ ouple needs to support four retired parents, some of whom are already infirm. Moreover, ­because of the increasing availability of educational and

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c­ areer opportunities, more and more young p ­ eople from urban families are pursuing ­careers in localities far away from their parents, making it practically impossible for many in this younger generation to provide personal care to the el­derly. As a result, provision of neighborhood aged care in urban China has been in ­great need of alternative providers, programs, and coordinating mechanisms. In 2011 China’s State Council called for establishing a new, improved, and coordinated nationwide system of aged care consisting of both f­ amily support and neighborhood and professional organ­izations. It forecast that achieving the goal of making aged care ser­v ices available in ­every urban residential community by 2015 would cost more than 450 billion RMB and would create more than five million new jobs. Guangzhou established its neighborhood aged care ser­vice system in 2009 (GCAB 2009). By 2015, Shenyang also had laid out detailed plans for accelerating existing small-­scale reforms in aged care ser­vices (Shenyang Municipal Government 2015). Recently, Suzhou has extended its government purchase of ser­vices to include neighborhood ser­vices for the el­der­ly; beginning with meal deliveries to the el­derly, the ser­v ices now include laundry, cooking, cleaning, and plumbing repairs, and a group of f­ amily ser­v ice companies have joined the program.

Residents’ Committees and Neighborhood Support for the El­derly Residents’ Committees are involved in the provision of neighborhood aged care in vari­ous ways across the country. For example, in Shenyang, they carry out the work of neighborhood support for the el­derly. They allocate one or two staff members to be the point persons for this support. The staff keep in touch with the el­derly through home visits and phone calls and or­ga­nize recreational activities for them. Some of ­t hese activities take place in the offices of Residents’ Committees, so that many el­derly residents become daily visitors: they play mahjong, chat with other residents, and attend calligraphy, painting, and handicrafts classes or participate in choirs or group dances. Sometimes residents themselves or­ga­nize ­these activities and apply for a small financial subsidy (usually less than 200 yuan) from the Residents’ Committee. To date, the Residents’ Committees’ provision of aged care—­replacing work units in providing support and ser­v ices to urban retirees—is the most common model in urban China. In this scenario, neighborhood aged care is one of the welfare responsibilities that the state shifted to shequ through the “community construction” proj­ect. However, Residents’ Committees have less capacity and resources to deliver ser­vices and support than the previous work units. Aged care support is just one component of a wide range of their work tasks, all of which are solely dependent

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on funds allocated by the local government; as a result many Residents’ Committees lack sufficient staff and money to adequately care for and support the el­derly. To address that issue, MSY3 and MSY4 neighborhoods in Shenyang ­were selected as pi­lot sites by the district government to improve the neighborhood delivery of aged care in the early 2000s. The Residents’ Committees t­here received extra funding to set up community-­based health clinics and rehabilitation centers, which targeted the el­derly with physical disabilities. The committees provided office space and equipment and recruited staff for the clinics. Yet, no more than five staff members usually worked at each clinic or rehabilitation center, and they could only treat two new patients each day. Given that the Shenyang neighborhoods h ­ oused a few thousand residents, the reach of the health clinics and the rehabilitation centers w ­ ere quite ­limited, and the available funding barely covered their cost. The Residents’ Committee staff in Shenyang w ­ ere receptive to the state’s call for neighborhoods to serve as the backbone of a neighborhood aged care system but w ­ ere frustrated by the dearth of resources. In MSY4 neighborhood, one Residents’ Committee developed a program to provide a community lunch ser­ vice for the el­derly in its activity room. Lacking a government subsidy, it planned to hire a local caterer and to set the price of the meal slightly lower than the market price. But the residents started questioning the price, the qualifications of the caterer who was hired, and ­whether the Residents’ Committee was trying to make a profit from the lunch ser­v ice. El­derly residents also complained about the accessibility of the function room, which was on the fourth floor of a building that did not have an elevator. When the Residents’ Committee tried to run a home-­delivery meal ser­v ice for an extra charge, most of the el­derly w ­ ere unwilling to pay for the delivery fee. In the end, the Residents’ Committee had to abandon the lunch ser­v ice due to the lack of funding, space, and personnel. This is a common dilemma for neighborhood aged ser­vices led by Residents’ Committees. Although their staff have sufficient knowledge of the local situation, which helps them identify residents’ needs, they typically must address them with insufficient resources. Residents’ Committees need to do their own fund­rais­ing and spend time and energy securing periodic donations from local enterprises to support their initiatives. Even then the extra funding is usually very ­limited, at 5,000–20,000 yuan a year. Funding issues have largely ­limited Residents’ Committees’ leading role in neighborhood aged care. More recently, Residents’ Committees have stepped back to assume a more supporting role in the delivery of ser­vices, and the government purchase of ser­vices has taken a leading role.

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Government Purchase of Ser­vices: Establishing Collaboration Data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs (2018b) show that since 2015, ­t here has been a steady annual increase in neighborhood aged care organ­izations and facilities, from 26,000 in 2015 to 45,000 in 2018. Similarly, the number of neighborhood organ­izations that provide mutual support for the aged care increased from 62,000 in 2015 to 91,000 in 2018 (Zhiyan Consultancy 2019). Let us look at how the growth of government purchase of ser­vices has affected the delivery of care to the aged in Wujiang District in Suzhou. Since the early 2010s large numbers of young p ­ eople have moved into newly developed neighborhoods surrounding the old town center of Songling in Wujiang District. As a result, a large proportion of aged p ­ eople w ­ ere residing in Songling’s former work-­unit residential compounds. ­Today one-­quarter of Songling’s population—­ approximately 190,000 residents—­are older than sixty years old. Among ­t hese, 30,000 are over the age of eighty, comprising nearly 4 ­percent of the total population. How to provide public ser­v ices to the el­derly residents—­which used to be provided by the work units—­has become a practical, urgent local governance issue. This is not unique to Wujiang District. Most local governments need ser­ vice providers to cope with the growing el­derly population. Across the country, third-­party providers have emerged rapidly along with the introduction of the government purchase of ser­v ices. In 2013, with a 24 million RMB investment, the Wujiang District government set up a neighborhood el­derly center that is within walking distance or a short bus ­ride from most of the neighborhoods in the old town center. The el­derly center remains ­under the management of government personnel, but a property management com­pany that is now also registered as an aged care ser­vice com­pany has been hired to manage its daily operations. A team of twelve full-­time staff offer 24/7 ser­vices, including reception, catering, cleaning, security, and maintenance. The two se­nior managerial positions—­the center director and deputy director—­ are seconded from the district government and so are already on the government payroll, despite being part of the property management com­pany. The el­derly center is situated in a four-­story building provided by the district government: it h ­ ouses a canteen, gym, computer room, TV room, library, hairdresser, and function rooms for activities such as group dances, t­ able tennis, mahjong, calligraphy and painting, and counseling ser­vices. The center adopts a “four-­in-­one” model that combines nursing day care, recreational activities, a se­ niors’ college, and an internet-­based system through which el­derly residents can place online o ­ rders for meal delivery, ­house cleaning, and laundry ser­vices (­these

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are barely used, however, b ­ ecause almost none of the el­derly are willing to pay for ­these ser­vices). The el­derly can also contact the center staff in case of a medical emergency. The center is open exclusively to residents over age sixty who hold a local ­house­hold registration. Its most frequently used spaces are function rooms for recreational activities. Usually the residents line up for a half-­hour before mahjong sessions start to guarantee their seat. The dance room is usually fully occupied ­every after­noon, with at least two dozen ­women practicing group dances. On average, the center is visited by about 200 el­derly daily. In addition, the se­nior’s college, which is funded separately by the district government, offers classes at the center in computer skills, painting, calligraphy, handicrafts, choir, and dancing. The college recruits some of its teachers from among the el­derly who visit the center. In Wujiang, the local government maintains a leading role as the or­ga­nizer and coordinator of aged care resources, but third-­party ser­vice providers are taking over its role in ser­v ice delivery. The two key managerial positions are held by local government officials, and the building used as the el­derly center is government owned. The ser­v ices that the government purchases from the property management com­pany are l­ imited to reception and maintenance. This is b ­ ecause the purchase of ser­v ices in Wujiang is still in its early stages, and ­t here do not yet exist enough qualified social ser­v ice organ­izations to carry out t­ hose programs in­de­pen­dently. In addition, ­t here are few professional care staff trained in delivering ser­v ices to the el­derly. The entire district has 2 se­nior aged care nurses, 20 intermediate aged care nurses, and 173 ju­nior aged care nurses, and the g­ reat majority of them are already working at nursing homes. Of the 500 social workers in Wujiang, 200 are working at neighborhood aged care centers, but the ­great majority are Residents’ Committee staff who w ­ ere required to obtain social worker qualifications. As a result, the government purchase of ser­v ices arrangement in Suzhou is more one of collaboration, with the local government serving as both client and employer. The local government outsourced partial ser­vices to a third-­party provider and retained its direct involvement in neighborhood aged care. In this scenario, the state actors directly involved in ser­vice provision work for local government, instead of Residents’ Committees, b ­ ecause ser­v ice provision is coordinated at a higher administrative level such as the Street Office or the district, rather than in individual neighborhoods. As a result, the Residents’ Committees are relieved of managing the daily operations of a center and organ­izing activities for the el­derly. They can now focus more on other administrative tasks and are simply a liaison between the el­derly residents and the neighborhood el­ derly center. But t­here is only one such center is in the entire district, and so

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el­derly residents residing in other parts of the district continue to turn to their Residents’ Committees for their daily activities.

Government Purchase of Ser­vices: Developing Partnerships In contrast to Shenyang and Suzhou, Guangzhou has managed to establish a comprehensive aged care system through the government’s purchase of ser­vices. Since 2009, the Guangzhou government has encouraged the establishment of Integrated ­Family Ser­v ice Centers that provide a wide range of neighborhood ser­ vices: they are subsidized by the local government but are operated by in­de­pen­dent third-­party NGOs or social ser­v ice organ­izations. Guangzhou became the first city in the country to establish an Integrated ­Family Ser­v ice Center in ­every neighborhood. By 2015, 179 Integrated ­Family Ser­vice Centers ­were spread across all the 132 Street Office jurisdictions in the city. Completely separate entities from the Residents’ Committees, the Integrated ­Family Ser­vice Centers take care of all the non-­administrative ser­vices provided to residents. The popu­lar practice is the “3 + 2 operation model,” in which ­t here are three compulsory ser­vice components that target the el­derly, youth, and families. In addition, some centers have special ser­v ices for the disabled or mi­grant workers, depending on the needs of the neighborhood. Yet ­every Integrated ­Family Ser­v ice Center, no m ­ atter what program model it follows, includes an El­derly Ser­v ice Center. In addition to providing on-­site ser­v ices similar to t­ hose in Suzhou, the centers’ ser­vices extend to regular home visits. Each social worker at an El­derly Ser­vice Center is in contact with several el­derly p ­ eople in the neighborhood who need special attention, such as t­hose living alone and the disabled. ­These programs are f­ ree to all neighborhood residents over age sixty, with no restrictions based on h ­ ouse­hold registration status. Yuexiu District, part of the old town in Guangzhou, responded to growing demands for neighborhood support for the el­derly by pioneering the El­derly Ser­ vice Center scheme, which now is the norm in ­every Guangzhou district. It selects the social ser­v ice organ­i zation that runs the center’s daily operations through a bidding pro­cess. The district government organizes the bid applications and evaluation pro­cess, which is open to registered NGOs and social ser­vice organ­izations from China and overseas. Overseas bidders, including ­those from Hong Kong, are required to apply in association with a local partner. The contract is usually for three years and can be renewed subject to the results of an audit and a new application round. For each Integrated ­Family Ser­vice Center, the municipal government provides a subsidy varying from one to two million RMB, and

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the district government is required to match that amount. The district government also provides the buildings for the centers, usually rent f­ ree. Although the government subsidy is the major funding source for each Integrated ­Family Ser­ vice Center, the social ser­vice organ­izations also engage in their own fund­rais­ing activities. In addition to providing activities for the el­derly on a drop-in basis, the centers run an el­derly day-­care program from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at a cost of about 15 yuan a day, including lunch and snacks. Transportation ser­v ices are available at the daily rate of 5 yuan. The program is heavi­ly subsidized and includes computer classes, choirs, ­table tennis classes, and book clubs. But each el­derly day-­care program usually enrolls no more than thirty participants. Given the large number of el­derly residents in a neighborhood (varying from hundreds to thousands), the day-­care program so far can serve only a very small proportion of them. In addition, a separate Se­nior’s Canteen program provides subsidized meals at the centers to about 100–150 p ­ eople e­ very day, which creates opportunities for socializing with other el­derly p ­ eople in the neighborhood. Unlike the neighborhood el­derly center in Suzhou, where daily operations are carried out by a property management com­pany supervised by government personnel, the El­derly Ser­vice Centers in Guangzhou are staffed by five to eight full-­ time professional social workers with nationally recognized qualifications. They are recruited by the social ser­vice organ­ization and constitute about one-­third of the staff at each center. In addition, the centers recruit volunteers from local enterprises to help or­ga­nize events such as field trips and sports games on a regular basis. Most centers work with at least one local com­pany that sponsors events as its social responsibility contribution. By sponsoring center activities, t­ hese firms maintain good contacts with the local government, from which they hope to receive favored deals in return, especially on taxes. For example, Bank H, a World Fortune 500 firm, has been a major enterprise sponsor for five years. In addition to an annual monetary donation, the Guangzhou branch of Bank H sends 200 volunteers to a local center to help out with programs each year. In Guangzhou’s neighborhood aged care system, local governments are less directly involved in everyday policy implementation but instead act as partners and supervisors of the non-­state organ­izations that carry out the daily activities. The local government’s main concerns are how to select qualified social organ­izations and effectively audit the centers. Some of the social organ­izations are religious organ­izations (mainly Christian and Buddhist), some are overseas organ­izations, and some are private charities. ­These organ­izations tend to have other sources of funding in addition to government funding. For example, one religious organ­ization stated in its application that, if it was chosen to deliver ser­vices, it would be willing to self-­fund the center without the government’s sub-

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sidy. Some charity organ­izations also run neighborhood health clinics, which can be linked to the ser­v ices provided by the el­derly center. ­These organ­izations usually also have developed extensive social networks among the el­derly through their other activities and are more likely to gain the initial support and trust of residents. Once t­ hose organ­izations receive their first contract, they are more likely to have the contract renewed if they pass the audit; local governments tend to believe it would be more efficient to continue with existing arrangements than to start again with a new partner. To ensure financial accountability, the local government carries out an annual evaluation, midterm evaluation, and final evaluation. Of course, the centers complain that they spend too much time preparing all the paperwork the government requires.1 As a result of the government purchase of care in Guangzhou ­today, Residents’ Committees have completely withdrawn, physically and administratively, from aged care ser­v ices. In most Guangzhou neighborhoods, Residents’ Committee offices are located adjacent to or relatively close to the ­Family Ser­v ice Center. This spatial arrangement sends a clear message to the residents: for administrative requests, they should go to the Residents’ Committee office, and for aged care support and social activities, they go to the El­derly Ser­v ice Center. Residents’ Committees then liaise with the center, especially its social workers, to maintain frequent contact with the residents and recruit resident volunteers. The social workers also share information with the grid management teams, but they do not replace the grid management members. Social workers usually focus on a par­tic­u­lar group of residents who are in special need of their professional help. By 2015 t­ here ­were more than four hundred registered social ser­v ice organ­ izations, with more than 13,000 registered professional social workers, in Guangzhou. Even so, the city still f­aces a dearth of experienced social workers and a high turnover rate. Almost all the centers I visited are struggling to find enough experienced social workers. The pre­sent corps of social workers is made up mostly of young and inexperienced university gradu­ates who sometimes have difficulties dealing with practical issues in the field, even though they graduated with a major in social work. B ­ ecause social work is a relatively new field in China, t­ here is often inadequate training. In addition, well-­educated young p ­ eople are not optimistic about the ­career prospects in this new profession. The monthly salary starts at 4,500 yuan, and at 6,000 yuan for se­nior social workers, plus contributions to social security. Even though this salary package is above average in Guangzhou for recent university gradu­ates, social workers at the centers usually leave for other jobs a­ fter two or three years. One reason is that they do not see bright ­career prospects beyond becoming a se­nior social worker. Another reason that emerged from my 2016 interviews with social workers at centers is that they seldom have the support of their families, who think being a social

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worker is a low-­class job. In some cases, the centers have had to resort to hiring experienced social workers from Hong Kong to train and supervise the ju­nior staff. In sum, from the perspective of local governance, aged care support and ser­ vices directly provided by Residents’ Committees or alternatively through government purchases of ser­vices play dif­fer­ent roles that shape not only the dynamics of aged care but also the interactions at the local level among the state, semi-­state, and nonstate actors and organ­izations. Local bud­gets, aged care needs, and the availability of ser­vice organ­izations and professional social workers have significantly influenced vari­ous practices observed in the cities of Shenyang, Suzhou, and Guangzhou. ­These cities’ practices represent dif­fer­ent dynamics of involving non-­state actors in neighborhood ser­vice provision in Chinese cities. In urban middle-­class neighborhoods, non-­state actors largely include newly engaged social organ­izations and market suppliers, resulting from the marketization pro­cesses, whereas in urbanized neighborhoods, they reflect more of the heritage of rural governance that has been maintained despite urbanization.

Transforming Village Ser­v ices to Urban Neighborhood Ser­v ices Newly urbanized neighborhoods such as urban villages and relocation neighborhoods are facing equally, if not more complicated, changes in neighborhood ser­vice provision than traditional urban neighborhoods. In the rural governance setting, village collectives are the backbone of the village economy and largely overlap with village governance. Lily Tsai (2007a) found that informal institutions—­social groups based on common interests and shared obligations, such as lineage group and village t­ emple institutions—­played a significant role in providing better governmental public goods to the villa­gers. That is ­because, through ­t hose village social institutions, villa­gers can hold village officials accountable for their per­for­mance by villa­gers. As a result of urbanization, as shown by chapters 1 and 2, village collectives have become involved, formally or informally, in urban neighborhood governance structures. In contrast to urban work units that have gradually withdrawn from neighborhood ser­vice provision, village collectives try to maintain their autonomy a­ fter the village-­to-­community transition through the provision of collective welfare, job opportunities, and control of the remaining collective assets. Hsing (2010, 123–124) terms t­hese practices as “village corporatism” that provides initiatives from the bottom-up and manages the accumulation and distribution of collective funds. Through providing public goods and ser­vice in neighborhoods, village collectives have gradually

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acquired more formal channels to participate in local policymaking, such as with re­spect to local land policy discussed in chapter 3.

Collective Welfare In princi­ple, welfare provision should have been shifted from the village collective to the urban welfare system along with the change in residents’ h ­ ouse­hold registration. However, local practices vary from place to place. Pensions and medical insurance, the two most basic forms of social welfare in urban China, are usually funded partly by state subsidies and partly by contributions from employers and employees. When they w ­ ere granted urban h ­ ouse­hold registration, the villa­gers expected that they would receive the same welfare entitlements as urban residents. However, fieldwork suggests that in most cases, it is the village collectives that have been subsidizing and organ­izing the villa­gers’ social welfare entitlements through the urban social security scheme. ­Because many residents in urbanized neighborhoods do not have an employer to provide consistent, stable contributions, village collectives provide the contribution collectively. For example, UGZ1 village in Guangzhou retained around 30 ­percent of its land, which the village collective in the form of a shareholding com­pany rents out to local factories. This rental income has become the main source of the villa­gers’ collective welfare provision. In 2011, e­ very villa­ger received 1,500 yuan on average, reaching an upper limit of about 7,000 yuan in annual dividends for older villa­gers, or 14,000 yuan for an older c­ ouple. Although the annual bonus dividends have been modest, ­these formerly rural residents feel that they are better off than ordinary urban residents for the first time since the establishment of the ­house­hold registration system in China. As one villa­ger observed, “We used to think of becoming an urban resident with pride. Now, it is the other way around—­the urban residents admire us. This is b ­ ecause we have share dividends and we have our collective properties that make money.”2 The village shareholding com­pany also provides the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee for the el­derly who can no longer work and offers a monthly livelihood subsidy of 150 yuan to all villa­gers who have reached the age of sixty. In other places where I conducted fieldwork, village collectives on average subsidized 60 ­percent of the medical insurance contribution of the villa­gers. In addition to pension and medical insurance, assistance in finding employment is another collective need in urbanized neighborhoods. As vari­ous studies have shown, the majority of displaced landless residents have no formal employment. Since the 1990s, it has become increasingly difficult for villa­gers to find jobs, even if they an urban ­house­hold registration. ­Those who are in their forties or older usually find themselves excluded from the urban job market

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­ ecause of their age, poor education, and lack of skills. Most have given up the b search for urban jobs and have become what is termed “three loss” villa­gers—­ villa­gers who have lost their land, jobs and incomes. Thus, helping unemployed residents find work is another impor­tant component of welfare program in urban communities. Well-­resourced village collectives can be essential to negotiating employment opportunities. In Guangzhou, village collectives normally make deals with investors to give priority to local villa­gers when filling vacancies in the new enterprises built on village land. Th ­ ese are usually low-­skilled jobs, such as cleaners or gardeners. In Wuhan, the RWH3 village collective, with the help of local vocational schools, provided vocational training to villa­gers so they could find jobs as electricians and plumbers with local enterprises. More importantly, the village collective itself also hired locals who lacked the skills required by the job market, especially ­women in their late forties or fifties, to work as cleaners in the com­pany and in the residential communities in the neighborhood. One cleaning lady told me, “My salary ­isn’t high. I get less than 1,000 yuan a month and the job is tiring. But I’m happy to have this job, ­because it makes me feel I have something to do and I can still be useful.”3 In Suzhou, the villages secured a deal with the local government through which landless villa­gers ­were hired as cleaners or gardeners for a com­pany that provides environmental maintenance ser­v ices for the city. The distribution of collective welfare is carried out through the collectives of villages to which the residents previously belonged. In urban villages, where residents still reside in their village h ­ ouses, collective welfare provision takes place within their territorial bound­aries. In relocation neighborhoods where residents from dif­fer­ent villages live next to each other, welfare provision can involve dif­ fer­ent village collectives. The Residents’ Committees usually are not directly involved in the activities of village collectives, but they help coordinate between residents and their village collectives: that is b ­ ecause residents in relocation neighborhoods do not have neighborhood-­based, direct, frequent contact with their village collectives and the Residents’ Committees have become their first contact. In relocation neighborhoods that accommodate residents from dif­fer­ ent villages, representatives of village collectives are recruited to join the grid management team.

Neighborhood Property Management Ser­vices As part of the government’s vision of urbanization and modernization, having professional property management companies to replace the self-­maintenance and management of residential areas in Chinese villages is a significant symbol

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of the “citizenization” of urbanized neighborhoods and their residents brought about by their integration into urban life. Urbanized neighborhoods, especially relocation communities, are designed and operated in similar ways to other urban residential estates and face similar needs for professional property management and maintenance. However, in most of the urban villages and relocation communities that I studied, the remaining village collectives, e­ ither voluntarily or involuntarily, are providing property management ser­v ices. In many urbanized neighborhoods, the introduction of professional property management companies evoked re­sis­tance from residents. For displaced farmers, land expropriation and relocation are usually accompanied by the loss of income, and many considered the property management fee an extra expense and refused to pay. In addition, property management in residential communities is a new concept to t­ hose villa­gers, who previously relied entirely on self-­management and self-­maintenance of their residential properties and environment. Therefore, the collection of property management fees in urbanized neighborhoods has become almost an impossible mission. Take Wujiang in Suzhou as an example. In its largest relocation neighborhood, RSZ1, which accommodates four residential communities and 5,000 residents, no relocation community was able to successfully collect property management fees—­which ­were set at around 0.2–0.4 yuan per square meter per month. As a result, the local Street Office de­cided to suspend the collection of property management fees for the time being and to instead collect annual cleaning ser­v ice fees of 120 yuan per h ­ ouse­hold from the village collectives. In addition, the village collectives subsidized the hiring of security guards and cleaning staff for each neighborhood, instead of hiring a property management com­pany. They encouraged each community to recruit security and maintenance staff among their residents, which would also help provide employment opportunities for the villa­gers. Moreover, having residents do the work would be expected to reduce conflicts between residents and property management companies. The newly established Residents’ Committees, working with the property management office of the district government, supervise property management ser­vices in t­ hose relocation communities. The other common prob­lem that urbanized neighborhoods are facing is the lack of government funding for building and maintaining infrastructure and public facilities in the residential areas. When u ­ nder rural administration, the villages themselves through the village collective economy financed their infrastructure and public facilities, such as road construction, street lighting, and trash collection. A ­ fter being transferred to the urban administrative system through the village-­to-­community transition, urban villages ­were supposed to offload t­ hese responsibilities to the local government, as did all other urban

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neighborhoods. However, this expectation was rarely realized. Instead, the village collectives continued to cover some, if not all, of the expenses of neighborhood facilities, particularly in urban villages. For relocation communities, village collectives contributed to the expenses of property management in the new urban estate development. For instance, during the village-­to-­community transition in Guangzhou, the UGZ4 village collective was required to subsidize administrative expenses and community ser­vices for three years, ­after which the city government was supposed to provide that funding. However, a de­cade ­later, the village collective was still spending about one-­quarter of its annual income on community infrastructure, policing, and sanitation. In 2009, it spent a million yuan renovating facilities in the local primary school and community park. Given that more than one-­third of the students in the neighborhood schools come from mi­grant resident families and the park is open to the public, the village collective argued that t­hose facilities should be the city government’s responsibility and that the village collective should only be responsible for the interests of its villa­gers.4 Yet the village collective had no other choice but to follow the government’s “administrative o ­ rders.” In addition, the large number of mi­grant residents also resulted in security concerns in the village. The village collective has collaborated with the Residents’ Committee to deal with ­t hese concerns. From the point of view of both the village collective and the Residents’ Committee, mi­g rant residents are welcome ­because they boost the local economy and the rental market. However, both feel that mi­grant residents need to be “managed” for the sake of neighborhood security.5 In accordance with local policies, the Residents’ Committee in urban village UGZ4 set up a “mi­grants’ management office” to deal with community affairs related to mi­grant worker residents, and the village collective hired a team of security guards from among young villa­gers to work in the community. This is a common situation observed in urban villages that host factories and mi­grant worker residents. Relocation neighborhoods in general are better equipped with neighborhood facilities than urban villages. Yet village collectives have still been asked to step in to cover the gap between the government bud­get and the a­ ctual costs of street cleaning and security ser­vices for new residential communities and for the main roads outside them. For instance, in relocation neighborhood RWH2 in Wuhan where some villa­gers brough their livestock and farm tools to the relocation community (as discussed in chapter 1), the village collectives and the Residents’ Committee brought the villa­gers’ requests to the attention of the local Street Office. The local officials agreed to help solve the storage prob­lem, but they also pointed out the difficulties of providing storage inside the residential community due to the lack of government bud­get funds and space. The village collective then went

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to the villa­gers and started discussing other options, such as storage outside the community. A ­ fter a month of back-­and-­forth communication and informal discussions, the three parties reached an agreement: the villa­gers would not bring farm tools and cows into the community; the village collective would provide thirty rooms owned by the village collective com­pany as temporary storage shelters within walking distance from the community; and the local Street Office would contribute a partial financial subsidy to the village collective. Given that some villa­gers w ­ ere still worried about the security of their property stored at a distance from their residences, the village collective and the Residents’ Committee together hired a team of security guards to work the night shifts at the storage shelters: the Residents’ Committee recruited and trained the guards, and the village collective provided their salaries. Another example is e-­bike chargers in relocation neighborhoods. E-­bikes have become one of the most popu­lar vehicles among residents. Buildings in middle-­class neighborhoods are usually equipped with e-­bike chargers in the basement parking area. Yet t­ hose facilities are absent or inadequate in relocation neighborhoods b ­ ecause of the lack of professional property management ser­vices and the incompetence of t­ hose ser­vices when provided. Some residents then installed illegal chargers in their building basement, which caused safety concerns and complaints from other residents. The local government’s response to this prob­lem has usually been to ask the village corporations to subsidize e-­bike chargers in the neighborhoods.

Variations in Neighborhood Ser­v ice Provision and State–­S ociety Relations in Transition This chapter has examined dif­fer­ent modes of neighborhood ser­v ice provision in urban China, exploring the interactions among the local state, nonprofit organ­izations, and business partners and how ser­v ices are coordinated in local governance programs. The varying practices in dif­fer­ent cities illustrate how and to what extent the local party-­state tries to improve governance through multiple strategies at the neighborhood level, flexibly expanding to include non-­state or semi-­state actors and market organ­izations and activities. As this chapter reveals, non-­state actors carry out neighborhood ser­v ice provision u ­ nder the supervision of the state. Although ­t hose non-­state actors and organ­izations have gradually obtained more autonomy and flexibility, they continually have to deal with state control. Meanwhile, state actors have also adjusted their strategies to collaborate with non-­state actors in delivering neighborhood ser­v ices while keeping control at the same time.

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NGOs ­were tasked with delivering neighborhood aged care ­because of urban governments’ realization that they lacked the capacity to do so effectively. As this chapter shows, the provision of ser­v ice has been implemented locally subject to the availability of subsidies from local government, the diverse demands of stakeholders, and the presence of non-­state resources. The three types of practices—­ state-­dominated, partial state involvement, and state–­society collaborative practices—­reveal the flexibility and variations in local governance mechanisms. Whereas in Shenyang the Residents’ Committees directly operate neighborhood aged care, Suzhou has introduced hired market actors, while the local state continues to provide the managerial personnel. In contrast, Guangzhou has turned over neighborhood aged care to nonprofit organ­izations that are able to retain more autonomy and work as partners of the local government. ­There the state has stepped back from being an employer and assumes the role of a client and auditor. Through the government purchases of ser­vices, Residents’ Committees in Suzhou and Guangzhou have been relieved of their neighborhood aged care responsibilities. Even so, in most Guangzhou neighborhoods the Residents’ Committee offices and the Integrated F ­ amily Ser­vice Centers are adjacent to each other, so that it is con­ve­nient for residents to access all ser­v ices in one location. In contrast, Residents’ Committees in Shenyang continue to carry out neighborhood aged care ser­v ices and strug­gle with a lack of staff and administrative resources. In this context, the practices in Shenyang are not just the result of a dearth of government funding. More importantly, ­there has been a stronger ongoing local government presence in its urban communities, with less governance space for non-­state actors than in Suzhou and Guangzhou. Yet, the practices in Suzhou and Guangzhou suggest that the involvement of the local government to a certain extent ensures more efficient interactions and coordination between vari­ous sectors. At the same time, Shenyang realizes the advantages of cooperating with non-­state actors and has adjusted accordingly. In 2015, the Shenyang municipal government stated an intention that “through government purchase of ser­v ices, social organ­izations are encouraged and guided to enter neighborhood aged care” (Shenyang Municipal Government 2015). In urbanized neighborhoods, despite their transition to the urban administrative system, the remaining village collectives continue to play an impor­tant role in providing neighborhood ser­v ices. When the villages ­were ­under the rural administrative system, the village collectives’ involvement in collective welfare and community ser­v ices was intertwined with the po­liti­cal functions and activities of the Village Committees. In other words, the village collectives in that context w ­ ere acting as state actors in providing ser­v ices to the villages. In the context of urbanized neighborhoods where residents’ neighborhood life is

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separated from their economic life, village collectives participate in neighborhood ser­v ice provision more as a market group. Through their interactions and negotiation with the local governments and Residents’ Committees in the neighborhoods, they (sometimes involuntarily) provide collective welfare and public facilities to the residents. The state actors in this scenario rely on the village collective’s financial support and h ­ uman resources, while trying to ensure that the village collectives are ­under the leadership of the Residents’ Committees. As a result, the remaining village collectives in urbanized neighborhoods, just like social ser­v ice organ­ izations in urban middle-­class neighborhoods, join neighborhood governance as non-­state actors. They are accepting the leadership of the state actors while, at the same time, seeking more autonomy and flexibility in neighborhoods. They have been interacting with the state using their own strategies, as chapter 5 examines in detail.

5 PARTICIPATION IN NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

Chapters 2–4 have illustrated the po­liti­cal structures and practices of neighborhood governance through which both flexible and relatively autonomous arrangements are permitted and strengthened party-­leadership is embedded. The material in ­those chapters was presented mainly from the perspective of the party-­state: how it organizes neighborhood governance structure and leads the operations of urban neighborhood politics. In contrast, this chapter examines the experiences, perceptions, and strategies of the non-­state participants and how ­those affect the functions and dynamics of the intermediary governance space. To this point, discussions of state–­society relations mostly considered non-­state actors as po­liti­ cally suppressed groups with heavi­ly constrained autonomy. Taking a dif­fer­ent approach, this chapter emphasizes non-­state participants’ experiences and role as collaborators and strategic players with the party-­state. This is not to deny the party-­state’s leading and often dominant role in neighborhood governance but to explore in what ways and to what extent actors both within and outside the party-­ state system can and do work together to produce po­liti­cal outcomes in the intermediary governance space. I claim that the experiences, strategies, and perceptions of the non-­state actors are indeed significant in shaping neighborhood governance by shaping how “governmentality” plays out at the Chinese grassroots. According to Foucault’s (1991) concept of governmentality, states exert power by emphasizing the role of m ­ ental constructs as object-­specific frames of reference (Lemke 2007, 48). The ­mental constructs usually exert an influence by interpreting real­ity and shap-

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ing po­liti­cal action. For example, instead of forcing individuals to behave in specific ways, states instead entice them to regulate themselves by providing frames of reference regarding what and who they are and should be (Dean 1999, 12). In the Chinese context, this kind of referencing “mentality” usually is seen in the party-­led government proj­ects, discourses. and practices such as “community building,” “urbanization and citizenization,” and “self-­governance.” As Jean-­ Louis Rocca’s (2013) study suggests, one critical and effective governance technique for governing newly emerged social classes is to focus on the subversive realm that labels dif­fer­ent social categories (such as “Chinese middle-­class” and “Chinese urban”) and sets new standards of conduct and quality as mea­sures of personal attainment. Tomba’s study on po­liti­cal consensus building in urban neighborhoods suggests that, rather than showing re­sis­tance, Chinese urban residents actually accept ­t hose government proj­ects, discourses. and practices. Po­ liti­cal consensus thus is defined as “the ability of societal actors to speak the language of the government to achieve po­liti­cal gains and to reduce the risks implicit in social action. Although this appears to strengthen the interest and position of the rulers and to produce a more governance society, it also provides autonomous actors with ave­nues to protect and represent their interests, even in an authoritarian environment” (Tomba 2014, 22). Using the governmentality construct, this chapter examines everyday politics in urban neighborhoods from the perspectives of non-­state actors who perform as po­liti­cal intermediaries ­under the CCP’s control. As shown, non-­state actors are a diverse group including neighborhood organ­izations, market groups, and resident volunteers. Some groups are newly emerging participants in urban neighborhood governance, such as social ser­v ice organ­izations, property management companies, and village collectives; ­others, such as resident volunteers, have a long history in neighborhood politics. This chapter explores all t­ hese groups’ participation in neighborhood governance, their strategies to survive and grow in the intermediary governance space, and their perceptions that shape and are being s­ haped by their strategies and be­hav­iors in neighborhood governance participation. It seeks to understand in what ways and to what extent their experiences are ­shaped by their everyday perception of politics, power, and government and, in turn, contribute to their support for regime legitimacy. In other words, departing from the state-­led discourses of “self-­governance” and “co-­ governance,” I claim that ­t hese non-­state actors tend to follow the lead of the state actors in the intermediate governance space, perceive themselves as participants rather than victims of neighborhood governance, and adjust their strategies to gain more flexibility and autonomy ­under the lead of the party-­state.

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Neighborhood Social Organ­i zations Neighborhood social organ­izations (shehui tuanti or shehui zuzhi) in recent years have become a significant feature of China’s urban neighborhoods. As previously discussed, they include (1) resident social groups or­ga­nized by the residents themselves and operating largely within the residential communities and (2) social ser­v ice organ­izations run by NPOs providing ser­v ices or support to a par­ tic­u ­lar group of residents, such as the el­derly, teen­agers, the disabled, and low-­income residents.

Resident Social Groups According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs (2018a), in Chinese urban neighborhoods ­there w ­ ere 1.4 million resident groups by the end of 2016, an increase from 1.3 million in the previous year. To date, resident social groups are the most common type of neighborhood social organ­ization, and among them, recreational activity groups are the most widespread in urban neighborhoods. They offer recreational activities such as group dance and physical exercise—­for example, Taichi, basketball, and t­ able tennis; educational programs such as calligraphy, painting, and handcrafts; and the performing arts, such as choirs and dance. The number of groups usually varies according to the size of the neighborhood. For example, middle-­class neighborhood MSZ4 in Suzhou has four middle-­class gated communities with more than one thousand residents living in each one. In this neighborhood, ­there are 186 resident groups on rec­ord. About forty-­three resident groups have been established in its largest residential community, which has nearly two thousand residents. In 2007 when the first group of residents moved in, several se­nior residents who shared a common interest in group dance or­ga­nized a daily time to practice in the park inside the residential compound. ­These daily practices gradually attracted the attention of other residents, and more and more residents approached them and joined the dance group. ­Today the dance group has grown to nearly twenty teams and more than two hundred members. At the same time, participation in other groups such as the choir or calligraphy groups also started to increase. Although resident social groups are open to all residents, observations in the field suggest that more than 95 ­percent of the participants are retired and the g­ reat majority are female. Choir and dance groups are usually the most popu­lar groups among the se­nior residents. ­Those groups serve critical social and po­liti­cal functions for retirees in urban neighborhoods: ­t hose activities become the loci of their associational life and social network ­after retirement from work units. When they ­were working, ­t hese residents spent l­ ittle time in the residential communities, just like t­ oday’s



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younger generation of residents. A ­ fter retirement, their everyday life is largely taking place in the neighborhoods, and they have a strong desire to expand their social networks within the neighborhood, which they neglected before. In contrast to younger residents, who ­today who are more accepting of not having a work unit ­because of their increasing self-­employment and generally higher turnover rate at work, retired residents value more a sense of belonging to a stable group. Moreover, t­hose groups provide a wide social base for governance networks in the neighborhoods, especially when it comes to resident interactions and mobilization (Heberer and Göbel 2011; Read 2012). For displaced farmers, especially ­t hose who moved to relocation neighborhoods, the transformation of their daily activities and community life shapes their “new citizen” identity to a significant degree. The relocated farmers experience dif­fer­ent modes of social interactions and community life as they deal with new groups and organ­izations in their neighborhoods. They no longer work in the fields, and they do not know their neighbors who moved from other villages. The younger generation who are in their twenties and thirties usually find jobs in the cities and spend very ­limited time in the community; many even move out to live closer to work. For ­t hose who are in their forties and fifties, men are more likely to be self-­employed or to find casual work than ­women. For ­women of this age group, t­ here are very l­ imited job opportunities, and most end up living on their compensation from land expropriation, annual bonus and interests, and rental income. Thus, middle-­aged w ­ omen and the se­nior residents have become two major resident groups who spend most of their time in relocation communities, and the demand for collective recreational activities is very high. Landless and displaced farmers, as new members of China’s urban society, tend to be stigmatized in media discourses as being “low-­quality” residents and to be considered as an outgroup by the urban residents who are heavi­ly influenced by this prejudice (Du, Song, and Li 2020). As a result, associational life within the neighborhood has become very impor­tant for residents in newly urbanized neighborhoods. Their experiences with urban society are more likely to take place in ­t hose neighborhoods among other residents who share a similar social background, than other urban groups, such as urban middle-­class residents. Neighborhood recreational activities thus play an essential role in associational life for displaced and landless farmers, especially for the relocated villa­gers who are adapting to the new living environment and are trying to expand their social networks. Participation in recreation has become a primary way for them to get to know their fellow residents from dif­fer­ent villages. Active participants usually spend the after­noon with their group members for five or six days a week. Each community has at least three to four recreational activity groups, with the number of participants ranging from fewer than ten to more

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than fifty. Through participating in t­ hose activities, a new community identity gradually emerges. During conversations with the residents who participate in ­t hose recreational activities regularly, it is more common to hear them identify themselves as “I am from former Village A” and to refer to their residential community as “our community.” In some cases t­ hese groups participate in per­for­ mances or contests outside the neighborhood. When their activities go beyond their own residential community, the statement, “We are from Community X” replaces “I am from former Village A.” ­These recreational activities differ in form and content from the mass campaigns ­under Mao. But one tradition remains: they serve as a starting point for the state to reach a par­tic­u ­lar group of the population and, from t­ here, to mobilize the population as a ­whole. As shown in chapters 2 and 3, Residents’ Committees and the local government use recreational activity groups as the resource pool for resident mobilization. To obtain more neighborhood resources for their group activities, active members of t­ hose groups tend to be in frequent contact with Residents’ Committee staff; thus, they help serve as liaisons between the residents and Residents’ Committee and property management companies. Some have also become resident participants or volunteers, becoming involved in neighborhood deliberation or ser­v ice provision, as shown in chapters 3 and 4. In some middle-­class neighborhoods, the grid governance model encourages resident groups to register with the Residents’ Committee, rather than with the local Municipal Affairs Bureau. In that way, the Residents’ Committees retain supervision and control over ­t hose groups in the neighborhood. If they are registered with the local bureau, the Residents’ Committees lose the capacity to mobilize the groups b ­ ecause they are no longer in the category of neighborhood groups. According to government regulations, social organ­izations are required to be registered ­either ­under the local Civil Affairs Bureau or the shequ through Residents’ Committees: it is more common for social ser­v ice organ­izations to register with the local Civil Affairs Bureau, whereas resident social groups typically register with their Residents’ Committees. This arrangement is a win-­w in for both Residents’ Committee and resident social groups: the committees can extend their reach and monitoring to the resident social groups, and the groups can have better access to neighborhood facilities for their activities. Indeed, resident social groups often try to use their connections with the Residents’ Committees to advance their own interests and agenda by obtaining more neighborhood resources. MGZ2 neighborhood in Guangzhou h ­ ouses thirty buildings and more than two thousand 2,000 residents, who moved in at dif­fer­ent stages. Early on, ­t here w ­ ere eleven resident groups—­six dancing and five badminton groups—­organized by the residents themselves through their own networks. Soon public space and facilities in the neighborhood for ­t hose



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activities grew ­limited, and the groups started to have conflicts with each other regarding use of the space. They then asked the Residents’ Committee to be the liaison and coordinator for use of the space by creating a daily schedule for the dif­fer­ent groups. In exchange, the groups agreed to be registered with and supervised by the Residents’ Committee. They supported its initiative to combine similar groups ­under one larger resident association and to establish four major associations of residents’ recreational activities: dancing, badminton, calligraphy and painting, and reading groups. In this way, residents’ groups obtained the Residents’ Committee’s support for their activities and used its resources to facilitate operation of the groups, while the Residents’ Committee secured its ability to monitor ­t hose groups. In relocation neighborhoods, landless farmers make similar requests of newly established Residents’ Committees. The relocated farmers see the committees as a resource pool to help with their social activities and an agent to introduce them to the urban lifestyle. In addition to helping coordinate recreational activities inside the residential communities, the Residents’ Committees also help the groups establish contacts and find opportunities to perform or join in group dance or singing contests outside their neighborhood. When asked what they would like the Residents’ Committees to do for them, se­nior residents in dif­fer­ent neighborhoods expressed one common request: to or­ga­nize day tours of the city for them. One resident told me, “I used to work in the field ­every day and had no time for ­those t­ hings (recreational/leisure activities). Now I no longer have work to do, I would like to see dif­fer­ent places of the city. But I know ­little about the city, where to go and what to do. So it would be nice if our Residents’ Committee can or­ga­ nize day trip for us, so that we can enjoy the trip with no worries.”1 For Residents’ Committees, this kind of neighborhood activity provides opportunities for their staff to get acquainted with the residents and recruit resident volunteers to facilitate their everyday work. Therefore, Residents’ Committees in relocation communities tend to be supportive of ­those requests and activities.

Neighborhood Ser­vice Organ­izations The second type of neighborhood social organ­ization are ­those that provide public ser­vices in the neighborhoods. In middle-­class neighborhoods, such organ­izations are mostly referred to as “neighborhood ser­vice organ­izations”: government purchases ser­vices from them that they provide. Compared to resident recreational activity groups, neighborhood ser­vice organ­izations are more distant from the Residents’ Committees. As chapter 4 suggests, for more established government purchase of ser­vice arrangements, such as for neighborhood aged care, ­there tends to be a gradual separation between Residents’ Committees and neighborhood

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ser­vice organ­izations. But in cases where the government purchase of ser­vices is less established and involves more state control, Residents’ Committees usually intervene to choose between the residents and ser­vice providers. For example, in Wujiang District in Suzhou, apartments in former work-­unit residential complexes ­were gradually deteriorating, and community facilities ­were being poorly maintained. In addition, more than half the apartments w ­ ere rented out to mi­ grants, and the landlords who now lived elsewhere rarely responded to Residents’ Committees’ call for meetings to discuss maintenance prob­lems. The former work-­unit residents who remained in the community then or­ga­nized collective petitions to the local government requesting maintenance and repair ser­vices in the neighborhood. In response, Wujiang’s government purchased ser­vices from local repair companies for large-­scale maintenance and repairs affecting many residents. ­Because of the high turnover of the residents and the lack of communication between the mi­grant tenants and the landlords, Residents’ Committees have become the liaison between them and the repair companies. When prob­lems only occur in one or a few h ­ ouse­holds, Residents’ Committees collect information and mediate the disagreements between the residents regarding payment for the repair work. If the prob­lems are identified as affecting more than a few h ­ ouse­holds, the Residents’ Committees ­will lodge a job request with the local government, and then the government w ­ ill send in professional ser­vice companies. Neighborhood ser­v ice organ­izations have more frequent contacts with local government offices than with Residents’ Committees, b ­ ecause local government is a major funding source and it supervises all the proj­ect bidding, operation, and auditing of the social organ­izations. In general, t­ hose neighborhood ser­vice organ­izations that have received government funding accept supervision and monitoring by the local government. Their biggest complaints are more about the bureaucratic auditing pro­cess and the lack of sufficient trust by government. The current practice of funds allocation for successful bidders is that, for a three-­ year contract proj­ect, the local government w ­ ill allocate one-­t hird of the funds to the social organ­ization to kick off the proj­ect. Then t­ here w ­ ill be an evaluation e­ very six or nine months, plus random requests for paperwork submission from the local government. ­A fter passing each periodic evaluation, the social organ­ization would receive another installment of funds. The social organ­ izations chafe at the amount of time they have to devote to the preparation of paperwork submitted to the local government; as one staff member told me, “We would like to spend [this time] on d ­ oing more work for the neighborhood.”2 Yet, neighborhood ser­v ice organ­ization staff know that their long-­term survival and development require a good relationship with the local government. To receive that state support, they have generally developed a cooperative strategy of responding to the state’s requests. In many cases, the religious backgrounds



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of the organ­izations that run the neighborhood el­derly ser­v ice centers are po­ liti­cally sensitive, as mentioned in chapter 4. To ensure a long-­term working relationship, ­t hose religious organ­izations all guarantee in their contract with the state that religious activities are off-­limits at the centers. In addition, the organ­ izations also provide the local government with a list of names and contact information of all the residents who participate in any kind of activity or program or­ga­nized by them. This is done u ­ nder the pretext of health and safety concerns; for example, if ­t here is a fire at the center, the government ­w ill be able to get in touch with ­family members. The cooperative strategy also helps the social organ­izations recruit staff and collaborate with other actors involved in the proj­ect. As discussed in chapter 4, social organ­izations face two major challenges: inadequate numbers of experienced social workers and their high turnover rate. State endorsement gives the applicants more confidence in the social organ­ization and its prospects. When interviewing the staff of social organ­izations, I often heard this or similar comments: “I want to work with a social organ­ization that can provide a path for my ­career development. Without proj­ects, the organ­ization ­wouldn’t last long. So the ones with government (funded) proj­ects are more stable and have a ­f uture. Also, they must be good if the government can give them the proj­ects.”3 Claiming the endorsement and trust by the state also convinces other potential collaborators, such as equipment suppliers, local health care clinics, and caterers, of the organ­ization’s long-­term sustainability. A good relationship with local government is also the key to smooth collaboration with individual government offices that their proj­ects need to deal with, such as offices in charge of social security and welfare, mi­grant residents, and the local police. As Thornton (2013, 3) observes, social ser­v ice organ­izations also tend to have cooperative relationships with the CCP: some NGOs “not only rely upon the sponsorship and support of local party committees for the purposes of registration, but also maintain active internal party cells that carry out recruitment and other party-­ directed activities alongside their core tasks, and police popu­lar compliance with the party line.” My fieldwork suggests that social organ­izations that manage to build trust with local government usually manage to receive more proj­ects through the government purchase of ser­v ices. For example, in Wujiang the com­pany that was chosen to provide property management for government office buildings won the bid to provide ser­vices to older residential communities in the same district—­ providing maintenances and repairs for the roads and lights inside the communities, as well as for w ­ ater management and plumbing prob­lems. This com­pany ­later was chosen to provide similar ser­v ices for the aged care center in Wujiang. In Guangzhou, well-­established social organ­izations also tend to be awarded

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proj­ects through local government purchases of ser­v ices. In most cases the organ­ization provides dif­fer­ent ser­v ices, such as switching from el­derly care to mi­grant ­children support or working with the homeless on the street. In some cases, the organ­ization received similar proj­ects from a dif­fer­ent Street Office or district. But one ele­ment remains the same: a cooperative relationship with local government is required for consistent government support.

Market Groups Market groups—­which ­were not part of neighborhood life u ­ ntil the 1990s—­have also gained more visibility in neighborhood governance. In middle-­class neighborhoods, property management companies have experienced growing pains and re­sis­tance from the residents and now are trying new ways to have a more functional relationship with the residents. In urban villages and relocation communities, in contrast, village collectives continue to influence residents’ daily life but in dif­fer­ent forms than in the pre-­urbanization era. Although the two types of market groups interact with the residents in dif­fer­ent ways, they share a common feature that is significant for dynamics in the intermediary governance space: they both coordinate and collaborate with the agents of the party-­ state in the neighborhood to carry out their activities together.

Property Management Companies In the initial development stage of gated communities, property management companies ­were more likely to deal with the residents in­de­pen­dently from the Residents’ Committees. This occurred mainly for two reasons. First, the property management companies had access to comprehensive data about the apartment purchase documents and did not need to rely on Residents’ Committees for the contact information of residents; in fact, in some cases, the new Residents’ Committees had to turn to property management companies for help in collecting residents’ information. Only l­ater did the management companies realize that they needed the help of Residents’ Committees to make effective contact with the residents. Second, most of the residents’ requests of the residents related to maintenance of the buildings and use of communal areas in the residential complex. Residents’ Committees did not have the resource or decision-­making capacities to address t­ hose requests. However, as conflicts with the property management companies and the residents grew in number and intensity, Residents’ Committees began to intervene to maintain social stability.



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The attitude of property management staff ­toward Residents’ Committees has also changed over the years. Initially, ­t here was tension between property management companies, which tended to put themselves in a dominant position in the communities, and Residents’ Committees. And just like many middle-­class residents, property management companies also felt that the tasks carried out by Residents’ Committees ­were irrelevant to them. In fact, Residents’ Committees that w ­ ere located outside the residential community had to get permission from the property management companies to gain access to the community. ­These power relations gradually shifted. With more and more management-­ related conflicts arising in middle-­class neighborhoods, the property management companies started to grow dependent on Residents’ Committees for serving as a liaison with residents. Most Residents’ Committees had cultivated a comprehensive social network and close relationships with the residents (beyond merely having statistical data about them), which the property management companies lacked. Especially in situations where residents refused to communicate with the property management companies, the intervention of Residents’ Committees became sorely needed. One resident reported, “The property management com­pany is a bully. They ­didn’t do a good job and they now are accusing us of every­thing. They only care about money, not our residents’ interests. We d ­ on’t trust them. But we trust our Residents’ Committee. It is (led by) the government. So, we would like to have them around (when talking to the property management com­pany).”4 Over the years, thanks to the Residents’ Committees’ intervention, the relationship between property management companies and residents has evolved from antagonism and confrontation to negotiation and discussion. In recent years, interactions between property management companies and Residents’ Committees have expanded from addressing individual, isolated conflicts to exploring more systemic, functional dynamics. As discussed in chapter 2, property management companies have become part of the grid governance structure and, in that position, help secure and reinforce the reach of the party-­ state in middle-­class neighborhoods. The “Red Property Man­ag­er” (hongse guan­ jia) scheme in Suzhou is a good example. It is a government initiative to implant the CCP’s leadership in property management in urban neighborhoods. In this scheme, one or two members of the Party Committee of each Residents’ Committee (usually the party secretary) sit on the property management team for the neighborhood; in addition, resident party members are recruited to work as volunteers for the property management com­pany in their residential compounds. By co-­opting property management companies, Residents’ Committees fulfill their mission of social stability control by resolving property-­right-­related conflicts in the neighborhoods. Mr. Ye, the party secretary of a Street Office told me,

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“The aim (of the Red Property Man­ag­er) is to establish the party’s leadership over the property management companies. The party secretaries of the Residents’ Committees should be liberated from dealing with specific work tasks. Their job should be setting the directions of and performing leadership in neighborhood governance.”5 Collaboration with Residents’ Committees brings more benefits to property management companies than merely resolving complaints in the neighborhood. More importantly, it enables them to establish a contractual relationship with their supervisory local government offices, which ­will bring more favored deals from the local government to their parent companies. By cooperating with Residents’ Committees, the companies send friendly messages to the local government, which increases their success in seeking government support. T Group is one of the most successful real estate development companies in China and is famous for its high-­quality property management ser­vices. Its subsidiary companies all adopt the strict staff training and promotion scheme of the ­mother com­ pany. A ­ fter joining the “Red Property Man­ag­er” scheme, T companies in the local area all modified their staff training and promotion scheme by adding “participation in [the] Red Property Man­ag­er” scheme and “cooperation with Residents’ Committees” as evaluation criteria. Com­pany staff in the area can get extra points for their CCP membership application if they receive recommendations from the neighborhood party branch. In some neighborhoods, the property management com­pany staff can actually choose to apply for CCP membership through the neighborhood party branch instead of the one in their com­pany. This arrangement is appealing to young, ambitious staff who consider competition within the companies to be so fierce that they would have a better chance of being accepted in the CCP if they apply through the neighborhood party branch.

Village Collectives Urbanization of the Chinese countryside has brought a new market group to urban neighborhoods: the village collective corporations in urban villages and relocation neighborhoods. As shown in chapter  4, by supporting the villa­gers’ socioeconomic well-­being ­after land expropriation and the transition to urban administration, some resource-­rich and profitable village collectives continue to play a leading role in welfare provision in urbanized neighborhoods. For landless farmers, their continuing interactions with village collectives from their former villages undermine the urban administration and the identity of “being an urban citizen”: they continue to see themselves as “shareholders” of the village collectives, rather than “urban residents.” This is ­because exclusive membership in the village collective determines the welfare of the residents of urbanized villages.



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­ ecause of their involvement in grassroots urban administration, village collecB tives are more than market firms; they also act in partnership with local government, albeit involuntarily most of the time, as chapter 4 reveals. In urbanized neighborhoods, village collectives mainly interact with Residents’ Committees by subsidizing the committees’ administrative costs, sponsoring neighborhood activities, and financing neighborhood ser­vices. In contrast to Residents’ Committees in other urban neighborhoods that are solely dependent on government funding, ­t hose in urbanized neighborhoods can receive funding from the local government but are mainly subsidized by profits generated by the assets of the village collective. Most Residents’ Committees I visited received ­limited government funding; similarly, a study in Hunan province also found that nearly 80 ­percent of Residents’ Committee bud­gets in the urban villages w ­ ere inadequate (Huang and Jiang 2011). Thus, many Residents’ Committees in urbanized neighborhoods are highly dependent on the village collectives to fill gaps in their bud­gets. One staff member described Residents’ Committee’s dependence on village collectives this way: “A Residents’ Committee without [sponsorship from] a (village collective) com­pany is like a person without social security.” 6 In some cases, such as relocation neighborhood RWH1 in Wuhan, where village collectives have managed to maintain a certain proportion of village assets to continually generate profits, they contribute to nearly half of the administrative expenses of their Residents’ Committees and the salaries of all Residents’ Committee staff. I observed similar practices in Suzhou. As explained in chapter 2, in relocation neighborhood RSZ1, ­t here are two de facto Residents’ Committees u ­ nder the title of “working groups” that carry out specific tasks. The two working groups function u ­ nder the supervision of the local Street Office, but the remaining village collectives—in the form of the investment com­pany—­provide the salary for all fifteen staff in the two working groups. Village collectives also support the work of Residents’ Committees by subsidizing neighborhood leisure facilities and activities. For example, in relocation neighborhood RWH2 in Wuhan, which accommodates residents from seven dif­ fer­ent villages, the largest village collective purchased two t­able tennis ­tables for the Residents’ Committee. The Residents’ Committee then or­ga­nized daily ­table tennis tournaments so that residents could get to know each other by playing or watching the games. The region is associated with traditional dragon dancing, so the village collective also organizes a community dragon dance team comprising twenty-­t hree residents from all seven villages. The social events and activities sponsored by the village collectives have helped the Residents’ Committee bring residents from dif­fer­ent villages together. The urbanized neighborhoods that I visited on average contributed at least 60 ­percent of the expenses of

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the neighborhood activities. Many also subsidized four to five big community events ­every year, such as a day tour of the city for el­derly residents and cele­ bration parties for public holidays such as Chinese New Year and National Day. In some relocation neighborhoods, residents view the support provided by the village collectives for neighborhood activities as even more desirable than their support for improving communal infrastructure. The Residents’ Committees’ dependence on the support of village collectives has presented challenges to achieving municipal governments’ aim to “keep village collectives ­under the leadership of their Residents’ Committees.”7 As major financial supporters of Residents’ Committee, village collectives sometimes feel ­free to ignore the committees’ opinions regarding the operation and development plans of the village collective com­pany. In Wuhan, the RWH2 village collective even influenced some of the administrative decisions of the higher-­level Street Office, such as staff appointments and nomination of the director of the Residents’ Committee. As one village collective member explained, “The Residents’ Committees ­really need ­those activities, as that is how they can get to know the residents. And we [the village collective] are the ones to pay for t­ hose activities. Where would they go to find the money if we w ­ ere not h ­ ere?”8 Village collectives whose assets are managed through an investment com­pany associated with the local government, such as in RSZ1 neighborhood in Suzhou, have ­little direct involvement in managing and allocating the collective income. Similarly, in RSY2 in Shenyang, ­because t­ here are no more collective assets, the village collective only serves as a temporary and transitional governance organ­ ization that ­w ill cease to exist when the land expropriation pro­cess is completed. In both cases, village collectives have l­ ittle bargaining power with the local government. They see themselves as liaison between the villa­gers and the government, without the clear in­de­pen­dent identity enjoyed by their counter­ parts in Guangzhou and Wuhan. They are largely co-­opted by the local government to “help the smooth transition of urbanization.”9 Thus, the village collectives’ autonomy in neighborhood governance is largely determined by their ability to continuously generate collective income. Yet, pressure is increasing from a competitive market and from villa­gers who expect better economic returns ­every year. Faced with this situation, many village collectives are ­eager to withdraw from delivering the ser­v ices and financial support they are providing the neighborhoods. Some members saw the remaining village collectives more as a “charity organ­ization” than an economic organ­ ization: “Not all our profits go to the (villa­ger) shareholders. We should only be responsible to our shareholders, and the government should provide public ser­ vices in the area.”10 Other village collectives are not averse to continuing to engage in neighborhood governance tasks, which enables them to maintain a



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partnership with the local government that puts them in the advantageous position of being part of local commercial development proj­ects. The RWH2 village collective in Wuhan, for example, with the support of the local government, has managed to become involved urban real estate proj­ects. A ­ fter being actively engaged in governance in relocation neighborhood RWH2 for six years, in 2012 the com­pany received a government contract to build more housing in the area for other relocated villa­gers. The ambitious proj­ect covers 400,000 square meters of residential and commercial real estate.

Resident Volunteers Mass mobilization has played a significant functional role throughout the CCP’s history. In par­t ic­u ­lar, recruitment and mobilization of volunteers have been widely used strategies to gain public support by organ­izing a small segment of the population to work with the masses (Deng and O’Brien 2013; Deng 2017). Although Chinese society has experienced dramatic social changes during marketization and urbanization, this po­liti­cal tradition of mobilizing volunteers has thrived in neighborhood governance. Volunteering is a combination of “party-­building” and “mass work” techniques inherited from the past with newer methods of recruiting, mobilizing, and surveilling residents to secure social stability in urban neighborhoods. This strategy has not been very successful in urban underclass neighborhoods, where residents show l­ ittle interest in or cynicism about volunteering to carry out neighborhood tasks assigned by the state (Heberer and Göbel 2011). ­There, the voluntary participation rate is low, and residents in general do not wish to take part in public tasks and activities: they only volunteer in activities that are directly related to their interests. In underclass neighborhoods, low-­income residents who are dependent on state welfare support and CCP members are the target of mobilization efforts. In both the middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods that I observed during fieldwork, volunteering—­u nder the guidance of Residents’ Committees—­has become the major orga­nizational format of and the major pillar to support operation of the neighborhood governance structure (Read 2012; Tomba 2014). Studies suggest that ­today’s Chinese ­middle class as a ­whole tends to support the current regime rather than to instigate eruptive demo­cratic changes that directly challenge the party-­state. As a major component of the Chinese ­middle class, ­those employed in the state sector—­about 60 ­percent according to a survey in 2007–2008 (Chen 2013)—­tend to have closer ideational and institutional ties with the party-­state and to prefer the current status quo (Chen 2013; Tang 2016). This is also reflected in the extent and scope of resident volunteering in

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middle-­class neighborhoods. In middle-­class neighborhoods, the emphasis on volunteering and nongovernment-­led participation highlights the “self-­governance” feature of grid governance that aims to increase bottom-up participation in neighborhood affairs. In urban villages and relocation neighborhoods, volunteering is tightly associated with the networks of previous village po­liti­cal elites and village collectives. In ­these neighborhoods, resident volunteers include two groups—­ retired residents and resident CCP members—­that are not mutually exclusive most of the time. Participation of the retired residents and the CCP residents in neighborhood governance is significant for mass mobilization at the grassroots level ­because it reflects what Foucault (1977) considers “subject visibility,” which is essential to any disciplinary system. The retired residents and the CCP residents are highly vis­i­ble in the intermediary governance space, which reinforces the hierarchy of authority within hybrid authoritarianism.

The Retirees: Shining through Retirement Studies of collective action highlight retirees’ orga­nizational capacity (Hurst and O’Brien 2002) and the ability of communal ties to facilitate “communication, coordination and the aggregation of interests and demands” (Lee 2007, 201). ­Today, both the orga­nizational capacity of the retirees and communal ties produced by the spatial setting of urban neighborhoods have become key ele­ments for resident mobilization in neighborhoods led by Residents’ Committees and neighborhood party branches, which share the aim of eliminating or diminishing unsanctioned collective action. The daily lives of t­ hose born in the 1940s and the 1950s ­were largely attached to their work life and their work units. ­After retirement, they had to shift their focus from their workplaces to residential communities. Urban neighborhoods, then, have become the alternative sites of social and po­liti­cal life for t­ hese active retirees. Almost all the staff of the Residents’ Committee staff observed for this study are in their twenties and thirties, and more than 95 ­percent are female. When mediating neighborhood disputes, the young staff feel they do not receive much re­spect from residents older than them. The Chinese cultural tradition of re­spect for the elders has offered some se­nior resident volunteers a unique advantage: residents are more likely to be responsive to them than to some of the young, inexperienced Residents’ Committee staff. Therefore, Residents’ Committee staff actively mobilize the se­nior residents by building close personal relationships with them. They greet se­nior residents with a warm address of “Aunt Li” or “­Uncle Wang,” chat with them about their families and neighbors, attend their per­for­mances, and always show their gratitude that “without the support and help from the aunties and ­uncles, we ­wouldn’t do



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our job well.”11 Many se­nior residents consider Residents’ Committee staff to be like their nieces, and they are happy to help. Social and recreational activities constitute a significant component of neighborhood-­based support for the el­der­ly’s well-­being. Through their participation in recreational activity groups, they feel connected to the community rather than isolated. In middle-­class neighborhoods t­oday, it is common to find that more than half of the se­nior residents are “se­nior migrants/floating population” (lao piao), who moved to their current city of residence to live with their ­children. This group of se­nior residents left their networks and associational life ­behind them; their new residential communities become the key sites for them to start their new social life. This is especially true of ­those middle-­class residents who retired from jobs in the party-­state system, such as in government offices, universities, schools, hospitals, and state-­owned enterprises. Mr. Wang, a retired university professor from a neighboring province, moved to his neighborhood six years ago to live with his son. ­After he moved, Mr. Wang felt a deep sense of isolation b ­ ecause he no longer had any contact with his previous work unit: “­After I retired, I was still in touch with my work unit. I attended Party branch activities and po­liti­cal studies all the time. I met my former colleagues for lunch from time to time. But ­after I moved ­here, the only person I knew was my son. When he went to work, I had nothing to do at home.”12 One day Mr. Wang saw an announcement from the Residents’ Committee that a resident volunteer was needed to teach calligraphy classes for the school-­aged c­ hildren in the neighborhood. A ­ fter contacting the Residents’ Committee, he became a volunteer teacher for the calligraphy class and one of the founding members of the party branch for se­nior mi­grant residents like him in the neighborhood. Through t­ hese social and recreational activities, retirees remain active and expand their social networks in their neighborhood. In some neighborhoods, recreational activities formally are part of neighborhood aged care programs, as discussed in chapter 4. In urbanized neighborhoods, ­t here are similar observations of retired residents continuing their activities, which ­were related to their former work, in neighborhood life. Retiree resident volunteers are mostly previous village elites: Village Committee members and production team leaders. They are the bridges connecting the new Residents’ Committees, the villa­gers, and the remaining village collectives. For them, urbanization led to the loss of or change not only of their economic activities but also of their status in their new residential environments. Some felt that they used to be active and impor­tant in the po­liti­cal life of their village, but now they ­were replaced by Residents’ Committee staff and have become “nobody” in the new administrative system. Some wanted to be more engaged with neighborhood life, ­because they have had no work ­after

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the land expropriation. Mr. Xie, a former production team leader, now lives in a relocation neighborhood. His former fellow villa­gers are spread across four relocation complexes. One of them is farther away than the ­others; he must take a short bus ­ride to visit him. Since being recruited by the new Residents’ Committees as a resident volunteer, Mr. Xie has been commuting between dif­fer­ent complexes to meet the now-­scattered villa­gers. Mr. Xie enjoys being occupied and the feeling of being needed: “I got less than a c­ ouple of thousand yuan per year, including traveling expenses, as an honorary payment as a resident volunteer. I d ­ on’t need the money. I just want to have something to do. and I want to do t­ hings for the villa­gers and the neighborhood. If they need me, I would do it without any payment.”13 Mr. Xie is not an exception. Participation in governance activities mobilized by Residents’ Committees brings a g­ reat deal of satisfaction to retired residents who feel they are still active and can be very helpful. They are often involved in the mediation of quarrels between the residents. As chapter 3 explains, resident volunteers play a significant role in mediation work and pre-­deliberative talks. Residents’ Committees usually or­ga­nize a mediation team by strategically mobilizing retired residents and CCP members who have formal or informal contact with the parties in dispute. The mediation pro­cess can last for a few weeks and even a few months, with all kinds of difficulties and frustrations. But this does not seem to discourage the retiree residents, for whom resolution of the conflict brings a g­ reat deal of satisfaction and self-­f ulfillment. Retired resident volunteers tend to be less involved in mediation when conflict is between residents and property management companies or the local government. Instead, they actively monitor the residents’ activities in their grid and report to Residents’ Committees if they observe any potential adverse collective reactions. They also help the Residents’ Committees collect residents’ opinions by handing out survey questionnaires. The resident volunteers in general are motivated by non-­material incentives to take part in bringing about a compromise between disputed parties. Th ­ ose incentives are largely associated with their relations with the Residents’ Committees, the authority they perceive themselves to represent, and their CCP membership. They often refer to the party leadership and the Mass Line that they believe have brought legitimacy to their mediation activities. Although involvement in resident representative organ­izations such as homeowner associations is highly sought out by community members who are willing to devote a substantial amount of time to improve communications within the neighborhood, retired volunteers are rarely involved in homeowner associations. First, they believe that homeowner associations need younger activists who have a good knowledge of the current policies and social situation; the retired resi-



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dents are not as familiar with private property owner­ship, given that it is a huge contrast to the work-­unit or village housing they grew up with and within. Therefore, they are more likely to encourage and support their ­children to participate. Second, given the nature of homeowner associations, which requires members to speak up against vitiations of homeowners’ property rights and collective interests, many retired residents may see such issues as too complicated, “bringing too much trou­ble,” and causing prob­lems in the neighborhoods. They consider that, if they work as volunteers for the Residents’ Committees, they can bring solutions to the neighborhood; they are helping, rather than making trou­ble for, the local government. And the semi-­official status of Residents’ Committees ensures them that the state authority ­will intervene when necessary to solve the prob­lems. Homeowner associations, in contrast, have to work out their own solutions, and most of the time suffer failure and frustration.

Resident CCP Members In most cases, retired volunteers also extend their associational life to the party branch in the neighborhoods. With the introduction of a flexible governance structure to residential neighborhoods, as shown in chapter 2, party branches at the neighborhood level have also gone through appropriate adjustments. As part of the neighborhood governance structure ­today, neighborhood organ­izations such as recreational activity groups, resident repre­sen­ta­tion groups. and market groups have all become intermingled with the neighborhood party organ­ization and Residents’ Committee. For example, in middle-­class neighborhood MGZ2 in Guangzhou, 16 ­percent of their resident group members are CCP members, and more than 50 ­percent of the group leaders are CCP members. In MSZ1 neighborhood in Suzhou, ­there are thirty-­two resident activity groups; nearly 30 ­percent of the group leaders are CCP members. When organ­izing resident activities, Residents’ Committee usually provide a sign-in list for the participants that includes this question, “Are you a CCP member?” One target group for resident volunteer recruitment for neighborhood deliberation is thus the neighborhood party branch and CCP member residents. And retired residents are the key targeted group for the neighborhood party branch to recruit and mobilize. With the increasing number of “se­nior mi­grants” in urban middle-­class neighborhoods, the reach of the neighborhood party branch has recently been extended to this group through not only informal orga­nizational activities but more importantly, also through gradual institutionalization of the party structure. For example, in MGZ4 neighborhood in Suzhou, within the existing grid governance structure, Residents’ Committee established a neighborhood party branch for ­these se­nior mi­grants. The “relocation party branch” organizes

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CCP members among se­nior mi­grants to conduct po­liti­cal study sessions and other po­liti­cal activities. Through their associational membership with the relocation party branch, many of the se­nior mi­grants actively stay in touch with the Residents’ Committee and have become new resident volunteers. Se­nior mi­grants such as Mr. Wang consider the “relocation party branch” to be “a second home ­here where I am connected to the [party] organ­ization again.”14 Being a member of the CCP is especially useful when dealing with conflicts ­going beyond one grid, such as conflicts over the use of funds for public repairs. In princi­ple, the Public Repair Fund is to be used for restoration and maintenance of the common facilities in the residential compound, and its use needs to be approved by the homeowner association. However, in most cases, the property management companies refuse to use that funding and expect the homeowner association both to pay for and take the lead in making repairs. Th ­ ese conflicts often extend to the community as a ­whole. During this pro­cess, resident volunteers sometimes encounter conflicts of interest and face questions about which side they are on. In t­ hose circumstances, they normally use their CCP membership as proof of their objective position and to obtain trust from the residents. Mrs. Zhou shared her thoughts: “My neighborhood at the beginning asked me why I ­wasn’t on the side of our homeowners. I told them that with my nearly 30-­year CCP membership, I can assure them that I am fair and reasonable. I take the side of justice. Of course, the neighbors trust me not only ­because what I said. They have seen how I treat p ­ eople and do ­t hings e­ very day as a CCP member. So, they are convinced.”15 In urbanized neighborhoods, CCP member residents play a substantial role in supporting the operations of the mixed neighborhood governance structure. With the diversification of residents—­mi­grant residents in urban villages and residents from dif­fer­ent villages living in the same relocation neighborhoods—­ CCP member residents have become the key contacts for the newly established Residents’ Committees to disseminate information regarding government policies and regulations, to collect residents’ information, and to be in contact with former villa­gers. Th ­ ose who had served as production team leaders and Village Committee members are called on as key CCP member residents to or­ga­nize regular meetings among themselves and with Residents’ Committee staff. In contrast to members of a “Relocation Party Branch” who are new to the neighborhoods, the CCP member residents in urban villages and relocation communities have deep connections with and dense social networks among their former villa­gers. They see themselves as the “middleman” between villa­gers and the local government. Their CCP membership has also become a justification and form of protection when they express opinions that deviate from state policies and when they



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express sympathy for their fellow residents. Mr. Hu, a former village party secretary in his seventies, voiced his opinions regarding local land policy: We all w ­ ere farmers. So I understand what the villa­gers want. I have been a CCP member for more than forty years. And I always support the government. But sometimes government policies ­don’t understand or address that. We feel sad about losing our land. I understand the economy development need that [land expropriation]. But they d ­ on’t have to take all our land. They could leave some to the younger generations.16 ­ ecause of their shared sympathy and mutual understanding, CCP members B can advocate for the needs of former villa­ger residents now residing in the neighborhoods. The party in both middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods is trying to expand the coverage of neighborhood CCP branches to dif­fer­ent resident groups. For urban villages and relocation communities, attracting the younger generation to join the party and resident volunteer team is a difficult task. Most members of the younger generation of villa­gers work in the cities and do not spend much time in the neighborhoods. That is why CCP member residents approach se­niors to help them keep in touch with the younger generation. To encourage more participation of younger residents, they also work with the Residents’ Committees to or­ga­nize neighborhood activities during the weekend or festivals. In addition, most urbanized villages that I visited have recruited Residents’ Committee staff from among the younger generation. The neighborhood party branch also encourages young residents to join the CCP through the neighborhood branch instead of at their workplace or to transfer their CCP membership rec­ords to the neighborhood party branch when they change jobs. Although the number remains low, recruitment of members through neighborhood party branches, rather than at their workplaces, is increasing. For younger residents who work in the private sector or who are self-­employed, neighborhood party organ­izations are more stable than workplace branches, so they are gradually becoming more willing to join the party this way. Even younger residents who can join at their workplace sometimes consider joining through the neighborhood party branch b ­ ecause the application pro­cess is less competitive. Mr. Chen, in his late twenties, de­cided to apply through his neighborhood party branch: “My com­pany is very large, with many young p ­ eople like me. For promotion and ­career development, a CCP membership always helps. So every­one wants to apply. And it is getting more and more difficult, and the waiting list is getting longer and longer. That’s why I want to apply through our neighborhood branch, which I ­w ill have a much better chance.”17

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Non-­S tate Actors as Po­l iti­c al Intermediaries The involvement of diverse governance actors has become a new feature of neighborhood governance in Chinese cities. This chapter has examined the experiences, strategies, and perceptions of non-­state actors through their involvement with neighborhood governance affairs, as well as their relations with the state through their interactions with Residents’ Committees. In both middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods, self-­organized recreational activity groups have become the primary channel for residents to be involved in neighborhood activities: they are tremendously popu­lar. ­Those groups also have become the primary source pool for Residents’ Committees. Neighborhood ser­ vice organ­izations have more in­de­pen­dence and autonomy: their focus is on actively responding to their clients who purchase the ser­v ices, which go beyond what can be delivered by Residents’ Committees. Property management companies in recent years have developed a working relationship with the Residents’ Committees. Through the government-­led “Red Property Man­ag­er” scheme, property management companies recognize the leadership of the neighborhood party branches and accept the leadership of the Residents’ Committees. In exchange, the development companies hope to receive favorable deals from the local government. A similar contractual relationship exists for village collectives. While maintaining control of some of the village collective assets a­ fter the administrative transition, some village collectives play an essential role in determining the economic and social well-­being of the villa­gers. In the new neighborhoods, they help the local government, despite their initial reluctance, by taking on responsibilities in providing social welfare and neighborhood ser­vices to the villa­gers. Their co-­optation is impor­tant for the long-­term survival of the village collective companies. Volunteering has become the pillar to support the operation of neighborhood governance. Resident volunteers’ communication work to a certain extent serves as a platform for public deliberation and offers a potential space for participation of multiple interest groups that are usually ignored in formal institutional settings. In some cases, resident volunteers directly participate in the mediation of conflicts. In other cases, they are not directly involved but instead actively monitor residents’ activities and report to Residents’ Committees if they spot any potential adverse collective responses. They also help collect residents’ opinions and clarify misunderstandings in advance of formal deliberation meetings. Retired residents and resident CCP members constitute the main body of the volunteer team. The CCP’s reach has been extended to newly emerged neighborhoods during marketization and urbanization. By cultivating both strength



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and flexibility, the party-­state has established a working relationship with non-­ state actors in carry­i ng out neighborhood governance, without sacrificing its control. Wenfang Tang (2016) argues that t­ here is a strong connection between the party-­state and the public through the operation of the Mass Line, which reinforces weak institutions and civic organ­izations. This explains the high level of po­liti­cal activism among the mass public. Yet the lack of in­de­pen­dent intermediate groups between the state and the ­family has led to a lack of social autonomy. In this sense, China is more of a mass society than a civil society. This chapter argues that instead of passively receiving ­orders from or being manipulated by the party-­state, non-­state participants in the intermediary governance space have shown a l­imited degree of autonomous participation and have applied strategies to gain collective benefits by working with the state actors. They constitute impor­tant po­liti­cal intermediaries positioned in between the party-­ state and society, facilitating interactions between the two.

Conclusion

THE PARTY-­S TATE, CIVIL SOCIETY, AND NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

Along with economic reforms, the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly highlighted the need for demo­cratic reforms, although their specific content remains vague. Yet, one area that has been consistently addressed is the legitimacy, effectiveness, and efficiency of governance per­for­mance. In discussions of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CCP Central Committee on continuing reform, Xi Jinping (2014b) stated, A country’s governance system and capacity are the major barometers of its system and that system’s governing efficiency. The two are ­complementary. . . . ​Nevertheless, our national governance system and capacity still have much room for improvement, and we should exert greater efforts to enhance our national governance capacity. Our governance system w ­ ill become more efficient as long as we focus on improving the Party’s governance capacity while raising the moral and po­liti­cal standards, scientific and cultural levels, and professional abilities of officials at all levels and administrators of all areas, and as long as we make Party and government agencies, enterprises, public institutions, and social organ­izations more efficient. Since socialist market reforms began in the early 1990s, governance challenges at all levels have been directly driven by dramatic social changes experienced by Chinese citizens. Especially since the early 2000s, marketization of the urban state sector and urbanization of the countryside have fundamentally shifted and blurred China’s long-­standing bound­aries between socialism and marketi132



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zation, as well as between rural and urban socie­ties. This social transformation has also deeply redefined Chinese citizens’ economic, social, and po­liti­cal life, as well as the way they interact with the party-­state. In par­tic­u ­lar, marketization has sorted Chinese urban residents into dif­fer­ent neighborhoods associated with their socioeconomic status, and urbanization has produced a large number of displaced farmers who have lost their land and introduced them to the urban administrative system. The emergence of t­ hose two groups have produced a dif­fer­ent governance landscape and new dynamics of local governance. To secure its po­liti­cal legitimacy, it is essential for the party-­state to actively respond to t­ hese changes by performing as an influential player rather than a passive receiver of po­liti­cal contention. “Responsiveness to the masses of ­people” has been impor­tant to the CCP’s Mass Line politics (Pfeffer 1972), which emphasizes extensive consultation and study of popu­lar preferences and interests, as well as extensive persuasion in the pro­cess of policy implantation. Bureaucratic authoritarianism emphasizes top-­down control by po­liti­cal elites and bureaucratic institutions. The paternalistic theory argues that a paternalistic relationship between the state and the masses results in sustainability of the regime through Confucian harmony that holds the state and society together. To date, the party-­state’s responsiveness has largely been documented in studies of contentious politics in terms of how the Chinese government has responded to protesters’ grievances evoked by policy changes (Heurlin 2016). Through an inductive approach, this book pre­sents a hybrid authoritarianism thesis that explores the party-­state’s responsiveness and changing state–­society relations through everyday politics at the grassroots level in urban neighborhood governance. It pre­sents a nuanced way of steering between one-­party mono­poly of po­liti­cal power and western-­centric democracy. It is impor­tant to note that the hybrid authoritarianism presented ­here does not mean an autocratic po­liti­cal system imitating or embracing democracy both in form and in practices. Instead, it highlights the responsiveness of an authoritarian state driven by its strong desire to secure public support. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis, on the one hand, emphasizes the unchanged and perhaps more tightened ruling style of authoritarianism. On the other hand, it highlights the diversity, variability, and adaptability of governance practices, as well as the governance outcome of generating regime legitimacy and popu­lar support. The hybridity elaborated ­here aims to identify the key features and mechanisms of governance combined with flexibility in governing and the strength of party control in Chinese po­liti­cal life. To a large extent, the hybridity analyzed in this book is l­imited to grassroots-­level governance and is absent in observations of regime-­level democ­ratization. It advocates a systematic approach to study state–­ society relations in an authoritarian state by examining new governance practices across dif­fer­ent locations and population groups.

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This book has examined ­those issues through the following five related aspects of neighborhood governance: (1) diversification of neighborhood governance, which identifies new neighborhood governance issues during marketization and urbanization; (2) the intermediary governance space, which accommodates new governance structures and actors; (3) conflict resolution through neighborhood deliberation; (4) neighborhood ser­v ice provision through new practices; and (5) participation and governmentality of citizens and civil organ­izations through their involvement in neighborhood governance. ­These aspects of governance highlight the transformation of urban space and institutions and vari­ous practices— in terms of governing structures, strategies, and mechanisms—­taking place particularly at the grassroots level in an authoritarian state. This book depicts an evolving form of state–­society relations with an actor-­centered approach focusing on the pro­cess of Chinese po­liti­cal life at the grassroots level. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis reveals the impacts of changing grassroots governance on wider social and po­liti­cal development of China. Urban housing reform and rural land expropriation are among a series of critical reforms regarding property owner­ship in China. ­These reforms have directly resulted in the emergence of middle-­class residents and landless farmers, two of the most impor­tant new social bases of Chinese politics. Yet, landless farmers, in par­tic­ u­lar, have not been studied sufficiently, despite the impact they w ­ ill have on Chinese politics. As You-­tien Hsing (2010, 7) correctly points out, Chinese “local politics centers on the politics of urban development proj­ects, which define the dynamics of the local state and its relations with the market and society.” ­Urban neighborhoods have become impor­tant po­liti­cal arenas associated with China’s economic and social transformation and have experienced tremendous changes in their landscape, type of residents, and management styles. This book examined two types of urban neighborhoods that have emerged during China’s marketization and urbanization: middle-­class neighborhoods and newly urbanized neighborhoods. Middle-­class neighborhoods are the direct result of the marketization of urban housing, which used to be a public good provided by the socialist state. Since the 1990s, gated community housing has become the most popu­lar choice for residential housing and the major form of middle-­class residence in Chinese cities. At the same time, the urbanization of the Chinese countryside has produced landless farmers who e­ ither live on their original ­house sites in the one-­t ime village—­t he so-­called urban villages—or have been relocated collectively to new urban residential neighborhoods—­t he relocation communities. Both middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods carry out new social and po­liti­cal functions through daily governance of dif­fer­ent neighborhood m ­ atters. During the coronavirus (COVID-19)



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outbreak in 2020, party leadership, neighborhood mobilization, and neighborhood grid governance enabled the identification of infected residents and the organ­ization and operation for spatial control of the spread of the virus (State Council 2020). Rooted in the unique territorial, spatial, and administrative features of neighborhood governance in urban China, this study highlights the profound impact of daily interactions between Chinese citizens, the society, and the party-­state on producing governance legitimacy at grassroots level. Through the lens of everyday politics of neighborhood governance, the thesis of hybrid authoritarianism explains the complex po­liti­cal mechanisms involved in both strength building and flexible development of the Chinese party-­state. On the one side, the CCP retains its leadership role ­under marketization and urbanization by strengthening the party’s leadership of orga­nizational structures and enhancing its mass mobilization capacity. Yet it does so with some degree of flexibility, working with multiple actors, diverse governance mechanisms, and clearly targeted governance priorities. Together the strength and flexibility produce governance legitimacy and public support for the party-­state, minimizing challenges to regime legitimacy during the current substantial social and economic transformations. The resulting system is hybrid authoritarianism, in which ­there is an intermediary and hybrid governance model between (1) the work-­u nit governance model that emphasized citizens’ dependence on the state and the state’s dominance on the citizens in a defined po­liti­cal space and (2) the government-­citizen model that highlights in­de­pen­dent, universalistic relationships between the citizens and the authorities in a public space. Across dif­fer­ent types of urban neighborhoods, a wide range of practical governance issues ­were identified in chapter 1; chapters 2–5 examined new strategies and means employed by the Party-­state to deliver efficient governance and secure public support ­under deepened marketization and urbanization. Chapter 2 explored an intermediary governance space that accommodates daily interactions between state and non-­state actors and is where hierarchical po­liti­cal power meets coordination and the interdependence of horizonal social relations. Chapter 3 introduced a deliberative turn for neighborhood conflict resolution that highlighted the role of informal deliberation outside formal intuitions, mostly in the form of public reasoning through casual conversations and everyday talk. Chapter 4 described new ways of neighborhood ser­v ice provision in dif­fer­ent neighborhoods, in par­tic­u ­lar the participation of non-­state organ­ izations in carry­ing out government preprograms. And chapter 5 revealed the new governance mentality of non-­state participants associated with vari­ous strategies such as mass mobilization, co-­optation, and collaboration.

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Strength and Flexibility of Grassroots Governance The thesis of hybrid authoritarianism offers an analytical framework of a survival kit for an authoritarian state to obtain governance legitimacy and public support at the grassroots level. Authoritarian regimes are generally believed to be inherently unstable (Nathan 2003), yet China has presented signs of “hybrid” po­liti­cal regimes (a mix of authoritarianism and democracy) that seem to be thriving as a global phenomenon in comparative governance studies (Snyder 2006). China’s hybrid economy is the economic foundation of hybrid authoritarianism. Paul Clifford (2017) proposed an economic model to explain how China managed to achieve extraordinary economic outcomes despite its economic transition over the past four de­cades. His so-­called China paradox model is a hybrid developmental model where “the forces of change, of entrepreneurialism, of innovation have enjoyed a productive equilibrium with the ruling Party” (197). The CCP plays its role on the central stage of this model by displaying remarkable pragmatism in leading the economic reforms with a willingness to experiment, adapt and innovate: this pragmatism flows directly from its quest for survival (Clifford 2017). Chinese po­liti­cal life reflects the paradox observed in its economy. Similarly, the hybrid authoritarianism model has ­shaped po­liti­cal life at China’s grassroots by bringing incompatible po­liti­cal forces into circumstances where they are unexpectedly supportive and aligned to each other. Hybrid authoritarianism, as this book reveals, includes two key aspects of governance practices focusing on po­liti­cal governance and social governance. Po­liti­cal governance emphasizes on social stability control and conflict resolution, whereas social governance focuses on ser­vice provision. In this context, local governance has two critical dimensions: how governance institutions are or­ga­nized and how they interact with society. Through adjustments to grassroots governance institutions and practices, hybrid authoritarianism and the intermediary governance space enable citizens to interact with the state and participate in politics without creating the potential to threaten the regime as a w ­ hole. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis emphasizes the party-­state’s flexibility exercises through coordination of horizontal relations and its strength-­building activities through hierarchical power control. Flexibility is s­ haped by the responsiveness of the party-­state to changing po­liti­cal scenarios and diversity in institutional settings and practical operations. Strength is reflected through the party’s leadership, orga­nizational structure, and mobilization capacity accepted and supported by the public. Interdependence brings about variety and flexibility in governance practices and interactions of multiple actors in a defined governance space. The party-­state allows, tolerates, and sometimes even encourages the co-



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existence of formal and informal institutions, routinized and spontaneous practices, and ambiguous and blurred bound­aries. Si­mul­ta­neously its hierarchical power implements and enhances the CCP’s leadership in activities taking place through horizontal-­level social relations. Variety and flexibility are operated in line with a series of state-­sponsored governance discourses, supervised by the agents of the party-­state and accompanied by Party-­building strategies and activities. Together they produce a collection of governance mechanisms through which the state, market, and societal actors interact with each other to respond to growing heterogeneity and contention in Chinese society driven by economic and social transformation. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis permits governance fragmentation, which is largely associated with China’s localism and decentralization of the Chinese party-­state. Take China’s highly decentralized fiscal system as an example: in some cases, 70 ­percent of total bud­getary expenditures are distributed among subnational levels, whereas the central government accounts for only 30 ­percent (Park et al. 1996). In addition, local governments are assigned responsibilities for providing public goods and ser­v ices, such as social security, education, and health care. This kind of decentralization has resulted in China’s localism being characterized by administrative and economic devolution and less po­liti­cal devolution. It gives local governments more incentives to regulate local markets and provide public ser­v ices to society (Qian and Weingast 1996). In hybrid authoritarianism, China’s localism is displayed through variations in local states, which serve as impor­tant intermediaries between the central state and the local population. The local state’s effectiveness largely determines ­whether and to what extent the central state is recognized and supported by the local population. Flexibility in hybrid authoritarianism is shown by the dif­fer­ ent ways that local governments implement central policy and implement their own plans in the absence of higher-­level instructions or intervention—­what Remick (2002) defines as “local state practice.” This flexibility also embraces vari­ ous informal strategies ­adopted by the local state to safeguard its visibility and interests in the national polity. Moreover, flexibility within the local state is itself complex, with its own intermediary governance space between the local government and residents through neighborhood governance. One key condition for hybrid authoritarianism is that the strength and flexibility of the party-­state are exercised in a distinct, defined governance space. In the context of urban China, that is the urban neighborhood: the farthest end of the reach of the state and the most grassroots level where citizens and the state interact frequently. Neighborhoods in Chinese cities have provided an intermediary governance space, through which non-­state actors are involved in governance, and they bargain and negotiate with the state for their interests and

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actions. ­Those po­liti­cal intermediaries are the key channels through which government programs are implemented, state–­ society relations are (re)constructed, and public support is generated. Through neighborhood governance the party-­state has developed new governance strategies to foster stronger ties with non-­state actors that facilitate the state’s coordination and balancing of societal interests during rapidly changing economic and social conditions. The inevitable question, and core issue, is as follows: Where is the CCP in the analy­sis of hybrid authoritarianism? Just as how the grids are built in neighborhoods as explained in chapter 2, the CCP is built in the intermediary governance space and its state–­society relations in general. In hybrid authoritarianism, inherent tensions therefore exist between administrative specialization and power concentration, between official rules and practical flexibility, and between local accountability and top-­down supervision and intervention. ­Because they are associated with the specific living environment of each neighborhood, the priorities, needs, and practices of governance vary from place to place. What t­ hese practices share is that, while involving diverse actors and exhibiting a certain degree of flexibility for the party-­state, they engage in party-­building to assure the CCP’s strong leadership. Through new trends in the practice and dynamics of neighborhood governance, hybrid authoritarianism shapes public support for the party-­state, the efficiency of neighborhood governance, and interactions between the state and society. Chapters 1–5 have explained five key components, respectively that constitute the hybrid authoritarianism thesis: diversification of neighborhood governance, mixed governance structure and actors, conflict resolution through a deliberative approach, collaborative ser­vice provision, and participation governmentality that outlines the expected po­liti­cal be­hav­iors and participation of the citizens and social groups. ­Those five components work together to produce a functional and effective hybrid authoritarianism system in China, which helps secure public support for the party-­state at the grassroots level.

Diversification of Neighborhood Governance The diversification and responsiveness of neighborhood governance provide the social and po­liti­cal conditions for the operation of hybrid authoritarianism. Chinese urban life has changed tremendously since the 1978 economic reforms and the 1992 market economy reforms. Th ­ ose transformations have resulted in significant changes of grassroots governance mechanisms, gradually shifting in focus from po­liti­cal campaigns u ­ nder Mao’s era to practical governance m ­ atters at



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the local level ­today. With the demise of the public sector’s control of urban housing in the 1990s, dif­fer­ent types of urban residential communities for residents of dif­fer­ent economic means have become the common scenario in Chinese urban life (Li and Wu 2006; Fleischer 2006; He and Qian 2017). Neighborhoods, in turn, have been transformed from state-­led po­liti­cal campaign grounds to arenas where the state, market, and residents interact regarding community affairs that are closely associated with the specific living environment of the residential communities (Ma and Wu 2005; Li and Huang 2006; He and Lin 2015). As explained in chapter 1, since the 2000s marketization and urbanization have resulted in a greater heterogeneity among urban residents, more diverse neighborhoods, and new governance issues. The rise of new urban middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods has resulted in new governance issues and priorities, including conflict resolution and neighborhood ser­vice provision; they accommodate a more inclusive variety of social groups and diversity of governance affairs in po­liti­cal participation. In response, Residents’ Committees restructured their tasks and personnel. Through the “community building” scheme and becoming an essential component of “residents self-­ governance,” they moved from a marginalized position to center stage in neighborhood politics in the 1990s. The Residents’ Committees’ dual identities of being both state agent and a self-­governance organ­ization have led them to become a key po­liti­cal intermediary between the state and society. On behalf of the state, they respond to diverse governance needs and interact with the citizens at the frontline of Chinese po­liti­cal life. Grassroots governance has changed in scope, content, and priorities u ­ nder marketization and urbanization. Urban neighborhood governance t­oday is closely associated with practical ­matters of urban life, and neighborhoods have become the primary site for new governance issues to come into being. They are also the experimental sites gaining experience how to deal with the newly emergent governance issues. This offers the opportunity for neighborhoods to gain flexibility and autonomy that do not exist at other levels of the po­liti­cal system within the fixed administrative structure. Hybrid authoritarianism is a collection of adaptive, selective, and responsive mechanisms used by both state actors and non-­state actors in the defined governance space of urban neighborhoods.

Mixed Neighborhood Governance Structures and Actors Situated in the context of diverse neighborhood governance is an intermediary governance space that embodies the orga­nizational structure and participating

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actors of hybrid authoritarianism, as shown in chapter 2. ­Under China’s strict institutional structure and tight po­liti­cal control, the grassroots level has relatively more tolerance for new experiments, unconventional governance methods, and non-­authoritarian governmentality. ­Those practices have accommodated multiple interest groups and required the role of Residents’ Committees in neighborhood governance to change. Residents’ Committees have no decision-­ making authority and largely serve as a coordinator and mediator when dealing with neighborhood affairs. Meanwhile, new groups such as property management companies and homeowner association have come into the picture. Neighborhoods t­ oday include residents, social groups representing residents’ interests, market groups providing ser­v ices, and the party-­state’s agents, all of which are intermediary governance actors in the neighborhoods. In addition, hybrid authoritarianism is supported by hybrid governance structures that include both official and informal arrangements. In both middle-­class neighborhoods and urbanized neighborhoods, ­there is a degree of flexibility and diversity that is in contrast to the rigid administrative structure ­adopted at other levels of government. Both the “grid governance” structure in middle-­class neighborhoods and the mixed administrative structure in urbanized neighborhoods exercise some flexibility and autonomy by incorporating non-­state actors in decision making and implementation regarding neighborhood affairs. The multiple governance actors and hybrid governance structures together provide the context for understanding hybrid authoritarianism. Instead of drawing a distinct line between the state and the society, this space overlaps with both spheres. It plays a significant role in a po­liti­cal context where the state and society are directly linked and interact in the absence of an established zone of civil society. Structurally speaking, it serves as the junction where hierarchical po­liti­cal power meets horizontal social relations. On the one hand, the hybridity emphasizes the flexibly of governance practices by providing a relatively adaptive institutional setting at the horizonal level. This kind of institutional setting, to a certain extent, leads to less re­sis­tance and sometimes to even more support for the daily governance carried out through personal interactions between the agents of the state and the citizens. On the other hand, the mixed governance structure and its actors help strengthen social control and maintain governance order in urban neighborhoods. Party-­building practices in dif­fer­ent neighborhoods have not only secured the reach of the state but also enhanced mass mobilization led by the CCP. As the regime mobilization thesis argues, a regime strengthens its position and consolidates its power by employing direct persuasion and organ­ization, as well as indirect encouragement, tolerance, and cultivation. Especially in Chinese neighborhoods, repression happens only when situations get out of control (Tang



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2016, 102–103). In the intermediary governance space, party-­state control is ­shaped by a general tendency to encourage, tolerate, and respond to the diversification of neighborhood governance priorities, structures and actors. Party-­ building in the neighborhoods uses this kind of diversification to mobilize vari­ous groups of residents to strengthen its power, especially when conflicts are localized within neighborhoods.

Deliberative Mechanisms for Conflict Resolution Hybrid authoritarianism not only embraces a diversified governance structure in responding to targeted governance issues but also incorporates a series of strategies, including non-­authoritarian means, into its daily governance practices. Conflict resolution is one of the most prioritized governance areas at all government levels ­because of its direct relationship to social stability, which is required for regime stability and legitimacy. Chapter 3 examines neighborhood deliberation as a non-­authoritarian and relatively efficient mechanism for conflict resolution within hybrid authoritarianism so that tensions do not escalate into larger-­scale social unrest that threatens social stability. Of course, the government desires stability, but citizens also usually prefer to have their prob­lems resolved in a timely manner; when conflicts grow to expand beyond the neighborhood, their resolution typically involves a much higher cost and a longer time. Even when they attract the attention of higher-­level state authorities, conflicts are directed back to the neighborhoods for speedy and practical solutions ­under the state’s monitoring and supervision. Therefore, efficiency ­here mainly refers to the overlapping and shared goals of both the residents and the government: conflict resolution does not promote stability-­oriented governance dynamics for their own sake but instead focuses on the practicality of solving prob­lems in the neighborhood setting. As chapter 3 shows, neighborhood deliberation contributes significantly to the effectiveness of hybrid authoritarianism by incorporating deliberative means in pursuing conflict resolution. A functional and effective neighborhood deliberative system includes diverse (both formal and informal) deliberative gatherings, multiple kinds of actors, and a variety of institutions and has three key aspects: participation, reasoning, and impact. Participation is enhanced by the inclusiveness and repre­sen­ta­tion of diverse governance actors. Reason includes vari­ous forms of communication that contribute to the formation of public reasoning through dif­fer­ent neighborhood activities. Impact refers to both practical outcomes for conflict resolution and expansive implications for dynamic

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systems that integrate both microlevel deliberative forums (Hendriks 2006) and macrolevel communication in the public sphere (Parkinson 2004; Dryzek 2006). In contrast to the party-­state, which has a mono­poly of po­liti­cal power, the intermediary governance space in Chinese urban neighborhoods offers more inclusivity for deliberative activities. Given that Residents’ Committees are government agencies, the question arises ­whether and how deliberative democracy can operate in urban residential communities. As chapter 3 points out, neighborhood deliberation ­today does include multiple actors. For example, in urban middle-­class neighborhoods, ­t here exist the agent of the state (Residents’ Committees), non-­state organ­izations (resident volunteer groups), representative groups of the residents (homeowner associations), and market groups (the real estate developer and management companies). In addition, deliberation also occurs at dif­fer­ent sites and among vari­ous parties, including between Residents’ Committees (on behalf of the local authority) and the public, between Residents’ Committees and resident representative organ­izations, and among dif­fer­ent groups of residents. Through interactions among vari­ous actors and sites, a deliberative system with “Chinese characteristics” offers both incentives and opportunities for conflict resolution. With very practical and specific goals to achieve, Chinese citizens normally ask for intervention by a higher-­level state authority in their disputes or publicize their concerns through the media or online to attract the attention of higher-­level authorities (Cai 2008). Neighborhood deliberation is no exception, which to be effective must empower deliberative outcomes. Residents’ Committees can maximize their instrumental role in connecting the public sphere and state authorities, providing institutional coordination to implement both the “transmission” and “reflection” pro­cess of neighborhood deliberation. ­Because of Residents’ Committees’ semi-­official status, vari­ous interest groups believe that the deliberative talks coordinated by the committees w ­ ill lead to some solutions that w ­ ill be reinforced and implemented by official authorities. In some cases, the local police ­were also invited by the residents to participate in the WeChat deliberation group, not least b ­ ecause they considered it impor­tant to involve the authorities in the discussion pro­cess and the subsequent implementation of deliberative outcomes. In this scenario, deliberation outside formal institutional settings plays a particularly impor­tant role in authoritarian deliberation, b ­ ecause it fills the gap between mass participation and the exclusion and non-­transparency that characterize decision making in the current po­liti­cal system. In urban neighborhoods, informal deliberation helps disseminate information that is unavailable from official channels, mobilize discussions that allow dif­fer­ent voices, and shape opinion formation through clarifying misunderstandings and reasoning. The degree



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of the flexibility and autonomy of the local government determines in what ways and to what extent authoritarian deliberation can be effectively practiced and thereby shape local governance mechanisms. From a systemic point of view, the mix of deliberative and non-­deliberative features facilitates the development of a functional deliberative system in which the non-­deliberative parts can be compensated by deliberative ele­ments ­later. The issue is ­whether and to what extent ­there is adequate, functional, and coordinated institutional responsiveness to discursive changes, rather than the need to eliminate non-­deliberative or non-­ democratic ele­ments of the existing institutions. In this light, authoritarian deliberation and its contribution to hybrid authoritarianism differ from most debates on democ­ratization trajectories in China, which speculate about ­whether and when China as a w ­ hole w ­ ill become demo­cratic and through what kind of participation. Instead, its emphasis is on the ways in which deliberation can be practiced in par­tic­u­lar locations at dif­fer­ent levels of governance to enhance participation and promote demo­cratic values and practices.

Collaborative Ser­v ice Provision The practices illustrated in chapter 4 show that social governance in the intermediary governance space is gradually moving from a corporatist model to more of a supervisory or regulatory one. This shift may lead to empowerment of the societal actors or organ­izations that advocate for more accountability and transparency of local government in ser­vice provision; it may also accelerate administrative modernization t­ oward a regulatory state. Neighborhood ser­vice provision as explored in chapter 4 highlights two aspects of hybrid authoritarianism: (1) non-­ state actors’ involvement and participation in government programs and (2) local diversity and flexibility in carry­ing out nationwide government schemes. Despite an increasingly active role in social and po­liti­cal life in China, non-­state actors have ­until recently rarely participated in governance programs in such a direct, systematic way as with their involvement in delivering neighborhood aged care. In a similar manner, the remaining village collectives in urbanized neighborhoods have filled the gap between socialist welfare and marketized ser­vices. The combination of operations of socialism and marketization has led the socialist state to step away from the sole provision of government programs. Non-­state actors have been allowed to support, collaborate, or even establish partnership with state actors to carry out government programs. By incorporating non-­state actors, the party-­state manages to secure the quality of ser­vices needed to satisfy the citizens, and, in turn, to gain public support.

144 CONCLUSION

Collaborative ser­v ice provision also sheds light on how hybrid authoritarianism embraces local diversity and flexibility according to local conditions. The local economy and each neighborhood’s existing ser­v ices and demands for new ones play a significant role in explaining differences in the government purchase of ser­vices. Suzhou and Guangzhou are among the most well-­off cities in China. Their governments therefore have more financial resources to run programs for residents and have the cash on hand to expand programs for the el­derly by outsourcing impor­tant aspects of them. Shenyang’s economy, in contrast, has faced difficulties since the 1990s when large numbers of state-­owned enterprises went bankrupt. In Shenyang, to a large extent the Residents’ Committee still functions as the sole replacement for the work unit and the key site for implementing governance programs. Neighborhood ser­vice provision to displaced farmers is largely determined by local urbanization trajectories and to what extent the village collectives are involved in delivering ser­v ices. Village collectives that I studied in Guangzhou and Wuhan managed to maintain more autonomy and owner­ship of their collective assets, in contrast to t­ hose in Shenyang and Suzhou. As a result, they participated in neighborhood ser­vice provision in dif­fer­ent ways. Despite the local variations, t­ hose practices show consistency across dif­fer­ ent localities in the participation of non-­state actors ­under the strong supervision of the party-­state. Just like it uses deliberation for conflict resolution, the party-­state is responding to the growing demand for neighborhood ser­v ice provision by involving non-­state actors. The goal of hybrid authoritarianism that incorporates multiple actors is not the complete autonomy or in­de­pen­dence of non-­state actors or organ­izations but their participation ­under the strong monitoring of the party-­state. Through its supervision the party-­state ensures the CCP’s leadership of market and social organ­izations. This aspect of hybrid authoritarianism is an example of the state’s withdrawal from social management and its encouraging societal actors to participate in taking over some of the local state’s former responsibilities such as the provision of public goods and ser­vices. Studies have found that this pro­cess has gradually encouraged civil society groups to play a more active role in both policy implementation and policy formation, which has led to a new model of state–­society relations (Mertha 2009; Teets 2012). Mertha (2009) considers this as “fragmented authoritarianism,” whereas Teets (2013) sees it as “consultative authoritarianism,” which includes facilitation of a fairly autonomous civil society and the development of more indirect tools of state control at the same time. Hybrid authoritarianism echoes t­hose research agendas with its two simultaneous and interactive pro­cesses of civil society participation and strengthening the party.



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Efficient Mass Mobilization Grassroots governance has always been a key site for leader–­mass relations in Chinese politics. According to Tang (2016), the underdevelopment of the rule of law, of intermediate social organ­izations, and of the electoral system have all contributed to weak institutions in the Chinese po­liti­cal system. ­These weak institutions are both a cause and a result of the direct mass po­liti­cal participation. As the foundation of Chinese theories of leadership, leader–­mass relations, and certain types of policy making (Blecher 1979), the Maoist Mass Line theory argues that the success or failure of “any kind of work that requires [the masses’] participation” (Mao 1965) depends ultimately on their enthusiasm, willingness, and power. Hybrid authoritarianism is consistent with this po­liti­cal tradition. Especially at the grassroots, hybrid authoritarianism absorbs strength from the society through the mobilization of mass participation in neighborhood governance to improve governance and public policy, reduce social conflicts, and guide po­liti­cal be­hav­ior and participation. The development of market and social organ­izations is crucial for the new dynamics of neighborhood governance. Accompanying the diversification of neighborhoods and their residents, participants in neighborhood politics have also been transformed from citizen groups led by the work units to civil groups with vari­ous missions and dif­fer­ent collective interests. Neighborhood social organ­izations, market groups, and resident volunteers have all become impor­tant participants in neighborhood governance. Despite their dif­fer­ent operations, t­ hose non-­state actors adopt similar strategies to operate ­under agreed discourses and to follow mass mobilization led by the party-­state. The state-­sponsored discourses such as “self-­ governance,” “co-­governance,” and “citizenization” not only serve the functions of po­liti­cal propaganda but also serve as the guide for po­liti­cal be­hav­ior and actions of the non-­state actors in neighborhood governance. With dif­fer­ent rationales and aims, the non-­state actors sign up for t­ hose discourses and practice them through their activities. Market groups aim to have a good relationship with the local government, which ­will bring them favored deals in the long run. For neighborhood social organ­izations, a functional working relationship with the local government ­will bring more trust from the state and, in turn, relatively more autonomy in their operations. Resident volunteers are pursuing a sense of fulfilment in neighborhood life, accompanied by their strong beliefs in the CCP’s ideology. This kind of po­liti­cal participation be­hav­ior and governmentality guided by state-­sponsored discourse goes hand in hand with mass mobilization in the neighborhoods, especially the mobilization of resident volunteers. Resident mobilization has been a key feature of urban grassroots governance, in parallel

146 CONCLUSION

with mass mobilization carried out at urban residents’ workplaces. By helping coordinate the social groups among the residents and their activities, the local government manages to keep a close relationship with certain groups of residents who ­w ill, in turn, help to carry out government tasks in the neighborhoods. Through the recruitment of resident volunteers, Residents’ Committees manage to mobilize resident participation in e­ very aspect of neighborhood life, which is usually intertwined with other po­liti­cal activities such as party-­building activities in the neighborhoods. Both mass mobilization and party building manage to co-­opt multiple interest groups in neighborhoods to participate in neighborhood governance. Th ­ ese groups become interdependent and work together to shape the state–­mass relationship at the most local level.

Neighborhood Governance and Democ­r atization ­ ere is a lack of consensus to date among scholars, both inside and outside Th China, about the f­ uture prospects for Chinese politics, especially with the continuing development of the market economy and the growing urban m ­ iddle class. Many scholars believe a transitional trajectory through which the responsiveness, adaptiveness, or resilience of authoritarianism presented in China, ­w ill have to somehow be replaced by more demo­cratic, authentical liberal po­ liti­cal institutions to avoid the potential crisis of state collapse. Some scholars are less optimistic, speculating more resilience, adaptation, and stability of the Communist regime. Jean-­Pierre Cabestan (2004) raised the possibility “that China w ­ ill once again innovate and manage its retreat from communism through a movement ­towards a softer but stabilized authoritarianism” (21). The hybrid authoritarianism thesis explains the contradiction faced in the China Studies field. Hybrid governing practices at the grassroots level have generated public support for governance and regime legitimacy in an authoritarian regime through some of the non-­authoritarian means. ­These practices have helped the CCP consistently deliver remarkable economic growth and redirect internal challenges. The implications are that hybrid authoritarianism reflects the party-­state’s tolerance for flexibilities that aim to improve improving governance efficiency and competence and gradually increase citizen participation in local governance affairs. In the meantime, it remains uncertain ­whether hybrid authoritarianism can also serve as a basis for democ­ratization, understood as a po­liti­cal pro­cess and trajectory to be sought in very dif­fer­ent ways by dif­fer­ent socie­ties. The hybrid authoritarianism thesis echoes with the “systemic approach” in the field of deliberative democracy through its emphases on a dy-



THE PARTY-STATE, CIVIL SOCIETY, AND NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

147

namic governance system that goes beyond individual, isolated practices. As shown in this book, the five components of hybrid authoritarianism can operate together to produce governance legitimacy in general, but the individual components alone may not produce functional neighborhood governance. A functional hybrid authoritarianism system requires its ele­ments to work individually and interact collectively to deliver public support to the party-­state and governance accountability to the citizens. Scholars tend to agree that, following the transition from the Hu-­Wen administration to the Xi-­Li administration, the CCP’s leadership in all aspects of society has experienced growing, intensified emphases. Neighborhood governance, due to its distance from yet connections to the party-­state, which are absent in higher-­level governance, still exhibits a certain extent of flexibility and variety in the past de­cade, as shown in this book. Hybrid authoritarianism as presented ­here does not assume or imply that governance mechanisms at the grassroots level would be automatically extended to higher levels of governance. Grassroots governance is one of the very few governance spaces in China in which citizens, society, and the state interact with each other with flexibility and diversity, especially u ­ nder the state’s increasingly tight control on ideology and society. Neighborhood governance practices both channel and restrain the work of the party-­state agents through existing, well-­k nown familiar patterns. Yet, hybrid authoritarianism is also a pro­cess of reinvention that departs from previous practices and disrupts e­ arlier patterns of interaction. This dynamic pro­cess constantly and deliberately creates new channels for po­liti­cal interchange that are unfamiliar to both the government and the citizens, such as mixed governance structures, neighborhood deliberation and neighborhood ser­vice provision. As Shue and Thornton (2017, 37–38) correctly point out, ­those governance practices “do not conform to fixed scripts; they are not nor static, but are in themselves continually undergoing revision, renewal, and reform. Such governing practices as t­ hese are, in themselves, and as a collection or constellation of governing techniques, forever fluid; continuously ‘in the making.’ ” So far, development of most of the “innovative” practices examined at the neighborhood level in this book has not extended beyond the grassroots level, remaining partial and uneven. It remains unclear w ­ hether the governance innovations we observe potentially can be in line with the standard approach in democ­ratization studies—­especially in the Western countries—­that see demo­ cracy as a well-­defined package comprising competitive elections, constitutionalism, and a standard set of ­human rights, accompanied by the breakdown of an authoritarian system. Further development would require the expansion of multifaceted and wide-­ranging po­liti­cal participation, rather than isolated innovations, beyond the grassroots level. This would involve vari­ous communicative

148 CONCLUSION

pro­cesses where citizens exchange opinions and form a consensus in public settings about issues that affect their community, society, or the state. Or ­these innovations may simply bolster the legitimacy and authority of the party-­state. If the flexibility occurs only within well-­defined limits set by the party-­state and the CCP continues to grow stronger, to the extent that hybrid authoritarianism does reinforce state legitimacy and authority, promoters of the standard Western model of democ­ratization would become very uneasy indeed. The f­ uture development of hybrid authoritarianism “in the making” is subject to changing po­liti­cal agendas, priorities, interests and policy preferences of the CCP, as shown in the past four de­cades since China’s economic reform. The significance of hybrid authoritarianism for Chinese po­liti­cal life, to a certain extent, lies in potentially key practices and outcomes of citizen empowerment, society coordination, and state responsiveness, through which improved demo­ cratic values and actions take place within a well-­defined po­liti­cal territory and at l­imited scale. This is especially crucial for the Chinese m ­ iddle class whose Western counter­parts are perceived as driving forces for democracy. Interactions between the party-­state and Chinese urban residents through effective citizens’ participation in neighborhood affairs could result not only in better social policies but also the improved participatory capacity of the citizens. Demo­cratic values and actions, as well as citizen competency, could transform individuals and groups from po­liti­cal actors—­t hose who are involved in dif­fer­ent sections of a po­liti­cal system—to po­liti­cal influences: t­ hose who can exert impact on po­liti­ cal outcomes. Healthy, evolving state–­society relations are critical for the country’s po­liti­cal ­f uture.

Appendix SUMMARIES OF NEIGHBORHOODS

­TABLE A.1 CHAPTER

CODE

TYPE OF NEIGHBORHOOD

DISTRICT

CITY

1

UGZ1

Urban village

Huangpu

Guangzhou

RWH1

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

RSY1

Relocation community

Hunnan

Shenyang

MSZ1

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Suzhou Industrial Park

Suzhou

RWH2

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

MSY2

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Shenhe

Shenyang

UGZ2

Urban village

Huangpu

Guangzhou

UGZ3

Urban village

Huangpu

Guangzhou

MSZ2

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Suzhou Industrial Park

Suzhou

MGZ1

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Haizhu

Guangzhou

RSY2

Relocation community

Hunnan

Shenyang

RSZ1

Relocation community

Wujiang

Suzhou

2

(continued)

149

150 Appendix

­TABLE A.1 (continued) CHAPTER

CODE

3

MSZ1

4

5

TYPE OF NEIGHBORHOOD

DISTRICT

CITY

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Suzhou Industrial Park

Suzhou

MSZ3

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Suzhou Industrial Park

Suzhou

RWH3

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

UGZ2

Urban village

Huangpu

Guangzhou

RWH2

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

UGZ3

Urban village

Huangpu

Guangzhou

MSY2

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Shenhe

Shenyang

MSY3

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Dadong

Shenyang

MSY4

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Huanggu

Shenyang

UGZ4

Urban village

Huangpu

Guangzhou

RWH3

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

RSZ1

Relocation community

Wujiang

Suzhou

RWH2

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

MSZ4

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Suzhou Industrial Park

Suzhou

MGZ2

Middle- ­class neighborhood

Haizhu

Guangzhou

RWH1

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

RSZ1

Relocation community

Wujiang

Suzhou

RWH2

Relocation community

Hanyang

Wuhan

RSY2

Relocation community

Hunnan

Shenyang

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. WeChat is the En­glish name for Weixin, the most popu­lar form of social media in China. It supports both text and voice messages, file transfers, and audio and video calls. 1. DIVERSIFICATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

1. Interview with Residents’ Committee staff, no. 9, July 2009. 2. Interview with resident in urban village, no. 13, July 2011. 3. Interview with Resident’s Committee staff, no. 2, May 2007. 2. INTERMEDIARY GOVERNANCE SPACE

1. Interview with Street Office staff, No.7, October 2015. 2. Interviews with residents in middle-­class neighborhood, No. 29–31, March 2016. 3. Interview with Street Office staff, No.2, July 2014. 4. Interviews with the residents in relocation neighbourhoods, No. 9–12. July 2016. 5. Local Street Office documents collected in Shenyang and Suzhou by the author. 6. Local Street Office documents collected in Shenyang, Suzhou, and Guangzhou by the author. 3. NEIGHBORHOOD CONFLICT RESOLUTION

1. Interview with resident in relocation neighborhood, No. 27, July 2012. 2. Interviews with residents in urban village, No. 14–19, August 2013. 3. Interviews with residents in urban village, No. 20–25, August 2013. 4. Interviews with residents in urban village, No. 18–20, August 2013. 5. Interview with resident in relocation neighborhood, No. 5, July 2012. 4. NEIGHBORHOOD SER­V ICE PROVISION

1. Interviews with social workers, No. 2–3, July 2013. 2. Interviews with resident in urban village, No. 12–15, July 2013. 3. Interview with resident in relocation neighborhood, No. 11, July 2013. 4. Interview with resident in urban village, No. 4, August 2012. 5. Interview with resident in urban village, No. 8, August 2012. 5. PARTICIPATION IN NEIGHBORHOOD GOVERNANCE

1. Interview with resident in a relocation neighborhood, No. 6, May 2017. 2. Interview with social organ­ization staff member, No. 5, July 2014. 3. Interview with social organ­ization staff member, No. 6, July 2014. 4. Interview with resident in a middle-­class neighborhood, No. 7, November 2016. 5. Interview with Street Office official, No. 2, November 2015. 6. Interview with Resident Committee staff in urban village, No. 12, August 2013. 7. Interview with Street Office official, No. 3 November 2015.

151

152 NOTES TO PAGES 122–129

8. Interview with Resident Committee staff in relocation neighborhood, No.  16, August 2016. 9. Interview with Resident Committee staff in relocation neighborhood, No.  18, August 2016. 10. Interview with Resident Committee staff in urban village, No. 11, August 2013. 11. Interviews with Residents’ Committee staff in middle-­class neighborhood, No. 23– 25, July 2012, No. 78–80 November 2016. 12. Interview with resident in middle-­class neighborhood, No. 58, November 2017. 13. Interview with resident in middle-­class neighborhood, No. 43, November 2017. 14. Interview with resident in middle-­class neighborhood, No. 61, December 2017. 15. Interview with resident in middle-­class neighborhood, No. 62, December 2017. 16. Interview with resident in relocation neighborhood, No. 18, August 2016. 17. Interview with resident in middle-­class neighborhood, No. 58, November 2017.

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Index

Figures are indicated with an italic f following the page number. activism of homeowners, 8, 18, 20, 26–27, 29, 40 administrative structures: autonomy and, 139–140; blurring of bound­a ries and, 23, 108; care for the aged and, 101; citizenization and, 34; co-­governance and, 16; community construction scheme and, 15–16, 35, 48, 95; decentralization of, 137; deliberation and, 71–72, 84; grassroots governance and, 15, 84–85, 121, 139; grid governance and, 12, 48–50; homeowner associations and, 27; hybrid authoritarianism and, 138; intermediary governance and, 55–59; landless farmers and, 20, 23, 43, 133; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 20, 28, 48–50, 64, 140; neighborhood defined by, 3, 15; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 8, 20, 29–33, 55–59, 105–106, 108, 120–121; participation and, 120; relocation communities and, 33; Residents’ Committees and, 28, 32, 35, 37, 64, 72, 98, 101, 108, 125; ser­v ice provision and, 89, 91, 93, 98, 143; urban villages and, 105–106, 118; urbanization and, 23, 30; village collectives and, 32–33, 120–121, 130 aged persons. See care for the aged agricultural reforms. See land expropriation; landless farmers authenticity in deliberation, 70, 72, 79 authoritarianism: authoritarian communitarianism, 47; autonomy and, 6, 47, 111; bureaucratic authoritarianism, 114, 116, 133; deliberation and, 68–70, 82, 85–87, 90, 142–143; democ­ratization and, 82, 146–147; regime legitimacy and stability and, 2, 5–6, 13, 22, 89, 136; responsiveness in, 14, 133; scholarship on, 3, 6, 9, 14, 47, 69, 90, 136, 146. See also hybrid authoritarianism autonomy: administrative structures and, 139–140; authoritarianism and, 6, 47, 111; care for the aged and, 108; deliberation and, 21, 142–143; homeowner activism and, 8; homeowner associations and, 27; hybrid

authoritarianism and, 144; intermediary governance and, 47, 140; local policies and, 41–42; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 16, 25–26; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 16, 30–31; participation and, 110–111; Residents’ Committees and, 37; scholarship on, 89; ser­v ice provision and, 90, 107, 109, 145; urban neighborhood governance and, 7, 16, 139; village collectives and, 31, 102, 122–123, 130–131, 144. See also self-­governance bankruptcies of SOEs and ser­v ice provision, 14, 144 be­hav­ior of citizens, po­liti­cal, 13, 34, 40, 138, 145 Beijing: CCP members in, 60–61; grid governance in, 48–49, 60–61; Olympics in, 49; ser­v ice provision in, 49 blurring of bound­a ries: administrative structures and, 23, 108; grassroots governance and, 9, 47; ­house­hold registration system and, 23; hybrid authoritarianism and, 136; intermediary governance and, 47; land expropriation and, 43; landless farmers and, 23; marketization and, 132–133; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 9; rural-­ urban divide and, 9, 23, 43, 132–133; urbanization and, 9, 43, 89, 132–133 bonuses offered to relocated villa­gers, 31, 77, 81, 83, 103, 105, 113 bottom-up governance, 9, 29, 47, 50, 102, 124 bound­a ries. See blurring of bound­a ries branches of CCP in neighborhoods, 2, 36, 60–63, 120, 124–125, 127–130 bud­gets, 36, 57, 67, 102, 106, 121, 137 building efforts of CCP, 11, 13, 16, 21, 59–63, 65, 87, 123, 138, 146 bureaucratic authoritarianism, 114, 116, 133 business o ­ wners and associations, 8, 12, 25, 53, 90, 107

165

166 INDEX

Cabestan, Jean-­Pierre, 146 care for the aged: administrative structures and, 101; autonomy and, 108; collaboration established for, 97–99; demographic crisis and, 94; El­derly Ser­v ice Centers for, 99–101; funding issues of, 96; government purchase of ser­v ices and, 97–102, 115; growth in, 95, 97; marketization and, 94, 102; nationwide system for, 95; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 94; one-­child policy and, 94; overview of, 21, 42–43, 91, 94–95, 102, 108; partnerships developed for, 99–102; recreational activities and, 95, 97–98; Residents’ Committees and, 95–99, 101–102, 108, 125; social organ­i zations and, 12, 93, 97, 99, 102, 108, 143; traditional emphasis on, 94; urbanization and, 94, 102; work units and, 91, 94–95, 97 CCP. See Chinese Communist Party Chambers, Simone, 67, 71 Chen, Xi, 10, 76 Chinese Communist Party (CCP): COVID-19 pandemic and, 1–2, 134–135; deliberation and, 44, 66–69, 71, 87; democ­ratization and, 132, 146–148; ­f uture development of, 146–148; grassroots governance and, 44, 46, 59–60, 124, 145; grid governance and, 60–62; hybrid authoritarianism and, 3, 5, 66, 124, 133, 136–138, 144, 146; intermediary governance and, 46, 59–65, 89, 111, 124, 138, 140–141; Mass Line tradition and, 67, 82, 114, 131, 133, 145; mass mobilization efforts of, 50, 59–63, 65, 87, 123–124, 135, 140, 145–146; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 55, 59–62, 65, 127–129; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 59–63, 65, 128–129; participation and, 66, 123, 127–131; party branches in neighborhoods in, 2, 36, 60–63, 120, 124–125, 127–130; party-­building efforts of, 11, 13, 16, 21, 59–63, 65, 87, 123, 137–138, 140–141, 146; property management companies and, 53–54, 119–120; regime legitimacy and stability and, 2–3, 10, 15, 44, 59, 136, 138, 146–148; relocation communities and, 62, 128; resident volunteers and, 111, 123–124, 127–130, 145; Residents’ Committees and, 36, 60–65, 75, 126–128, 145; retired members of, 127–129, 130–131; scholarship on, 5, 47, 117, 146–148; self-­governance and, 145; ser­v ice provision and, 89; social management innovation and, 12, 15–16, 46, 65–66, 71; social organizations and, 60, 117, 144; urban neighborhood

governance and, 132–133; urban villages and, 62, 128, 129 Chinese ­People’s Po­l iti­c al Consultative Conference, 67 citizenization: administrative structures and, 34; goals of, 12–13, 15, 145; landless farmers and, 12, 15, 33–34; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 34, 63, 105; overview of, 12–13, 15; participation and, 111; property management companies and, 105; ser­v ice provision and, 12; stability maintenance and, 15; urbanization and, 63 Clifford, Paul, 136 co-­governance: administrative structures and, 16; development of, 16, 145; grid governance and, 48, 53–55; intermediary governance and, 111; Residents’ Committees and, 54; self-­governance and, 16, 53; social organ­ izations and, 48 collective reasoning in deliberation, 80–83, 141–142 collective welfare provision. See ser­v ice provision Communist Party. See Chinese Communist Party community construction scheme, 15–16, 35, 48, 95 Community Ser­v ice Centers, 58–59, 64 conflict resolution: community construction scheme and, 48; deliberative turn in, 11–12, 18, 21, 66–67, 69–71, 76–78, 81, 84–85, 134–35, 141–143; diversification of governance and, 38–42; grassroots governance and, 66–67, 71, 84–85; grid governance and, 48–50; homeowner associations and, 8, 40, 50, 72, 77; hybrid authoritarianism and, 11, 21, 44, 136, 141; intermediary governance and, 17, 46, 66; local policies and, 41–42; market groups and, 12; marketization and, 6, 17; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 8, 38–39, 44, 74–75; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 38–39, 56; overview of, 6–7, 11–12, 17, 21, 38, 66–68, 134; property management companies and, 8, 17, 20–21, 26, 38–40, 50, 72–73, 105; Public Repair Fund and, 40–41, 83, 128; regime legitimacy and stability and, 6–7, 12, 71, 141; resident volunteers and, 52, 68, 73–74, 76, 86, 126; Residents’ Committees and, 35–36, 39–40, 44, 48, 66, 71–77, 86; self-­governance and, 12; ser­v ice provision and, 11–12, 15, 17, 40–43, 144; social management innovation and, 12, 66; stability maintenance and, 7;

INDEX 167

urban neighborhood governance and, 6–7, 12, 138–139; urbanization and, 17; village collectives and, 72 Confucian harmony, 133 corruption, 2, 6, 26 COVID-19 pandemic, 1–2, 134–135 deliberation in neighborhoods: administrative structures and, 71–72, 84; authenticity and, 70, 72, 79; authoritarianism and, 68–70, 82, 85–87, 90, 142–143; autonomy and, 21, 142–143; CCP and, 44, 66–69, 71, 87; collective reasoning and, 80–83, 141–142; conflict resolution and, 11–12, 18, 21, 66–67, 69–71, 76–78, 81, 84–85, 134–135, 141–143; coordination and leadership in, 73–75; democ­ ratization and, 69, 82–86, 143; development of, 68–70; discursive deliberation in, 75–76; diversification of governance and, 70; formal meetings in, 73, 76, 79–82, 84, 86; goals of, 67–69, 71, 82–83; grassroots governance and, 12, 67–68, 71; grid governance and, 73–74, 76; homeowner associations and, 77, 80–81, 83, 87; hybrid authoritarianism and, 83, 87, 141–143; inclusiveness in, 70–73; informal talks and, 77–81, 84; intermediary governance and, 71–72, 82–83, 142; lack of information in, 77–78; landless farmers and, 78; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 73–74, 77, 142; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 74, 76–78, 81, 142; outcomes of, 82–85; overview of, 12, 17, 21, 66–68, 85–87, 141–143; participation and, 12, 69–73, 85–86; property management companies and, 80, 83; public reasoning and, 75–83; regime legitimacy and stability and, 76; repre­sen­ta­t ion in, 70–73; resident volunteers and, 81–82, 114, 126–127; Residents’ Committees and, 21, 68, 71–81, 83, 86, 142; returned villa­gers and, 78–79, 83, 84; scholarship on, 66–67, 69–72, 76–77, 82; social management innovation and, 71; social media and, 80, 142; systemic approach to, 68–70, 73; triangle of interrelations and, 84–85; urban neighborhood governance and, 12, 17, 21, 141–143; village collectives and, 77, 79, 86 democ­ratization: authoritarianism and, 82, 146–147; CCP and, 132, 146–148; deliberation and, 69, 82–86, 143; hybrid authoritarianism and, 133, 143, 146–148; participation and, 70; scholarship on, 69–70, 82; urban neighborhood governance and, 146–148

disputes. See conflict resolution; deliberation in neighborhoods diversification of governance: conflict resolution and, 38–42; grassroots governance and, 24, 44–45, 138–139; grid governance and, 50–51, 65; hybrid authoritarianism and, 11–13, 138–139; intermediary governance and, 21, 45; landless farmers and, 44; marketization and, 6, 23, 43–45, 134, 139; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 25–29, 44, 139; new issues and priorities following, 38–39; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 32–34, 139; overview of, 11, 23–25, 43–44, 134, 138–139; property management companies and, 39–40, 44; relocation communities and, 30; Residents’ Committees and, 34–38, 44, 139; responsiveness and, 43–44; self-­governance and, 27–29; ser­v ice provision and, 40–43, 91–94; urban neighborhood governance and, 11, 14–16, 24, 134, 138–139; urbanization and, 43–45, 134, 139; village collectives and, 24, 29–34 Dryzek, John, 70, 82, 85 economic reform. See marketization el­derly persons. See care for the aged El­derly Ser ­v ice Centers, 99–101 employment ser ­v ices, 103–104 environmental concerns, 42, 75, 78–79, 81, 83 expropriation of land. See land expropriation farming reforms. See land expropriation; landless farmers Fishkin, James, 70 flexibility and strength of hybrid authoritarianism, 10–13, 16–17, 65, 136–138 formal meetings in deliberation, 73, 76, 79–82, 84, 86 Foucault, Michel, 13, 110, 124 funding, 40–41, 59, 74–75, 96, 105–106, 122–123, 128 Göbel, Christian, 3–4, 27, 35, 37 governance. See bottom-up governance; co-­ governance; diversification of governance; grassroots governance; grid governance; intermediary governance; participation in neighborhood governance; self-­governance; top-­down governance; urban neighborhood governance government purchase of ser­v ices, 21, 92–93, 95–102, 108, 115–117, 144

168 INDEX

governmentality, 13, 110–111, 134, 138, 140, 145 grassroots governance: administrative structures and, 15, 84–85, 121, 139; blurring of bound­a ries and, 9, 47; CCP and, 44, 46, 59–60, 124, 145; conflict resolution and, 66–67, 71, 84–85; deliberation and, 12, 67–68, 71; development of, 2, 5, 24; diversification of governance and, 24, 44–45, 138–39; governmentality and, 110; grid governance and, 48–50; hybrid authoritarianism and, 3–5, 10–11, 21–22, 24–25, 38, 46, 133–138, 145–147; intermediary governance and, 12, 45–47, 140; marketization and, 45, 139; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 9; overview of, 2–5, 23–24, 134–147; participation and, 145; regime legitimacy and stability and, 5, 10, 12, 88; Residents’ Committees and, 35, 37, 71; self-­governance and, 12; ser­v ice provision and, 88; social management innovation and, 46; social organ­ izations and, 12; stability maintenance and, 7, 29; strength and flexibility of, 136–38; urban neighborhood governance and, 2–16, 19–22, 133, 135–138, 145–147; urbanization and, 45, 139; village collectives and, 121; work units and, 5 grid governance: administrative structures and, 12, 48–50; CCP and, 60–62; co-­ governance and, 48, 53–55; community construction scheme and, 48; composition of, 50–52, 51f; conflict resolution and, 48–50; construction and operation of, 51–55; definition of, 12; deliberation and, 73–74, 76; diversification of governance and, 50–51, 65; establishment of, 48–50; goals of, 50; grassroots governance and, 48–50; homeowner associations and, 48, 53–54, 62, 65; intermediary governance and, 48–51, 140; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 55; overview of, 12, 21, 46, 135, 140; participation and, 114; property management companies and, 52–55, 62, 65, 119; resident groups and, 52–53, 55; resident volunteers and, 51–53, 55, 124, 126; Residents’ Committees and, 48, 51–55, 65, 73, 114; residents’ representatives and, 52–53; self-­governance and, 51, 53–55, 124; ser­ vice provision and, 48, 50; shared features of, 50; social management innovation and, 49, 65; social organ­izations and, 48; structure of, 49f; targeted groups in, 50 Guangzhou: administrative structures in, 106; autonomy in, 108, 144; care for the aged in, 95, 99–102, 108, 117; CCP in, 61, 127; deliberation

in, 81–84; environmental concerns in, 84; grid governance in, 49–50, 52; land expropriation in, 18; MGZ1 middle-­class neighborhood in, 52, 61; MGZ2 middle-­c lass neighborhood in, 114, 127; newly urbanized neighborhoods in, 30–32, 56–57, 81; overview of, 18; participation in, 114; party-­building in, 61; policy entrepreneur activities in, 84; Residents’ Committees in, 61, 81–82, 83, 101, 108; returned villa­gers in, 41, 84; ser­v ice provision in, 92–93, 103–104, 106, 144; UGZ1 urban village in, 31–32, 103; UGZ2 urban village in, 41, 83; UGZ3 urban village in, 42, 81, 83–84; UGZ4 urban village in, 106; urban villages in, 30–31; urbanization in, 18, 122; village collectives in, 57, 144; Village Committees in, 56–57 Hasmath, Reza, 90 He, Baogang, 69 Heberer, Thomas, 3–4, 27, 35, 37 Heilmann, Sebastian, 11 homeowner activism, 8, 18, 20, 26–27, 29, 40–41 homeowner associations: administrative structures and, 27; autonomy and, 27; conflict resolution and, 8, 40, 50, 72, 77; deliberation and, 77, 80–81, 83, 87; development of, 8, 26; grid governance and, 48, 53–54, 62, 65; intermediary governance and, 47, 64; property management companies and, 27, 40–41, 128; public funds and, 40–41; regulation of, 27; resident volunteers and, 54; Residents’ Committees and, 27, 48, 54, 80, 127; retired volunteers and, 126; scholarship on, 20, 27; self-­governance and, 20, 26–27; urban neighborhood governance and, 4, 8; urbanization and, 64 house­hold registration system (hukou), 9, 23, 29–31, 33, 41, 43, 61, 98–99, 103 Hsing, You-­t ien, 30, 102, 134 Hsu, Jennifer, 90 hybrid authoritarianism: administrative structures and, 138; autonomy and, 144; blurring of bound­aries and, 136; CCP and, 3, 5, 66, 124, 133, 136–138, 144, 146; conflict resolution and, 11, 21, 44, 136, 141; decentralization and, 137; definition of, 3, 10; deliberation and, 83, 87, 141–143; democ­ratization and, 133, 143, 146–148; development of, 4, 10–11; diversification of governance and, 11–13, 138–139; explanatory aims of, 3–4, 7, 10–11, 13, 64, 144; flexibility and strength of, 10–13, 16–17, 65, 136–138; ­future development of,

INDEX 169

146–48; governmentality and, 13; grassroots governance and, 3–5, 10–11, 21–22, 24–25, 38, 46, 133–138, 145–147; intermediary governance and, 3, 11, 20–21, 47, 64–65, 138, 139–141; marketization and, 4–5, 10, 12, 43; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 16–17, 140; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 16–17, 140; overview of, 3–13, 20–22, 132–148; participation and, 11, 145–146; regime legitimacy and stability and, 3, 10–11, 133, 135–136, 138, 146; Residents’ Committees and, 38, 64; scholarship on, 4–5, 13, 136, 146–147; ser­v ice provision and, 11, 21, 143–144; urban neighborhood governance and, 3–4, 7, 10–13, 133, 136–138; urbanization and, 4, 10–12, 43 intermediary governance: administrative structures and, 55–59; autonomy and, 47, 140; blurring of bound­a ries and, 47; CCP and, 46, 59–65, 89, 111, 124, 138, 140–141; co-­governance and, 111; communitarianism and, 46–47; conflict resolution and, 17, 46, 66; deliberation and, 71–72, 82–83, 142; diversification of governance and, 21, 45; flexibility meets strength through, 64–65; grassroots governance and, 12, 45–47, 140; grid governance and, 48–51, 140; homeowner associations and, 47, 64; hybrid authoritarianism and, 3, 11, 20–21, 47, 64–65, 138; market groups and, 64–65, 118, 140; mass mobilization and, 59–63; middle-­c lass neighborhoods and, 140; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 140; overview of, 20–21, 45–47, 134, 139–141; participation and, 111, 131; party-­building and, 59–63; resident volunteers and, 58; Residents’ Committees and, 29, 37, 45, 47–48, 56–57, 140; retired residents and, 124; self-­governance and, 16, 47; ser­v ice provision and, 90, 143; social management innovation and, 46; stability maintenance and, 29; urban neighborhood governance and, 3, 10–12, 134–141; village collectives and, 47, 63–65; work units and, 47 land expropriation: blurring of bound­a ries and, 43; compensation for, 77, 81, 105, 113; ­house­hold registration system and, 29, 41; relocation communities and, 30; Residents’ Committees and, 56, 126; returned villa­ gers and, 79; urbanization and, 5, 9, 18, 43–44; village collectives and, 9, 29–31, 41, 120, 122

landless farmers: administrative structures and, 20, 23, 43, 133; blurring of bound­a ries and, 23; citizenization and, 12, 15, 33–34; compensation for, 9, 78; deliberation and, 78; development of, 4, 9, 24, 29–30, 134; diversification of governance and, 44; ­house­hold registration system and, 23, 29–30, 33; participation and, 113; recreational activities and, 113; regime legitimacy and stability and, 4; relocation communities and, 20, 30, 115, 134; Residents’ Committees and, 115; scholarship on, 134; ser­vice provision and, 12, 43; urban neighborhood governance and, 4, 9, 12; urban villages and, 29–30, 134; urbanization and, 4, 9, 20, 23, 44, 78, 134; village collectives and, 120; village-­to-­community transition of, 20, 29–32, 55, 89, 102, 105–106 Lee, Ching Kwan, 46 legitimacy of the regime. See regime legitimacy and stability living environment disputes. See conflict resolution local policy disputes. See conflict resolution Mao Zedong: grassroots governance and, 24, 138; mass campaigns u ­ nder, 114; Mass Line of, 82, 114, 145; recreational activities ­u nder, 114 market groups: conflict resolution and, 12; intermediary governance and, 64–65, 118, 140; marketization and, 12, 64; overview of, 4; participation and, 22, 111, 118–123, 127, 145; ser­v ice provision and, 12, 92; urban neighborhood governance and, 4, 12, 145; urbanization and, 64. See also property management companies; village collectives marketization: blurring of bound­a ries and, 132–133; care for the aged and, 94, 102; conflict resolution and, 6, 17; diversification of governance and, 6, 23, 43–45, 134, 139; grassroots governance and, 45, 139; home owner­ship and, 5, 8; homeownership and, 23; hybrid authoritarianism and, 4–5, 10, 12, 43; market groups and, 12, 64; middle-­ class neighborhoods and, 7, 23, 25, 134; new social contract through, 23; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 7, 134; overview of, 5–10, 23, 134–135, 139, 143; property management companies and, 8; resident volunteers and, 123; ser­v ice provision and, 17, 88–89, 91; urban neighborhood governance and, 5–10, 12, 14–15, 17–18, 132–133; work units and, 14, 24, 43

170 INDEX

Mass Line tradition of CCP, 67, 82, 114, 131, 133, 145 mass mobilization efforts of CCP, 50, 59–63, 65, 87, 123–24, 135, 140, 145–146 Mertha, Andrew, 144 MGZ1 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Guangzhou), 52, 61 MGZ2 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Guangzhou), 114, 127 MGZ4 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Suzhou), 127 middle-­class neighborhoods: administrative structures and, 20, 28, 48–50, 64, 140; autonomy and, 16, 25–26; CCP and, 55, 59–62, 65, 127–29; conflict resolution and, 8, 38–39, 44, 74–75; deliberation and, 73–74, 77, 142; development of, 4, 7–8, 20, 24–27, 134; diversification of governance and, 25–29, 44, 139; environmental concerns and, 41–42; floating population and, 61; homeowner activism and, 8, 18, 20, 26–27, 29, 40–41; hybrid authoritarianism and, 16–17, 140; intermediary governance and, 140; marketization and, 7, 23, 25, 134; mass mobilization in, 59–62; overview of, 7–8, 16–17, 20, 134, 139–140, 142; participation and, 112–115, 118–119, 130; party-­building in, 59–62, 65; privacy and, 26, 28; property management companies and, 8, 24, 26, 39–41, 118–19; regime legitimacy and stability and, 4; resident retirees and, 127; resident volunteers and, 65, 123–124; Residents’ Committees and, 18, 28–29, 33, 35, 38–40, 53, 55, 57, 118–119; scholarship on, 8, 16, 18, 25, 38, 53, 123; self-­governance and, 15, 20, 27–29; ser­v ice provision and, 12, 26, 40–41, 91–92; social organ­izations and, 102; spatial segregation of, 26, 28, 45; as status symbol, 25; urban neighborhood governance and, 4, 7–8; urbanization and, 7, 134; work units and, 25–26. See also care for the aged; grid governance; homeowner associations MSY2 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Shenyang), 41, 83 MSY3 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Shenyang), 96 MSY4 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Shenyang), 96 MSZ1 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Suzhou), 39, 52, 74, 80, 127 MSZ2 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Suzhou), 52, 61–62

MSZ3 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Suzhou), 75, 78–81, 83 MSZ4 (middle-­class neighborhood) (Suzhou), 112 National Estate Management Industrial Development Report (2018), 26 neighborhood governance. See urban neighborhood governance neighborhood party branches, 2, 36, 60–63, 120, 124–125, 127–130 newly urbanized neighborhoods: administrative structures and, 8, 20, 29–33, 55–59, 105–106, 108, 120–121; autonomy and, 16, 30–31; blurring of bound­a ries and, 9; care for the aged and, 94; CCP and, 59–63, 65, 128–129; citizenization and, 34, 63, 105; conflict resolution and, 38–39, 56; deliberation and, 74, 76–78, 81, 142; development of, 9, 29–32; diversification of governance and, 32–34, 139; grassroots governance and, 9; grid governance and, 55; ­house­hold registration system and, 29–30; hybrid authoritarianism and, 16–17, 140; intermediary governance and, 140; marketization and, 7, 134; mass mobilization in, 59–60, 62–63; overview of, 7, 16–18, 21, 134; participation and, 113–115, 125, 130; party-­building in, 59–60, 62–63, 65; property management companies and, 40; resident volunteers and, 123–125; Residents’ Committees and, 18, 32–33, 38, 56–59, 63, 65, 74, 81, 115, 121, 128; returned villa­gers and, 41; scholarship on, 16; self-­governance and, 15; ser­v ice provision and, 12, 21–22, 89, 91–92, 102–107; urban neighborhood governance and, 7–8, 15; urbanization and, 7, 15; village collectives and, 18, 24, 32–34, 38, 56–57, 120–121; village-­to-­community transition and, 20, 29–32, 55, 89, 102, 105–106; work units and, 88. See also relocation communities; urban villages non-­governmental organ­izations (NGOs). See ser­v ice provision; social organ­izations non-­state actors. See homeowner associations; market groups; property management companies; resident social groups; resident volunteers; social organ­izations; village collectives not-­for-­profit organ­i zations (NPOs). See ser­v ice provision; social organ­i zations old persons. See care for the aged Olympics in Beijing (2008), 49 one-­child policy, 94

INDEX 171

participation in neighborhood governance: administrative structures and, 120; autonomy and, 110–111; CCP and, 66, 123, 127–131; citizenization and, 111; community identity and, 113–114; deliberation and, 12, 69–73, 85–86; democ­ratization and, 70; governmentality and, 110–111; grassroots governance and, 145; grid governance and, 114; homeowners associations and, 126–127; hybrid authoritarianism and, 11, 145–146; intermediary governance and, 111, 131; landless farmers and, 113; market groups and, 22, 111, 118–123, 127, 145; mass mobilization and, 114, 145–146; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 112–115, 118–119, 130; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 113–115, 125, 130; overview of, 21, 110–111, 130–131, 134, 145–146; po­liti­cal consensus and, 111; property management companies and, 118–120, 128, 130; recreational activities and, 112–114; regime legitimacy and stability and, 111; relocation communities and, 113, 118; resident volunteers and, 115, 123–129, 130, 145; Residents’ Committees and, 64, 77, 114–116, 118, 124–126, 130; retirees and, 124–127; self-­governance and, 12, 28, 53, 111; ser­v ice organ­izations and, 115–118; ser­v ice provision and, 12, 93, 115–118; social organ­i zations and, 17, 112–118, 145; urban neighborhood governance and, 4–5, 11–13, 145–146; urbanization and, 111; village collectives and, 111, 120–123, 130; work units and, 145 the Party. See Chinese Communist Party party branches in neighborhoods, 2, 36, 60–63, 120, 124–125, 127–130 party-­building efforts of CCP, 11, 13, 16, 21, 59–63, 65, 87, 123, 137–138, 140–141, 146 Perry, Elizabeth, 11 pet store dispute (MSZ1) (Suzhou), 39, 74, 80, 83 po­liti­cal be­hav­ior of citizens, 13, 34, 40, 138, 145 popu­lar support. See regime legitimacy and stability property management companies: CCP and, 53–54, 119–120; citizenization and, 105; conflict resolution and, 8, 17, 20–21, 26, 38–40, 50, 72–73, 105; corruption and, 26; deliberation and, 80, 83; development of, 20, 24, 26, 92, 140; diversification of governance and, 39–40, 44; grid governance and, 52–55, 62, 65, 119; homeowner associations and, 27, 40–41, 128; marketization and, 8;

middle-­c lass neighborhoods and, 8, 24, 26, 39–41, 118–119; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 40; overview of, 17, 20–21, 38–40, 140; participation and, 118–120, 128, 130; Residents’ Committees and, 28–29, 39–40, 48, 53, 73–75, 80, 105, 114, 118–120; scholarship on, 19–20; ser­v ice provision and, 92, 104–105; urban neighborhood governance and, 4, 8, 20, 140; urbanization and, 104; work units and, 26, 89 Property Rights Law (2007), 39 provision of neighborhood ser­v ices. See ser­v ice provision public funds and property right disputes. See conflict resolution Public Repair Fund, 40–41, 83, 128 PX proj­ect (planned) (MSZ3), 75, 78–81, 83 Read, Benjamin, 8 recreational activities, 35, 58, 62, 95, 97, 112–115, 125 Red Property Man­ag­er scheme (Suzhou), 119–120, 130 reform era. See marketization regime legitimacy and stability: authoritarianism and, 2, 5–6, 13, 22, 89, 136; CCP and, 2–3, 10, 15, 44, 59, 136, 138, 146–148; conflict resolution and, 6–7, 12, 71, 141; corruption and, 6; deliberation and, 76; grassroots governance and, 5, 10, 12, 88; hybrid authoritarianism and, 3, 10–11, 133, 135–136, 138, 146; implicit contract of, 9; landless farmers and, 4; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 4; participation and, 111; scholarship on, 9; self-­governance and, 12, 16; ser­v ice provision and, 44, 88; social management innovation and, 15–16; stability maintenance and, 7, 15, 29; urban neighborhood governance and, 2, 5, 10, 13, 132–133 relocation communities: administrative structures and, 33; bonuses offered in, 31, 77, 81, 83, 103, 105, 113; CCP and, 62, 128; development of, 7, 30; diversification of governance and, 30; land expropriation and, 30; landless farmers and, 20, 30, 115, 134; participation and, 113, 118; recreational activities and, 58, 113; resident volunteers and, 129; Residents’ Committees and, 57–58, 74, 105, 115; scholarship on, 19; ser­v ice provision and, 105; village collectives and, 77, 106, 118 Remick, Elizabeth, 137 Report of the 17th Party Congress (2007), 46

172 INDEX

Report of The Fourth Plenum of the 16th Party Congress (2004), 46 Report of the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress (2013), 49 resident retirees, 113, 124–127 resident social groups, 12, 20–23, 52–56, 64–65, 77, 87, 92, 102, 112–14, 129, 138–140, 146 resident volunteers: CCP and, 111, 123–124, 127–130, 145; conflict resolution and, 52, 68, 73–74, 76, 86, 126; deliberation and, 81–82, 114, 126–127; grid governance and, 51–53, 55, 124, 126; homeowner associations and, 54; intermediary governance and, 58; marketization and, 123; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 65, 123–124; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 123–125; participation and, 115, 123–130, 145; relocation communities and, 129; Residents’ Committees and, 36, 51, 54, 61–62, 76, 101, 115, 126, 128, 130, 146; retired residents and, 124–127; self-­ governance and, 51, 53, 124; ser­vice provision and, 89–90; social management innovation and, 65; urban neighborhood governance and, 4, 130, 145–146; urban villages and, 124; urbanization and, 123; village collectives and, 124 Residents’ Committees: administrative structures and, 28, 32, 35, 37, 64, 72, 98, 101, 108, 125; autonomy and, 37; bud­gets of, 57, 102, 121; care for the aged and, 95–99, 101–102, 108, 125; CCP and, 36, 60–65, 75, 126–128, 145; co-­governance and, 54; community construction scheme and, 35; conflict resolution and, 35–36, 39–40, 44, 48, 66, 71–77, 86; deliberation and, 21, 68, 71–81, 83, 86, 142; development of, 14–15, 35–38; diversification of governance and, 34–38, 44, 139; duties of, 3, 28, 37, 72; grassroots governance and, 35, 37, 71; grid governance and, 48, 51–55, 65, 73, 114; homeowner associations and, 27, 48, 54, 80, 127; hybrid authoritarianism and, 38, 64; intermediary governance and, 29, 37, 45, 47–48, 56–57, 140; land expropriation and, 56, 126; landless farmers and, 115; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 18, 28–29, 33, 35, 38–40, 53, 55, 57, 118–119; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 18, 32–33, 38, 56–59, 63, 65, 74, 81, 115, 121, 128; overview of, 3–4, 14–15, 18–21, 139–140, 142, 146; participation and, 64, 77, 114–116, 118, 124–126, 130; party-­ building by, 60–65; property management companies and, 28–29, 39–40, 48, 53, 73–75, 80, 105, 114, 118–120; recreational activities

and, 35, 62, 95, 115; relocation communities and, 57–58, 74, 105; resident volunteers and, 36, 51, 54, 61–62, 76, 101, 115, 126, 128, 130, 146; retired residents and, 124–125; returned villa­gers and, 79; scholarship on, 34, 37–38; self-­governance and, 28–29, 36–37; ser­v ice provision and, 14–15, 104–107, 109; stability maintenance and, 29; staff of, 36, 124–125; transformation of, 34–38, 64; urban neighborhood governance and, 3–4, 14–15, 18–21, 139–140, 142, 146; urban villages and, 74, 121; village collectives and, 33, 38, 121–122; work units and, 14, 34–35 resolution of conflicts. See conflict resolution retired residents, 113, 124–127 returned villa­gers, 41, 78–79, 83–84 Rocca, Jean-­Louis, 111 RSY2 (relocation community) (Shenyang), 56, 122 RSZ1 (relocation community) (Suzhou), 57–59, 105, 121–122 rural-­urban divide, 9, 23, 43, 89, 132–133 RWH1 (relocation community) (Wuhan), 31–32, 121 RWH2 (relocation community) (Wuhan), 40–41, 83, 106–107, 121–123 RWH3 (relocation community) (Wuhan), 78, 104 self-­governance: CCP and, 145; co-­governance and, 16, 53; community construction scheme and, 15, 139; conflict resolution and, 12; development of, 13, 15; diversification of governance and, 27–29; grassroots governance and, 12; grid governance and, 51, 53–55, 124; homeowner associations and, 20, 26–27; intermediary governance and, 16, 47; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 15, 20, 27–29; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 15; non-­state actors and, 16; overview of, 12–13, 16, 139, 145; participation and, 12, 28, 53, 111; regime legitimacy and stability and, 12, 16; resident volunteers and, 51, 53, 124; Residents’ Committees and, 28–29, 36–37; scholarship on, 13, 47; urbanization and, 15. See also autonomy ser­v ice provision: administrative structures and, 89, 91, 93, 98, 143; autonomy and, 90, 107, 109, 145; bankruptcies of SOEs and, 14, 144; CCP and, 89; citizenization and, 12; collective welfare and, 103–104; conflict resolution and, 11–12, 15, 17, 40–43, 144; corporatist mea­sures and, 89–90; diversification of governance and, 40–43, 91–94;

INDEX 173

government purchase of ser­v ices and, 12, 21, 92–93, 95–102, 108, 115–117, 144; grassroots governance and, 88; grid governance and, 48, 50; hybrid authoritarianism and, 11, 21, 143–144; increasing demand for, 42–43; intermediary governance and, 90, 143; landless farmers and, 12, 43; local charities and, 90; market groups and, 12, 92; marketization and, 17, 88–89, 91; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 12, 26, 40–41, 91–92; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 12, 21–22, 89, 91–92, 102–107; overview of, 11–12, 15, 17, 21, 42–43, 88–91, 107–109, 134, 143–144; participation and, 12, 93, 115–118; property management companies and, 92, 104–105; regime legitimacy and stability and, 44, 88; relocation communities and, 105; resident volunteers and, 89–90; Residents’ Committees and, 14–15, 104–107, 109; scholarship on, 88–90, 144; ser­v ice organ­izations and, 115–118; social contract and, 88; social organ­izations and, 12, 89–92, 108; state-­society relations and, 107–109; symbiotic relationships in, 90; urban neighborhood governance and, 11–12, 17, 21–22, 134–136, 138–139, 143–144; urban villages and, 102, 104; urbanization and, 17, 89, 102, 104; variations in, 107–109; village collectives and, 88, 102–109, 143–144; village ser­v ice provision, 2, 88, 102–109, 143–144; work units and, 42–43, 88–89, 91, 102. See also care for the aged Shenyang: administrative structures in, 108; care for the aged in, 95–96, 102, 108; grid governance in, 49; ­house­hold registration system in, 30; land expropriation in, 18, 31; middle-­ class neighborhoods in, 17; MSY2 middle-­ class neighborhood in, 41, 83; MSY3 middle-­class neighborhood in, 96; MSY4 middle-­class neighborhood in, 96; newly urbanized neighborhoods in, 30–31, 56–57; overview of, 17–18; Residents’ Committees in, 36, 56–57, 95–96, 108, 144; RSY2 relocation community in, 56, 122; scholarship on, 17–18; ser­vice provision in, 108, 144; urbanization in, 18, 30; village collectives in, 31, 33 Shenzhen, urban villages in, 30 Shi, Tianjian, 24 Shue, Vivienne, 11, 147 social groups of residents, 12, 20–23, 52–56, 64–65, 77, 87, 92, 102, 112–14, 129, 138–140, 146 social management innovation, 12, 15–16, 46, 65–66, 71

social media, 20, 62, 80, 142 social organ­i zations: care for the aged and, 12, 93, 97, 99, 102, 108, 143; CCP and, 60, 117, 144; challenges faced by, 117; co-­governance and, 48; cooperative strategy of, 117–118; grassroots governance and, 12; grid governance and, 48; high turnover rate in, 117; middle-­c lass neighborhoods and, 102; overview of, 4, 12, 17, 21, 112–118, 144–145; participation and, 17, 112–118, 145; religious organ­i zations and, 117; ser­v ice provision and, 12, 89–92, 108; social workers in, 93, 117; urban neighborhood governance and, 4, 12, 17, 21, 144–145 social unrest. See conflict resolution; deliberation in neighborhoods SOEs (state-­owned enterprises), 14, 18, 125, 144 stability maintenance, 7, 15, 29 stability of the regime. See regime legitimacy and stability State Council, 15, 27, 95 state-­owned enterprises (SOEs), 14, 18, 125, 144 Street Offices, 3, 44, 46, 48–51, 58–59, 68, 81, 93, 99, 105–107, 118–122 strength and flexibility of hybrid authoritarianism, 10–13, 16–17, 65, 136–138 Suzhou: administrative structures in, 33; care for the aged in, 43, 95, 97–98, 100, 102, 108; CCP in, 61, 119–120, 127; deliberation in, 74–75, 83; grid governance in, 49, 52, 54, 61, 127; land expropriation in, 18, 31; MGZ4 middle-­class neighborhood in, 127; MSZ1 middle-­class neighborhood in, 39, 52, 74, 80, 127; MSZ2 middle-­class neighborhood in, 52, 61–62; MSZ3 middle-­class neighborhood in, 75, 78–81, 83; MSZ4 middle-­class neighborhood in, 112; newly urbanized neighborhoods in, 57–58; overview of, 18; participation in, 112, 116; party-­building in, 61; pet store dispute in, 39, 74, 80, 83; property management companies in, 119–120; PX proj­ect planned in, 42, 75, 78–81, 83; Red Property Man­ag­er scheme in, 119–20, 130; relocation communities in, 30, 57; Residents’ Committees in, 54, 57–58, 61, 98–99, 108, 116, 121, 127; RSZ1 relocation community in, 57–59, 105, 121–122; ser­v ice provision in, 43, 92–94, 108, 144; urbanization in, 18; village collectives in, 31, 33, 121–122; village ser­v ice provision in, 104, 105

174 INDEX

T Group (real estate development com­pany), 120 Tang, Wenfang, 131, 145 Teets, Jessica, 93, 144 Thompson, Dennis, 83 Thornton, Patricia, 11, 117, 147 Tomba, Luigi, 10, 111 top-­down governance, 7–8, 13–14, 16, 29, 43, 47–51, 60, 64, 133, 138 Tsai, Lily, 102 UGZ1 (urban village) (Guangzhou), 31–32, 103 UGZ2 (urban village) (Guangzhou), 41, 83 UGZ3 (urban village) (Guangzhou), 42, 81, 83–84 UGZ4 (urban village) (Guangzhou), 106 urban middle-­class neighborhoods. See middle-­class neighborhoods urban neighborhood governance: autonomy and, 7, 16, 139; CCP and, 132–133; challenges to research on, 19; community construction scheme and, 15; conflict resolution and, 6–7, 12, 138–139; COVID-19 and, 134–135; definition of, 3; deliberation and, 12, 17, 21, 141–143; democ­ratization and, 146–148; development of, 2–5, 7–10, 14–16; diversification of governance and, 11, 14–16, 24, 134, 138–139; flexibility and strength of, 10–13, 136–138; grassroots governance and, 2–16, 19–22, 133, 135–138, 145–147; homeowner associations and, 4, 8; hybrid authoritarianism and, 3–4, 7, 10–13, 133, 136–138; intermediary governance and, 3, 10–12, 134–141; landless farmers and, 4, 9, 12; market groups and, 4, 12, 145; marketization and, 5–10, 12, 14–15, 17–18, 132–133; methodology for study on, 16–20; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 4, 7–8; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 7–8, 15; organ­ization of study on, 20–22; overview of, 1–10, 132–35; participation and, 4–5, 11–13, 145–146; property management companies and, 4, 8, 20, 140; regime legitimacy and stability and, 2, 5, 10, 13, 132–133; resident volunteers and, 4, 130, 145–146; Residents’ Committees and, 3–4, 14–15, 18–21, 139–140, 142, 146; scholarship on, 10, 14, 16–20, 134, 146–147; ser­v ice provision and, 11–12, 17, 21–22, 134–136, 138–139, 143–144; social organ­izations and, 4, 12, 17, 21, 144–145; stability maintenance and, 7; urban villages and, 7, 134; urbanization and, 2, 4–10, 12, 14–15, 132–134; village

collectives and, 32–34, 143–144; work units and, 14–15, 145 urban villages: administrative structures and, 105–106, 118; autonomy and, 31; CCP and, 62, 128, 129; development of, 7, 29–30; landless farmers and, 29–30, 134; resident volunteers and, 124; Residents’ Committees and, 74, 121; ser­v ice provision and, 102, 104; urban neighborhood governance and, 7, 134; urbanization and, 120, 134; village collectives and, 30–31, 77, 86, 105–106, 120 urbanization: administrative structures and, 23, 30; blurring of bound­a ries and, 9, 23, 43, 89, 132–133; care for the aged and, 94, 102; citizenization and, 63; conflict resolution and, 17; development of, 5–6, 8–9; diversification of governance and, 43–45, 134, 139; grassroots governance and, 45, 139; homeowner associations and, 64; ­house­hold registration system and, 8–9, 23; hybrid authoritarianism and, 4, 10–12, 43; land expropriation and, 5, 9, 18, 43–44; landless farmers and, 4, 9, 20, 23, 44, 78, 134; market groups and, 64; middle-­c lass neighborhoods and, 7, 134; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 7, 15; overview of, 2, 4–10, 12, 14–15, 132–134, 144; participation and, 111; property management companies and, 104; rate of, 5–6, 34; resident volunteers and, 123; retired residents and, 125; scholarship on, 9, 34, 111; self-­governance and, 15; ser­v ice provision and, 17, 89, 102, 104; urban neighborhood governance and, 2, 4–10, 12, 14–15, 132–134; urban villages and, 120, 134; village collectives and, 32–33, 118; work units and, 24, 43 urban-­r ural divide, 9, 23, 43, 89, 132–133 village collectives: administrative structures and, 32–33, 120–121, 130; autonomy and, 31, 102, 122–123, 130–131, 144; conflict resolution and, 72; deliberation and, 77, 79, 86; development of, 24, 29–34, 120; diversification of governance and, 24, 29–34; funding of, 122–123; grassroots governance and, 121; intermediary governance and, 47, 63–65; land expropriation and, 9, 29–31, 41, 120, 122; landless farmers and, 120; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 18, 24, 32–34, 38, 56–57, 120–121; participation and, 111, 120–23, 130; relocation communities and, 77, 106, 118; resident volunteers and, 124; Residents’ Committees and, 33,

INDEX 175

38, 121–122; retired residents and, 125; scholarship on, 20; ser­v ice provision and, 88, 102–109, 143–144; transitional organ­ ization of, 33; urban neighborhood governance and, 32–34, 143–144; urban villages and, 77, 86, 105–106, 120; urbanization and, 32–33, 118 Village Committees, 29, 56–58, 108 village ser­v ice provision, 2, 88, 102–109, 143–144 village-­to-­community transition, 20, 29–32, 55, 89, 102, 105–106 volunteer residents. See resident volunteers Warren, Mark, 69 WeChat, 20, 62, 80, 142 work units: care for the aged and, 91, 94–95, 97; community construction scheme and, 15; grassroots governance and, 5; intermediary governance and, 47; marketization and, 14, 24, 43; middle-­class neighborhoods and, 25–26; newly urbanized neighborhoods and, 88; overview of, 14; participation and, 145; property management companies

and, 26, 89; Residents’ Committees and, 14, 34–35; retired residents and, 124; ser­v ice provision and, 42–43, 88–89, 91, 102; transition away from, 14, 24–26, 34, 42, 88, 145; urban neighborhood governance and, 14–15, 145; urbanization and, 24, 43 Wuhan: administrative structures in, 31, 122; autonomy in, 144; deliberation in, 83; grid governance in, 49; land expropriation in, 18; newly urbanized neighborhoods in, 56–57; overview of, 18; Residents’ Committees in, 36, 121–122; returned villa­gers in, 41; RWH1 relocation community in, 31–32, 121; RWH2 relocation community in, 40–41, 83, 106–107, 121–123; RWH3 relocation community in, 78, 104; scholarship on, 18; ser­v ice provision in, 144; urbanization in, 18, 122; village collectives in, 31–32, 57, 121–122, 144; Village Committees in, 56–57; village ser­v ice provision in, 104, 106–107 Xi Jinping, 67, 132, 147 Zhang, Yonghong, 46