Handbook of Public Policy and Public Administration in China 1789909945, 9781789909944

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HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC POLICY AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN CHINA

HANDBOOKS OF RESEARCH ON CONTEMPORARY CHINA Series Editor: David S.G. Goodman, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China China has undergone a period of intense and rapid social and economic change in its path to becoming a modern industrial superpower. This timely and exciting multidisciplinary series includes Handbooks that offer comprehensive overviews of the very latest research on contemporary China. Prestigious, high-quality works of lasting significance, the Handbooks explore a range of issues affecting China in the 21st century. The emphasis of the series is on the most important concepts and research as well as expanding debate and indicating the likely research agenda for the future. Titles in the series include: Handbook of Cultural and Creative Industries in China Edited by Michael Keane Handbook on Ethnic Minorities in China Edited by Xiaowei Zang Handbook of Welfare in China Edited by Beatriz Carrillo Garcia, Johanna Hood and Paul I. Kadetz Handbook of Education in China Edited by W. John Morgan, Qing Gu and Fengliang Li Handbook on the Family and Marriage in China Edited by Xiaowei Zang and Lucy Xia Zhao Handbook on Urban Development in China Edited by Ray Yep, June Wang and Thomas Johnson Handbook on China and Globalization Edited by Huiyao Wang and Lu Miao Handbook on Human Rights in China Edited by Sarah Biddulph and Joshua Rosenzweig Handbook of Protest and Resistance in China Edited by Teresa Wright Handbook on Religion in China Edited by Stephan Feuchtwang Handbook on Transport and Urban Transformation in China Edited by Chia-Lin Chen, Haixiao Pan, Qing Shen and James Jixian Wang Handbook on Tourism and China Edited by Songshan (Sam) Huang and Ganghua Chen Handbook of Public Policy and Public Administration in China Edited by Xiaowei Zang and Hon S. Chan

Handbook of Public Policy and Public Administration in China Edited by

Xiaowei Zang Chair Professor of Social Sciences, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Hon S. Chan Professor, Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

HANDBOOKS OF RESEARCH ON CONTEMPORARY CHINA

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Xiaowei Zang and Hon S. Chan 2020

Cover image: Nick Fewings on Unsplash. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944710 This book is available electronically in the Social and Political Science subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781789909951

02

ISBN 978 1 78990 994 4 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78990 995 1 (eBook)

Contents

List of contributorsviii Acknowledgmentsxi List of abbreviationsxii PART I 1

INTRODUCTION State of the field: research on public policy and public administration in China Xiaowei Zang and Hon S. Chan

PART II

2

THE CHINESE CIVIL SERVICE

2

Selection of local leaders in China: meritocracy or personal connections? Zhiyue Bo

22

3

Civil service pay in China Shuo Chen and Hon S. Chan

41

4

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness Jie Gao

59

PART III GOVERNMENT CAPACITY-BUILDING IN CHINA 5

Integrity management under state hierarchy: controlling corruption in China Ting Gong

6

Beyond governance for economic growth: understanding incentive distortions in the Chinese bureaucracy Shui-Yan Tang and Bo Wen

7

Digital governance in China Liang Ma

122

8

Regulation in China May Chu and Pak Wan Major Pau

136

9

The development of fiscal transparency in China: a critical review Hanyu Xiao and Jingyuan Xu

151

10

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age Xigen Li

169

11

Authoritarian transparency: a comparative survey on open government information regulations in China Fen Lin v

81

96

206

vi  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 12

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments Alfred M. Wu and Fangzhi Ye

13

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies: asserting a flavor of Chinese characteristics Yangbin Chen

14

The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China Lucy Zhao, Xiaowei Zang, and Shijia Yang

222

241 256

PART IV PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND GOVERNANCE IN CHINA 15

Family planning policies and fertility changes in China: a historical review Yu Song

16

Urbanization like China? Implementation mode, policy regime and sustainable transformation pathways Xiaoling Zhang

291

17

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes: a comparative analysis of two elderly service networks in Shanghai Wai Fung Lam and Wei Li

305

18

Land administration policy and illegal land use Hongping Lian, Hui Li, and Kilkon Ko

19

Government capacity, citizen activism, and wastewater treatment in China: evidence from provincial panel data (2004‒2014) Xiaowei Zang

347

20

Organ donation in mainland China and Hong Kong: learning from international models and adopting proper motivational measures Ruiping Fan and Chunyan Ding

362

PART V

278

325

STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRACY IN CHINA

21

Research on street-level bureaucracy in China: past, present, and future Xiaowei Zang

378

22

Authoritarian capitalism and policing studies in China Jianhua Xu, Qipu Hu, and Anli Jiang

392

23

Exploring frontline work in China Xiaowei Zang and Michael Musheno

408

24

Leniency and severity in street-level law enforcement in China Lisa Zang and Xiaowei Zang

424

Contents  vii PART VI RESEARCH AND TEACHING ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN GREATER CHINA 25

Dissertation research in public administration in China Yijia Jing

437

26

A review of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau, 2010‒2019 Echo Lei Wang and Jie Gao

452

27

Crisis of relevance? Public administration theory and practice connections in Taiwan Milan Tung-Wen Sun, Wen-Hsueh Chen, and Windy Thi-Ngoc-Minh Phan

466

Index480

Contributors

Bo, Zhiyue is a Professor in the XIPU Institution at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. Chan, Hon S. is a Professor in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong. Chen, Shuo is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Urban Governance at Shenzhen University, China. Chen, Wen-Hsueh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at National Chi Nan University, Taiwan. Chen, Yangbin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Australia. Chu, May is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Ding, Chunyan is an Associate Professor in the School of Law at City University of Hong Kong. Fan, Ruiping is the Chair Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong. Gao, Jie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at National University of Singapore, Singapore. Gong, Ting is a Professor in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong and Distinguished Chair Professor in the Institute for Global Public Policy and School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University. Hu, Qipu is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Macau, Macau. Jiang, Anli is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Macau, Macau. Jing, Yijia is a Professor in the School of International Relations and Public Affairs and Dean of the Institute for Global Public Policy at Fudan University, China. Ko, Kilkon is a Professor in the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University, South Korea. Lam, Wai Fung is a Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Li, Hui is an Assistant Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. Li, Wei is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong. viii

Contributors  ix Li, Xigen is a Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication, Shanghai University, China. Lian, Hongping is an Associate Professor in the School of Government at Beijing Normal University, China. Lin, Fen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong. Ma, Liang is a Professor in the School of Public Administration and Policy at Renmin University, China. Musheno, Michael is a Professor in the Law School at the University of Oregon, USA. Pau, Pak Wan Major is a PhD student in in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Phan, Windy Thi-Ngoc-Minh is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at National Chi Nan University, Taiwan. Song, Yu is a Senior Associate Professor in the XIPU Institution at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. Sun, Milan Tung-Wen is a Professor in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at National Chi Nan University, Taiwan. Tang, Shui-Yan is Frances R. and John J. Duggan Professor in Public Administration in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, USA. Wang, Echo Lei is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore. Wen, Bo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong. Wu, Alfred M. is an Associate Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore, Singapore. Xiao, Hanyu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian and Policy Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong. Xu, Jianhua is an Associate Professor and department head in the Department of Sociology at the University of Macau, Macau. Xu, Jingyuan is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, China. Yang, Shijia is a PhD student in the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK. Ye, Fangzhi is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Economics, Zhejiang University, China. Zang, Lisa is a Senior Associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Los Angeles, USA.

x  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Zang, Xiaowei is the Chair Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Social and Behavioral Science at City University of Hong Kong. Zhang, Xiaoling is a Professor in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong. Zhao, Lucy is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Acknowledgments

The editors thank Professor David Goodman, Dr. Beibei Tang, Monica Yang and Yishu Xie for their support in this book project. The editors thank the relevant editorial offices for granting permissions for reprinting the following articles in this Handbook: Chapter 5 is an updated version of “Managing Government Integrity under Hierarchy,” by Ting Gong, Journal of Contemporary China 24(94), 684‒700 (2014), doi​.org/​10​.1080/​10670564​.2014​.978151. Chapter 12 is an updated version of “Land Use Reforms: Towards Sustainable Development in China,” by Wen Wang, Alfred M. Wu, and Fangzhi Ye, in: Ehtisham Ahmad, Meili Niu, and Kezhou Xiao (eds.), Fiscal Underpinnings for Sustainable Development in China: Rebalancing in Guangdong. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd., pp. 29‒52 (2018), doi​.org/​10​.1007/​978​-981​-10​-6286​ -5​_2. Chapter 17 is an updated version of “Network Structure and Collaborative Innovation Processes – A Comparative Analysis of Two Elderly Service Networks in Shanghai,” by Wai Fung Lam and Wei Li, Public Administration and Development 38(2), 87‒99 (2018), doi​.org/​10​.1002/​pad​.1821. Chapter 18 is based partly on “Market-led Transactions and Illegal Land Use: Evidence from China,” by Hongping Lian, Hui Li, and Kilkon Ko, Land Use Policy 84(May), 12‒20 (2019), doi​.org/​10​.1016/​ j​.landusepol​.2019​.02​.014 and partly on “Adoption of the Market Mechanism and Its Implication on Illegal Land Uses in China,” by Kilkon Ko, Zhi Hui, and Hongping Lian, China: An International Journal 15(4), 90‒110 (2019). Chapter 21 is partly based on “Research on Street Level Discretion in the West: Past, Present, and the Future,” by Xiaowei Zang, Chinese Political Science Review 1(4), 610‒622 (2016), doi: 10.1007/ s41111-016-0041-z. Chapter 23 is a slightly modified version of “Exploring Front-Line Work in China,” by Xiaowei Zang and Michael Musheno, Public Administration 95(3), 842‒855 (2017), doi​.org/​10​.1111/​padm​.12340. Chapter 25 is an updated version of “Dissertation Research in Public Administration in China,” by Yijia Jing, Chinese Public Administration Review 5(1/2), 27‒38 (2008). Chapter 26 is an updated version of “Public Administration Research in Hong Kong and Macau: A Review of Journal Articles Published from 1999 to 2009,” by Jie Gao, American Review of Public Administration 44(2), 168‒186 (2014), doi​.org/​10​.1177/​0275074013498299.

xi

Abbreviations

AOPOs AQSIQ BSC CATI CBR CCP CCYL CEC CIQ CNN CNY COD CSL DEA e-government ECW EDCCs EDSCs EHCAs EMP ESCI FDI FOI G2B G2C G2G GDP Guangzhou Center HECC IBP ICAC

American Organ Procurement Organizations General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine Balanced Scorecard Computer-Assisted Telephone Investigation Crude Birth Rate Chinese Communist Party Chinese Communist Youth League Community-based elderly care China Entry–Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureaus Cable News Network Chinese Yuan Central Organization Department Civil Service Law Data Envelopment Analysis Electronic government Elderly care workers Elderly Day Care Centers Elderly Dining Service Centers Elderly Home Care Agencies China’s Ethnic Minority Policies Emerging Sources Citation Index Foreign Direct Investment Freedom of information Government to business Government to citizen Government to government Gross Domestic Production Center of Government Performance Evaluation at the South-China University of Technology Home-Based Elderly Care Centers International Budget Partnership Independent Commission Against Corruption xii

Abbreviations  xiii ICT ISO JRC Lanzhou Center LO LUDs LUR LURS m-government MLT MOE MOF MOH MOHRSS MOST NAO NDC NGO NHFPC NPM NUP OA OCP ODC OECD OGA OGI OPO OTASP PACSB Party-state PPP PRC PROPOLIS

Information and communication technology International Organization for Standardization Joint Research Centre Local Government Performance Evaluation at Lanzhou University Lead organization Living Unrelated Donors Land use right land use rights system Mobile government Market-led transaction Ministry of Education Ministry of Finance Ministry of Health Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security Ministry of Science and Technology Network administrative organization National Development Council Nongovernmental organization National Health and Family Planning Commission of China New Public Management New-type Urbanization Plan Office automation One Child Policy Organ Donation Coordinators Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Openness in Government Affairs Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information Organ Procurement Organization Openness in Two Areas and Supervision by the Public Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau The government of the Communist Party of China Public–private partnership People’s Republic of China Planning and Research of Policies for Land Use and Transport for Increasing Urban Sustainability

xiv  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China PSR QS RGC RNA ROGI SAC SAR SCIO SCLAO SEDZ SLB SPS SSCI TASPAA TFR TRS UDICs UN USI USR USSR VPN WGI WOS WTO

Pressure-State-Response Quality Safety Standards Research Grants Council Regional National Autonomy Regulation on Open Government Information Standardization Administration of China Special Administrative Region State Council Information Office State Council Legislative Affairs Office Special economic development zone Street-level bureaucracy Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures Social Science Citation Index Taiwan Association of Schools of Public Administration and Affairs Total Fertility Rate Target Responsibility System Urban development investment corporations United Nations Urban Sustainability Index University Social Responsibility Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Virtual private network Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Bank Web of Science World Trade Organization

PART I INTRODUCTION

1. State of the field: research on public policy and public administration in China Xiaowei Zang and Hon S. Chan

In this Handbook, we offer students and researchers a timely discussion of research and teaching on public policy and public administration (PA) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since the 1980s. Contributors include established scholars and emerging research stars from universities in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK, and the US. Their presentations have contributed to the study of PA in China with theoretical insights, empirically based findings and innovative methodologies, enabling this edited volume to depart from existing handbooks on PA in two ways. First, many existing handbooks examine general challenges and broad opportunities in PA research in different countries, yet they do not include a detailed discussion of theoretical and empirical issues in each of the countries they cover, given space limitation. In comparison, this Handbook offers detailed information on many aspects of PA in a single country, that is, the PRC. Second, many existing PA handbooks include chapters on theoretic perspectives on different topics in PA from research in the West. They are unlikely to be very relevant for readers who are interested in empirical issues in or how existing theories from the West can be best used to guide research on PA in China. In comparison, many chapters of this Handbook combine a theoretical discussion with empirical analyses in the study of PA in China. It can serve as an important reference for graduate students and young scholars in future research in this field. This way, this Handbook can advance PA research in China. It also contributes to mainstream PA research since knowledge production in this field of inquiry is inherently comparative (Kim et al. 2019, 754‒755; also Fritzen 2010; Jreisat 2005, 2011; Holzer and Zhang 2002, 2009; Yang 2018). Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 262) claimed that a discussion on the development and future direction of PA research in mainland China “could prove to be of global significance to the development of the field.” There are three objectives in this introduction chapter. The first one is to offer readers a contour of the development of PA teaching in China. The second is to discuss the current state of research on PA in China, via an examination of some good reviews of both the English literature and its Chinese counterpart on PA in China. And the third is to outline each of the chapters to guide readers through this Handbook. We conclude with a suggestion of some possible action plans to advance research on PA in China.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PA TEACHING IN CHINA The centralized imperial bureaucratic system was first established by the Qin dynasty (221‒206 bc) after China was united in 221 bc. A civil service examination system was set up to recruit talents into the bureaucracy according to their merits, demonstrated by their examination test scores, in the Sui dynasty (581‒618 ce), and consolidated in the Tang dynasty 2

State of the field  3 (618‒907 ce). The civil service examination system lasted for 1,000 years (Cartwright 2019; Miyazaki 1981). It was abolished in 1905 by the Qing government in the midst of modernization attempts. The imperial bureaucracy and the civil service examination system had little to do with PA as an academic discipline as we understand today. While we are aware that this discipline was imported into China from abroad (Holzer and Zhang 2002; Kim et al. 2019; Li, Han, and Kim 2018; Liu and Li 2013), we do not know exactly when it made a debut in and who first introduced it to China. Citing Harris (2002), Kim et al. (2019, 754) asserted that Kang Youwei introduced the concept and theories of PA from Japan to China in the late 19th century. But Yang (2018) claimed that “modern PA in China is first mentioned by Liang Qichao” in the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China (1912‒1949 ce). Liu and Li (2013, 1) offered a different view that PA was first imported from the West in the 1930s. Zhang Jinjian, who is later called the “Father of Chinese PA”, was trained at the Department of Political Science of Stanford University, with a focus on PA. When he came back to China with the master’s degree, he also brought back his knowledge gained from Western countries.

In addition, citing Wang (2006), Kim et al. (2019, 754) claimed that PA was first taught as a subfield of political science in the School of Law and Politics in Guangdong province in 1904. Yet Yu, Rubin, and Wu (2012, 546) argued that “the origins of Public Administration as an academic discipline in China can be traced back to the 1920s when it was first introduced into the higher education curriculum as a subfield of political science.” Xue (2019) asserted that “China’s public administration education started in the 1930s.” These different views have existed partly because information about PA teaching and research in China before 1949 is thin and sketchy. There is not much to say about PA teaching and research in China between 1952 and 1982, as it was removed from the university curriculum during this period of time (Chow, Xu, and Wen 2019; Kim et al. 2019; Li, Han, and Kim 2018; Mingus and Jing 2016; Xue 2019; Yu, Rubin, and Wu 2012; Yang 2018; Zhang et al. 2018; Zhao 2008). In 1982, two events occurred. First, “Xia Shuzhang, a Harvard MPA graduate in the 1940s, wrote articles and called for a systematic research of PA” in China in that year (Liu and Li 2013, 2); second, a workshop on PA was organized by the Chinese Association of Political Science in the same year. In 1984, a joint seminar on PA was held by the General Office of the State Council and the Ministry of Labor to discuss the importance and necessity of PA research and training. In 1986, the Ministry of Education categorized PA as a subject under political science, turning PA as an academic discipline in China (Kim et al. 2019; Li, Han, and Kim 2018; Yu, Rubin, and Wu 2012). There has been a rapid expansion of degree programs in PA in China since then. Yang (2018) reported that Wuhan University and Zhengzhou University began to recruit undergraduate students in PA in 1986. Next, the Chinese Association of PA was founded in 1988. In 1997, “public management was recognized by the Ministry of Education as an independent category under the officially-issued catalogue of academic fields. The next year, three universities were given the authority to grant PhD degrees of PA” (Liu and Li 2013, 8‒9). In 2000, Tsinghua University set up China’s first public policy school (Xue 2019; Yang 2018; Chow, Xu, and Wen 2019; Zhao 2008) and reported that the undergraduate programs of PA at Chinese universities increased from two in 1986 to 876 (among these, 517 programs are called

4  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China “public affairs,” and 369 programs are called “public administration”) in 2017, the academic master programs increased from one in 1988 to more than 200 in 2017, the professional master programs (MPA) increased from 24 in 2001 to 226 in 2017, and the PhD programs increased from two in 1990 to 47 in 2017. Kim et al. (2019, 754) reported that the first MPA program in the United States was offered by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 1924, and there were 197 MPA related programs accredited in the United States by 2018. In comparison, the PRC developed 228 MPA programs between 2002 and 2015 (also Yu, Rubin, and Wu 2012). Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 261) estimated that the number of scholars in this field in China was around 1,500 in 2013. Of course, the number does not tell us everything about the mainland Chinese PA community. Liu and Li (2013, 5) noted that “the first generation of PA scholars actually have various educational backgrounds other than PA. They learned, for example, economics, sociology, law, or political science, and later, when PA as a discipline started to develop in China, switched their foci to this new field.” Zhao (2008, 51‒52) found that many PA scholars were trained in arts, economics, engineering, medicine sciences, and political science, and asserted that they “started to acquire modern concepts and theories in the field in the past decade or so.” Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 267, 269) claimed that many mainland Chinese PA scholars were trained in philosophy and law. Zhao (2008, 52) concluded that there “is a serious shortage of professionally trained public administration educators, scholars, and researchers in universities.” This situation has been improved, as there have been efforts and investments to improve the quality of domestic PA doctoral programs in China. Furthermore, more and more Chinese students with PhDs in PA from the West, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore have returned to work at Chinese universities in recent years. Tong and Straussman (2003) noticed that Chinese universities adopted a Western-style professional MPA degree (also Yu, Rubin, and Wu 2012). Wu and He (2009) discussed how different paradigms in PA teaching from the West impacted the selection of course content and pedagogical foci in professional curricula in top PA degree programs in China. Liu and Li (2013, 5) explained that “Chinese PA, due to its interrupted academic tradition, lacks theoretical legacies,” and that “Chinese PA was imported from Western countries. The influence of international scholarship has never stopped since its resumption,” and that “learning from the West is a realistic approach to echo back” (also Yang 2018).

RESEARCH ON PA IN CHINA As noted, PA teaching in China has made impressive progresses since the late 1980s (Kim et al. 2019; Li, Han, and Kim 2018; Liu 1993; Zhang 1993). Is there a similar achievement in research on PA in China? To address this question, we examine the current state of research on PA in China via an examination of some good reviews of both the English literature and its Chinese counterpart on research on PA in China (Cheng and Lu 2009; Chow 1991; Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018; Chow et al. 2019; Kim et al. 2019; Liu and Li 2013; Lu and Chow 2008; Mills and Nagel 1993; Mingus and Jing 2016; Walker, Brewer, and Choi 2014; Wu, He, and Sun 2013; Zhao 2008). We focus on the reviews on research on PA in the PRC in this section. Readers interested in research on PA in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan can refer to Gao

State of the field  5 (2014), Lo (2014), and Chapter 26 by Wang and Gao and Chapter 27 by Sun, Chen, and Phan in this Handbook. The English Literature on PA in China The English literature on PA in China is part of mainstream PA research and global PA knowledge production, as it has made persistent efforts on the basis of mainstream theories and methods to address mainstream PA questions in the context of the PRC. Although it has advanced knowledge on public policy and public administration in China in the past few decades, Kim et al. (2019, 753) have not found “an overview of Chinese public administration research and recommended potential ways forward.” What are the trends and characteristics in this growing field of inquiry? What are the main limitations in this field? And what are the opportunities and challenges presented in the English literature on Chinese PA? Existing scholarly efforts have partly addressed the above questions. Walker, Brewer, and Choi (2014) found 309 English-language articles on PA in China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea in 32 PA journals from the Web of Science for the period 1999‒2009. They claimed that many of these articles were comparative in nature, focused upon systems of government and policies as the topic and unit of analysis, exploited reviews of secondary sources for data, and drew upon many disciplines and scholars from around the globe. They concluded that the extent of the English-language research published in PA journals as listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) was limited and largely focused on East Asia. However, Walker, Brewer, and Choi (2014) did not offer specific information about research outputs on PA in China in their paper. Kim et al. (2019, 753, 756‒757) analyzed 346 articles on PA in China published in the top 25 English-language PA journals in the world between 1996 and 2016 and showed an increase in the number (from one article in 1996 to 43 articles in 2016). Among the authors of these articles, 85 were “from the United States, 298 from Mainland China, 127 from Hong Kong, and 26 from Australia.” Also, “217 articles (62.7 percent) used qualitative methods, while 117 (33.8 percent) chose quantitative methods. Only 12 studies applied mixed methods.” These articles examined various issues such as “local governments, institutional governance, performance management, economic development, and administrative reform” (Kim et al. 2019, 758). Zhang et al. (2018, 74) assessed the performance in mainland China’s research on PA by examining publication size, impact, and scient-metric indicators, including China’s global publication share, growth rate, citation impact, and leading journals based on the last 15 years of publications data, as retrieved from the SSCI database; recognized international collaborators and domestic contributors are also considered. They found that the quantity and quality of mainland China’s PA research increased steadily. They predicted that mainland China scholars would continue to achieve international publishing success and discussed challenges brought about by internationalization in China. “For instance, in 2012, at least 27 special issue papers were published by mainland China scholars, out of a total of 56 publications (48 percent); this signifies the boost which ‘special issues’ have delivered to mainland China’s research record.” However, “special interest in China will no doubt decline going forward, as uniquely China-related topics may not satisfy international peers so easily in future.” Zhang et al. (2018) also claimed that mainland scholars had a relatively lower citation score. The participation of non-mainland scholars improved mainland PA publications in citation performance. For top-rated journals, apart from international collaboration, mainland scholars

6  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China mainly depended on special issues or supplementary issues. Finally, they asked several questions about future research on PA in China: Will internationalization result in mainland scholars catering to global publication preferences? Will internationalization encourage “publishing for publication sake”? Will the international publishing preference of mainland scholars force the reform of domestic PA journals? Will the domestic market for PA journals shrink? Overall, the English literature on PA in China include good research outputs in top PA journals with strong theoretical relevancy and innovation and rigorous research methodology, judging from the mainstream social science perspective. This is partly because many authors were educated and have worked in the West. It is encouraging that more and more mainland PA scholars have published in top English journals in recent years. Nevertheless, the English literature on PA in China is still an emerging specialty, and one of the major challenges PA scholars in the West have faced is limited access to data in China, which has limited the range of research topics they can investigate. PA scholars in the West have relied heavily on their collaborators in China for data gathering. The tightening control over academic activities in the PRC in recent years can pressurize and short-live future research by PA scholars outside China. The Chinese Literature on PA in China The Chinese literature on PA in China has developed rapidly, especially in terms of the range of research themes and the amount of outputs. Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 266‒267) gave an incomplete list of topics under study including administrative philosophy and ethics, administrative law, crisis management, human resource management, local government, network governance, organizational theory/study, public policy, public finance and budgeting, public sector reform, and new public management (also Mingus and Jing 2016). Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 261) found that a leading Chinese-language PA journal in the PRC, Chinese Public Administration, published about 360 articles in 2008, which was more than the combined total of articles published in the same year by eight top English-language PA journals: Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Public Administration, Journal of European Social Policy, and Governance. Chow, Xu, and Wen (2019, 145) showed some breakthroughs in research on Chinese PA (CPA) by mainland scholars, “including ontological confirmation of public administration nature and identification of necessary conditions for effective administrative results.” Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 273) claimed that “PA scholars in mainland China are clearly ambitious in building new theories.” Chow, Xu, and Wen (2019, 156) were hopeful that if CPA scholars “utilize the concept of social responsibility force, which is a necessary condition for ‘responsible purposive authority application’ in the administrative world, they are likely to make genuine contributions to the realization of PA as a basic science and a design science” in the future. Studies of Sinicized Big Questions Much of this growing Chinese literature on PA has been produced by mainland Chinese scholars. We divide them into two schools to simplify the discussion below. First, mainland PA scholars in one of the schools have sought inspirations from Behn’s (1995) big questions

State of the field  7 on micromanagement, motivation, and measurement, and they are more interested than other Chinese PA scholars to develop Sinicized big questions on PA in China. Their interest was partly motivated by the warnings from 马骏/刘亚平 (2007) that PA research in China ran into an “identity crisis,” as it failed to address real problems in the PRC (also Cheng and Lu 2009; Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018; Mingus and Jing 2016). Some of these PA scholars have proposed some possible Sinicized big questions in the Chinese context. Mingus and Jing (2016) identified and elaborated six main issues from their proposals: (1) Micromanagement: How can Chinese policy makers accelerate the development of an efficient and professional civil service while adapting their institutions for political control of society and the civil service? (2) Trust: How can professional managers increase their persuasive powers in relation to the party secretaries, toward the aim of stronger agency performance? (3) Governance: How can public managers focus on effective implementation while avoiding the appearance that they are seeking to establish or change public policy? (4) Entrepreneurship: How can local economic and social development be encouraged, yet with a strong focus on the public interest? How can state enterprises become more efficient without privatization? (5) Motivation: How can the culture of the Chinese civil service be developed to reflect the public interest rather than the personal interest? (6) Measurement: How can China use diverse measures to increase the performance of its public officials and its public agencies while also meeting political demands and obligations? It is not clear how much and how successfully empirical research has been conducted by mainland Chinese PA scholars interested in Sinicized big questions in China. Nor is it clear what new theories and methods have been invented to study Sinicized big questions in China. Much research on domestically embedded big questions is in Chinese and not well known to scholars outside China. More importantly, while the above six issues are important, it is difficult to judge how much they are Sinicized big questions. PA scholars all over the world have examined same or similar PA questions and used same or similar concepts in their studies. Furthermore, Lu and Chow (2008) claimed that theory-building and knowledge advancement in Chinese PA were problematic, and the field was characterized by traditionalism, conservatism, and reductionism, leading to “mediocrity in scholarship.” Cheng and Lu (2009) pinpointed the inability of the mainland Chinese PA community to conduct sophisticated research and generate indigenous theories. Chow, Xiao, and Wen (2018, 22) argued that Chinese PA “could hardly be a source of indigenous theories to inform political-administrative practice.” Hopefully, these problems may be gradually removed from Chinese PA, as more and more Chinese students with PhD from overseas institutions return to and work in China (Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018, 25‒26). Studies of Mainstream PA Research Questions Second, mainland PA scholars in another PA school in China are more interested than those in the above school to apply theories and methods from the West to the study of various PA issues in China. Walker, Brewer, and Choi (2014) found that studies published in the native languages of Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, South Korea, and Taiwan pointed to a robust and healthy community that actively published on topics of administration and policy. The topics studied reflect international trends in research on management reform and social policy but show distinct differences at the country level, where local debates are more of an influence on academic writing. Yang (2018) found that the number of PA articles published

8  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China in China increased since 1986, and the three major research perspectives were politics (51.67 percent), management (43.6 percent), and law (2.83 percent). Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 262) sampled a total of 2,566 articles published in the top three Chinese-language PA journals in mainland China between 1998 and 2008 and reported that the contributions by government officials accounted for more than 10 percent of authors in leading PA journals in China. Also, 11.8 percent of first authors in articles published in leading PA journals in mainland China were graduate students, notably higher than the proportion (2.3 percent) of graduate students among first authors for top English-language PA journals (Wu, He, and Sun 2013, 265‒266). However, Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 269) found that on average the articles in Chinese PA journals are much shorter than would be expected by readers of articles of similar prestige in top Western-language PA journals. The length of most articles in PA journals in mainland China (more than 75 percent) is between 3000 and 10,000 Chinese characters, the equivalent of only 2000 to 6500 words in English (given a conversion rate of 1.5:1 between Chinese characters and English words).

Also, “The average number of references in articles published in mainland China seems relatively low compared to what one customarily sees in articles published in Western language PA journals.” There is a general concern over the quality of research on PA in China by the mainland PA research community. Jing (2008) examined the quality of PA dissertations produced in China between 2002 and 2006 and claimed that the results were unsatisfactory. Lu and Chow (2008) asserted that Chinese PA scholars tended to pursue atheoretical studies and were unable to use sophisticated methodology to develop theories. Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 272) judged that only a small proportion of PA outputs they reviewed met international standards for the social sciences, and there is “the scarcity among mainland publications of articles covering any research methods, empirical or non-empirical – about 90 percent of these articles did not engage with any formal research methods at all.” Walker, Brewer, and Choi (2014) argued that PA scholarship from some East Asian countries (including China) tended toward doing the descriptive work, and much needs to be done to improve the methodology. Chow, Xiao, and Wen (2018, 24) claimed that in the 2010s, Chinese PA scholars “are still busy in producing here-and-now descriptive, thus merely generating low quality publication. Unfortunately, such a mediocre information practice has in fact been reinforced by the current academic incentive system, which rewards academicians based on the quantity of their publication, rather than quality.” Chow, Xu, and Wen (2019, 145) concurred that research outputs by the mainland PA research community “lacked an intellectual core that defines the nature of public administration as a professional practice, and in turn, the nature of CPA as an academic discipline.” Chow, Xu, and Wen (2019, 150) asserted that CPA “has been unable to generate usable knowledge to help” the Chinese government meet developmental and governance challenges. CPA could hardly be considered a science of administration, as it does not have sufficient philosophical and intellectual underpinnings. Further, CPA suffers from three maladies, namely, reductionism, traditionalism, and conservatism, which together reinforce mediocrity. If untreated, these maladies would make CPA’s redemption impossible, preventing the political-administrative theoretical breakthrough that China badly needs. (Chow, Xu, and Wen 2019, 150)

State of the field  9 Finally, Chow, Xu, and Wen argued (2019, 149) that CPA has suffered “from research deficiencies, such as researchers’ tendency to pursue atheoretical studies and their incapacity to use sophisticated methodology to develop theories.” The critics of the research outputs by mainland PA researchers include scholars in and outside the PRC. They have given different reasons to justify their harsh comments on the Chinese literature on PA in China. 马骏/刘亚平 (2007) thought that PA researchers in China focused much of their attention on importing theories and practices from the West. Liu and Li (2013, 5) claimed that “the biggest challenge for Chinese PA lies in the failure of PA scholars to adopt scientific research…most publications on CPA are descriptive, normative, non-analytical and non-empirical, without even the simplest research design.” Wu, He, and Sun (2013) lamented about inattention to research methodologies by the mainland Chinese PA community. Chow, Xiao, and Wen (2018, 25) argued that Chinese PA scholars were risk-aversive researchers, opposing radical changes in their research and pedagogical pursuits: They tend to avoid critical or creative studies, which are too scholarly taxing and politically dangerous and which produce research outputs that are often not publishable due to the conservative stance of journal editors and publishers. They would rather pursue descriptive, normative, and non-analytical research – that is, insignificant research. The inevitable consequence is their failure to enhance strategic insights and innovative ideas.

Encouragingly, Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 269, 272) found that empirical analytic methods showed an increase in publications from mainland China, as the share of such articles increased from 1.2 percent in 1998‒2001 to 7.3 percent in 2006‒2008. Chow, Xiao, and Wen (2018, 25‒26) reported that in the past decade more Chinese PA scholars received their doctoral education in developed regions and countries, and many top Chinese PA programs adopted the policy of recruiting scholars with a doctoral degree conferred by world class universities.

CHAPTER OUTLINES Our third task in this introduction is to offer an outline for each chapter in this Handbook. We observe that the important topics in research on PA in China include the civil service and policy implementation in China. PA scholars in and outside China have examined them separately, however. We deem it necessary to link these two research topics to provide readers with a comprehensive and coherent lens to understand challenges and opportunities in the study of PA in China. This is a difficult task since it is perhaps a first attempt to change the status quo in research on PA in China. To a large extent, our contributors have helped us to meet this challenge in this Handbook, as discussed below. Part II: The Chinese Civil Service The three chapters in this section address the following questions: How are Chinese bureaucrats recruited? What are the main selection criteria? How are bureaucrats supervised, managed, and rewarded? How is civil service performance assessed? In Chapter 2, Zhiyue Bo examines the selection of local leaders in China. His chapter provides a clear definition of local leaders in China before it reviews rules and norms for selecting local leaders in China.

10  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China It then presents theoretical debates over personal connections versus meritocracy in selecting Chinese local leaders and provides a critical assessment of this field of inquiry and reflects on its practical implications. Bo concludes his chapter by pointing to some promising ways forward for the future study. In Chapter 3, Shuo Chen and Hon S. Chan discuss civil service pay in China with a view to elucidating the background of the pay reform. Chen and Chan argue that civil service pay is crucial to human resource management, government efficiency and integrity in public administration. They stress that China’s civil service pay system is different from its Western counterparts, with a high integration of politics in civil service. Chen and Chan first review the four rounds of civil service pay reforms from 1950s to 2006. Next, Chen and Chan examine the main achievements and unfold the underlying controversies of these reforms. Based on the discussion of the recent changes of civil service pay policies, Chen and Chan then explore the prospects and major challenges surrounding the recent development of the civil service pay system. By evaluating the development of civil service pay since 1949 up to date, Chen and Chan offer readers a basic understanding of the reform process and main dilemmas of the civil service pay in China. In Chapter 4, Jie Gao observes the embrace of performance measurement as a tool to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the bureaucracy since the late 1970s. The embrace came in three waves. In the first wave, which began in 1979, the national leaders took the initiative to develop a cadre evaluation system and a target responsibility system (the TRS). The TRS has remained the most influential performance measurement system in local government. The second wave began in the late 1990s, characterized by the rise of third-party evaluations in assessing government performance to address the shortcomings of the TRS since it focuses on top-down evaluation and control. The third wave started in the late 2000s, when local governments at all levels were enthusiastic about developing their own evaluation systems. Gao explores the following questions on the three waves in her chapter: What are the major performance measurement systems that the Chinese leaders have adopted during the three waves of reform? How are these systems designed, and what are their key features? How effective has the implementation of these systems been in improving the performance and effectiveness of local governments? What challenges and problems do China’s performance measurement reforms face if they are to go forward? Part III: Government Capacity-Building in China The chapters in this section discuss government capacity-building and policy making in China, to explore how governments in China are funded, what new capacities they have developed to cope with crises and other challenges in government, and how they have handled issues of transparency and accountability in an authoritarian context. In Chapter 5, Ting Gong reports that since the onset of reform in the early 1980s, the Chinese government has engaged in an intensified battle to control corruption and to promote government integrity. However, corruption has continued to surge and become increasingly rampant, threatening the legitimacy of the PRC. To partly address this problem, local government integrity initiatives and programs have proliferated in recent years. Local innovation in managing government integrity has been encouraged by the central government. Drawing on her fieldwork in Guangdong, Ting Gong addresses the question of why the central leadership has become receptive to local initiatives in cadre management, an area where political conformity was deemed necessary by an author-

State of the field  11 itarian regime. Ting Gong suggests that the strategic adjustment testifies to the institutional failure of the earlier anti-corruption regime that manifested in, inter alia, an acute agency loss problem. The emerging approach to integrity management nevertheless has paradoxical institutional roots. It indicates the new thinking of the central authorities on holding local governments responsible for integrity management. However, the adjustment is also driven by the center’s concern about losing control and its desire to “manage” government integrity under the state’s hierarchy. In Chapter 6, Shui-Yan Tang and Bo Wen argue that China’s relatively decentralized fiscal system and its highly centralized cadre management system have driven its economic growth. Yet many of the same fiscal and personnel incentives have negatively impacted other governance issues such as environmental protection projects, efforts to combat corruption, and widening income gaps. By comparing four in-depth case studies, Tang and Wen examine how the current fiscal and personnel incentives result in distorted behavior patterns among local government officials: bureaucratic entrepreneurship, reliance on extra-budgetary revenues, excessive borrowing, making the numbers regardless of outcomes, and short-sightedness. Tang and Wen challenge arguments put forward by Weingast that (1) China is a case of market-preserving federalism, and that (2) market-preserving federalism can be developed without constitutional guarantees of political freedom and democratic representation. In Chapter 7, Liang Ma examines electronic government (e-government), which is a new form of government in the digital era, characterized by the use of various information and communication technologies in administrative procedures, public service delivery, and public participation. Ma claims that the PRC has been lagging behind in e-government, but it has been catching up rapidly in many aspects in the past decade. Ma reviews the current literature on e-government in China, identifies the key gaps in theories and research methods, and suggests future research avenues in this field. Ma finds that the research on e-government in China is split into three camps, including the assessment of e-government development, and the antecedents of e-government adoption and implementation, and the various impacts of e-government. Ma suggests that future research can explore the cross-boundary collaboration in e-government development, incorporate the behavioral science and design science into e-government studies, and pay more attention to cybersecurity, privacy protection, and crisis management in e-government implementation. The research on e-government in China can also benefit from developing and testing indigenous theories as well as using experimental design, big data analytics, and mixed methods. In Chapter 8, May Chu and Pak Wan Major Pau discuss the forms and components of a comprehensive regulatory system, which includes standard-setting, enforcement and self-regulation. They then introduce the concept of regulatory competition in which regional governments are competing in establishing more rigorous or loose regulations to attract foreign investments. Under such internationalized force, a nation, especially a developing one, is increasingly affected by the interests of its global stakeholders, while attempting to balance that of its citizens. Next, Chu and Pau choose China’s food safety regulatory regime to illustrate how a developing nation balances between enhancing the quality of its export food products and maintaining a low operational cost for its domestic food producers. Two different systems of food safety regulatory regimes (differences in standard-setting, information gathering and behavior modification) have thus emerged in China, based on the location of the market. Chu and Pau show that if a product is exporting to a foreign country, related international safety standards are likely to be directly adopted for the industries to follow with no room for the

12  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China latter to negotiate. These industries are frequently inspected in a rigorous manner, and their operating licenses are easily suspended or revoked if any safety hazards are detected. On the contrary, if a product is targeted at the domestic market, with a comparative purchasing power, big and small producers are allowed to participate in the standard-setting process, making the process more inclusive and transparent. These industries are less frequently inspected by authorities and are less likely to face deterrent measures when wrongdoings are detected. In Chapter 9, Hanyu Xiao and Jingyuan Xu observe that fiscal transparency has been viewed as a proxy for good governance and a remedy for curbing corruption. Taking China’s fiscal transparency development as an example, Xiao and Xu examine whether this view holds true in China. They first review the progress of fiscal transparency in China since the implementation of its open information policy. Next, Xiao and Xu conduct an analysis of the concentrated costs and dispersed benefits of fiscal transparency in the Chinese context. Xiao and Xu then evaluate the impact of fiscal transparency on corruption, fiscal accountability, and an administratively open culture. Xiao and Xu find that we should not have high expectations of fiscal transparency and conclude with comments on the potential for further development of fiscal transparency in China. In Chapter 10, Xigen Li examines how the PRC’s internet and media policies adapt to the changing media landscape in China, due to the advancement of media technology and the emerging media usage patterns. Compared to the age of the traditional media, there are visible changes to the fundamental changes with regard to media landscape. Despite of the fact that the newspapers and television continue to be controlled by the government, online and social media in various forms have emerged. It is no longer the case that official media dominate information production and delivery. Along with the growth of online and social media, people can produce and publish information and express views in information channels other than the traditional media. Thus, information production and delivery are no longer totally under the control of the government, and could sway far away from the government guidelines. Li reports that along the different stages of the online and social media development and the media landscape change, the Chinese government established a series of laws and regulations to confine and guide the information production and dissemination via online and social media. Through a documentary analysis of the laws and regulations created and enacted by the Chinese government on internet information governance since 2000, and a case study of social media vocal Big Vs who were cracked down by the Chinese government after they became the symbol of the civil voice in the virtual world, Li addresses several key questions regarding how people communicate and share information through different digital platforms and raise problems that concern the government. Li also illuminates how the Chinese government rules online and social media with its internet and media policies initiated and adapted to the changing media landscape to gain control over the information production and distribution in the digital world. In Chapter 11, Fen Lin draws attention to the Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information (OGI, The Regulation) issued in April 24, 2007. Lin argues that since the OGI regulation went into effect on May 1, 2008, it has become one of the most important legal documents that defines authoritarian transparency as well as one of the most popular legal citations in China’s courts. Lin discusses the study of Open Government Information Regulations in three comparative aspects. First, Lin introduces the history of OGI regulations in China and locates the development of OGI legislation in the background of global diffusion of Freedom of Information laws. Second, Lin compares the existing studies

State of the field  13 on Freedom of Information laws across nations. Lin highlights three research domains in these studies: diffusion of legislation; implementation of laws/regulations; and impacts of laws/regulations. Finally, Lin discusses the research challenges and opportunities of studying China’s OGI regulations and explores the implications on the information transparency and government accountability in an authoritarian regime. In Chapter 12, Alfred M. Wu and Fangzhi Ye explore the nature of China’s land use rights system, its evolution and impact on resource allocation and local governments’ public finances. In recent decades, the public ownership of land has not hindered the development of a thriving market economy. Since the inception of the economic reform, land use rights, a new institution, have been introduced to address the rigidness and ineffectiveness of land ownership in China. The current land use rights system has provided enterprises and individuals with a largely stable land tenure system while permitting local governments to leverage land finance for infrastructure investment. Nevertheless, rampant corruption and predatory behaviors by local governments are associated with land transactions, which pose a threat to social stability at the grassroots level. The Chinese experience sheds fresh light on the development of a sound land administration system in developing countries. In Chapter 13, Yangbin Chen critically reviews a swarm of research literature surrounding China’s ethnic minority policy. Chen argues that beneath the contestation on Chinese ethnic minority policy between Chinese and the Western narratives, there emboldens a desire of forming a Chinese discourse, which is manifestation of a “Chinese model” in addressing ethnic minority issues. Chen adopts the binary political-cultural framework of the “Chinese model” to unfold the historical trajectory of Chinese ethnic minority policy since the founding of the PRC in 1949. Chen argues that the socialist political ideology and Confucian cultural tradition, explicitly and implicitly, constitute two fundamental imperatives behind China’s party state’s ethnic minority policy discourse, which is often conflicting with its counterpart of Western discourse: universal minority rights and politics of identities in liberalism. In Chapter 14, Lucy Zhao, Xiaowei Zang, and Shijia Yang examine the Chinese foreign language education policies. They understand that foreign language education policies of a country are influenced by various factors, such as national ideology, politics, economy, culture and so on. In the West, scholars put forward some theories on how to study foreign language education policy scientifically, such as the economics of language, the language ecology, grassroots politics, and so on. Through a detailed analysis of Chinese foreign language education policies since 1949, they find that the development of Chinese foreign language education policies has gone through four distinguishing periods, and its choice of the first foreign language and other foreign languages has fluctuated in different historical periods. In addition, when applying existing theories such as the economics of language and the language ecology to the reality of China, they find that both theories can be applicable to Chinese foreign language education policies but with certain limitations. The reason is that the formulation of these foreign language policies made by the Chinese government are guided by the political needs of the country. They examine the elite discourse on the Chinese dream to understand the political dynamics of the changes in Chinese foreign language education policies from 1949. They conclude that the effect of the elite discourse on the Chinese dream needs to be taken into account when researching government policies on foreign language education in China.

14  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Part IV: Public Administration and Governance in China The chapters in this section examine issues related to government and governance in general and policy implementation in particular in the PRC. In Chapter 15, Yu Song offers historical review of family planning policies in connection to fertility changes in the PRC. Song argues that since the founding of the socialist regime in 1949, China’s family planning policies have undergone tremendous changes due to its drastic political, economic and social changes. Drawing on China’s national population statistics, Song analyzes China’s family planning policies and fertility changes in a dynamic, historical context. Song divides China’s family planning policies into three stages and nine sub-stages in terms of its scope and rigidness: the pre-family planning stage, the family planning stage and the later-family planning stage. In line with the changing family planning policies in China, Song shows that the total fertility rate has dropped radically from over 6 in 1949 to below 2 in the early 1990s and then continued its downward trend. In Chapter 16, Xiaoling Zhang examines how the explosive growth in China’s urban population has invited inevitable conflicts in the process of human–environmental interaction, which may render a new social–economic–ecological landscape in the post-urbanization era. Zhang analyzes the unique facts, policies, and implementation activities of China’s urbanization over the past two decades. First, Zhang introduces the administrative structure of the urbanization policy system in China and assesses the process of policy options under multiple objectives. Next, Zhang discusses the theoretical frameworks of urbanization and offers a critical assessment of sustainable urbanization policy in China. Zhang then studies the risks, challenges and externalities in Chinese sustainable urbanization. Zhang concludes the chapter with a discussion of various features associated with China’s urbanization mode at different levels to provide implications for future research and policy design, and further suggests a broader perspective in examining sustainable urbanization policy. In Chapter 17, Wai-Fung Lam and Wei Li examine the role of state–society interactions in governance in China by conducting a comparative analysis of the structure and processes of collaborative innovation of two government-funded community-based, elderly service networks in Shanghai. Lam and Li find that in line with the literature, a network that has an organized administrative organization structure is better able to manage the process of service innovation in a way that balances the need to achieve government policy goals on the one hand and the imperative to facilitate bottom-up citizen participation on the other. Contrary to what existing studies have suggested, Lam and Li found that a network in which a lead organization plays a dominant role, despite its more centralized process of service innovation, is often able to deliver a variety of high-quality and low-cost services addressing citizens’ needs. With the leadership provided by the network lead organization and its close affiliation with the street-office government, the network has been able to solicit government support. Such a hierarchical yet responsive state–society relation has emerged as a result of the coalescence of a corporatist state legacy and an increasing pressure demanding for local governments to seek citizens’ support in service delivery in China. In Chapter 18, Hongping Lian, Hui Li, and Kilkon Ko examine China’s growing transactions of urban land use rights (LURs) and the resultant rampant illegal land use since the 2000s. Their research question is whether LURs were appropriately used to advance the public interest. In response to such concerns, beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese central government urged local governments to adopt the market-led transaction (MLT) approach.

State of the field  15 Using a multi-level analysis model with a two-level structure (time and province), Lian, Li, and Ko examine whether the MLT reform has reduced illegal land use by local governments, as the central government intended. Their study shows that even after controlling for yearly and provincial variations, a 1 percentage point increase in the MLT adoption rate results in a 0.765 percent decrease in illegal land use cases and a 1.45 percent decrease in illegal land use area respectively. The adoption of market-led transactions in the 2000s seemingly intends to prevent an increase in illegal land use during a period of rapid economic and urban development. Also, the MLT adoption rate continuously increased, reaching 43.4 percent in 2008; after 2008, the trend was reversed and the MLT adoption rate dropped to 27.0 percent in 2012. Lian, Li, and Ko suggest that the Chinese government should continue to utilize market mechanisms as a policy instrument to curb illegal land use and also try to close institutional loopholes to improve implementation. In Chapter 19, Xiaowei Zang asks whether the Chinese government has played a key role in wastewater treatment in China, and whether Chinese citizens have been a major actor in pollution control in China. Zang addresses these two questions by exploring the effects of government capacity and citizen activism on wastewater treatment in China. Zang measures government capacity in terms of regulatory enhancement (e.g., legislative motions) and resource allocation (e.g., earmarked budgets and environmental personnel recruitment) for pollution control. These measures manifest the commitment and capacity of a local government to protect the environment in its jurisdiction and are the mechanisms whereby government policies become effective tools of wastewater treatment in China. Zang measures citizen activism in environmental protection in terms of (1) personal visits to local government offices by concerned citizens to register their request to address an environmental issue and (2) complaint letters against polluters from the public to government offices. Zang discusses a provincial panel dataset on wastewater treatment for the period of 2004‒2014 for empirical tests. Next, he outlines the levels of water pollution and reviews the existing literature on wastewater treatment in China. Zang then conducts empirical tests to evaluate the relationship between government capacity, citizen activism, and wastewater treatment in China. Data analyses show the important role of government capacity in wastewater treatment in China. However, there is little evidence of public environmentalism on wastewater in China. In Chapter 20, Ruiping Fan and Chunyan Ding discuss how policy makers can learn from international experiences and adopt proper motivational measures to promote organ donation in China and Hong Kong. Fan and Ding identify three prominent international models of organ donation pertaining to motivation, which can be termed liberalism, compensationalism, and familism, respectively. Fan and Ding construct the features of these models by the following factors: the characteristic incentives adopted by the respective models to motivate individuals to donate organs, the fundamental cultural values underlying each model, and the outcomes of donation resulted from the models in the United States, Iran and mainland China. Fan and Ding find that none of these three different models should overwhelmingly be affirmed as a whole for making recommendations to every country and region to embrace. Rather, there are meriting and advantageous elements in each model that should be integrated to shape a group of incentive measures to improve donation in every society in general and mainland China and Hong Kong in particular. A suitable goal for relevant policy and administration is to confirm and promote practically effective, ethically justifiable, and politically legitimate incentive measures for organ donation in China and Hong Kong.

16  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Part V: Street-Level Bureaucracy in China The four chapters in this section study street-level bureaucracy to understand how policies and regulations are implemented at the street level by frontline bureaucrats in China. In Chapter 21, Xiaowei Zang reviews research on street-level discretion and its relevancy for frontline work in China. Street-level bureaucrats includes police officers, teachers, social workers, and the like. Discretion refers to their capacity to follow or deviate from rules and procedures to address client circumstances and needs. Lipsky (1980, xii, 84) argued that the decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures, effectively become the public policies they carry out. I (Lipsky) argue that public policy is not best understood as made in legislatures or top-floor suites of high-ranking administrators, because in important ways it is actually made in the crowded offices and daily encounters of street-level workers.

Since 2000, Chinese scholars began to do research on street-level bureaucracy. Some reviews of the English literature on street-level bureaucracy have been published in China. Compared with the existing Chinese reviews, Zang provides a more substantial and updated summary and assessment of the literature on street-level discretion. Zang also raises some critical issues for future research on frontline discretion in China. In Chapter 22, Jianhua Xu, Qipu Hu, and Anli Jiang provide a review of current research on Chinese policing. This chapter examines how recent political and economic developments in China affect empirical research in this area. The regime nature of Chinese party-state as an authoritarian capitalism has clear footprints in policing studies in China. More specifically, three group discourses surrounding authoritarian capitalism are identified in literature. First, scholars have widely explored how authoritarianism affects Chinese policing. It is found that due to its authoritarian politics, related police work has centered on increasing performance legitimacy for the party-state. The securitization of the Chinese state has impactfully affected police operation. Police violence and corruption have suffered from a lack of accountability in authoritarian politics. Low police morale is observed under the authoritarian model of policing. Second, scholars have examined how market logic under capitalism penetrates into policing. They find that policing has increasingly become a commodity tradable in the market. The principle of cost-saving and efficiency can also be seen in policing civilianization and outsourcing. Third, Chinese policing is evolving toward a soft-authoritarian policing model as many soft-line tactics are adopted along its authoritarian way of law enforcement. This chapter ends with suggestions for future studies on Chinese policing. In Chapter 23, Xiaowei Zang and Michael Musheno examine discretion in frontline work in China. Drawing upon a survey (n = 1,721) of Chengguan (city management) officers in urban China, Zang and Musheno explore the influence of autocratic one-party rule on the meaning of and variation in rule compliance in China. They find that the majority of Chengguan officers are rule followers, and demographic differences show little effect in deviations from this norm. However, institutional factors associated with one-party rule, particularly upward accountability, the privilege of administrative rank, and unequal access to power and resources, are significant in making differences in rule-following among Chengguan officers. Zang and Musheno conclude with a discussion of the similarities in institutional pressures on urban regulatory policing in China and the United States. In a way, this chapter breaks new ground by conducting an institutional analysis of rule compliance in the PRC.

State of the field  17 In Chapter 24, Lisa Zang and Xiaowei Zang examine the main causes of leniency and severity in street-level law enforcement in China. Their research questions attest to that given a civil offense in China, how many adjudications are harsh punishments and how many of them are lenient treatments? Who are likely to receive legal leniency? Zang and Zang briefly review the history of severity and leniency in China’s legal system and discuss two possible institutional bedrocks of severity and leniency by Chengguan officers: political expediency and Confucian benevolence. Zang and Zang examine patterns of civil law enforcement among Chengguan officers and find that while there was severity during the course of law enforcement, there was leniency toward some groups of street venders if they were the elderly, women, disabled, and so on. Zang and Zang explain the variation in severity and leniency in terms of the government policy of balancing leniency with severity and Confucian tradition of leniency and severity. Part VI: Research and Teaching on Public Administration in Greater China The last section of this Handbook includes three chapters to review PA teaching and research in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. In Chapter 25, Yijia Jing examines dissertation research in PA in China. Using the evaluation framework originally developed by McCurdy and Cleary (1984), Jing examines the quality of 132 dissertations successfully defended by public administration doctoral students in Mainland China between 2002 and 2006. Jing argues that in general, the quality of these PA dissertations was inadequate in six criteria: research question, validity, theory relevance, causality, importance, and innovativeness. Jing further reckons that major institutional problems have led to such inadequacy, including the lack of a research orientation, inflexible PhD advisory arrangements, and difficulty to adapt to internationalization. Real efforts and institutional reforms are urgently needed to build PhD education and research of PA on contemporary social science standards. In Chapter 26, Echo Lei Wang and Jie Gao observe that the PA literature of Hong Kong and Macau has grown substantially in the past decade, yet an up-to-date literature review on the recent development of the field is still lacking. The latest review of studies was done by Gao (2014) using a sample size of 113 papers collected on Hong Kong and 223 papers on Macau published between 1999 and 2009. Wang and Gao adopt the same data sources, data collection method and analytical factors but for an updated period from 2010 to 2019 to do the study in this chapter. Wang and Gao gather a total of 782 journal articles, with 478 articles on Hong Kong and 304 articles on Macau, published from 2010 to 2019. They examine various issues including research topics, methodologies, purpose and style, and author profiles. Wang and Gao find that studies on Hong Kong are found to be more methodologically rigorous in terms of theory-building and examining, and they cover a wider scope of topics with emphases on governance, development and public management reform. The Hong Kong academic community has attracted broader international participation and resources. Studies engaging Macau, on the other hand, are significantly less quantitative and more descriptive with greater contribution from social institutions and practitioners, while they cover a narrower range of topics with shorter time spans and less international funding. Wang and Gao suggest that the discrepancies in research, while reflecting the academic capacities of Hong Kong and Macau as intellectual hubs, could be a result of diverging political and administrative challenges and concerns the two city-states individually face under the post-colonial constitutional framework.

18  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China In Chapter 27, Milan Tung-Wen Sun, Wen-Hsueh Chen, and Windy Thi-Ngoc-Minh Phan claim that in the past 30 years, the public administration community in Taiwan has taken shape, but the community itself still faces the problem of integrating theory with practice. There is a lack of communication between the academics’ and the practitioners’ community, as these two communities focus on different issues and embody different governing structures (governance vs. government) for problem-solving. Not only are their related issues different, but also theories and concepts are less discussed in the practitioners’ community. The two communities become less and less relevant to each other. Over time, the crisis of relevance may evolve into the “crisis of confidence,” in which members of the practitioners’ community do not have confidence about whether knowledge or exemplary practices produced in the academic community can be beneficial to their daily problem-solving. In the long run, the professional status of PA may be questioned, and it may lead to the “crisis of legitimacy” in which the discipline of PA is at stake. According to Sun, Chen, and Phan, a great part of the reasons for the growing distance between the two PA communities stems from the different emphases and demands from different institutions in Taiwan: the central government stresses the importance of forward-looking policy planning research in Taiwan as a whole; local governments prefer policy evaluation research which emphasizes the conditions, demands, and satisfaction of local stakeholders about local services in different parts of Taiwan; and the topics of government-funded journals are quite diverse, as the agencies which sponsor the journals are targeting at different audiences. There is a pressing need to address the issue of relevance if PA research and practice are to advance in the future.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION To sum up, there are altogether 27 chapters in this Handbook. The chapters in this Handbook advance research on PA in China significantly in two aspects. First, research publications on PA in China have mushroomed in recent years. Yet they address different PA issues in the PRC and are scattered across a large number of books and academic journals in and outside China. This Handbook identifies some important research topics and arranges them systematically to establish a broad framework for the future study of PA in China. Second, this Handbook consolidates knowledge scattered in different disciplines and provides readers with a multidisciplinary and multifaceted coverage of major issues on PA in China in one single volume. The chapters in the Handbook address some conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues in the study of PA in China. They offer critical reflection on where the field has been and where it is going. These chapters turn this Handbook into a convenient reference, offering an overview of key issues in research on PA in China. With regard to the future study of PA in China, we agree with Kim et al. (2019, 757, 761) that PA scholars “could address the complexity of Chinese public administration by applying diverse methodologies,” and “the following eight fields may be fruitful in generating pertinent publications: nonprofit management; emergency management; global comparative public administration (including the PRC); intergovernmental relations; public–private partnerships (PPPs); environmental protection; climate change; and performance measurements and improvements.” We urge pro-active efforts by mainland Chinese PA scholars to broaden their collaborative links with their counterparts outside China, since this would be an effective and

State of the field  19 fast way for them to increase quality research outputs in top international journals. They shall also actively recruit Chinese students with PhDs from top universities in the world and create good working environments for the returned Chinese PhD holders to flourish in China. Finally, while acknowledging the increasing number of mainland Chinese PA scholars who have published in top research outlets, we draw attention to the critics of research on PA in China (Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018; Jing 2008; Lu and Chow 2008; Walker, Brewer, and Choi 2014; Wu, He, and Sun 2013) that if the mainland PA community aims to enhance its global profile and reputation in research on PA, it shall make efforts to move away from descriptive and atheoretical studies, follow the standard formats for mainstream social science research such as a reasonable amount of references for an output, promote theoretical innovation, improve the research methodology, and conduct empirical examinations rigorously so that it can produce more high-quality works by international standards for the social sciences, and its research becomes a more important part of global efforts for knowledge production in PA. We hope that the chapters in this Handbook can contribute to the efforts by the mainland PA community to internationalize the future study of PA in China.

ENGLISH REFERENCES Behn, Robert (1995) “The Big Questions of Public Management.” Public Administration Review 55(4), 313‒324. Cartwright, Mark (2019) “The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China.” February 8. https://​www​ .ancient​.eu/​article/​1335/​the​-civil​-service​-examinations​-of​-imperial​-china/​, accessed January 20, 2020. Cheng, Joseph and Lucia Lu (2009) “Public Administration Research in China: Evidence from Content Analysis of Leading Chinese Public Administration Journals.” Issues & Studies 45(1), 203‒241. Chow, King (1991) “Public Administration as an Academic Discipline in China.” In: Ali Farazmand (ed.), Handbook of Comparative and Development Administration. New York: Marcel Dekker, 409‒420. Chow, King, Haiyan Xiao, and Mingyue Wen (2018) “The Maladies of Chinese Public Administration.” Transylvanian Review of Administrative Science 18(3), 18‒31. Chow, King, Zhihang Xu, and Mingyue Wen (2019) “The Evolution of Chinese Administrative Studies.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 24(1), 145‒159. Fritzen, Scott (2010) “Envisioning Public Administration as a Scholarly Field in 2020.” Public Administration Review 70(S1), 300‒301. Gao, Jie (2014) “Public Administration Research in Hong Kong and Macau: A Review of Journal Articles Published from 1999 to 2009.” The American Review of Public Administration 44(2), 168‒186. Harris, Peter (2002) “The Origins of Modern Citizenship in China.” Asia Pacific Viewpoint 43(2), 181‒203. Holzer, Marc and Mengzhong Zhang (2002) “Chinese Public Administration Review.” Chinese Public Administration Review 1(1), 5‒8. Holzer, Marc and Mengzhong Zhang (2009) “Introduction to the Special Issue on Comparative Chinese/ American Public Administration.” Public Administration Review 69(1), S5‒S12. Jing, Yijia (2008) “Dissertation Research in Public Administration in China.” Chinese Public Administration Review 5(1/2), 27‒38. Jreisat, Jamil E. (2005) “Comparative Public Administration is Back in, Prudently.” Public Administration Review 65(2), 231‒242. Jreisat, Jamil E. (2011) “Commentary – Comparative Public Administration.” Public Administration Review 71(6), 834‒838. Kim, Min-Hyu, Huafang Li, Marc Holzer, and Mengzhong Zhang (2019) “Public Administration Research in Mainland China: A Systematic Review of Chinese Public Administration in English Language Journals (1996‒2016).” International Journal of Public Administration 42(9), 753‒764.

20  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Li, Xiufeng, Yadong Han, and Pan Suk Kim (2018) “The Development of China’s Public Administration Education.” Teaching Public Administration 36(2), 163‒177. Lipsky, Michael (1980) Street-Level Bureaucrats. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Liu, Wei and Wenzhao Li (2013) “Public Administration in China – Evolution and Current Challenge.” Asian Journal of Political Science 21(1), 1‒20. Liu, Yichang (1993) “An Insider’s Perspective: The Development of Chinese Administrative Science.” In: Miriam Mills and Stuart Nagel (eds.), Public Administration in China. Westport: Greenwood Press, 133‒144. Lo, Shiu Hing (2014) “The Study of Public Administration in Hong Kong and Macao.” Asian Journal of Political Science 22(1), 20‒44. Lu, Lucia and King W. Chow (2008) “Monitoring the Growth of Chinese Public Administration Knowledge.” Chinese Public Administration Review 5(1/2), 7‒25. McCurdy, H. and R. Cleary (1984) “Why Can’t We Resolve the Research Issue in Public Administration?” Public Administration Review 44(1), 49‒55. Mills, Miriam and Stuart Nagel (1993) (eds.), Public Administration in China. Westport: Greenwood Press. Mingus, Matthew and Zhu Jing (2016) “The Big Questions of Chinese Public Administration Research.” Administration & Society 49(6), 775‒797. Miyazaki, Ichisada (1981) China’s Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China. New Haven: Yale University Press. Tong, Caroline Haiyan and Jeffrey Straussman (2003) “A Master of Public Administration Degree with Chinese Characteristics.” Journal of Public Affairs Education 9(2), 105‒115. Walker, Richard, Gene Brewer, and Yujin Choi (2014) “Public Administration Research in East and Southeast Asia.” The American Review of Public Administration 44(2), 131‒150. Wang, Lefu (2006) “A Probe into China’s Public Administration Education and the Construction of the Subject of Public Administration.” Chinese Public Administration Review 1(1), 31‒36. Wu, Xun and Jingwei He (2009) “Paradigm Shift in Public Administration.” Public Administration Review 69(S1), S21‒S28. Wu, Xun, Yanling He, and Milan Tung-Wen Sun (2013) “Public Administration Research in Mainland China and Taiwan.” Public Administration 91(2), 261‒280. Xue, Lan (2019) “On the Future of Public Policy Schools, in Developing Countries.” Global Policy 10(1), 102‒103. Yang, Lihua (2018) “Public Administration as a Dynamic Balance and Integrative Science across Politics, Management, and Law.” American Review of Public Administration 49(2), 79–97. Yu, Wenxuan, Marilyn Rubin, and Wei Wu (2012) “An Executive MPA Program for China.” Journal of Public Affairs Education 18(3), 545‒564. Zhang, Cheng F. (1993) “Public Administration in China.” In: Miriam Mills and Stuart Nagel (eds.), Public Administration in China. Westport: Greenwood Press, 3‒20. Zhang, Wei, Xiaolin Xu, Richard Evans, and Feng Yang (2018) “Towards Internationalization: A Critical Assessment of China’s Public Administration Research in a Global Context 2000‒2014.” International Public Management Journal 21(1), 74‒104. Zhao, Yongfei (2008) “Three Waves of Public Administration Education in China.” Chinese Public Administration Review 5(1/2), 49‒60.

CHINESE REFERENCE 马骏/刘亚平 (2007) “中国公共行政学的‘身份危机’.”《中国人民大学学报》第21卷第4期, 8‒12.

PART II THE CHINESE CIVIL SERVICE

2. Selection of local leaders in China: meritocracy or personal connections? Zhiyue Bo

Policy-making and policy implementation in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) rely very much on local leaders. Who are they? How are they selected? This chapter addresses these two questions in the study of local leaders in China. It first provides a clear definition of local leaders in China. Second, it reviews rules and norms for selecting local leaders in China. Third, it presents theoretical debates over personal connections versus meritocracy in selecting Chinese local leaders, in particular Chinese provincial leaders. Fourth, it provides a critical assessment of the state of art in the subfield and reflects on its practical implications. Fifth, it points to promising ways forward for the future study.

DEFINING LOCAL LEADERS IN CHINA In China, local leaders officially refer to the leaders from the county level to the provincial level. Generally speaking, these are leaders of 31 provincial units (including 22 provinces, four centrally administered municipalities, and five autonomous regions), leaders of the 334 (it is 424 according to my calculation) prefectural-level units (including 294 prefectural-level cities), and leaders of 2,851 county-level units (including 962 districts, 363 county-level cities, 1,355 counties, and 117 autonomous counties) (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2018, Table 1.1). At each level, there are four basic categories of leaders: the party (i.e., the Chinese Communist Party or the CCP), the government, the people’s congress, and the people’s political consultative conference. But there are overlaps among these categories. In 2020, there are about 1,200 top provincial leaders; about 12,000 top prefectural leaders; and about 110,000 top county leaders in China.

PROVINCIAL LEADERS According to Table 2.1, as of February 21, 2020, there were altogether 1,273 posts for the top leadership in all provincial units but these posts were actually filled by 1,175 individuals. It is necessary to mention that many provincial party secretaries are concurrent chairmen of their respective provincial people’s congress standing committees. In these six provincial units where party secretaries are Politburo members, there are separate individuals serving as chairmen/chairwomen of their people’s congress standing committees. These include Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangdong, and Xinjiang. Tibet is the exception. Its party secretary, Wu Yingjie, is neither a Politburo member nor chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional People’s Congress Standing Committee. Losang Jamcan (Tibetan), a full member of the 19th Central Committee of the CCP, is the chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional 22

Selection of local leaders in China  23 Table 2.1 Province a

Number of top provincial leaders in China Party b

Government c

Congress d

Consultative

Posts

Total

Conference e Beijing

12

10

8

11

41

38

Tianjin

12

9

8

11

40

38

Hebei

14

9

7

10

40

36

Shanxi

13

7

8

10

38

35

Neimenggu

12

8

8

11

39

36

Liaoning

13

10

8

10

41

38

Jilin

12

8

8

10

38

35

Heilongjiang

13

9

8

10

40

36

Shanghai

11

9

8

11

39

37

Jiangsu

12

9

9

11

41

37

Zhejiang

12

10

8

11

41

38

Anhui

13

9

8

11

41

38

Fujian

12

8

9

11

40

36

Jiangxi

12

9

7

11

39

35

Shandong

13

10

8

11

42

39

Henan

12

10

9

11

42

39

Hubei

13

8

8

11

40

36

Hunan

11

9

8

11

39

36

Guangdong

12

9

8

11

40

39

Guangxi

13

10

8

11

42

38

Hainan

13

7

8

10

38

35

Chongqing

13

10

8

10

41

39

Sichuan

13

9

9

12

43

40

Guizhou

12

9

7

10

38

35

Yunnan

12

10

8

10

40

37

Tibet

15

15

15

16

61

56

Shaanxi

11

8

8

11

38

35

Gansu

13

9

8

11

41

37

Qinghai

12

10

9

12

43

40

Ningxia

11

9

8

11

39

36

Xinjiang

13

11

10

14

48

45

Notes: a This refers to provinces, centrally administered cities, and autonomous regions, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao are not included. b This includes standing members of the provincial-unit party committee. c This includes governors, chairmen of autonomous regions, and mayors of centrally administered cities. d This includes chairman and vice chairmen of the provincial-unit congress. e This includes chairman and vice chairmen of the provincial-unit people’s political consultative conference. Source: http://​district​.ce​.cn/​zt/​rwk/​index​.shtml.

People’s Congress Standing Committee as well as a deputy party secretary of Tibet. Losang Jamcan has been a standing member of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional CCP Committee since October 2006 and its deputy party secretary since December 2012. He was chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional Government from January 2013 to January 2017. All provincial governors are concurrent deputy secretaries of their provincial CCP committees. Madame Shen Yiqin, governor of Guizhou, for instance, is a deputy secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee. Madame Bu Xiaolin (daughter of Buhe, former chairman of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Regional Government and granddaughter of

24  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Ulanhu, founding father of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Regional Government), the chairwoman of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Regional Government, is also a deputy party secretary of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Regional Party Committee. Third, some vice governors are concurrent standing members of their provincial CCP committees. Out of eight vice governors in Hebei, for instance, two, Yuan Tongli and Chen Gang, are concurrent standing members of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee. Out of eight vice mayors in Beijing, two, Lin Keqing and Yin Yong, are also concurrent standing members of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee. Generally speaking, executive vice governors are normally members of the provincial-unit CCP standing committees and one more vice governor could be a member of the provincial CCP standing committees in some cases. However, there are no overlaps between the local people’s congresses and provincial party committees in provincial units where the party secretary is not the concurrent chairman of the local people’s congress standing committee (i.e., Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangdong, and Xinjiang). Li Wei, the chairman of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress Standing Committee, for instance, is not a standing member of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, even though he had been a standing member of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee while he was the director of Beijing’s CCP Propaganda Department. Similarly, Yin Yicui, the chairwoman of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress Standing Committee, is not a standing member of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, though she had been a standing member and a deputy party secretary of Shanghai for more than 12 years. The same is true of Duan Chunhua, the chairman of the Tianjin Municipal People’s Congress Standing Committee; Zhang Xuan, the chairwoman of the Chongqing Municipal People’s Congress Standing Committee; Li Yumei, the chairwoman of the Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee; and Shewket Imin, the chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional People’s Congress Standing Committee. Nor are there any overlaps between members of provincial CCP committees and those of provincial people’s political consultative conferences in all provincial units. Ji Lin, the chairman of the Beijing Municipal People’s Political Consultative Conference, for instance, was a standing member of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee from May 2002 until April 2013 when he began to be fully focused on his work on political consultation. Liu Wei, the chairman of the Henan Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference, is not a standing member of the Henan Provincial CCP Committee either. He was transferred from Shandong where he served as the chairman of the Shandong Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference for eight years. Nor are there any overlaps between members of provincial governments and those of provincial people’s political consultative conferences in all provincial units. Cui Yuying (Tibetan), for instance, used to be a vice chairwoman of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional Government from 2002 to 2006 but she has served as the chairwoman of the Fujian Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference alone since January 2018. However, as a rare exception, Xue Weimin, a deputy head of the Fujian Provincial Education Department since March 2000, has continued his government post even though he has been a vice chairman of the Fujian Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference since January 2013. Nor are there any overlaps between members of provincial people’s congresses and those of provincial people’s political consultative conferences in all provincial units. Leaders of provincial people’s congresses are separate individuals from leaders of provincial people’s political consultative conferences. One rare exception is Pagbalha Geleg Namgyai (Tibetan),

Selection of local leaders in China  25 who served as a vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) between 1959 and 1993 and since 2003. He has also been a vice chairman and chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Regional People’s Political Consultative Conference since 1965. In the meantime, he also served as a vice chairman of the National People’s Congress from 1993 to 2003.

PREFECTURAL LEADERS Top prefectural leaders are also distributed in the four categories of the party, the government, the congress, and the political consultative conference apparatuses. Prefectural leaders have overlaps with provincial leaders in three ways. First, some prefectural leaders are concurrent standing members of provincial party committees. Normally, party secretaries of capital cities in provincial units are concurrent standing members of provincial party committees with a rank of vice ministers. So are party secretaries of cities with independent planning status (jihua danlie shi, 计划单列市) such as Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen, and Shenzhen. Party secretaries of important cities such as Suzhou of Jiangsu and Datong of Shanxi are also concurrent standing members of their respective provincial party committees. Second, as a transition, some standing members of a provincial party committee could serve as concurrent vice chairmen of either provincial people’s congress standing committees or provincial people’s political consultative conferences. Out of 11 prefectural-level party secretaries in Shanxi, for instance, two are concurrent vice chairmen of the Shanxi Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee, and one is a concurrent vice chairman of the Shanxi Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference. Li Junming, the party secretary of Xinzhou, and Yue Puyu, the party secretary of Lingfen, are both concurrent vice chairmen of the Shanxi Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee. Li Zhengying, the party secretary of Lvliang, is a vice chairman of the Shanxi Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference. Li Xiaomin, the party secretary of Wuxi and a standing member of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee, for instance, was elected a vice chairman of the Jiangsu Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee in January 2019. Li retired in December 2019 when he was replaced as the party secretary of Wuxi by Huang Qin, the then mayor of Wuxi. These leaders are prefectural leaders with a rank of provincial leaders (vice governors). Third, some prefectural leaders are concurrent vice governors of their provincial units. Ma Chenghai, the mayor of Guyuan City in Ningxia, was elected a vice chairman of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Regional Government in January 2018. Fourth, similar to provincial units where most party secretaries are concurrent chairmen of provincial people’s congress standing committees, prefectural party secretaries are also mostly concurrent chairmen of their municipal people’s congress standing committees. Most prefectural party secretaries in Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi, for instance, are concurrent chairmen of their municipal people’s congress standing committees. Out of 14 city party secretaries in Hunan, 12 are concurrent chairmen of their municipal people’s congress standing committees. Out of these 12, two are also vice chairmen of the Hunan Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference. Yi Pengfei, the party secretary of Linzhou, and Peng Guopu, the party secretary of Huaihua, assume three posts simultaneously: in addition to their party position, they are concurrent chairmen of their municipal people’s congress standing committees and vice chairmen of the Hunan Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference.

26  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Out of 21 city party secretaries in Guangdong, 16 are concurrent chairmen of their municipal people’s congress standing committees. The Party Secretary of Guangzhou, Zhang Shuofu, and the Party Secretary of Shenzhen, Wang Weizhong, are not concurrent chairmen of their municipal people’s congress standing committees because they are concurrent standing members of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee. The Party Secretary of Jieyang, Ye Niuping, is a major exception because he concurrently is the mayor of Jieyang as well. Ye was just promoted as the party secretary of Jieyang in May 2019. It is likely that he will give up his position as the mayor and take up the position of the chairman of the Jieyang Municipal Table 2.2 Province a

Number of top prefectural leaders in China Party b

Government c

Congress d

Consultative

Posts

Total

Conference e Beijing

0

0

0

0

0

0

Tianjin

0

0

0

0

0

0

Hebei

11

11

11

11

44

39

Shanxi

11

11

11

11

44

38

Neimenggu

12

12

12

12

48

43

Liaoning

14

14

14

14

56

52

Jilin

9

9

9

9

36

34

Heilongjiang

13

13

13

13

52

50

Shanghai

0

0

0

0

0

0

Jiangsu

13

13

13

13

52

49

Zhejiang

11

11

11

11

44

40

Anhui

16

16

16

16

64

55

Fujian

9

9

9

9

36

33

Jiangxi

11

11

11

11

44

40

Shandong

17

17

17

17

68

64

Henan

18

18

18

18

72

68

Hubei

17

17

17

17

68

61

Hunan

14

14

14

14

56

40

Guangdong

21

21

21

21

84

63

Guangxi

14

14

14

14

56

39

Hainan

4

4

4

4

16

13

Chongqing

0

0

0

0

0

0

Sichuan

21

21

21

21

84

81

Guizhou

9

9

9

9

36

34

Yunnan

16

16

16

16

64

59

Tibet

7

7

7

7

28

24

Shaanxi

10

10

10

10

40

32

Gansu

14

14

14

14

56

51

Qinghai

8

8

8

8

32

28

Ningxia

5

5

5

5

20

17

Xinjiang

14

14

14

14

56

52

Notes: a This refers to provinces, centrally administered cities, and autonomous regions, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao are not included. b This includes party secretaries of the prefectural-level units. c This includes heads of government at the prefectural level. d This includes the prefectural-level people’s congress. e This includes chairman of the prefectural-level people’s political consultative conference. Source: http://​district​.ce​.cn/​zt/​rwk/​index​.shtml.

Selection of local leaders in China  27 People’s Congress Standing Committee soon. Out of 14 city party secretaries in Guangxi, 12 are concurrent chairmen of their municipal people’s congress standing committees. The Party Secretary of Nanning, Wang Xiaodong, is a concurrent standing member of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Regional Party Committee, as is the case for all party secretaries of provincial capitals. The Party Secretary of Beihai, Wang Naixue, is the only city party secretary in Guangxi who does not assume any other posts. There is a large number of top prefectural leaders in China (Table 2.2). There are 1,356 posts for number one leaders in the four categories of prefectural leaders but these posts are currently filled by 1,199 individuals due to various overlaps and vacancies. It should be noted that the four centrally administered municipalities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing do not have prefectural-level units. The actual number of top prefectural leaders in China in fact is much larger. For example, there are 11 cities in Zhejiang at the prefectural level with only 44 posts for the number one positions in four categories. But there are more posts for top leadership at this level in each of the 11 cities in each of the four categories. Hangzhou, the capital city, for instance, has 15 members in its CCP standing committee. Ningbo has 12 CCP standing members. And all the other cities have 10 CCP standing members. Moreover, there are at least eight government leaders (including mayor, vice mayors, and secretary general), seven congressional leaders (including chairman and vice chairmen), and seven consultative conference leaders (including chairman and vice chairmen) in each city. Altogether, there are 419 posts (Table 2.3). Table 2.3

Number of top prefectural leaders in Zhejiang

Cities a

Party b

Government c

Congress d

Consultative Conference e Posts

Hangzhou

15

11

7

10

43

Ningbo

12

8

7

10

37

Wenzhou

10

9

9

4

32

Jiaxing

10

11

9

11

41

Huzhou

10

8

9

10

37

Shaoxing

10

8

9

11

38

Jinhua

10

10

9

10

39

Quzhou

10

8

9

10

37

Zhoushan

10

10

10

10

40

Taizhou

10

10

9

10

39

Lishui

10

10

9

7

36

Notes: a This refers to prefectural-level cities in Zhejiang. b This includes standing members of the prefectural-level city party committees. c This includes mayors, vice mayors, and secretary generals of government at the prefectural level. d This includes chairman and vice chairmen of the prefectural-level people’s congress. e This includes chairman and vice chairmen of the prefectural-level people’s political consultative conference. Source: http://​district​.ce​.cn/​zt/​rwk/​index​.shtml.

COUNTY LEADERS Top county leaders are also distributed in the four categories of the party, the government, the congress, and the political consultative conference apparatuses (Table 2.4). The number one posts in all four categories in all county-level units alone amount to 11,404 in China. The

28  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China actual number of top leadership in all county-level units would be at least 10 times larger if we count all top leaders at this level, including all standing members of the party committee, all senior leaders of the government, all chairmen and vice chairmen as well as secretary generals of the people’s congress, and all chairmen and vice chairmen as well as secretary generals of the political consultative conference. Take Xiangcheng District of Suzhou in Jiangsu as an example. The number one posts in four categories are four. They are Party Secretary Gu Haidong, Head of Government Zhang Yongqing, People’s Congress Standing Committee Chairwoman Qu Lingni, and People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Chen Jianguo. However, there are many more senior Table 2.4

Number of top county leaders in China

Province a

Party b

Government c

Congress d

Consultative Conference e

Posts

Beijing

16

16

16

16

64

Tianjin

16

16

16

16

64

Hebei

168

168

168

168

672

Shanxi

119

119

119

119

476

Neimenggu

103

103

103

103

412

Liaoning

100

100

100

100

400

Jilin

60

60

60

60

240

Heilongjiang

128

128

128

128

512

Shanghai

16

16

16

16

64

Jiangsu

96

96

96

96

384

Zhejiang

89

89

89

89

356

Anhui

105

105

105

105

420

Fujian

85

85

85

85

340

Jiangxi

100

100

100

100

400

Shandong

137

137

137

137

548

Henan

158

158

158

158

632

Hubei

103

103

103

103

412

Hunan

122

122

122

122

488

Guangdong

121

121

121

121

484

Guangxi

111

111

111

111

444

Hainan

23

23

23

23

92

Chongqing

38

38

38

38

152

Sichuan

183

183

183

183

732

Guizhou

88

88

88

88

352

Yunnan

129

129

129

129

516

Tibet

74

74

74

74

296

Shaanxi

107

107

107

107

428

Gansu

86

86

86

86

344

Qinghai

43

43

43

43

172

Ningxia

22

22

22

22

88

Xinjiang

105

105

105

105

420

Notes: a This refers to provinces, centrally administered cities, and autonomous regions, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao are not included. b This includes party secretaries of the county-level units. c This includes heads of government at the county level. d This includes chairman of the county-level people’s congress. e This includes chairman of the county-level people’s political consultative conference. Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China (2018), Table 1.1.

Selection of local leaders in China  29 leaders in the District. In addition to the party secretary, there are two deputy secretaries and eight more standing members. In addition to the head of government, there are 10 deputy heads of government. In addition to the chairwoman, there are four vice chairmen of the people’s congress standing committee. In addition to the chairman, there are four vice chairmen and one secretary general of the people’s political consultative conference. Altogether, there are 33 posts filled by 29 individuals because of four overlaps between the party committee and the government.

SELECTING LOCAL LEADERS IN CHINA: RULES AND NORMS In the era of Mao Zedong of 1949‒1976, local leaders in China were selected for their political loyalty and work experiences. In the era of Deng Xiaoping, the selection of local leaders began to be institutionalized. Under Jiang Zemin, the Central Committee of the CCP introduced a temporary regulation on selecting leading cadres of the party and the government in 1995 (Bo 1999, 2004) and matriculated the regulation in 2002. The regulation was revised in December 2013 again and released in January 2014. The regulation was further revised and released in March 2019. According to the regulations, in order to be a leader, one needs to have political loyalty, appropriate educational credentials, and relevant work experiences. He/she should be promoted one step at a time and will have to be transferred away if he/she reaches a 10-year limit in one post, and he/she should follow the principle of avoidance in his/her appointment. Political Loyalty Article 3 of this most recent version of the regulation shows that political loyalty has again become the top criterion, as it was in the Mao era. Local leaders as well as national leaders can be appointed or removed simply because of their political problems. Chinese political leaders need to study Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (Xi Jinping’s signature ideology that could be anything), support General Secretary Xi Jinping as the core of the CCP, and obey the CCP Center in thoughts and actions (Article 7 Item 1). Educational Credentials All local leaders are required to have at least a three-year college education. Candidates for leading positions at the department/bureau level and above need to have a four-year university education. They also need to go through requisite training in party schools or administrative schools. Sadly, there still is a major mismatch between social elites and political elites in China. Since Deng Xiaoping reintroduced competitive college entrance examinations in 1977, 40 classes have graduated with bachelor’s degrees in various fields, leading to more than 108 million graduates (Table 2.5). Nevertheless, a large number of top local leaders has not gone through the regular channels of higher education. Among 62 provincial party secretaries and governors, 38.71 percent (24 people) have not received a four-year college education. Ten people have received a three-year college education, eight people studied for a two-year program, and six people have never received any formal college education. Of course, they have all later gone through some remedial programs to gain enough educational credentials for career development.

30  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 2.5

Number of university graduates in China

Year

Number of graduates

1982

457,000

1983

335,000

1984

287,000

1985

316,000

1986

393,000

1987

532,000

1988

554,000

1989

576,200

1990

613,600

1991

614,300

1992

604,200

1993

570,700

1994

637,400

1995

805,400

1996

838,600

1997

829,100

1998

829,800

1999

847,600

2000

949,800

2001

1,036,300

2002

1,337,300

2003

1,877,500

2004

2,391,000

2005

3,068,000

2006

3,774,700

2007

4,477,900

2008

5,120,000

2009

5,311,000

2010

5,754,000

2011

6,082,000

2012

6,247,000

2013

6,387,000

2014

6,594,000

2015

6,809,000

2016

7,042,000

2017

7,358,000

2018

7,533,000

2019

8,340,000

Total

108,130,400

Sources: National Bureau of Statistics of China (2018), Table 21.9. http://​www​.360doc​.com/​content/​18/​0517/​20/​ 40694459​_ 754776858.shtml; http://​www​.stats​.gov​.cn/​tjsj/​zxfb/​201902/​t20190228​_1651265​.html; https://​baijiahao​ .baidu. com/s?id=1618485573722459041&wfr=spider&for=pc.

Work Experiences Candidates for leading posts at the county level should have at least five years of work experiences and two years of grassroots work experiences; candidates for leading posts above the county level should have gained experiences of at least two positions at a lower level. Candidates for promotions to leading posts above the county level need to have worked in

Selection of local leaders in China  31 a deputy position for at least two years when they are promoted from deputy positions to chief positions, or to have worked in a chief position for at least three years, when they are promoted from chief positions of a lower level to deputy positions of a higher level. Local leaders should be selected from candidates with local leadership experiences or state-owned enterprise management experiences. Local leaders normally are selected and promoted one step at a time. But there can be exceptions when candidates are particularly outstanding or when circumstances warrant special promotions. Those who have not completed their probation or who have not completed their first year in office should not be considered for further promotion. No one should skip two steps in promotion. Ideally, provincial leaders should come from prefectural leaders, who in turn should come from county leaders. The idea is that those who have managed a county well are good candidates for managing a prefectural-level city; those who are good managers of prefectural-level cities are well prepared to manage provinces. In reality, however, many provincial leaders have never worked as prefectural leaders and many prefectural leaders have never worked as county leaders. Take Liu Jiayi, the party secretary of Shandong, for example. Born in August 1956, Liu worked in the countryside for more than two years as an “educated youth” before being admitted as a student in a two-year program for finance in Sichuan. Upon his graduation in February 1980, he began his long career in the finance and audit system until he became the head of the National Audit Office of the People’s Republic of China in March 2008. After 37 years in the finance and audit system, he was transferred to Shandong as the party secretary in March 2017. He had had zero experiences as a local leader before his Shandong appointment but now has been entrusted to lead a province of 100 million. He has never been a county leader, nor has he ever been a prefectural leader. Moreover, he has never even been seconded to any locality to gain local management experiences. Similarly, Shen Yiqin, the governor of Guizhou, got her first local appointment as a deputy party secretary of Qiannan Prefecture with a rank of chief department in 2001. She had earned her rank through the Guizhou Party School. Starting as an assistant professor in January 1982, she became a vice president of the Guizhou Party School in August 1995. She was promoted to be a standing member of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee in April 2007 while she was a deputy party secretary of Tongren Prefecture. She has never been a county leader before being appointed as a prefectural leader, and she has never been a chief prefectural leader. Transfers Local leaders in China are required to be transferred under at least three conditions. First, they should be transferred because of the work need. Second, they are transferred to a different location to improve their leadership skills. Third, they must be transferred if they have stayed in the same position for 10 years. Transfers among provinces and between provinces and central ministries are more frequent than expected. Since the end of the 18th CCP Congress in October 2012, several provincial leaders have been transferred to different places more than once. For example, Li Qiang, the CCP secretary of Shanghai, has experienced two transfers since October 2012. At the 18th CCP Congress, Li was elected as an alternate member of the Central Committee because he was a deputy party secretary of Zhejiang. After the 18th CCP Congress, he was promoted to be the governor of Zhejiang in 2013. He was transferred to Jiangsu as the party secretary in 2016 and was further transferred to Shanghai as the party secretary in October 2017, after he became a Politburo member at the 19th Party Congress.

32  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Similarly, Li Xi, the CCP secretary of Guangdong, has also experienced two transfers since October 2012. He was transferred from Shanghai where he had been a deputy party secretary to Liaoning as the acting governor in 2014. He was promoted to be the party secretary of Liaoning within a year and was further transferred to Guangdong as the party secretary in October 2017 after he had been made a Politburo member at the 19th Party Congress. Avoidance Local leaders should avoid their relatives, including their spouses, direct relatives, indirect relatives within three generations, and relatives through marriage. Local leaders should also avoid the county where they grow up. They should not be leading cadres of the CCP and the government of the county. Nor should they be leading cadres in disciplinary inspection committees, organization departments, courts, procuratorates, and public security bureaus of the county. They should also try to avoid similar positions at the prefecture-level unit where they grow up. However, it is not a problem to assume leadership positions in their home provinces. According to the Law of Self-Autonomy of the Ethnic Regions of the People’s Republic of China, chief government leaders of autonomous regions have to be local people of the region. For this reason, chairmen/chairwomen of the five autonomous regions are all assumed by people from these regions. Moreover, three individuals have also assumed positions of chief government leaders in their home provinces. Shen Yiqin, a native of Guizhou, is the governor of Guizhou. Xu Dazhe, a native of Hunan, is the governor of Hunan. And Wu Zhenglong, a native of Jiangsu, is the governor of Jiangsu. Of course, Shen is different from Xu and Wu. Shen has grown up and been working in her home province all her life. Xu and Wu have spent a significant part of their lives away from their home provinces until they returned to their home provinces as top provincial leaders. All the other provincial party secretaries and governors are serving in other provinces. In general, people from three provinces dominate the current provincial leadership: Shandong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu. Out of 62 leaders, 11 are from Shandong, taking 17.74 percent of the total. Zhejiang and Jiangsu each have contributed six provincial leaders. Retirement In the era of Mao Zedong, there was no retirement. Political leaders lost their jobs either for political reasons or due to death. Deng Xiaoping made efforts to end the life-long tenure by introducing retirement. In 1978, with the approval of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, the State Council issued a regulation on the retirement of cadres who are old, weak, sick, and infirm. According to the regulation, cadres who meet one of three conditions should retire. First, those who have reached the age of 60 for males and 55 for females could retire. Second, those who have reached the age of 50 for males and 45 for females and who have worked for 10 years with a certificate from hospitals that they have completely lost their capacity to work could retire. Third, those who have completely lost their capacity to work with a certificate from hospitals due to their work injuries could retire. In 1982, the Central Committee of the CCP issued a decision to set up a retirement system for senior cadres. According to this document, leaders of chief ministerial rank should retire at the age of 65 and others at the age of 60. In other words, chief provincial leaders such as provincial party secretaries and governors could stay on until 65, but deputy provincial leaders

Selection of local leaders in China  33 and other local leaders will have to retire at the age of 60. Strangely, this regulation has never been updated. The current provincial leadership is old. The average age of provincial party secretaries is 63.4 years old, with the youngest at 58 and the oldest at 66. Among 31 provincial party secretaries, only three are 60 or younger and could possibly remain in their posts after the 20th CCP Congress in 2022. Provincial governors are about four years younger. The average age of provincial governors is 59.6 years old, with the youngest at 56 and the oldest at 67. Among 31 provincial governors, only five will have to retire in the next three years and the rest would likely remain in their posts or get promoted in the near future.

THEORETICAL DEBATES OVER LEADERSHIP SELECTION IN CHINA There are two opposing views on the selection of local leaders in China. On the one hand, some scholars argue that local leaders are selected for their merits because of political institutionalization. On the other hand, some other scholars insist that many Chinese local leaders are selected because of their personal connections. Meritocracy and Selection of Local Leaders The dominant view in the scholarly literature on local leaders in China is that due to political institutionalization in the era of economic reforms, meritocracy has become a more important factor in selecting local leaders in China. Based on biographical data of more than 2,500 provincial leaders and provincial data on economic growth and revenue contributions from 1949 to 1998, for instance, the present author produced a performance model and conducted statistical tests on its hypotheses. As a result, I discovered that the political mobility of provincial leaders, especially in the era of economic reform, is essentially determined by the economic performance of their provinces. The worse the record of economic performance, the more likely it is that the provincial leader will be demoted. Moreover, the revenue contributions of a province to the center during the provincial leader’s tenure is also a determinant of the political mobility of the leader (Bo 2002, 143–149). Evidently, there have been new twists to this performance model in the 21st century: some provincial leaders have gone all the way for their promotion by having manipulated their provincial economic growth data. Chen Qiufa, a deputy party secretary and the acting governor and governor of Liaoning from April 2015 to October 2017 and the party secretary of Liaoning since January 2017, openly admitted in his government report in January 2017 that Liaoning failed to reach its targets in the gross regional product, additional value produced by large industrial enterprises, fixed asset investment, and export in 2016 partly due to economic data fabrications when Wang Min was the party secretary of Liaoning from November 2009 to April 2015. After Wang’s transfer to Beijing in July 2015 as a vice chairman of the Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee of the 12th National People’s Congress, he was disciplined on August 10, 2016 for serious violations of the party discipline and was given a life sentence on August 4, 2017 for corruption. To some extent, Wang was used as a scapegoat for all of Liaoning’s problems.

34  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Liaoning of Wang Min is not alone in inflating economic data. Tianjin and Inner Mongolia have also made similar confessions about their exaggerated gross regional products, budgetary revenues, and additional values produced by large industrial enterprises. The gross regional product of Binhai New Area in Tianjin was registered as 1,000.2 billion yuan in 2016, but was adjusted by Tianjin officials in 2018 to be only 665.4 billion yuan. The actual gross regional product had been artificially inflated by more than one third (i.e., 334.8 billion yuan). Similarly, Inner Mongolia also openly admitted that their revenue in 2016 had been inflated by 53 billion yuan, 26.3 percent of the original figure and that their additional value produced by large industrial enterprises in 2016 had been artificially inflated by 290 billion yuan, 40 percent of the original figure. Obviously, under the pressure of delivering high performance for promotions, provincial leaders have had strong incentives to fabricate high growth data if they could not actually deliver them. Evidently, Chinese provincial leaders have been inflating their gross product since the beginning of the 21st century (Figure 2.1).

Sources: China Statistical Yearbook (2019), Table 3.1 and Table 3.9; China Statistical Yearbooks (2000‒2018), Table 3.9; China Statistical Yearbook (1999), Table 3.8; Author’s database.

Figure 2.1

China’s GDP: National and provincial totals (billion yuan) (1978‒2018)

Since 2002, provincial totals have always exceeded national totals with no exceptions. Provincial surpluses seem to have followed political cycles in China (Figure 2.2). Generally speaking, in the year of the National CCP Congress when personnel have already been decided, there is less incentive to inflate provincial economic data. In 2002 when the 16th National CCP Congress was held, there was a modest inflation of provincial economic growth (by 37.41 billion yuan). The very next year, 2003, the figure was almost 10 times larger; the following year (2004) it more than doubled the previous year (2003); the year of 2005 was more than five times as much as the year of 2003; the year of 2006 peaked with an inflation of almost 2 trillion yuan. The inflation came down significantly in 2007 when the 17th National CCP Congress was held. But the following year (2008) it resumed the upward trend, followed by increasing

Selection of local leaders in China  35 exaggerations in subsequent years until 2011 when inflation peaked again at a much higher level (more than 4 trillion yuan). With a political transition from the fourth generation leadership to the fifth generation leadership at the 18th National Party Congress in 2012, provincial leaders lost incentives to make up their numbers. In 2013, the inflation reached the historical high of 4,459.52 billion yuan. With the nation-wide anti-corruption campaign in the past seven years, Chinese provincial leaders have backpedaled on their economic data manipulations and the provincial surpluses have gradually come down. However, in 2018, after substantial adjustments, provincial totals still exceeded national totals by about 1.5 trillion yuan.

Source: Author’s database.

Figure 2.2

Provincial surpluses (billion yuan)

PERSONAL CONNECTIONS IN SELECTING CHINESE LOCAL LEADERS In a culture where personal connections play a very important role in social life, it is not very convincing to argue that personal connections do not play any role in political life. In fact, there has been a long line of arguments for personal connections in selecting political leaders in China in terms of factionalism in the literature (Nathan 1973; Domes 1984; Bo 1996, 2007a, 2010, 2018). Jürgen Domes, for instance, suggested that Chinese local leaders could be selected because of their backgrounds, including common regional origin (tong-xiang), common educational background (tong-xue) or common organizational experiences over many years (tong-hang) (Domes 1984, 27). To this list, one may add common experiences of going to the same village as “educated youth,” joining the same units of the People’s Liberation Army as comrades, or going to the same brothel as customers.

36  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Based on the complete information on the 17th Central Committee of the CCP, I conducted a systematic study of four factional groups: the Shanghai Gang, the Qinghua Clique, Princelings, and the Youth League Group. I generated a power index for all four groups and suggested the decline of the Shanghai Gang and the Qinghua Clique and the expansion of the Princelings and the Youth League Group in the 17th Central Committee. Based on their personal ties, I also produced a group cohesion index for all of them and concluded that the Youth League was the most powerful factional group in the Central Committee (Bo 2010, 131‒173). Altogether, 82 members of the 17th Central Committee (including 41 full members and 41 alternate members) have been identified as people with youth league backgrounds. They are further classified as “central cadres” (i.e., those who have worked in the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) on a full-time basis) and “local cadres” (i.e., those who have worked in the local apparatuses of the Chinese Communist Youth League). Although the Youth League Group may function in Chinese politics as a corporate group, its inner circle, members of the Secretariat of the CCYL in the 1980s are members of a factional group. They know each other personally and have worked with one another closely (Bo 2010, 147‒165). Probably for this reason, one may find numerous provincial leaders with youth league backgrounds under Hu Jintao. In 2007, there were 55 members of the 17th Central Committee members with the youth league background who were also local leaders. They include five provincial party secretaries, 15 provincial governors, one provincial chairman of the people’s congress, 11 provincial deputy party secretaries, 13 provincial party committee standing members, six vice governors, three prefectural-level city party secretaries, and one prefectural-level city mayor (Table 2.6). These people were subsequently further promoted under Hu Jintao. Out of the fifteen governors, for instance, six were later appointed as provincial party secretaries and two (Hu Chunhua and Han Zheng) were concurrent members of the Politburo. However, their selection as local leaders should not be credited to their personal connections alone. The fact that youth league cadres enjoy relatively more rapid promotions is partly due to their qualifications as college graduates with a high rank at a young age. A graduate of Peking University, for instance, Hu Chunhua obtained a rank of deputy department at the age of 26, a rank of chief department at the age of 29, and a rank of vice minister at the age of 34. When Hu was appointed as the acting governor of Hebei in April 2008 with a rank of full minister, he had just turned 45. Nevertheless, the rise of Xi Jinping’s former colleagues from Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai in Chinese provinces seems to corroborate the impression of personal connections. Out of 31 provincial party secretaries in 2019, for instance, 14 (45.16 percent) are directly or indirectly connected to Xi Jinping. The Party Secretary of Beijing (Cai Qi), the Party Secretary of Shanghai (Li Qiang), the Party Secretary of Chongqing (Chen Min’er), the Party Secretary of Jilin (Bayanqolu), the Party Secretary of Jiangxi (Liu Qi), the Party Secretary of Fujian (Yu Weiguo), the Party Secretary of Hunan (Du Jiahao), the Party Secretary of Hainan (Liu Xigui), and the Party Secretary of Yunnan (Chen Hao) have all worked with Xi Jinping in Fujian, Zhejiang or Shanghai. In sum, institutional loyalty based on formal superior–subordinate relationships is important but personal loyalty based on common work experiences is a more important factor in selecting top local leaders. Apparently, there is no contradiction to select local leaders in China on both merits and personal connections. It is likely that those who are promoted based on personal connections might have longer learning curves but their personal loyalty would more than compensate for their capability deficiencies at politically important conjunctures.

Selection of local leaders in China  37 Table 2.6

Youth league cadres as Chinese local leaders in 2007

Name

Home

Birth

CC Membership

Workplace

Title

Ji Bingxuan

Henan

1952

Full

Heilongjiang

Party Secretary

Liu Qibao

Anhui

1953

Full

Sichuan

Party Secretary

Qiang Wei

Jiangsu

1953

Full

Qinghai

Party Secretary

Zhang Baoshun

Hebei

1950

Full

Shanxi

Party Secretary

Zhang Qingli

Shandong

1951

Full

Tibet

Party Secretary

Zhou Qiang

Hubei

1960

Full

Hunan

Governor

Hu Chunhua

Hubei

1963

Full

Hebei

Governor

Han Zheng

Zhejiang

1954

Full

Shanghai

Mayor

Meng Xuenong

Shandong

1949

Full

Shanxi

Governor

Huang Huahua

Guangdong

1946

Full

Guangdong

Governor

Li Chengyu (Hui)

Shaanxi

1946

Full

Henan

Governor

Jiang Daming

Shandong

1953

Full

Shandong

Governor

Luo Baoming

Tianjin

1952

Full

Hainan

Governor

Song Xiuyan (f.)

Tianjin

1955

Full

Qinghai

Governor

Huang Xiaojing

Fujian

1946

Full

Fujian

Governor

Yuan Chunqing

Hunan

1952

Full

Shaanxi

Governor

Qin Guangrong

Hunan

1950

Full

Yunnan

Governor

Han Changfu

N/A

1954

Full

Jilin

Governor

Li Zhanshu

Hebei

1950

Alternate

Heilongjiang

Governor

Nur Bekri (Uygur)

Xinjiang

1961

Alternate

Xinjiang

Chairman

Chen Zhenggao

Liaoning

1952

Alternate

Liaoning

Governor

Wang Sanyun

Shandong

1952

Alternate

Fujian

Deputy Secretary

Xia Baolong

Tianjin

1952

Alternate

Zhejiang

Deputy Secretary

Liu Yupu

Shandong

1949

Alternate

Guangdong

Deputy Secretary

Zhang Xuan (f.)

Hebei

1958

Alternate

Chongqing

Deputy Secretary

Wang Rulin

Henan

1953

Alternate

Jilin

Deputy Secretary

Xing Yuanmin

Shandong

1949

Alternate

Tianjin

Deputy Secretary

Yang Gang

Hebei

1953

Alternate

Xinjiang

Deputy Secretary

Zhang Yijiong

Shanghai

1955

Alternate

Tibet

Deputy Secretary

Liu Wei

Shandong

1958

Alternate

Shandong

Deputy Secretary

Luo Lin

Liaoning

1955

Alternate

Liaoning

Deputy Secretary

Mei Kebao

Hunan

1957

Alternate

Hunan

Deputy Secretary

Bayanqolu (Mongolian)

Neimenggu

1955

Alternate

Zhejiang

Standing Member

Shi Lianxi (f.)

Hebei

1952

Alternate

Tianjin

Standing Member

Li Yumei (f.)

Shandong

1956

Alternate

Shandong

Standing Member

Shen Weichen

Shanxi

1956

Alternate

Shanxi

Standing Member

Sun Jinlong

Hubei

1962

Alternate

Anhui

Standing Member

Tang Tao

Hubei

1963

Alternate

Hubei

Standing Member

Ulagan (f. Mongolian)

Neimenggu

1962

Alternate

Neimenggu

Standing Member

Wu Xianguo

Hebei

1956

Alternate

Hebei

Standing Member

Zhao Yong

Hunan

1963

Alternate

Hebei

Standing Member

Luo Zhijun

Liaoning

1951

Alternate

Jiangsu

Standing Member

Ma Biao (Zhuang)

Guangxi

1954

Alternate

Guangxi

Standing Member

Zhu Xiaodan

Zhejiang

1953

Alternate

Guangdong

Standing Member

Song Airong (f.)

Henan

1959

Alternate

Xinjiang

Standing Member

Li Ke (Zhuang)

Guangxi

1956

Alternate

Henan

Vice Governor

Fu Zhifang

Henan

1956

Alternate

Hebei

Vice Governor

Ji Lin

Shanghai

1962

Alternate

Beijing

Vice Governor

Liu Hui (f. Hui)

Tianjin

1959

Alternate

Ningxia

Vice Governor

38  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Name

Home

Birth

CC Membership

Workplace

Title

Ren Yaping

Neimenggu

1952

Alternate

Neimenggu

Vice Governor

Jin Zhenji (Korean)

Jilin

1959

Alternate

Jilin

Vice Governor

Shen Suli (f.)

Jiangsu

1958

Alternate

Anhui

City Secretary

Yu Yuanhui (Yao)

Guangxi

1964

Alternate

Guangxi

City Secretary

Wu Jihai (Miao)

Hunan

1953

Alternate

Hunan

City Secretary

Lei Chunmei (f. She)

Fujian

1959

Alternate

Fujian

City Mayor

Source: Bo (2010), Table 4.5, 149‒152.

RESEARCH METHODS, THEORETICAL GAPS AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Because of large datasets available, scholars tend to use statistical analyses to uncover patterns of political mobility at the local levels. As mentioned earlier, I studied four categories of provincial leaders (provincial party secretaries, provincial deputy secretaries, provincial governors, and provincial vice governors) over the period of 1949 to 1998 and used statistical models to analyze correlations between economic variables of provinces and the political mobility of provincial leaders (Bo 2002). I also studied provincial military leaders as standing members of provincial party committees (Bo 2007b). Pierre Landry looked at prefectural-level elites with a similar statistical model (Landry 2008). I have also conducted the first systematic study of county leaders in China with Jiangsu as an example (Bo 2009). Unlike elite studies at the national level where case studies are predominant, it is rare to focus on individual cases at the local levels. But one may find excellent examples such as David Shambaugh’s study of Zhao Ziyang in Sichuan (Shambaugh 1984) and David S.G. Goodman’s study of Shanxi Party Secretary Hu Fuguo (Goodman 1996). In recent years, the field of Chinese local leadership studies has been flourishing because of the availability of information on local leaders and because of the availability of analytical tools. It is easy to collect a set of local leaders in China and to conduct a statistical analysis of their patterns of political mobility. However, there are at least three major gaps in the literature. First, few studies of local leaders have been done in the context of local history, local culture, and local political dynamics. Few scholars have conducted field research in a particular locality to discover particular patterns of political mobility in a local context. A major exception is Feng Junqi’s study of local cadres in Zhong County in Henan (冯军旗 2010). Second, more case studies of individual leaders are needed to understand nuances of the mechanisms of selection and appointment of local leaders. As more information is becoming available due to the anti-corruption campaign, it will become easier to construct the political network of local leaders. Third, studies of local leaders are mostly descriptive. They do not offer much clue about future development of the management of local leadership in China. Studies of Chinese local leaders have strong practical implications. First, Chinese local leaders themselves would be very much interested in genuine knowledge generated by such studies. This is because the knowledge would be very useful for their career advancement plans. Second, some local leaders are in fact national leaders as well. Aspiring politicians for top leadership positions at the Center would learn a great deal from studying the selection of local leaders in China. Third, studies of the behavior of local leaders will shed light on how Chinese localities at different levels operate, which have strong implications for China as a whole.

Selection of local leaders in China  39

FUTURE STUDIES OF THE SELECTION OF CHINESE LOCAL LEADERS In the foreseeable future, studies of Chinese local leaders will continue to benefit from the availability of data but need to be alert to drastic changes in the management of these leaders. On the one hand, because of rapid turnovers at all levels of local leadership, it is challenging to stay current with the local leadership at all levels. On the other hand, because of possible changes in the management of local leaders in China, there would be changes in selecting local leaders in the coming years. First, it is not sufficient to study local leaders alone. Future studies should pay attention to changes at the national elite politics in China. With the changes of elite politics, there would be new norms in China. This is a subject of study for political elites at all levels because this is their political ecosystem. Second, future scholars should focus on individual cases and try to come up with a complete story based on in-depth studies of individuals. Preferably, scholars should base their studies on extensive interviews with the local leaders concerned, their relatives, their colleagues, their superiors, and their friends, if possible. Third, it will be useful to conduct some comparative case studies to understand basic political dynamics and different mechanisms. It is likely that different cases have their unique features but they must share similar dynamics through different mechanisms. Fourth, scholars should try to go beyond being simply descriptive in their studies and to make predictions based on the trend of local leadership management. It is helpful to know the patterns of the past but it is far more useful to know the trend of the future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Professor Xiaowei Zang for his invitation to join this project, Professor Hon Chan for his helpful comments on an earlier draft, and for participants to the conference on public administration in China for their questions and comments.

ENGLISH REFERENCES Bo, Zhiyue (1996) “Native Local Leaders and Political Mobility in China: Home Province Advantage?” Provincial China 2, 2‒15. Bo, Zhiyue (1999) “Selection and Appointment of Leading Cadres in Post-Deng China.” Chinese Law and Government 32(1), 3‒98. Bo, Zhiyue (2002) Chinese Provincial Leaders: Economic Performance and Political Mobility since 1949. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Bo, Zhiyue (2004) “The Institutionalization of Elite Management in China.” In: Barry Naughton and Dali Yang (eds.), Holding China Together. New York: Cambridge University Press, 70‒100. Bo, Zhiyue (2007a) China’s Elite Politics: Political Transition and Power Balancing. Singapore: World Scientific. Bo, Zhiyue (2007b) “The PLA and the Provinces: The Military District and Local Issues.” In: David Finkelstein and Kristen Gunness (eds.), Civil–Military Relations in Today’s China: Swimming in a New Sea. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 96‒130. Bo, Zhiyue (2009) “Political Mobility of County Leaders in China: The Case of Jiangsu.” Provincial China 1(2), 76‒96.

40  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Bo, Zhiyue (2010) China’s Elite Politics: Governance and Democratization. Singapore: World Scientific. Bo, Zhiyue (2018) “Factional Politics in the Party-state Apparatus.” In: Willy Wo-Lap Lam (ed.), Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party. London: Routledge, 122–134. Domes, Jürgen (1984) “Intra-Elite Group Formation and Conflict in the PRC.” In: David S.G. Goodman (ed.), Groups and Politics in the People’s Republic of China. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 26‒39. Goodman, David (1996) “King Coal and Secretary Hu: Shanxi’s Third Modernisation,” unpublished manuscript. Landry, Pierre (2008) Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party’s Control of Local Elites in the Post-Mao Era. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nathan, Andrew J. (1973) “A Factionalist Model for CCP Politics.” The China Quarterly 53, 34‒66. National Bureau of Statistics of China (2018) China Statistical Yearbook (中国统计年鉴). Beijing: China Statistics Press. Shambaugh, David (1984) The Making of a Premier: Zhao Ziyang’s Provincial Career. New York: Routledge.

CHINESE REFERENCE 冯军旗 (2010) 《中县干部》. 北京: 北京大学社会学博士论文. https://​www​.dyhzdl​.cn/​k/​doc/​2​7​8​4​1​2​ 8​1​b​9​d​5​2​8​e​a​8​1​c​7​7​9​d​0​.html accessed on June 11, 2020.

3. Civil service pay in China Shuo Chen and Hon S. Chan

It is important to examine civil service pay in the People’ Republic of China (PRC) since it is crucial to human resource management, government efficiency and integrity in Chinese public administration. As an important mechanism of public administration, civil service pay provides major support and motivation for individual bureaucrats in China and many other countries. At the organizational level, civil service pay policies are correlated with corruption control and play a key role in regulating bureaucrats’ behaviors and government performance. The civil service pay system in the PRC is different from its Western counterparts because of its high integration of politics in civil service. For an extended period of time, China’s public sector pay was managed in a centralized and unified manner in the era of the planned economy. This situation continued until the mid-1980s when the PRC spearheaded the reform. With the attempt to adjust the relationship between politics and administration, China’s leaders began to make efforts to create a division of responsibility between the general civil service and cadre personnel. In 1993, the State Council (国务院 1993a) formally established a civil service system, and introduced new civil service pay policies as an integral part of the civil service system. However, China’s civil service and its pay system still highlight the centrality of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After the issue of Civil Service Law (CSL) (全国人 民代表大会 2005) in 2005, the (CCP) has brought back a historical pattern – it holds tight control over leadership change and management at various levels, making itself into a political institution that has become the source of both civil service empowerment and control (Chan and Li 2007). In this light, it is not likely that China’s civil service system can escape from the CCP control and can independently function.

AN HISTORICAL REVIEW OF CIVIL SERVICE PAY REFORMS (1953‒2006) In the early years of the PRC, China established a unified cadre personnel system in which party and government officials, staff of service units (事业单位), military officers and employees of state-owned enterprises were collectively referred to as “cadres.” At that time, public sector employees were basically remunerated on the basis of a supply system (供给 制), a practice inherited from the revolutionary days. They were paid a minimum of food and daily necessities in kind (clothing, shoes, socks, towel, soap, etc.) supplemented by various seasonal allowances (such as festival allowance, health care subsidy, childbearing subsidy, etc.) in either kind (usually pork) or a small sum of money. The compensation could only meet the basic needs of employees. According to the Provisional Regulations on the Pay Standard of New Employees of Departments Directly Subordinate to the Party Central (关于中央直属机关新参加工作人 员工资标准的试行规定) (政务院 1950), employees were remunerated either by a supply system or a salary system (薪金制) depending on the location a cadre was attached to. This 41

42  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China method used “a jin (斤, half a kilo) of rice” as the unit of measurement owing to the instability of commodity prices during the period. As stipulated, the compensation of administrative employees was divided into 25 grades, ranging from the state president (grade 1, monthly payment equivalent to 3,400 jins of rice) to service personnel such as messengers and cleaners at the lowest level (grade 25, monthly payment equivalent to 120 jins of rice). By establishing a 25-level pay scale, the Regulations helped to mark the difference in terms of the level of appointment, job responsibility, contribution, career path and the like. In 1952, the then Administration Council further developed a 29-rank pay scale, with different levels of monetary values attached to each rank. The “salary point” (工资分) system, a mechanism of converting food, clothing and allowance points into money, was adopted to calculate employees’ remuneration. This modification allowed a number of employees to receive cash while others continued to be paid in kind (Chew 1990a). Generally speaking, the public sector pay system in the early years of the PRC was strongly egalitarian. It reflected the idea of “destratification” and the orientation to narrow the income differences between social groups and occupations (Zhou et al. 1997). Since then, civil service pay system in China has experienced four rounds of major reforms respectively. The general aims of reform policies are two-fold: adjusting pay levels to match rising living costs and experimenting with various incentive mechanisms to better motivate individual performance (Cooke 2004).

THE 1953‒1956 PAY REFORM Recovering from the chaos caused by war, the economic situation got better, and the commodity price became stable in the mid-1950s. Under these circumstances, the first reform took place in several waves with the aim of eliminating a supply system, alongside the establishment of a rank-based pay system (职务等级工资制). The first wave in 1953 was therefore an effort to put an end to the dual system of paying in kind and cash and to adopt a formal salary-based pay system. With several rounds of adjustments between 1953 and 1955, the State Council then issued the Administrative Order for Implementing the Wage System and the Change to the Monetary Pay System for Working Personnel of State Organizations (国务 院关于国家机关工作人员全部实行工资制和改行货币工资制的命令) (国务院 1955) on August 31, 1955. Subsequently, China officially abolished the salary point system and began to implement a monetary wage system among all the state organ employees. Based on the 29-rank pay grade system built in 1952, the 1955 reform increased the number of ranks by one and placed all cadres in specific ranks with different pay levels (Chew 1990a, 1990b). After the first wave of reform, the monetary salary system was basically implemented all over the country, and a 30-rank pay scale was introduced, with the objective to prominently feature the principle of “distribution according to work.” The second wave was launched in 1956. The main goal was to adjust the pay grades. With the issuing of the Decision of the State Council on the Pay Reform (国务院关于工资改革 的决定) (国务院 1956), the State Council attempted to build a more performance-based pay system in all walks of life. On the basis of different levels of cost of living in localities, the 1956 reform divided the whole nation into 11 pay regions, each of which had its own 30-rank pay system (Table 3.1). Region 1, the lowest cost-of-living areas, was a benchmark; the pay standard increased by around 3 percent for each higher-level pay region. As shown in Table

Civil service pay in China  43 Table 3.1 Rank

Rank-based pay scale of state organ employees, 1956 (unit: ¥) Pay region and corresponding pay scale 5 6 7 8

1

2

3

4

9

10

11

1

560

577

594

611

627

644

661

678

695

711

728

2

505

520

535

551

566

581

596

611

626

642

657

3

450

464

477

490

504

518

531

545

558

572

585

4

400

412

424

436

448

460

472

484

496

508

520

5

360

371

382

393

403

414

425

436

447

457

468

6

320

330

339

349

359

368

378

387

397

407

416

7

280

289

297

305

314

322

331

339

347

356

364

8

250

258

266

273

280

288

295

303

310

318

325

9

220

227

233

240

247

253

260

266

273

280

286

10

190

196

202

207

213

219

224

230

236

242

247

11

170

175

180

186

191

196

201

206

211

216

221

12

150

155

159

164

168

173

177

182

186

191

195

13

135

139

143

147

151

156

160

164

168

172

176

14

120

124

127

131

135

138

142

145

149

153

156

15

108

111

115

118

121

124

128

131

134

137

141

16

96

99

102

105

108

111

114

116

119

122

125

17

86

89

91

94

97

99

102

104

107

109

112

18

76

79

81

83

85

88

90

92

94

97

99

19

68

70

72

74

76

78

80

83

84

87

89

20

61

63

65

67

69

70

72

74

76

78

80

21

54

56

57

59

61

62

64

66

67

69

70

22

49

50

52

53

55

56

57

59

60

62

63

23

43

45

46

47

48

50

51

52

54

55

56

24

38

39

40

41

42

43

45

46

47

48

49

25

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

42

26

29

30

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

36

37

27

26

27

28

29

29

30

31

32

32

33

34

28

24

25

26

26

27

28

29

29

30

31

31

29

22

23

24

24

25

26

26

27

28

28

29

30

20

21

21

22

23

23

24

24

25

26

26

Source: 经管之家 (2012) “1956年国家机关工作人员工资标准表,” February 4. https://​bbs​.pinggu​.org/​a​-1038127​ .html.

3.1, the highest-level salary was 28 times as much as the lowest-level salary. Taking into the regional difference into account, the maximum salary (¥728) was 36.4 times as much as the minimum salary (¥20). Through two waves of reform in 1950s, China reformed its supply system and established a rank-based pay system for state organ employees. This system had two major characteristics. First, it was an entirely rank-based pay system in which official ranks (rather than positions) decided the pay level, and other accompanied fringe benefits. Under the rank-based pay system, a higher salary rank did not necessarily correspond to a higher level of responsibility. This system dampened the enthusiasm of some employees, especially some young or newly recruited professionals who were put at junior levels but assumed important responsibilities. Second, the revamped civil service pay system in the mid-1950s was highly centralized. The State Council not only defined the pay level of all its ministerial leaders but also managed the pay level of cadres at full and vice bureau-level, and administrative staff who were above

44  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China level 10 and regional leaders of provinces, autonomous regions and metropolis. Furthermore, the pay level of leaders of departments, bureaus and cities must be reported to the State Council after being approved by the provincial government. In a one-party state with a highly centralized bureaucratic system, rank was not only the source and symbol of power, but also the determining factor to the level of economic remuneration and other associated benefits. Civil service pay policies during this stage also anchored on two ideas. On the one hand, national leaders realized the need for getting rid of the out-fashioned distribution system in an effort to better motivate job performance. As such, a pay differential system as a tool to encourage skill acquisition and work achievement was essential. Yet, on the other hand, a pay differential system seemed to have contravened the egalitarian ideology of socialism, especially when a large gap between high- and low-level cadres was put in place. As a result, a series of measures was taken by the CCP to compress pay differentials between levels. In October 1959 and February 1960 respectively, the CCP Central gave orders to reduce the pay of high-level cadres (杨奎松 2007). Further, adjustments were made in 1963, 1971 and 1977 to improve the economic remuneration of cadres at the lowest rungs of the hierarchy by raising their levels or salaries (Chew 1990a). Over the next three decades after the 1956 reform, civil service pay still enshrined the principle of egalitarianism. Moreover, due to the party and state’s control over the price of commodities, there was no pressing need or desire to adjust nominal pay relative to the price index (Chan and Ma 2011). As a result, public sector pay remained stagnant between 1957 and 1977 (何宪 2016). According to one account, when comparing the growth rate of gross national product and national income at the same period of time, public sector pay stayed at a low level (石剑/吴质 1993, 63‒64).

THE 1985 PAY REFORM The PRC launched the reform to rejuvenate its political economy in 1978. With the opening up of China to the West, a highly centralized and egalitarian pay system seemed unfitting for the new economic climate and social situation. The most pressing need was to widen income differentials because the new sectors (particularly the private one) had begun to emerge. The general sentiment was in favor of paying employees at market rates, alongside relaxing the control over the price of commodities (石剑/吴质 1993, 94; Chan and Ma 2011). To develop a more competitive public sector pay system in line with the principle of “pay according to work,” the second pay reform was implemented in 1985. This reform aimed at optimizing the pay structure and shifting the rank-based pay system into a position-based one. The CCP Central and the State Council reformed the pay system for public sector employees since July 1, 1985 (中共中央/国务院 1985). This reform reshaped the former rank-based pay structure in which the basic pay (i.e., rank-based pay) accounted for over 90 percent of the total pay and developed a structural pay system (结构工资制). Under the new system, a pay package was comprised of four parts: basic pay (基础工资), position pay (职务工资), seniority allowance (工龄津贴), and bonus pay (奖励工资). Table 3.2 uses the pay grades of positions in provincial governments in Region 6 as an example. Basic pay provided the basic life guarantee for public sector employees and it was identical for cadres at different ranks in the same pay region. Position pay was determined by the responsibilities, managerial skills and technical abilities in connection to position. Seniority allowance, designed as a compen-

Civil service pay in China  45 Table 3.2 Position

Pay scale in central and provincial governments in region 6, 1985 (unit: ¥) Basic 1

pay Chairman/

40

2

Grade and position pay scale 3 4 5

490

410

340

340

340

300

6

7

8

9

10

18

12

vice chairman & premier Vice premier, state councilor Minister & governor

40

315

300

270

240

215

190

165

Vice-minister/

40

270

240

215

190

165

150

140

vice governor Bureau director

40

190

165

150

140

130

120

Vice bureau director

40

150

140

130

120

110

100

Division director

40

130

120

110

100

91

82

Vice division

40

110

100

91

82

73

65

40

91

82

73

65

57

49

40

73

65

57

49

42

36

Section member

40

57

49

42

36

30

24

Clerk

40

42

36

30

24

18

12

Technical worker

40

73

65

57

49

42

36

30

24

Ordinary worker

40

49

42

36

30

24

18

12

6

director Section head/ section chief Vice section head/ chief

Source: 中共中央/国务院 (1985) “关于《国家机关和事业单位工作人员工资制度改革问题》的通知.” June 4. http://​ishare​.iask​.sina​.com​.cn/​f/​6s3DTK8zNBt​.html.

sation for the relative decrease of the weight of rank-based pay, factored a ¥0.5 per month for each year of service with the maximum of forty years or ¥20 per month. A small proportion of bonuses was used to reward employees who made a prominent contribution. By altering the pay structure, China’s reformers transformed the entire rank-based pay system into a position-based pay system. To make civil service pay more instrumental and competitive, they attempted to build the pay adjustment mechanism that had been proposed in the 1950s but was not put into practice immediately. The 1985 reform also separated the pay system of state-owned enterprises from that of state organs and service units in an effort to allow state-owned enterprises to tailor their pay system in its own course. Though public sector pay during the 1980s was still largely egalitarian, the structural pay policy represented, at least in theory, a marked shift in the principle of pay reform by placing far greater emphasis on position, which would presumably reflect competence and responsibility (Cooke 2004). Nonetheless, this reform also had some drawbacks. First, pay rises depended mainly on promotion (江玉荣 2018), whereas political mobility to higher positions in China did not rest on job competence (Cooke 2004). Second, the provision of bonuses was far from merit-based due to the poor performance appraisal method (Chew 1990b). Third, the position classification system was still underdeveloped. Despite their commitment to position classification which places emphasis on posts instead of the employees, reformers continued the practice of using multiple grades to feature the importance of different personal traits (Chew 1990b). In addition, this reform also widened the gap of income between civil servants and enterprise

46  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China employees since enterprise employees were paid on a market rate, and hence were much better remunerated (Cooke 2004).

THE 1993 PAY REFORM With the issuing of the Provisional Regulations on State Civil Servants on August 14, 1993, China established its civil service by initially setting it apart from the party cadre personnel management system. By dividing the civil service and the management of cadre personnel, the reformers attempted to build a relatively independent civil service sector. Meanwhile, the CCP proposed to develop the socialist market economy in 1992, with a view to develop a more pertinent pay management system for public sector employees. As a supporting measure of the 1993 civil service reform, the third pay reform aimed at transforming the position-centered pay system into a pay system which featured both rank and position components. The 1993 reform further separated the civil service pay from the pay system for service units. The reform retained the form of structural pay, with a revamped pay package in place. The rank pay (级别工资) was added into the system as a measure to reflect the difference of official ranks. The seniority allowance was renamed as seniority pay, raising to ¥1 per month for each year of service. Bonuses became an extra component. As a result, the new civil service pay consisted mainly of position pay, rank pay, basic pay and seniority pay, among which the basic pay component was a relatively standard part, seniority pay was nominal, and position and rank pay components were the core. Comparing to the 30-rank payment system established in the 1956 reform, the 1993 reform reduced the number of ranks by half. Table 3.3 shows the position-rank pay scale with 15 levels formulated in the 1993 civil service pay reform. By rearranging the level of rank pay, the reform increased pay differentials, since civil servants who occupied higher-level positions were paid better than those who worked at lower rungs of the hierarchy. Within each position, there were also different grades corresponding to different pay standards. The 1993 civil service pay reform also made progress in some other respects. Article 67 of the 1993 Provisional Regulations stipulated a formal mechanism of regular pay rise, which was further reinforced in the Reform Plan of Pay System for Working Personnel in State Organs (机关工作人员工资制度改革方案) (国务院 1993b). Further, the 1993 reform put an end to the division of pay regions. Instead, it established a regional allowance system that consisted of additional locality allowance (地区附加津贴) and the allowance for hardship and remote areas (艰苦边远地区津贴). The provision of allowance for hardship and remote areas began in 2001, giving local governments the power and authority to compensate their civil servants and party cadres and to use local finance to support the allowance. The provisions aside, the mechanism of regular pay rises had not been put into practice. Since the civil service pay was still kept at a relatively low level, this resulted in two problems. The first was the engagement of civil servants in inappropriate or even unlawful activities, which were often associated with corruption (Lu 2000). The other was the chaotic use of allowances and subsidies by local governments. Some local governments set and provide various allowances and subsidies to compensate their civil servants. The rate set by some localities excessively deviated from the national standards. In some cases, allowances and subsidies even went much higher than the total sum of position, rank, and basic pay. This practice inevitably widened the income gap between rich and poor areas because governments

400 330 270 215 175 144 118 96 79 63 50

Vice premier, state councilor

Minister, governor

Vice minister/vice governor

Department/bureau director

Vice department/bureau director

Division director, county chief

Vice division director, vice county chief

Section head, section chief

Vice section head, vice section chief

Section member

Clerk

60

75

94

116

143

174

210

255

315

380

460

555

2

70

87

109

136

168

204

245

295

360

430

520

630

3

80

99

124

156

193

234

280

335

405

480

580

4

90

111

139

176

218

264

315

375

450

530

5

100

123

154

196

243

294

350

415

6

Grade and position pay scale

110

135

169

216

7

120

147

8 425 382 340 298 263 228 193 164 135 111 92 77

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15

55

56

470

1

14

Pay scale

Rank pay scale Rank

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

90

Basic pay

each year of service

¥1 per month for

pay

Seniority

Source: 国务院 (1993b) “国务院关于机关和事业单位工作人员工资制度改革问题的通知.” November 15. http://​www​.pkulaw​.cn/​fulltext​_form​.aspx​?Db​=​chl​&​Gid​=​ 031d1a891d84891fbdfb​&​keyword​=​%e5​%b7​%a5​%e4​%bd​%9c​%e4​%ba​%ba​%e5​%91​%98​%e5​%b7​%a5​%e8​%b5​%84​&​EncodingName​=​&​Search​_Mode​=​accurate​&​Search​ _IsTitle​=​0.

480

1

The position-rank-based pay scale, 1993 (unit: ¥)

Chairman, vice chairman, premier

Position

Table 3.3

Civil service pay in China  47

48  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China in affluent areas had stronger financial capacity. These situations became even worse after the implementation of the 1994 tax-sharing reform. It is because the distribution of revenue enabled rich local governments to use their own self-generated income to give a higher allowance to their civil servants. As a remedy to these problems, the reformers raised civil service pay five times, in July 1997, July 1999, January and October 2001, and July 2003. The 1993 pay reform was a part of the plan to build a relatively independent civil service system. Under the notion of de-centralization, the central government gave local governments substantial discretionary power in remunerating local civil servants. However, some local governments went astray. The chaotic provision of allowances and subsidies aside, some of them abused the local financial power and even used educational appropriations to provide allowances and subsidies to their civil servants (何宪 2019). The chaos in the management of allowances and subsidies turned out to be an important reason to trigger the 2006 civil service pay reform.

THE 2006 PAY REFORM With the implementation of the 2005 CSL, China launched another round of civil service reform in 2006. A new civil service pay system was then introduced (see Chapter 12 of the 2005 CSL). At that time, there was also a pressing need to rectify the arbitrary provision of allowances and subsidies in local governments. Following the 2005 Law, the State Council issued the Reform Plan of Civil Service Pay System (公务员工资制度改革方案) (国务院 2006) and pushed forward the fourth civil service pay reform in the following year. The 2006 pay reform abolished the seniority and basic pay, increased the weight of rank pay and combined the position and rank pay into “base pay” (基本工资). As a result, the civil service pay system was then comprised of base pay, allowances, subsidies and bonuses. This pay system has continued to nowadays. As shown in Table 3.4, each level of position corresponds to a specific pay standard. Particularly, for positions from the township/section to the departmental/ bureau level, there are further pay differentials between leading and non-leading positions. Table 3.4

Position pay scale, 2006 (unit: ¥)

Position

Leading position

Pay scale Non-leading position

State-level head position

4000

State-level deputy position

3200

Provincial/ministerial-level head position

2510

Provincial/ministerial-level deputy position

1900

Departmental/bureau-level head position

1410

1290

Departmental/bureau-level deputy position

1080

990

County/division-level head position

830

760

County/division-level deputy position

640

590

Township/section-level head position

510

480

Township/section-level deputy position

430

410

Section member

380

Clerk

340

Source: 国务院 (2006) “国务院关于改革公务员工资制度的通知.” June 14. http://​www​.gov​.cn/​zhengce/​content/​ 2019​-03/​19/​content​_5375052​.htm.

347

316

320

290

26

27

416

2

342

374

408

446

488

535

586

641

700

764

833

908

989

1,076

1,172

1,275

1,387

1,508

1,638

1,778

1,936

2,122

2,334

2,562

2,810

3,060

3,340

3

368

401

436

476

521

572

627

686

749

817

890

969

1,054

1,145

1,246

1,354

1,472

1,600

1,738

1,887

2,054

2,248

2,466

2,698

2,950

3,205

3,500

4

394

428

464

506

554

609

668

731

798

870

947

1,030

1,119

1,214

1,320

1,433

1,557

1,692

1,838

1,996

2,172

2,374

2,598

2,834

3,090

3,350

3,660

5

420

455

492

536

587

646

709

776

847

923

1,004

1,091

1,184

1,283

1,394

1,512

1,642

1,784

1,938

2,105

2,290

2,500

2,730

2,970

3,230

3,495

3,820

6

 

 

520

566

620

683

750

821

896

976

1,061

1,152

1,249

1,352

1,468

1,591

1,727

1,876

2,038

2,214

2,408

2,626

2,862

3,106

3,370

3,640

 

 

 

 

596

653

720

791

866

945

1,029

1,118

1,213

1,314

1,421

1,542

1,670

1,812

1,968

2,138

2,323

2,526

2,752

2,994

3,242

3,510

 

 

9

 

 

 

 

 

757

832

911

994

1,082

1,175

1,274

1,379

1,490

1,616

1,749

1,897

2,060

2,238

2,432

2,644

2,878

3,126

3,378

 

 

 

Grade and rank pay scale 7 8 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

873

956

1,043

1,135

1,232

1,335

1,444

1,559

1,690

1,828

1,982

2,152

2,388

2,541

2,762

3,004

3,258

 

 

 

 

11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1,001

1,092

1,188

1,289

1,396

1,509

1,628

1,764

1,907

2,067

2,244

2,438

2,650

2,880

3,130

 

 

 

 

 

12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1,141

1,241

1,346

1,457

1,574

1,697

1,838

1,986

2,152

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1,294

1,403

1,518

1,639

1,766

1,912

2,065

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: 国务院 (2006) “国务院关于改革公务员工资制度的通知.” June 14. http://​www​.gov​.cn/​zhengce/​content/​2019​-03/​19/​content​_5375052​.htm.

380

386

352

455

498

545

596

651

711

776

847

924

1,007

1,098

1,196

1,302

1,416

1,538

1,669

1,818

1,996

2,202

2,426

2,670

2,915

3,180

24

1

The rank pay scale, 2006 (unit: ¥)

25

461

422

22

23

551

504

20

21

658

602

18

19

786

719

16

17

938

859

14

15

1,117

1,024

12

13

1,324

1,217

10

11

1,560

1,438

8

9

1,870

1,700

6

7

2,290

2,070

4

5

2,770

2,530

2

3

3,020

1

Rank

Table 3.5 14

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1,579

1,704

1,835

1,986

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Civil service pay in China  49

50  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 3.5 presents the rank pay scale developed in the 2006 pay reform. This reform increased the number of ranks from 15 to 27. Each level of position maps into various ranks, and within each rank, there are various grades. Comparing to the position-rank system established in the 1993 pay reform, pay differentials are much widened with the increase of the number of both grades (within the position) and official ranks. Allowances, including the additional provision of locality allowance, allowance for hardship and remote areas and positional allowance (岗位 津贴), as well as subsidies, including housing and medical care, are formalized as sources of income for civil servants. Civil servants who received an outstanding rating in the periodical performance appraisal could be rewarded with a year-end bonus equivalent to one-month salary. The pay structure developed in 2006 (Tables 3.4 and 3.5) has been applied up to date, and between 2006 and 2014, the civil service pay scale remained intact. The 2006 civil service pay reform made progress in formalizing a regular promotion mechanism of civil servants. According to the 2006 Reform Plan of Civil Service Pay System, if civil servants are rated as good (称职) or above in the annual appraisals consecutively for every two years, they can be promoted one grade up within their current rank; for every five years, one level up within the range of ranks corresponding to their position. Moreover, this reform made efforts to rectify the arbitrary provision of allowances and subsidies by managing the items, standards and sources of allowances and subsidies in a unified way (江玉荣 2018). The management process must follow the principle of “level-to-level responsibility, one-level-down management and level-by-level report” (分级负责,下管一级,逐级汇报) (何宪 2019). Nevertheless, the fourth pay reform followed the overall policy orientation of re-centralizing power and authority. First, rank pay, with a more complicated division of grade, had a bigger proportion in the pay package. This adjustment further highlighted the role of the CCP because civil servants holding leading positions are directly managed by the pertinent CCP committee according to his or her official rank. Second, the central government tightened up the management of local allowances and subsidies by regulating the approval power. Based on the principle of “one-level-down management,” the provision of allowances and subsidies must be approved by the higher-level authority. Third, the State Council proposed to strengthen the supervision and inspection of the provision of allowances and subsidies. The central government began to send inspection teams to check the provision of allowances and subsidies. Local governments at all levels were required to be audited and checked by the superior government. These measures further imposed restriction to regulate performance of local governments.

ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROBLEMS OF CIVIL SERVICE PAY REFORMS (1953‒2006) China launched four rounds of civil service pay reforms during 1953‒2006. These reforms were designed to make the pay system more adaptive to external changes on the one hand and to better motivate and manage civil servants on the other. In this regard, some achievements have been made. First, China has eliminated the supply system and established a more sophisticated, “scientific” (i.e., empirically derived) pay system. The 1953‒1956 pay reform put an end to the supply system by implementing the monetary pay system and developing a 30-rank pay scale with the division of eleven pay regions. On this basis, the 1985 pay reform optimized the structure of civil service pay and developed the structural pay system. This system shifted the

Civil service pay in China  51 entirely rank-based hierarchical pay system into a more sophisticated one that was featured by attaching importance to position, seniority and performance components. With several adjustments in the 1993 and 2006 pay reforms, the structural pay system has continued to this day. Furthermore, the 1993 and 2006 pay reforms explored the mechanism of regular pay rises, striving to respond to external changes and provide motivation more effectively. Second, the civil service pay system has generally become more decentralized and flexible. In the early decades of the PRC, the management of pay of state organ employees was highly centralized. According to a unified standard set by the central government, all cadres were paid according to their rank and each rank corresponded to a fixed pay standard. Although the structural pay system introduced in 1985 placed greater emphasis on (the grades of) position, this situation did not change significantly. However, major changes occurred in 1993 when reformers established the regional allowance system. This system allowed local governments to remunerate their civil servants according to their local financial capacity. Since then, civil service remuneration has included both a nationally unified regular wage and regional allowances and subsidies. The civil service pay system became more decentralized and has entered an era in which regional variation rapidly increased (You and Zhang 2016). Third, the civil service pay system has generally become more performance based. Since the early 1950s, China’s reformers realized the necessity of a shift in policy from “pay according to need” to “pay according to work.” To carry it out, the 1985, 1993, and 2006 pay reforms took different measures to increase pay differentials, with the primary goal of featuring difference in position. Another important measure is the introduction of the structural pay system in 1985. This system further departed from the egalitarian ideology that prevailed in the past. It placed more emphasis on the difference in positions and started the practice of performance-based reward. On this basis, the 2006 pay reform further refined the performance-based incentive mechanism by improving, for example, the personnel appraisal method. To better link the appraisal result to the pay level, the Central Organization Department and the Ministry of Personnel refined the rating system and stipulated the use of appraisal results in connection to pay rises more clearly (中共中央组织部/人事部 2007). Though the PRC has made achievements in building a modern scientific civil service pay system, civil service pay reforms still have many drawbacks. Notably, the pay level of the civil service has always been controversial. Low pay for cadres had been the norm of the pay system for over forty years before the five consecutive pay rises between 1997 and 2003. Even with the re-adjustment of the pay scale in the 2006 civil service pay reform (see Tables 3.4 and 3.5), civil service pay had remained stagnant again for nine years. According to an online survey conducted in 2013 (人民日报 2013), many people argued that civil service salaries were still comparatively low, especially for those who work hard in counties and townships but have neither power nor the source of gray income. Yet many others disagreed because civil servants were believed to have received various forms of allowance and subsidies and hidden incomes in addition to base pay. One reason to account for this controversy is the lack of transparency in civil service pay. Chan and Ma (2011) found that the salary given to civil servants was somewhat lower than the average level of the society as a whole. Further, if in-cash, in-kind and other hidden welfare benefits are included, public sector pay as a whole could be higher than that of many other sectors in Chinese society. Another important reason for the controversies over the pay level is the absence of a market-oriented adjustment mechanism in setting civil service pay standards. A former vice head of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) He Xian argued

52  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China that, in accordance with market norms, civil service pay should be higher than the pay of enterprises (何宪 2016). He reckoned that it was necessary to establish a survey and comparison system (调查比较制度) as well as a regular adjustment system in an effort to better respond to the changes of the labor market. Civil service pay reforms have difficulty in handling the relationship between pay level and corruption control. Civil servants, confronted with economic hardships such as low pay and delays in salary payment, are more likely to be corrupt (Sung 2002). China is not an exception. Since the founding of the PRC, a low pay policy had been implemented for over four decades, which, as discussed above, is believed to be an important factor which led to the rise of official corruption in the 1990s. China’s reformers then began to find ways to revamp the civil service in order to curb corruption. Thereupon, they put the idea of “adequate official salary for a clean government” (以薪养廉) into practice by raising civil service pay for five consecutive times between 1997 and 2003. However, the result of these efforts was far from effective. Gong and Wu (2012) examined the pay policy of the civil service during 1993‒2007 and studied the corruption cases during and after the period. Their findings show that the increase of remuneration for civil servants failed to result in a decline of corruption in China. Their findings were in line with some other studies on corruption control in developing countries – a pay rise does not necessarily achieve the desired results for establishing a clean government (Di Tella and Schargrodsky 2003; Foltz and Opoku-Agyemang 2015). Furthermore, civil service pay has suffered from internal disparity, including hierarchical and regional inequality. In China, the problem of hierarchical inequality in civil service pay persisted for a long time. In the early years of the PRC, special benefits in kinds were provided to senior cadres to recognize their achievement in building a modern socialist country (Wu 2014, 192). This made the income gap between senior and junior cadres larger than what was prescribed in any pay scale. Although China has undertaken four rounds of civil service pay reforms from the 1950s to 2006, the problem of hierarchical inequality has not been satisfactorily dealt with. In addition to the gap of base pay caused by the established position-rank pay scale, allowances, subsidies and hidden welfare are all provided in accordance with ranks and positions. Particularly, when government employees achieve a certain official rank, they are provided with certain kinds of rank-specific amenities and facilities (for example, cell phones, housings, vehicles and budgetary money), which are a kind of hidden income for those holding senior positions (Chan and Ma 2011). The actual total pay package, including wage, in-kind compensation and privilege, rose with the advancement in official rank. This phenomenon is not surprising in a rank-centered bureaucratic system. China introduced the rank classification (also known as rank-in-person) method in its cadre personnel management in the early days of the PRC. Official rank (rather than job or responsibility) decides almost everything including the remuneration, fringe benefits, social status, and power. Seen in this light, hierarchical inequality of civil service pay is an endogenous problem inherited in China’s cadre personnel management system. The problem of income inequality between poor and rich regions has been another difficult issue to deal with in China. This problem was particularly severe between 1993 and 2006 when the central government decentralized the management of allowances and subsidies for civil servants. During that period, governments in affluent regions were able to provide much more generous allowances and subsidies because of their strong economy, while those in poor areas could not catch up. In addition to regional economic development, the regional pay

Civil service pay in China  53 differential is also affected by local government fiscal revenue, central government’s transfer payments, the existing framework of pay scales, the amount of government employees, and the policy preference of the central government (You and Zhang 2016). To deal with it, the central government reduced regional disparity by adjusting the proportion of base pay and tightening the management of allowances and subsidies in the 2006 pay reform. However, the regional disparity of civil service pay has still been very large. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the highest average pay of the civil service was 2.69 times higher than the lowest among provinces in 2013 (何宪 2016).

RECENT CHANGES OF CIVIL SERVICE PAY IN CHINA Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China’s anti-corruption campaign has been far more wide-ranging and bigger than ever. Anti-corruption and “strict management of officials” ( 从严治吏) campaigns have curbed official rent-seeking tendencies. On June 13, 2013, four ministries jointly issued the Provisions on Penalties for the Irregular Provision of Allowances and Subsidies (违规发放津贴补贴行为处分规定) (监察部/人力资源与社会保障部/财政 部/国家审计署 2013). The provision exerted control on officials at respective levels over the items and sources of allowances and subsidies. It specified the measures on punishment of violations. These measures reduced the potential income of civil servants. Given the rapid growth of standards of living in China, civil servants could easily develop a sense of deprivation (being underpaid when making comparisons to employees in other sectors). Against the backdrops, the reformers made a decision of increasing the base pay of the civil service in 2014. According to the 2014 Proposal of Adjusting the Base Pay Scale of Employees in State Organs (关于调整机关工作人员基本工资标准的实施方案) (国务院办 公厅 2015), the range of position pay increased from ¥340‒¥4,000 (as shown in Table 3.4) to ¥510‒¥5,250; the range of rank pay increased from ¥290‒¥3,020 to ¥810‒¥6,135 (Table 3.5). The MOHRSS and the Ministry of Finance managed to rigorously implement the regular adjustment mechanism of civil service pay (王晓慧 2015). They updated the scale of base pay for two consecutive times in 2016 and 2018. According to the 2018 Proposal of Adjusting the Base Pay Scale of Employees in State Organs (国务院办公厅 2018), the range of position pay increased from ¥585‒¥7,835 in 2016 to ¥640‒¥9,280 in 2018; the range of rank pay increased from ¥1,020‒¥6,496 in 2016 to ¥1,130‒¥7,109 in 2018. These measures raise the share of base pay in the pay package of civil servants, but not the provision of allowances and subsidies. Under the high pressure of anti-corruption and integrity management, public employees resorted to inaction in order to avoid punishment or blame. Some of them even evaded responsibilities which they should have taken. Policies of the parallel of positions and rank sequences (职务与职级并行) were introduced to motivate grassroots civil servants. On January 15, 2015, the CCP Central issued the Opinion on the Establishment of the Parallel System of Positions and Rank Sequences for Civil Servants in State Organs at or below the County Level (关于在县以下机关建立公务员职务与职级并行制度的意见) (中共中央办 公厅 2015). Based on the initial division of leading and non-leading positions in civil service, a five-level system of rank sequences (i.e., division, deputy division, section, deputy section, and clerk level) was introduced into the management of lower-ranking civil servants holding non-leading positions at or below the county level. This system had been fully put into practice in 2019, with the promulgation of the 2018 CSL.

54  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China The 2018 CSL elaborated the sequences of ranks and extended the scope of application to civil servants holding non-leading positions at or below the departmental/bureau level. As stipulated, the sequences of ranks of civil servants in the category of general management include first-level inspector, second-level inspector, first-level researcher, second-level researcher, third-level researcher, fourth-level researcher, first-level section chief, second-level section chief, third-level section chief, fourth-level section chief, first-level section member, and second-level section member. By creating sequences of ranks for local civil servants, the parallel system of positions and rank sequences (hereafter the parallel system) sought to provide more opportunities of upward mobility and hence improve their pay level and other fringe benefits. To facilitate the implementation of the parallel system, on March 27, 2019 the CCP Central issued the Regulations on the Paralleling of Positions and Rank Sequences of Civil Servants (公务员职务与职级并行规定, hereafter the 2019 Regulations) (中共中央办公厅 2019). The Regulations elaborate each sequence of ranks (Table 3.6), and specify the corresponding pay scales (Table 3.5) and other accompanied fringe benefits. Moreover, the parallel system promotes the performance-based reward by linking the result of performance appraisal to the time required for promotion to the next higher level. According to Article 18 of the 2019 Regulations, civil servants holding non-leading positions (in the category of general management) are eligible for promotion one level up if they hold the current position for a specified length of time. The time requirements vary with ranks and positions. For example, if a civil servant serves as the third-level researcher for two years, s/he is eligible to be promoted to the next higher-level researcher. Further, when s/he receives an excellent rating in the annual performance appraisal exercise, the specified time limit could reduce by half a year. Table 3.6

The sequence of ranks of civil servants in the category of general management (unit: ¥)

Sequence of ranks

Corresponding ranks

First-level inspector

Rank 13–8

Second-level inspector

Rank 15–10

First-level researcher

Rank 17–11

Second-level researcher

Rank 18–12

Third-level researcher

Rank 19–13

Fourth-level researcher

Rank 20–14

First-level section chief

Rank 21–15

Second-level section chief

Rank 22–16

Third-level section chief

Rank 23–17

Fourth-level section chief

Rank 24–18

First-level section member

Rank 26–18

Second-level section member

Rank 27–19

Source: 中共中央办公厅 (2019) “公务员职务与职级并行规定.” March 27. http://​www​.gov​.cn/​zhengce/​2019​-03/​ 27/​content​_5377422​.htm.

PROSPECTS AND MAJOR CHALLENGES The principle of “pay according to work” is the hallmark of modern civil service systems all over the world. China, driven by both external marketization forces and its internal organizational needs, has aligned with the global trend. In undertaking several reforms for over a half

Civil service pay in China  55 century, China’s reformers have strived to promote a system of performance-based reward for its civil service. Through the several rounds of reforms, China has further revamped its civil service pay system under Xi Jinping’s leadership. Among all the measures, the parallel system of positions and rank sequences is the most significant one. Prior to its introduction, there was no clearly defined path of upward mobility for civil servants who were holding non-leading positions. In this case, if they wanted to move upward to the next higher rank and/or get better pay, they had to be promoted first to a higher-level post. Unfortunately, the number of posts of a certain department was fixed and limited due to the implementation of the bianzhi (编制, the authorized number of positions and personnel) system. This problem led to limited opportunities for career advancement and hence fewer possibilities of pay rises. However, the implementation of the parallel system makes a difference. This system aims at remaking the original design of non-leading positions and transforming it into a hierarchical system with clear sequences of ranks. Accordingly, it helps to build a promotion ladder for local civil servants taking up non-leading positions. Based on Article 24 of the 2019 Regulations, the rank sequence decides the pay level and fringe benefits (for example, housing, medical care and transportation subsidies and social insurance). In this way, local civil servants are allowed to move upward to the next higher rank without a position change. They are given more opportunities of upward mobility and receiving better pay. This measure is effective in boosting “motivation” because it improves the income of civil servants and relieves their sense of unfairness (李学明 2019). Reformers thus believe that the implementation of the parallel system helps to stimulate local civil servants to shoulder greater responsibilities (担当) and do a better job (作为). China’s civil service pay system still faces many dilemmas in practice. Since the regime underlines the centrality of the CCP, the civil service pay system lacks a mechanism to differentiate politics from administration. China’s civil service pay stands between the tension of job performance and political allegiance, a dilemma the civil service pay reform cannot deal with. For example, though the parallel system seems to be able to address some problems of the civil service system, the implementation of this system is still plagued with difficulties. First, the parallel system is still constrained by the bianzhi system. According to Article 11 of the 2019 Regulations, the number of posts corresponding to each sequence of ranks is strictly controlled. Taking state organs at the county or township level as an example, the number of personnel serving as second-level researchers should not exceed 2 percent of the total number of positions in the category of general management, and the number of personnel serving as third- or fourth-level researchers, should not exceed 10 percent. As a result, not all eligible civil servants can be promoted to the next higher level owing to the limited number of posts corresponding to each sequence of ranks. This problem diminishes the effectiveness of the parallel system in removing the obstacles to career advancement of local civil servants. Second, the parallel system, to some extent, does not enshrine the merit principle. According to the time requirement of promotion in terms of rank sequence (see Article 18 of the 2019 Regulations), a number of civil servants move upward to the next higher level just because they serve long (rather than well) enough (郝玉明 2019). This will deprive those who do a good job but have not held the position long enough. Third, the poor implementation of the performance appraisal mechanism is another impediment to promoting the parallel system. Based on Article 19 of the 2019 Regulations, the result of annual performance appraisal has impacts on the time requirement of promotion. Yet in practice, the appraisal result can hardly

56  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China reflect the actual job performance, which undermines the credibility of the parallel system (梁 仲明/贾欣 2017). There are other challenges in the civil service pay system. First of all, hierarchical income inequality is an inherited issue in the Chinese rank-in-person system. Civil service pay reforms between 1953 and 2006 made no attempt to alter the rank-centered nature of the cadre personnel management. Nor do recent policy changes. In a rank-centered cadre personnel system, a higher-ranking status brings much more than a higher base pay and allowances and subsidies. It also comes with greater power, higher privilege and exclusive access to social resources which are important in a guanxi-based society like China. Though the parallel system has made progress in improving the economic condition of local civil servants, the actual income gap between lower- and higher-ranking personnel is still prominently large. Seen in this light, the parallel system is not a solution that can fundamentally change the situation, but a step to alleviate the problem of demotivation of local civil servants. The hierarchical inequality is still a challenging problem yet to resolve. Financial capacity of the state presents another major challenge to the parallel system. The parallel system allows local civil servants to have more opportunities of moving upward and consequently getting better paid. According to the official statistics, there were 7,167,000 civil servants in China in 2016 (人力资源与社会保障部 2016). About 60 percent of civil servants work at the county or township level (董立人/李先广/高音 2017), among whom 20 to 30 percent get opportunities of promotion through the parallel system (梁仲明/贾欣 2017). Because of the large number of local civil servants, this means a dramatic increase of financial expenditure at both central and local levels. Given the pressure caused by the rise of base pay for three consecutive times in 2014, 2016, and 2018, the financial capacity could be another major challenge to the future development of the parallel system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was funded by the Ministry of Education of Singapore under Academic Research Fund Tier 2 (Grant number: MOE2015-T2-2-074) and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (Grant number: 20YJC810002). The authors thank the editors, reviewers, and participants of the Suzhou conference for their valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this chapter.

ENGLISH REFERENCES Chan, Hon S. and Edward S. Li (2007) “Civil Service Law in the People’s Republic of China: A Return to Cadre Personnel Management.” Public Administration Review 67(3), 383‒398. Chan, Hon S. and Jun Ma (2011) “How Are They Paid? A Study of Civil Service Pay in China.” International Review of Administrative Sciences 77(2), 294‒321. Chew, David C.E. (1990a) “Civil Service Pay in China, 1955 to 1989: Overview and Assessment.” International Review of Administrative Sciences 56(2), 345‒364. Chew, David C.E. (1990b) “Recent Development in Civil Service Pay in China.” International Labor Review 129(6), 773‒782. Cooke, Fang Lee (2004) “Public Sector Pay in China: 1949‒2001.” The International Journal of Human Resource Management 15(4‒5), 895‒916.

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CHINESE REFERENCES 董立人/李先广/高音 (2017) “优化公务员职务与职级并行制度研究.” 《中共南京市委党校学报》 第04期, 72‒76. 国务院 (1955) “国务院关于国家机关工作人员全部实行工资制和改行货币工资制的命令.” August 31. http://​www​.china​.com​.cn/​guoqing/​2012​-10/​11/​content​_26762988​.htm. Accessed on February 16, 2020. 国务院 (1956) “国务院关于工资改革的决定.”《劳动》第08期, 1‒3. 国务院 (1993a) “国家公务员暂行条例.” August 14. http://​www​.gdjct​.gd​.gov​.cn/​llyj/​1568​.jhtml​?isWap​ =​1. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 国务院 (1993b) “国务院关于机关和事业单位工作人员工资制度改革问题的通知.” November 15. http://​www​.pkulaw​.cn/​fulltext​_form​.aspx​?Db​=​chl​&​Gid​=​031d1a891d84891fbdfb​&​keyword​=​%e5​ %b7​%a5​%e4​%bd​%9c​%e4​%ba​%ba​%e5​%91​%98​%e5​%b7​%a5​%e8​%b5​%84​&​EncodingName​=​&​ Search​_Mode​=​accurate​&​Search​_IsTitle​=​0. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 国务院 (2006) “国务院关于改革公务员工资制度的通知.” June 14. http://​www​.gov​.cn/​zhengce/​ content/​2019​-03/​19/​content​_5375052​.htm. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 国务院办公厅 (2015) “国务院办公厅转发人力资源社会保障部财政部关于调整机关事业单位工 作人员基本工资标准和增加机关事业单位离退休人员离退休费三个实施方案的通知. ” January 12. http://​rsch​.xsyu​.edu​.cn/​info/​1019/​1069​.htm. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 国务院办公厅 (2018) “国务院办公厅转发人力资源社会保障部财政部关于调整机关事业单位工作 人员基本工资标准和增加机关事业单位离休人员离休费三个实施方案的通知.” November 29. http://​www​.scpta​.net​.cn/​e/​xw/​zc/​29655​.html. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 郝玉明 (2019) “公务员职务与职级并行的概念界定和试点评估.”《中国人事科学》第04期, 4‒11. 何宪 (2016) “公务员工资水平实证分析.”《中国井冈山干部学院学报》第02期, 11‒19. 何宪 (2019) “中国清理规范公务员津贴补贴工作的回顾与思考.”《中国井冈山干部学院学报》第 02期, 39‒51. 监察部/人力资源与社会保障部/财政部/国家审计署 (2013) “违规发放津贴补贴行为处分规定.” June 16. http://​www​.mohrss​.gov​.cn/​zbjcj/​ZBJIJIANJzhengcewenjian/​201706/​t20170616​_272477​ .html. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 江玉荣 (2018) “改革开放以来公务员工资制度改革的回顾与展望.”《中国人力资源开发》第10期, 75‒82, 109. 李学明 (2019) “激励视角下的公务员职级晋升制度研究.” 《中国行政管理》第10期, 101‒104. 梁仲明/贾欣 (2017) “基层公务员职务与职级并行：政策逻辑与推进对策.” 《重庆社会科学》第 11期, 80‒85. 全国人民代表大会 (2005) “中华人民共和国公务员法.” April 27. http://​www​.npc​.gov​.cn/​wxzl/​wxzl/​ 2005​-05/​30/​content​_341711​.htm. Accessed on June 11, 2020.

58  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 人力资源与社会保障部 (2016) “2015年度人力资源和社会保障事业发展统计公报.” May 30. http://​www​.mohrss​.gov​.cn/​SYrlzyhshbzb/​zwgk/​szrs/​tjgb/​201805/​W020180521566641377904​.pdf. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 人民日报 (2013) “公务员工资到底怎么涨才公平?.” August 23. http://​opinion​.people​.com​.cn/​GB/​ 363551/​368349/​index​.html. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 石剑/吴质 (1993)《中国官员的工资》，北京：改革出版社. 王晓慧 (2015) “公务员工资每年或每两年一调 机关事业单位涨薪六月底前落实.” 《华夏时报》, May 22. http://​www​.chinatimes​.net​.cn/​article/​48941​.html. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 杨奎松 (2007) “从供给制到职务等级工资制 – 新中国建立前后党政人员收入分配制度的演变.”《 历史研究》, 第04期, 111‒137, 191. 政务院 (1950) “关于中央直属机关新参加工作人员工资标准的试行规定.” January 20. Internal document. 政务院 (1952) “关于颁发各级人民政府供给制工作人员津贴标准及工资制工作人员工资标准的通 知.” July 1. Internal document. 中共中央/国务院 (1985) “关于《国家机关和事业单位工作人员工资制度改革问题》的通知.” June 4. http://​ishare​.iask​.sina​.com​.cn/​f/​6s3DTK8zNBt​.html. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 中共中央办公厅 (2015) “关于在县以下机关建立公务员职务与职级并行制度的意见.” January 15. http://​www​.jbxc​.gov​.cn/​zwxx/​zcfg/​10667​.htm. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 中共中央办公厅 (2019) “公务员职务与职级并行规定.” March 27. http://​www​.gov​.cn/​zhengce/​2019​ -03/​27/​content​_5377422​.htm. Accessed on June 11, 2020. 中共中央组织部/人事部 (2007) “公务员考核规定(试行).” January 4. http://​www​.scs​.gov​.cn/​zcfg/​ 201409/​t20140902​_374​.html. Accessed on June 11, 2020.

4. Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness Jie Gao

A striking feature of China’s political and administrative reforms in the post-Mao era is their embrace of performance measurement as a tool to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the bureaucracy (Gao 2009; Burns and Zhou 2010). Since the late 1970s, various types of performance measurement systems have been piloted, developed and institutionalized at various local levels. The reform came in three waves, each with a distinct focus, and supplementing one another over the time. In the first wave, which began in 1979, the national leaders took the initiative to develop a cadre evaluation system and a target responsibility system (the TRS). The TRS remains to the present day the most influential performance measurement system in local government. The second wave began in the late 1990s. It is characterized by the rise of third-party evaluations in assessing government performance. These efforts use external evaluations to address the shortcomings of the TRS, which overwhelmingly focuses on top-down evaluation and control. The third wave started in the late 2000s, when local governments at all levels were enthusiastic about developing their own evaluation systems. By 2012, over 100 local evaluation models had been developed by local governments in 27 provinces (尚虎平 2018). To date, most Chinese local governments have jumped on the bandwagon of performance measurement. These reform efforts have fueled continual discussion over the past few decades. Studies on China’s performance management reforms are rich and fruitful. The mainstream literature focuses on the TRS because of its paramount importance in this performance movement (Edin 2003; Tsui and Wang 2004; Gao 2009; Ma 2016). By comparison, fewer studies discuss the external evaluations by third-party organizations (Gao 2012; Yu and Ma 2015), and even fewer, if any, examine those flourishing local evaluation models. In addition, only a handful of studies provide an overview of the historical development of China’s performance measurement reforms, although most literature touches upon the development of a particular measurement scheme. One particularly noteworthy contribution is the article of Burns and Zhou (2010), which explains in detail three types of performance management reforms, namely, administrative restructuring and human resource management, performance and result management, and public-service delivery. Their study discusses several important practices in the three waves of performance management reform. More contributions are made by Chinese scholars who publish mainly in Chinese journals. For example, two recent articles by 尚虎平 (2018) and 贠杰 (2018) provide a good review of the evolution, key features, logical bases and challenges of China’s performance measurement reforms over the past forty years. This chapter adds to this scholarly discussion by reviewing the three waves of China’s performance measurement reforms over the past four decades. It will explore the following questions: What are the major performance measurement systems that the Chinese leaders have adopted during the three waves of reform? How are these systems designed, and what are their key features? How effective has the implementation of these systems been in improving 59

60  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China the performance and effectiveness of local governments? What challenges and problems do China’s performance measurement reforms face going forward? To answer these questions, I review the literature published by both Chinese and international scholars. Articles and books written in Chinese are a valuable source for information on China’s performance measurement reforms, as government performance measurement has been one of the most popular topics in Chinese academia over the past few decades and is probably the area that produces the greatest number of publications in the fields of political science and public management ever (尚虎平 2018, 60). In the year of 2006 alone, a total of 668 articles were published on the topic of government performance measurement in China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), a key national database in China that provides full-text access to academic publications, patents, standards, and so on (周志忍 2009) These studies provide rich discussions on issues such as local evaluation models and the role of third-party organizations in government performance assessment that are not addressed adequately in the English-language literature. Regarding this chapter, three caveats must be made in advance. First, it mainly examines performance measurement in the party-state system, and mostly at local levels. It does not examine the systems in other segments of China’s public-sector organizations, such as social institutions and state-owned enterprises, although those organizations also use performance measurement systems. Second, as Burns and Zhou (2010, 9) indicated, performance management is an elusive concept and includes various modern management tools and techniques. Many important reforms that were conducted in China over the past four decades aimed at improving bureaucratic performance, including, for example, the civil-service reforms, administrative downsizing reforms and e-governance reforms. This chapter will not review those reforms: its focus is on performance measurement reforms, a key component of China’s performance-oriented reforms. Third, this chapter focuses on a few major performance measurement systems in China and provides a relatively in-depth explanation of each one. These are the systems that appear most frequently in the literature. This chapter does not, however, provide an inventory of all the evaluation systems that have been implemented in the three waves. It may omit some performance evaluation systems that are prominent in local practice but have not received adequate attention in the literature.

THE BATON OF THE PARTY-STATE: CADRE EVALUATION AND THE TRS The TRS is the earliest form of performance measurement system in China. It uses a group of preestablished performance targets and indicators to measure an organization’s performance and links target fulfillment to rewards and penalties for the leaders and members of the organization. Systems similar to China’s TRS are widely used around the world – for example, by OECD member countries and the United States. The idea that cadre work performance should be evaluated fairly and linked to rewards and penalties was first initiated by national leaders during 1978–1984. In the mid-1980s, a few localities, such as Heilongjiang, Beijing, Liaoning and Shaanxi, began to pilot their own versions of the TRS. The TRS has spread much more widely since the 1990s, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established specific performance indicators for measuring leadership cadres’ work performance (中共中央组织部 1995, 2006).

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  61 From the outset, the TRS was intertwined with the CCP’s cadre evaluation system. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping, the general architect of China’s reforms, pointed out that reforms were urgently needed to improve the low efficiency of China’s economic management system. Specifically, he referred to the importance of establishing a work responsibility system, which would evaluate cadres’ performance fairly and link work accomplishments to material rewards and penalties (邓小平 1978). Cadre evaluation was thus placed on the agenda of China’s administrative reforms. In 1979, the Central Organization Department (COD, 中共中央组织 部) promulgated the Opinion on Implementing a Cadre Evaluation System, which stipulated four criteria for cadre evaluation, namely, virtue (de), competence (neng), diligence (qin) and work performance (ji) (中共中央组织部 1979). Another criterion – integrity and honesty (lian) was added in 1998 in a subsequent version of this document (中共中央组织部 1998). But how to measure work performance still needed to be figured out at both the national and local level. The TRS introduced the concept of focusing on the work performance of the leadership corps, who represent their organizations in the evaluation. In other words, the primary focus of the TRS is organizational performance, not individual performance or program performance – but it holds individual cadres, especially the leadership cadres, accountable for the accomplishment of the required performance tasks.

TYPES OF TRS In Chinese local party-states, there are three types of TRS (王汉生/王一鸽 2009, 64‒66). The first type is the TRS of the party-state (政府责任制, zhengfu zerenzhi). This is also the main expression of TRS, and it is comprehensive in its coverage: performance contracts are signed between different levels of the party-state, between the party-state at each level and its subordinate agencies, and between each agency and its employees. For example, a county signs performance contracts with the municipality that administers this county. Then, the county signs performance contracts with all its subordinate agencies and townships. Following this, each agency signs performance contracts with its employees. In this manner, each employee is held responsible for the accomplishment of certain specific performance tasks, while the leaders of the agency and the party-state are responsible for the overall accomplishment of the contracts they sign. The second type is the TRS of agencies within a specific functional system (部门责任 制, bumen zerenzhi). Under this system, performance contracts are signed between agencies within the same functional system – for example, between a supervisory agency in charge of family planning work and its subordinate branches at the next lower level. This type of contract specifies more targets to be fulfilled than do the comprehensive contracts an agency signs with the party-state (the first type). The third type is the TRS of specific work (专项责 任制, zhuanxiang zerenzhi). The local party-state may sign performance contracts relating to specific work – such as work safety, protection of farming land, emission reduction, energy saving, migrant labor management, etc. – that needs particular attention from local leaders. The first two types of TRS are used for regular and routine work, whilst the third type is used to tackle urgent, important or difficult tasks. All three types of TRS are pervasively used in the management of local party-states nowadays. Regardless of type, performance contracts specify the performance targets to be fulfilled, specific assessment indicators that measure the accomplishment of each target, the weight of

62  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China each indicator in the evaluation scheme, and rewards and penalties of target accomplishment. Performance contracts are normally updated on an annual basis. Progress toward target accomplishment is reported more frequently, such as on a quarterly or even monthly basis. Table 4.1 is an example of the performance contracts signed between a county and one of its townships in 2017 (凤县县委/凤县人民政府 2017). It also contains examples of performance targets used for specific work in areas such as work safety, forest construction, technology improvement, food and medicine safety, environmental protection, and so on.

KEY FEATURES In terms of policy design, the TRS has three distinct features compared to most of its Western and Asian counterparts. First, the TRS is not merely a measurement of efficiency, economy and effectiveness of service delivery and does not focus solely on the administrative branch. It is also applied to evaluate the performance of the party bureaucracy, mass organizations and judiciary (people’s courts and people’s procuratorates). The TRS measures governance performance of local leadership corps across the board. According to a national guideline provided by the COD in 2009, performance is measured in six categories: economic development, social development, sustainable development, improvement of people’s lives, social harmony, and the work style of Party and government (中共中央组织部 2009). Table 4.1 illustrates how the central instructions are applied in local practice. Not all performance targets are given the same priority in the annual evaluation. In general, three types of targets are differentiated in local practice: hard targets, soft targets and targets with veto power. There are no formal regulations regarding which targets should be soft, hard, or with veto power. It is more often than not up to the local leaders to define their work priority. Generally speaking, hard targets are “hard” because they are either more easily measurable or more important compared to the soft targets (the importance can be partly observed by the weight of each target in the evaluation system). Targets with veto power are the tasks that are given the top priority in annual evaluation. Failing to accomplish the targets with veto power often leads to a significant drop in a government’s ranking compared to its peer competitors, and it affects the career prospects of the responsible leadership cadres. An additional way to assess the priority of a target is by whether the target is allocated by higher-level authorities or developed by local agencies themselves. Targets allocated from above are normally key tasks for leaders at lower levels and often account for the majority of the hard targets and targets with veto power. Some self-developed targets are also measurable and important (such as road construction), but local leaders will give higher priority to top-down allocated targets if resources and time are limited. The TRS has a changing focus over time, which also illuminates the different priorities in the work of the party-state. In the 1980s–1990s, the TRS was GDP-centered; that is, it gave priority to the accomplishment of economic-growth targets, such as GDP growth rate, industrial outputs, agricultural outputs, fiscal revenue income, FDI, and investments on fixed assets, and so on. Most economic targets are hard targets because they are quantified and important. In the mid-2000s when the Hu–Wen administration promoted more balanced, scientific development and implemented a variety of “people-oriented” policies, the focus of the TRS shifted to strike a better balance between economic growth and social development. This change can be observed in the increasing number of targets on social development, resources and envi-

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  63 Table 4.1

Performance contract signed between Feng county and Shuangshipu township in Shaanxi Province, 2017 (Excerptsa)

Category

Targets (Points)

Indicators

Economic

GDP (20)

Achievement of a GDP annual growth rate of 12%

development

Investment in fixed assets (40)

Investment of 700 million yuan in fixed assets

(200 points)

Attracting funds (50)

Securing funding of 9 million yuan

Attracting business and investments (60)

Attracting investments of 120 million yuan by contract and ensuring 70 million yuan in place

Construction of new rural areas and

Accomplishment of all targets assigned by the county

balancing rural–urban development (30) Cultural

Education (30)

development (50 points)

Ensuring over 85% of children enter kindergarten before entering primary school

Culture (10)

Construction of cultural service centers in villages and communities

Technology (10)

Accomplishment of 2017 Performance Targets for Technology Improvement in Feng County

Social development Family planning (20) (110 points)

Social order and stability (45)

Controlling extra births to within 3% Accomplishment of tasks on maintaining comprehensive social order and stability, social safety maintenance, letters and visits and fighting against religious cults

Work safety (40)

Accomplishment of 2017 Performance Targets for Work Safety

Transparency of village affairs and

Ensuring the smooth election of the new village committee and

elections of the new village committee (5) ensuring the election follows legal procedure People’s lives

Distributable income per capita of rural

Ensuring rural residents a distributable income per capita of

(170 points)

residents (50)

14,026 yuan (30 points), with a growth rate of 10%

People’s health (20)

Controlling smoking rate to under 25% Accomplishment of 2017 Performance Targets for Food and Medicine Safety

Social welfare (30)

Accomplishment of 2017 Human Resources and Social Welfare Development Tasks Construction of 4 public cemeteries; ensuring over 98% of rural residents participate in the new rural cooperative healthcare system

Eliminating poverty (60)

Ensuring that 5 villages are no longer poverty stricken; lifting 444 people out of poverty; movement of 52 households with 183 people

Ecological

Building rural roads (10)

Maintenance of 38 roads with 104,644 total miles

Water and soil (25)

Accomplishment of all assigned targets on water and soil

environment

maintenance, water management, drinking water safety and

(120 points)

flooding prevention Preservation of 27,227.7 acres of farming land Forest (35)

Accomplishment of 2017 Implementation Plans for Forest Construction and Greening Projects

Environmental protection (60)

Accomplishment of 2017 Performance Targets for Environmental Protection Accomplishment of 2017 Performance Targets for Patriotic Hygiene Work

Brightening plan

Pursuit of organizational excellence (10)

Inclusion in the province’s top 10 cultural tourist sites

(30 points)

Featured work (20)

Construction of an innovative public-service hall

64  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Category

Targets (Points)

Indicators

Party building

Construction of leadership corps and

Education of cadres; development of an innovative

(non-mission-based cadre corps (40)

talent-management system

tasks)

Construction of grassroots party

Accomplishment of 2017 Performance Targets for Grassroots

(170 points)

organizations and recruitment of party

Party Building

members (40) Construction of appropriate party work

Accomplishment of 2017 Performance Targets for Construction

style and honesty in work (20)

of the Party’s Work Style

Strengthening party discipline and

Enhancement of party discipline, accountability, discipline

managing the party by rules (20)

inspection and vigilance against corruption

Propaganda, moral and civilization

Study of important talks of Xi Jinping and the party meetings

construction (20) Ruling Feng County by law (20)

Use of new media and technology to publicize rule of law; actively seeking the society’s supervision

Deepening reforms (5)

Deepening reforms on budgeting, information collection and other assigned tasks

United front work (5)

Establishment of dossiers on overseas Chinese, ethnic minority cadres, oversea students, teaching staff in religious places, business unions, etc.

Note: a Performance categories and targets are the originals. Indicators are selected excerpts. Source: 凤县县委/凤县人民政府 (2017).

ronment and improvement of people’s lives that became targets with veto power. Under the Xi–Li administration, the focus of the TRS changed again, with a higher emphasis on party building, while playing down the role of GDP and economic growth targets. Very recently, in April 2019, the COD revised the 2009 Work Regulations on the Evaluation of Party and State Leadership Cadres. The revision clearly stipulated that in measurement of party and state leaders’ work performance, especially that of the party secretaries and other party members, greater weight should be placed on party building (中共中央组织部 2019). In some localities, such as Shaanxi Province, party building was made a new target with veto power. A second distinct feature of the TRS is that crucial targets are established by the authorities at the higher levels and then allocated level-by-level downwards through the administrative hierarchy. This is different from the practice in many other countries, where performance targets are developed by the agencies themselves according to their missions or strategic plans, such as the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of the United States. In China, the most crucial targets are derived from the national and local socioeconomic five-year development plans. For crucial national tasks such as pollution control and family planning, the respective national leaders will first establish a national goal, which will be sent to each province. Provincial leaders then develop a local goal, disaggregate the local goal into more concrete tasks and then further allocate these to each municipality under their administration. The same process repeats at the municipal and county levels. The pressure for target fulfillment increases during the target allocation process. On the one hand, the performance goals ratchet up. A national goal of keeping a 6 percent GDP growth rate may become 8–10 percent by the time it reaches the townships. This is because at each level, leaders tend to inflate the target a bit so as to ensure they themselves can meet their own assigned target. On the other hand, the number of performance targets also increases in the allocation process. At each level, leaders add new targets according to the socioeconomic development plans at their level.

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  65 Interestingly, the TRS combines both centralization and decentralization in its operation: although target allocation is operated in a centralized way, accomplishment of the assigned targets is highly decentralized. As Kostka (2016, 63) indicates, the TRS permits far more flexibility during the target allocation process than one might assume. Flexibility is permitted in several aspects. First, most targets are result oriented. This means that local officials have high discretion in deciding how the targets are to be accomplished – they can be as creative as they want. Second, local leaders have considerable discretion in how to allocate targets within their governance territories. For example, they can decide whether to allocate targets selectively to some localities, or equally among all localities. They can also decide whether a subordinate organization is given an inflated target or an easy one. Although local leaders also solicit the opinions of the subordinate organizations regarding the difficulty level of the target, the negotiation power of the subordinate organizations vary significantly. Third, local leaders also have flexibility as to when to implement the required targets during the five-year period. Local leaders can distribute a particular target evenly for each year or set a more inflated target for the first or last year within the five-year window. Fourth, local leaders also have discretion regarding what to reward and what to penalize. If lower-level leaders end up unable to meet certain targets for unforeseeable reasons such as natural disasters, penalties can be waived. In a word, the TRS is both stringent in complying with national goals and responsive to changes and local needs. The third distinct feature of the TRS is that it offers a high-powered incentive mechanism for target fulfillment. Performance on target fulfillment is linked to awards, attractive bonuses and more importantly, cadres’ career prospects (Edin 2003; 周黎安 2007; Cai 2015). One of the most well-known assertions about the TRS is that it creates a dynamic “promotion tournament” among local leaders (周黎安 2007; 乔坤元/周黎安/刘冲 2014). The key feature of the promotion tournament is that local leaders continuously compete with one another on the basis of their comparative performance in the same evaluation system, not their absolute performance (周黎安 2008). Many studies have found evidence suggestive of a strong link between performance and promotion of local leaders, although the actual promotion decision is based on several other factors too. For example, the study of 周黎安 (2008, 92) shows a positive correlation between the promotion of China’s governors and a province’s economic performance, especially its GDP annual growth rate. It shows that between 1979 and 2002, if the average GDP annual growth rate in a provincial leader’s governing territory increased by 6 percent, his or her chances of a promotion increased by 2.4 percent (尚虎平 2018, 86). Cai (2015) finds that at the municipal level, the incentive structures for party secretaries and mayors are different. Personal connections with political bosses and better economic performance (of the province where the municipality is located) enhance the promotional prospects of municipal party secretaries. By contrast, interestingly, for mayors, neither work achievements in local economic growth nor personal connections with superiors are statistically significant factors in their career advancement. However, age, city status and performance in social-policy areas are determinants of mayors’ political advancement. This also shows how promotion of leadership cadres struck a balance between economic growth and social development under the Hu–Wen administration. Also worth noting is the fact that not all leadership cadres are equally concerned about promotion, as many of them will have reached promotion ceilings regardless of how well they perform. Hence, the promotion tournament theory, although very powerful, explains only

66  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China part of the story. Another dimension of the TRS is that it also creates a punishment-based, “hold-to-account” system. That is to say, local leaders are held accountable if they do not accomplish required tasks, especially the targets with veto power; they may be punished through demotion or removal from their positions. Mei and Pearson (2017, 208) find that in 2010, a total of 7,036 officials were held accountable for unsatisfactory performance, and this number jumped to 21,000 in 2013, including 54 at the prefecture-bureau level and 1,477 at the county-division level. Among those held to account, a small portion were removed, while others were subject to internal party discipline. Although the study also shows that many penalized cadres eventually return to the cadre system, their careers were undermined to different degrees. Hence, even if cadres are not incentivized for promotion, they are still strongly incentivized to avoid being held accountable for bad results. In summary, cadre evaluation and the TRS are effective and powerful instruments that function as the “thermometer” and the “baton” of Chinese national leaders’ policy preferences. During the past three decades, whenever the national leaders prioritize a policy goal, it is converted into new targets in the local party-state’s performance evaluation. The TRS and its use in the cadre evaluation have been critical in driving China’s rapid development on the one hand and in maintaining social stability on the other (周黎安 2007). Nevertheless, cadre evaluation and the TRS are evaluation instruments whose primary focus is on control and accountability within the administrative hierarchy: they give less attention to citizens’ satisfaction with government-provided services, which is usually an indispensable dimension in assessing a regime’s performance. The lack of citizen involvement or external evaluation in the TRS has been regarded as a major reason for the problems it causes, such as setting up development targets that are not favorable to local residents (O’Brien and Li 1999).

LISTENING TO PEOPLE’S VOICES: THE RISE OF THIRD-PARTY EVALUATIONS As mentioned, in the early 2000s, the change in national leadership brought a major policy shift from a GDP-centered development mode to a more balanced, scientific development mode. In this context, local governments began to introduce a variety of reform experiments to engage the citizens and the society in government performance measurement. This movement toward greater citizen engagement and social participation in government performance evaluation is described as the rise of third-party evaluations. “Third-party” is an ambiguous concept and interpreted somewhat differently in the Chinese literature (for a few representative opinions, see 倪星/余凯 2004; 包国宪/曹西安 2007; 程 样国/李志 2006; 杜娟/杜义国/张微 2019). According to 杜娟/杜义国/张微 (2019), there are two major viewpoints on what constitutes a third-party evaluation. According to the first viewpoint, for a government agency (for example), a first-party evaluation is conducted by local government, a second-party evaluation is conducted by the agency’s professional supervisory bodies, and a third-party evaluation is conducted by independent institutions. According to the second viewpoint, policy makers and implementers are the first and second parties, and the third party includes various groups external to the government, such as the citizens, universities, research institutions, intermediary agencies, social organizations, media and other relevant stakeholders. An example of third-party evaluation that accords with this understanding would be citizens’ assessment of local government’s performance. In a nutshell,

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  67 it refers to evaluations that solicit opinions from an external body, be it a group of citizens, selected social representatives, academic institutions, professional consulting firms, and so on. The third-party evaluations can be organized and conducted by the local party-state (for example, in the form of citizen satisfaction surveys), or by a semi-independent institution (for example, having an academic institution conduct the survey) or an independent institution (for example, hiring a professional consulting firm or survey experts) (徐双敏 2011). There are three major models in the experiment with third-party evaluations. The first one is to add citizen satisfaction surveys to the TRS, thereby keeping a better balance between top-down evaluation and evaluation by the citizens. Two other models are the “evaluation by ten thousand citizens” and “evaluation by third-party organizations.” These models are bolder and more innovative than the first and constitute important developments in China’s performance measurement reforms.

IMPROVING THE TRS At the national level, a clear message can be observed in the change in the cadre evaluation system. In 2004, the Ministry of Personnel proposed a scheme for local government (not the party-state) performance measurement. The ministry’s proposal had a total of 33 performance indicators, including three that required third-party evaluation. For example, “satisfactoriness of enterprises (the third party)” is an indicator that assesses the performance of market regulation, together with “the completeness of relevant rules and regulations” and “performance on law enforcement.” Citizens’ satisfaction is used in assessing “public-service delivery” and “integrity and honesty of the government” (人民文摘 2004). Following on that, in 2006, the COD required performance evaluation and appraisal of local party and state leadership corps to include surveys of citizens’ opinions (中共中央组织部 2006). It also proposed 24 performance items in the assessment of local leadership corps, with 12 items on objective topics such as GDP per capita and GDP growth rate (data collected by the statistical bureaus) and 12 items on subjective topics such as improvement of the people’s lives (data collected through public-opinion surveys). At local levels, many local governments also added citizen satisfaction indicators in their own TRS. A typical example is the practice in Qingdao Municipality. Qingdao implemented the TRS in 1998. In 2006, the municipality began to improve its TRS by incorporating a variety of measures in which “citizens evaluate officials’ performance.” In 2009, citizen satisfaction surveys accounted for 21 percent in the performance evaluation of cities and districts under the administration of Qingdao Municipality and 35 percent in the performance evaluation of organizations directly subordinate to the Qingdao municipal government (陈雪莲 2011, 88). These surveys focused on citizens’ satisfaction on four issues, namely, social order and safety, resolution of issues that citizens cared about most, performance in serving the community and neighborhood, and work style of party and government organizations (周志忍 2008, 115). Qingdao Municipality adopted several methods to collect citizens’ opinions. It is the first locality in China to use CATI (Computed-Assisted Telephone Investigation) technology to collect public opinions through random phone calls to local residents and to publicize the results instantly via the internet (陈雪莲 2011). The Qingdao system is representative of how public-opinion surveys are incorporated into TRS schemes by many other Chinese localities, including Shenyang, Xi’an, Guangzhou and Beijing, and so on.

68  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

EVALUATION BY TEN THOUSAND CITIZENS A more radical approach that took shape in the late 1990s was to use public-opinion surveys as a sole and separate source in government performance evaluation. In 1999–2001, Zhuhai Municipality in Guangdong Province and Nanjing Municipality in Jiangsu Province began to experiment with a “ten-thousand citizens evaluation” system (付景涛/倪星 2008; 付景涛/曾 莉 2010; 秦晓蕾 2017). Under this system, citizens were surveyed on an annual basis for their opinions on improvement in the work style and efficiency of party, state and law enforcement organizations, such as service attitude, quality of service, integrity and honesty, and efficiency of service, and so on (付景涛/曾莉 2010, 35). Both the Zhuhai and Nanjing models treat survey results very seriously. In the case of Nanjing, the results are linked to the accountability of responsible leaders. In 2002, two leadership cadres at the bureau level were removed from their positions because their organizations were ranked at the bottom in the citizen surveys. In 2015, the surveys collected over 6,000 opinions from citizens, and all of them were passed to the leaders of the Nanjing municipal party committee and government without any changes. If an organization was ranked at the bottom for two consecutive years, the municipal party committee would dispatch a special investigation group to conduct a special evaluation of the organizations, and the results were used for decisions on leadership promotion and selection (秦晓蕾 2017). In Zhuhai’s case, if an organization received a survey score at or below 60 out of 100, its leaders were disqualified from receiving an “outstanding” grade in their annual performance appraisal. Leaders were also penalized with a 20–30 percent reduction in their bonus. Furthermore, recipients of an “outstanding” grade were capped at a maximum of 5 percent of organization members (whereas for outstanding organizations, the limit was 20 percent) (付景涛/倪星 2008). The most interesting part of the ten-thousand citizens evaluation system is the composition of the “citizens.” In Zhuhai in 2007, 9,967 people responded to the survey. They included 2,767 respondents from the three representatives (representatives from the local party committees, people’s congresses and people’s political consultative conferences) and party-state cadres (jiguan ganbu), 4,000 respondents from enterprises and 3,200 respondents who were ordinary citizens (付景涛/曾莉 2010, 35). In Nanjing, the ten-thousand citizens’ survey included ten groups, namely, leadership cadres in the municipality (40), representatives of party committees, people’s congresses and people’s political consultative conferences (460), cadres managed by the municipality (450), representatives of organizations in districts and counties (1,350), enterprise managers (3,000), representatives of organizations dispatched to Nanjing (500), professionals and technicians (1,440), representatives of the streets and townships (660), mass representatives in the grassroots communities (4,500), and organization work style inspectors (200) – a total of 12,600 people (吉鹏/王跃 2006). In 2014, the total number surveyed increased to 28,921 people (秦晓蕾 2017). However, in both cases, in spite of the large number of respondents, the surveys focus on certain groups. The Zhuhai model, for example, highly values the opinions of enterprises. Among the 9,967 respondents, 4,000 came from enterprises (40 percent). Even among the representatives of the local people’s congresses and local people’s political consultative conferences, the number of enterprise representatives was higher than the number of ordinary citizen representatives. The evaluation system has this emphasis because it was developed mainly to serve the enterprises and investors so as to better promote local economic growth (付 景涛/倪星 2008). Nanjing’s survey appears to include a wide spectrum of citizens, but a sig-

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  69 nificant number of representative respondents were leaders in their organizations. Even mass representatives from the grassroots communities were mainly leaders such as the directors of village party committees and directors of local residential committees. Ordinary citizens, such as peasants, urban residents, laid-off workers and ordinary members in the abovementioned organizations were either not included or only in negligible numbers (吉鹏/王跃 2006). With such a composition of citizen representatives, both evaluation systems reflect the opinions of certain elites rather than the ordinary citizens. The function of the surveys was also constrained by the fact that responses from different groups were weighted differently. For example, in Zhuhai’s case, in 2007, evaluation of municipal leaders accounted for 15 percent of the final marks, while that of the three representatives accounted for 30 percent, cadres for 15 percent, enterprises for 20 percent and ordinary citizens for 20 percent (付景涛/曾莉 2010, 35). In other words, 60 percent of the final marks came from leaders and cadres within the system, while only 40 percent came from the enterprises and masses. It is interesting to note here that of the five groups, ordinary citizens were the harshest in their evaluations. Their mean score was 73, which was somewhere between “basically satisfied” (65) and “relatively satisfied” (75). The respondents from enterprises gave out the second-lowest average score, with a mean value of 79, somewhere between “relatively satisfied” (75) and “satisfied” (85). By comparison, the highest average score was from the municipal leaders, whose mean score was 87, within the range between “satisfied” (85) and “very satisfied” (95). When composite final scores are created for each evaluated organization, there are no meaningful differences among them. The organization that ranked first among the 67 evaluated organizations received a final score of 91.74, while the one that ranked last received a final score of 82.97 (付景涛/曾莉 2010, 35). In other words, the performance of all 67 organizations was between “satisfied” and “very satisfied.” The same phenomenon was also observed in Nanjing’s results (吉鹏/王跃 2006, 82). To be fair, the evaluations by ten-thousand citizens also have had some positive effects. Regardless of how proportionally slim citizen representation is, the evaluations still do provide a mechanism for sending feedback on government work and getting grievances and complaints off people’s chests. In Nanjing, every year the survey collects thousands of opinions, which can be used in making decisions for improvements (秦晓蕾 2017). In 1999 in Zhuhai, the municipal epidemic prevention station organized medical service teams to conduct health screening for workers after they received this suggestion from the enterprise representatives. This saved time for the enterprises and received favorable feedback from the investors. Similarly, the municipal land planning bureau greatly improved its efficiency by reducing the items for administrative approval from 70 to 17 and by reducing the average time spent on approving each item by 15 days (付景涛/倪星 2008, 42).

EVALUATION BY THIRD-PARTY ORGANIZATIONS Another noticeable approach is that since the mid-2000s, some localities have worked with third-party organizations to conduct performance evaluation. A few well-known experiments were conducted in Gansu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. Gansu Province was a pioneer in using a third-party organization in measuring government performance. Gansu is located in China’s hinterland. In 2004, the provincial leaders realized that the slow development of the province’s private businesses was hindering the province’s economic growth. In order

70  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China to tackle this issue, the provincial leaders hoped to collect the opinions of the private enterprises on the government’s performance, policies and changes regarding how to improve the environment for business growth. They delegated this project to the China Center for Local Government Performance Evaluation at Lanzhou University (hereafter the Lanzhou Center). The Lanzhou Center developed two performance measurement schemes: one for the 14 municipal governments in Gansu province, and one for the 39 organizations directly subordinate to the provincial government. The measurement scheme for the municipalities included five main performance categories – mission accomplishment, administration by law, management efficiency, honesty and diligence in work, and innovation. The five categories altogether contained 14 more specific performance indicators, such as investment environment, market regulation, administrative approval, and so on. The center then developed three sets of questionnaires for three groups of respondents, namely, private enterprises, supervisory bodies of a government/agency, and selected scholars and experts. The questions were developed to elaborate each performance indicator, and the questions for each group were different. The respondents were asked to rate the performance of a government or an agency on a 1–5 Likert scale. In 2004–2005, the weight of the evaluation from the private enterprises was 60 percent, from supervisory bodies was 20 percent, and from scholars and experts was 20 percent (包国 宪/董静/郎玫/王浩权/周云飞/何文盛 2011). From 2004 to 2006, the Lanzhou Center conducted the survey on an annual basis. In 2005, it sent out 15,750 questionnaires and received back 10,261 effective responses (65.15 percent). The survey results showed that the average score of municipalities was 3.68 (out of 5), and that of organizations directly subordinate to the provincial government was 3.63. This showed that overall, governmental performance was not remarkable, and the gap between the two types of surveyed organizations was not significant. Private enterprises’ average satisfaction rate for municipalities was 62.41 percent, while the average satisfaction rate for organizations directly subordinate to the provincial government was 59.2 percent (包国宪/董静/郎玫/王浩权/周云 飞/何文盛 2011, 65). The figures were by no means flattering. The original evaluation scores were sent to the provincial leaders without any modification and released to the whole society through media, government portals and newspapers. In 2006, after three years of performance evaluation, the average performance scores of both types of organizations had increased by 0.3, while the satisfaction rates remained at similar levels (包国宪/董静/郎玫/王浩权/周云飞/何文盛 2011, 65). Private enterprises in general thought the scores reflected the situation accurately. They indicated that the service attitude of government agencies had improved obviously, but that many problems remained in the areas of service quality and efficiency in administration examination and approval. They also pointed out problems in the general investment environment, including the high frequency of enterprise inspections and low governmental transparency. The information has been useful in directing the province to make changes. In Guangdong, the Center of Government Performance Evaluation at the South-China University of Technology (hereafter the Guangzhou Center) developed a different approach. Without any delegation, invites or funding from local governments, in 2007, the Guangzhou Center developed its own measurement system to evaluate the performance of municipal and county governments in Guangdong Province. The scheme included five performance categories, namely, promoting economic growth, maintaining social justice, protecting the natural environment, cutting back on government expenditure and realizing citizen satisfaction. The first four categories were used to assess the objective performance of local governments and

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  71 included a total of 40 more specific performance indicators. Data on the accomplishment of these tasks was drawn from annual reports, yearbooks and statistical bulletins, and so on. The fifth category, measuring citizen satisfaction with the government’s performance, included 10 indicators on citizens’ satisfaction with their personal lives, family lives, natural environment, government service and image, public-policy implementation, and so on. Data on citizen satisfaction was drawn from random surveys of citizens. In 2007, the Guangzhou Center surveyed a total of 23,777 citizens, and in 2012 this number rose to 27,640 citizens (郑方辉 2012, 96‒102). Since 2007, the Guangzhou Center has been using this measurement system to evaluate the performance of the 21 municipalities and 121 counties in Guangdong Province. The center also releases the evaluation results and the ranking of local governments in each category to the public through the media, and it publishes a series of red-cover books on the results. The 2012 survey results showed that the average score of the 21 municipalities was 64.2 (out of 100). Zhongshan was the top scorer at 70.8, while Shanwei had the lowest score – 59.8. Citizen satisfaction scores for all municipalities were lower than the scores in the other four categories: in 2012, the average citizens’ satisfaction score for the 21 municipalities was 55, whereas the average scores in the other categories were 67 for economic growth, 65.6 for maintaining social justice, 70.9 for protecting the natural environment, and 61.6 for cutting back on government expenditure. Zhongshan also ranked at the top of the citizen satisfaction surveys, with a score of 65.6, while Chaozhou and Shanwei both ranked at the bottom with scores of 45.3 and 50.7, respectively. The convergence of subjective and objective evaluations showed that in general, wealthy regions, such as the municipalities and counties in the Pearl River Delta region, were doing a better job than those in poverty-stricken regions (郑方辉 2012, 103‒129). The Guangdong experiment was different from the Lanzhou experiment in two respects. First, the Guangzhou Center had greater independence from local government, at least at the early stage of the practice. It did not receive funding from the government, it developed its own measurement standards, and it conducted the evaluation without any interference from either the citizens or the government (Yu and Ma 2015). The Guangzhou Center calls itself a “think tank” that provides local governments with additional, systematic and accurate information on their performance (郑方辉/谢良洲 2017). Second, its satisfaction survey targets ordinary citizens rather than focusing on particular groups such as businessmen or cadres. Citizen respondents were selected entirely randomly, which ensures representativeness of public opinion.

THE BLOSSOM OF A HUNDRED FLOWERS: MUSHROOMING OF LOCAL MODELS The years between 2008 and 2013 witnessed a mushrooming of locally developed government performance measurement models, an enthusiastic response to the national leaders’ advocation of building modern government performance management systems. In 2008, Premier Wen Jiabao indicated in his report to the 11th National People’s Congress that advancing China’s public-administration reforms required implementation of government performance management systems. This was the first time the term “performance management” had appeared in an official document (Burns and Zhou 2010, 9). In 2009, the COD released an updated account of methods of evaluating party and state leadership corps and leadership cadres (中共中央组织 部 2009). In July 2010, the Office of Performance Management Supervision was established

72  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China under the Ministry of Supervision. In March 2011, the State Council approved the establishment of a joint-meeting system of government performance management work consisting of nine ministries, including the COD, the Ministry of Supervision and the National Development and Reform Commission, among others. In June 2011, the State Council approved eight localities and six ministries to experiment with performance management. The eight localities were Beijing, Jilin, Fujian, Guangxi, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen. The ministries were the Ministry of Land Resources, the Ministry of Agriculture, the State Administration of Quality Inspection, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Finance. These efforts at the central level fueled a new stage of local experiments in performance management, with hundreds of local evaluation models appearing during the years 2008–2013. No one model is dominant. A study by 尚虎平 (2018) examines 96 local evaluation models and categorizes them into eight types by the organizations in charge: the party’s disciplinary inspection committees, the party’s organization departments, personnel agencies, local governments, performance evaluation offices, finance agencies, auditing agencies and the party’s commissions for established posts (see Table 4.2). Among the eight types of evaluation models, those managed by the finance agencies, auditing agencies, personnel agencies, local governments and performance evaluation offices are mainly evaluations of the administrative systems, though with different focuses. For example, finance agencies advocate performance-oriented budgeting systems and often link funding to program evaluation. The personnel agencies focus on human resource management and use performance evaluation to motivate cadres to accomplish agencies’ missions. Local governments focus on the TRS and use it to connect local five-year development plans to local organizations’ annual performance targets. By comparison, the evaluation models managed by the party’s disciplinary committees and organization departments focus on cadre management and political accountability. The organization departments’ evaluation models focus on selection and management of leadership cadres. The disciplinary committee’s evaluation systems focus on work style, integrity and cadre accountability. Despite this apparent variation, another study shows that most local evaluation models are highly similar in terms of what they measure (尚虎平/赵盼盼 2012). The study examines 42 local evaluation models that were highly promoted in propaganda. It finds that, first, these models have no big differences in terms of the specific evaluation indicators they use. The performance indicators fall into eight categories in all the 42 models: political indicators, economic indicators, social indicators, cultural indicators, indicators on citizens’ satisfaction, indicators on resources and the environment, indicators on the tasks with one-veto power and indicators on additional tasks. The models differed in the number of indicators under each category and the weights assigned to them. Second, the most obvious difference among the 42 models is their political indicators. This means that main innovations are in the area of how to measure performance on accomplishing political tasks such as party building. Overall, these models show a combination of top-down target control, efficiency building and citizen opinion surveys. Although each model declares itself to be a distinct model, by nature their differences amount to no more than “calling a cat a kitty” – they show a convergence of practices from previous reforms, with different local flavors. This trend has continued in Xi’s era. In 2012, the CCP’s 18th Congress indicated the need to “exercise government administration in an innovative way, increase public trust in the government, and improve its competence so as to make the government performance-oriented”

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  73 Table 4.2

Eight major performance measurement systems in China (based on 96 typical examples of performance measurement systems)

No.

Leading organizations

Key attributes and examples

Who’s in charge

1

Disciplinary inspection

Systems that emphasize work style, discipline and integrity

Party

committees

in measuring performance of local organizations. Typical examples include the systems implemented in some local governments in Hebei, Xinjiang, Hunan, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangsu and some central ministries.

2

Finance agencies

Performance budgeting and program evaluation systems.

State

Typical examples include the systems implemented in some local governments in Qinghai, Hubei, Hunan, Zhejiang, Tianjin, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hebei, Beijing, Jiangsu, Fujian and central ministries. 3

Auditing agencies

Performance auditing systems. Typical examples include the

State

systems implemented in some local governments in Henan, Fujian, Guangxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong. 4

Personnel management agencies Cadre and position evaluation systems. Typical examples

State

include the systems implemented in some local governments in Fujian, Hunan, Jilin, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, and Shaanxi. 5

Organization departments

Performance evaluation of leadership cadres and leadership

Party

corps. Implemented nationwide. Typical examples include the systems implemented in some local governments in Jiangsu, Guizhou, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hunan, Qinghai, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Guangxi. 6

Local party-states

TRS. Typical examples include the systems implemented in

Party-states

some local governments in Liaoning, Fujian, Hunan, Hainan, Anhui, Tianjin, Shanghai, Beijing, Hubei, Shenyang, Guizhou, and Shaanxi. 7

Performance evaluation offices TRS. Typical examples include the systems implemented in

Party/State

some local governments in Hunan, Jiangxi, Hubei, Jiangsu, Gansu, Shandong, Guangdong, and Zhejiang. 8

Commissions for established

Following the past practice of the organizations. No

posts

new experiments. Typical examples include the systems

Party

implemented in Guangdong, Tianjin, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu.

Source: 尚虎平 (2018), 111.

(Xinhua News Agency 2012). In June 2013, in a national meeting on organization work, Xi Jinping stated that the way to improve government performance evaluation was to prioritize indicators such as people’s improved livelihood, progress in social development, and ecological and environmental protection in local performance evaluation systems (贠杰 2018, 9). In 2017, Xi’s report to the 19th Party’s Congress indicated that “We will improve the performance assessment and evaluation systems for officials, institute incentive mechanisms and mechanisms to allow for and address errors” (Xinhua News Agency 2017). In this context, local practices show two general features: one is the development of a more balanced evaluation system that further downplays the importance of economic indicators. The second is the development of a more scientific approach to use both subjective evaluation (such as citizen satisfaction surveys) and objective evaluation (such as the government’s own evaluation

74  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China reports). There has also been growing collaboration between local government and third-party organizations in various policy areas (贠杰 2018).

REVIEWING THE REFORMS: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES Reviewing the reforms over the past forty years shows that performance measurement plays several key functions in local governance in China. It shoulders crucial political functions such as strengthening lower-level authorities’ policy compliance with the policy objectives set by their superiors (Gao 2009). It clarifies what performance means for the CCP leaders when it comes to selection, promotion and appointment of its cadre corps (Cai 2015). It is an important management tool for improving the efficiency and capacity of the administrative system. It promotes communication among party-states at different levels. Through the evaluation of policy implementations, the higher levels learn about problems with those implementations and their causes, which contributes to improvement in policy making (Heberer and Trappel 2013). Last but not least, it opens a window to the public and engages citizens in making the bureaucracy more responsive to public needs. Performance measurement is like a giant octopus – it has many tentacles that can be used to tackle different governance issues at the same time. Given space constraints, it is not possible to provide a thorough review here, but a few noteworthy observations can be made. First, according to the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), China’s “government effectiveness” has been improving for the past two decades. From 1996 to 2017, China’s score in this 100-point scheme increased from 46.8 to 68.2, whereas its scores on the other five dimensions – namely, voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption – show no significant improvement. Compared with other large developing countries and those with similar income levels, China’s progress is obvious. For example, India’s score on government effectiveness was 54.1 in 1996 and 56.7 in 2017, showing no improvement in twenty years (World Bank 2018). Although the WGI is only a rough proxy, some credit should be given to China’s governance-by-performance reforms. Through the TRS, China has also made impressive progress toward national and local development goals. Evidence abounds. For example, since work safety was made a binding target in local governments’ performance evaluation in 2004, total work-related fatalities have decreased from 136,025 in 2004 to 68,061 in 2014. The fatality rate per 100 million GDP decreased from 1.00 to 0.1 (国家安全生产监督总局 2005, 2015). In 2009, the Chinese leaders made a pledge at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen that China would reduce carbon emission per unit GDP by 40–45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005. In 2011, emission reduction targets were added into the environmental binding-target system. At the end of 2017, China had cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 46 percent from the 2005 level, fulfilling the commitment three years ahead of schedule. It is important to note that China achieved its emission targets without jeopardizing its economic growth. From 2005 to 2015, China’s economy more than doubled, and at the same time, its carbon intensity – the amount of carbon emissions per unit of GDP – dropped by 38.6 percent (United Nations 2018).

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  75 The Chinese government’s responsiveness to public needs is also very high. According to Tang (2018), this is one of the five “surprises” in public-opinion surveys in China. The Asian Barometer Survey conducted in 2008 shows that 78 percent of mainland Chinese respondents agreed that their government would respond to what people needed. In contrast, the percentages are much lower in other East Asian countries and regions that have copied the Western liberal democratic system in this survey, including Japan (33 percent), the Philippines (33 percent), Mongolia (25 percent), and South Korea (21 percent). Tan also finds that even when other factors such as age, education, gender, income, religiosity and geographic location are taken into consideration, government responsiveness is the single most significant factor in public regime support in China. One possible explanation is that “leaders of a democratic government may be hyper-responsive to public opinion only during the election season, and only to their supporters, but less once they get elected, between elections, and to those who do not vote for them” (Tang 2018, 10). However, the CCP leaders do not have the luxury of electoral cycles as a simple but effective yardstick to measure people’s opinion, and hence tend to be paranoid and compelled to respond to inconsequential protests or challenges. There are good reasons to believe that the proliferation of third-party evaluations in the 2000s has helped spur greater government responsiveness. China’s performance measurement reforms also face many challenges. One of the most notable problems is that the performance measurement system instigates widespread gaming behavior on the part of local officials. Manipulation of statistical data in order to fulfill required performance tasks has been documented by many studies (Minzner 2009; Gao 2015; Wallace 2016). Although data manipulation is a common problem in countries that have implemented performance management reforms, the magnitude, intensity and consequences of data manipulation in China are particularly worrisome. Data manipulation has been found in many policy areas, including economic statistics, poverty reduction, peasants’ net incomes, deaths in coal mine explosions, illegal extra births, the number of mass complaints and air quality (for a summary of this literature, see Gao 2015). Some economists believe that local leaders have been inflating their self-reported GDP data since the late 1990s (Rawski 2001; Wu 2007). The situation has been improving since the mid-2000s after the national leaders put up measures to tackle statistical distortion. Even when data is not faked or cooked, the desire to achieve high scores on performance measurement evaluations can still produce undesirable outcomes. When data manipulation is not feasible or viable, local officials may directly distort performance outputs, regardless of the harmful consequences for the public interest. For example, by the end of 2009, the national energy intensity levels had only been reduced by 14.4 percent, a much lower reduction than expected. To achieve the national goal of reducing energy intensity by 20 percent by 2010, officials in many localities chose to simply cut off electricity. In Hebei, local hospitals and schools were forced to close once every a few days. To save electricity, some companies even switched to diesel-operated generators, which ironically increased air pollution (Kostka 2016, 68). There is no systematic data on output distortion because such strategies are much subtler than data manipulation. But such behavior is likely to increase in response to the recent statistical reforms that aim to reduce statistical data manipulation. Third-party evaluations face constraints in their efforts to provide a more substantial monitoring of the party-state’s work. Although their overall quality is fair, they face the paramount challenge of maintaining their independence (Yu and Ma 2015). Most third-party evaluations are done by academic institutions, universities and research institutes. They are not entirely

76  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China immune from government interference even if their evaluations are not funded by the government. The more influential a third-party evaluation system is, the greater the chances that local governments will approach and pressurize the leaders of these organizations. In addition, citizen satisfaction surveys are limited as an information provision system (周志忍 2008; Yang and Wu 2013). Citizens do not have a say in the design of the performance evaluation system: they are not consulted regarding important questions such as whether performance evaluation should be conducted or how much their opinions should be weighed in the evaluation system, let alone such questions as what criteria should be used in assessing the work performance of local leaders. As Yang and Wu (2013, 165) observed, “the local bureaucracies, not citizens, are in charge of generating the performance results, pressuring the participating organizations, and making decisions about what elements are to be removed from the experiment. The role of the public is mainly to show up and assist the local authority to complete the process.”

CONCLUSION Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness has been a major theme of China’s administrative reforms over the past four decades. From the 1980s to 2013, the reform has gone through three stages, each with a different focus. In the first stage (1980s–1999), cadre evaluation and the TRS were the major tools. Performance measurement emphasized top-down evaluation and internal control within the bureaucratic hierarchy. In the second stage (1999–2008), the rise of third-party evaluations introduced a higher degree of citizen participation in evaluating government performance and made local party-states more responsive to citizen needs. In the third stage (2009–present), most Chinese localities, if not all, developed their own performance evaluation systems. These systems show convergence in terms of what they measure, although they are led by different party and state organizations and therefore have different focuses. It is important to note that these policy tools do not supersede one another over the reform course, but coexist in local governments’ evaluation systems to the present day. In essence, performance measurement has become a key policy instrument to achieve good governance in China. It carries important political functions as well as management functions. This chapter also shows that the reforms results are mixed. On the bright side, the reforms have made notable progress in improving the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of local party-states. On the negative side, performance measurement has caused certain undesirable outcomes. These undesirable outcomes are certainly not unique to China, but China needs to find its own solution to tackle them. Over the past few years, the CCP leaders have launched a series of centralization reforms to tackle statistical distortion and to discipline the cadre corps (see Kostka and Nahm 2017). These reforms are intended to address the severe information problems that have intensified over the past two decades (Gao 2016; Zhang 2017). Nevertheless, the key challenge for China’s future performance measurement reform is how to achieve a proper balance between political patronage and accountability, especially when the accountability pressure comes from both inside and outside the bureaucratic system. After three decades of intense and rapid development, it is time to review the dilemmas that have accumulated in the system. Future research can tell us how successful the CCP leaders are in addressing the undesirable outcomes of previous reforms, as well as the dilemmas and

Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  77 obstacles in achieving the multiple, sometimes competing, goals and values of performance measurement.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was funded by the Ministry of Education of Singapore under Academic Research Fund Tier 2 (Grant number: MOE2015-T2-2-074). The author thanks the editors, reviewers, and participants of the Suzhou conference for their valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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Measuring public-sector performance and effectiveness  79 秦晓蕾 (2017) “地方政府绩效评估中的有效公民参与：责任与信任的交换正义 – 以南京市‘万人 评议机关’15年演化历程为例.” 《中国行政管理》第2期, 35‒41. 人民文摘 (2004) “政府绩效评估体系引发争议(时政评论).” 第9期. Retrieved January 10, 2020, from http://​www​.people. com​.cn/​GB/​paper2086/​12900/​1159697​.html. 尚虎平 (2018) “合理配置政治监督评估与‘内控评估’的持续探索 – 中国40年政府绩效评估体制改 革的反思与进路.” 《管理世界》第10期, 105‒117. 尚虎平/赵盼盼 (2012) “绩效评估模式泛滥与绩效不彰困境 – 基于42个案例的分析.” 《中国行政 管理》第11期, 18‒24. 王汉生/王一鸽 (2009) “目标管理责任制：农村基层政权的实践逻辑.” 《社会学研究》 第2期, 61‒92. 徐双敏 (2011) “政府绩效管理中的‘第三方评估’模式及其完善.” 《中国行政管理》 第1期, 28‒32. 贠杰 (2018) “中国政府绩效管理40年：路径、模式与趋势.” 《重庆社会科学》第6期, 5‒13. 中共中央组织部 (1979) “中共中央组织部关于实行干部考核制度的意见.” 11月21日. Retrieved June 22, 2020, from http://​www​.chinalawedu​.com/​falvfagui/​fg22598/​19590​.shtml. 中共中央组织部 (1995) “关于加强和完善县(市)党委、政府领导班子工作实绩考核的通知.” 内部 文件. 中共中央组织部 (1998) “党政领导干部考核工作暂行规定.” 内部文件. 中共中央组织部 (2006) “体现科学发展观要求的地方党政领导班子和领导干部综合考核评价试行 办法.” 内部文件. 中共中央组织部 (2009) “地方党政领导班子和领导干部综合考核评价办法 (试行).” 内部文件. 中共中央组织部 (2019) “党政领导干部考核工作条例.” 内部文件. 郑方辉 (2012) 《2012中国政府绩效评价红皮书》. 北京：新华出版社. 郑方辉/谢良洲 (2017) “独立第三方评政府整体绩效与新型智库发展 – ‘广东试验’十年审视.” 《中 国行政管理》 第7期, 153‒155. 周黎安 (2007) “中国地方官员的晋升锦标赛模式研究.” 《经济研究》 第 7期, 36‒50. 周黎安 (2008) 《转型中的地方政府：官员激励与治理》. 上海: 格致出版社、上海人民出版社. 周志忍 (2008) “政府绩效评估中的公民参与：我国的实践历程与前景.” 《中国行政管理》 第1 期，111‒118. 周志忍 (2009) “我国政府绩效管理研究的回顾与反思.” 《公共行政评论》第1期， 34‒57.

PART III GOVERNMENT CAPACITY-BUILDING IN CHINA

5. Integrity management under state hierarchy: controlling corruption in China Ting Gong

Since the onset of reform in the early 1980s, the Chinese government has engaged in an intensified battle to control corruption and to promote government integrity. Corruption, defined as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain by Transparency International, has nevertheless continued to surge and become increasingly rampant, threatening the regime legitimacy. The top leaders for the first time openly and unequivocally admitted at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held in 2012 that government integrity was a fatal issue and corruption could cause the collapse of the Party and the state. The past decades witnessed numerous periodic yet tempestuous organizational rectification campaigns in China, subjecting corrupt party and government officials to draconian penalties. The central government also enacted numerous rules and regulations to guide the integrity performance of its cadre corps and considerably empowered its anti-corruption watchdogs to exercise authoritative fiats. However, the effectiveness of these campaigns left much to be desired. Their deficiencies have been documented by scholars (Quade 2007; Manion 2004), but the existing literature gives inadequate attention to local efforts at controlling and preventing corruption. It remains unanswered whether and how China’s anti-corruption enforcement regime may be strengthened from below. This chapter begins with the observation that China’s approach to fighting corruption has experienced some adjustments including a shift of focus from campaign-style corruption control toward locally based integrity management. Integrity management denotes strategies and activities undertaken by governments to stimulate and enforce integrity with a view to preventing corruption and other integrity violations (van Dooren 2009). Different from efforts to control existing corruption, integrity management puts more emphasis on preventing corruption. Governments in the world have pursued integrity management in, generally speaking, two different ways: rule-based and value-based. The former emphasizes monitoring officials’ behavior and punishing misconduct, while the latter pays more attention to building the moral competence of government employees (Paine 1994; Weaver and Treviño 1999). The implementation strategies of the two integrity management regimes are different. The rule-based system manages the ethical behavior of government officials by accountability mechanisms and penalties. The value-based integrity system relies more on “soft means” such as ethical leadership, integrity awareness, and positive incentives (Scott and Gong 2015). In addition, integrity management may be carried out in a top-down manner or a locally based bottom-up manner. The top-down approach demands sweeping conformity and uniformity across different localities in implementing central rules and directives, while the bottom-up approach allows local variation in the structure, process, and method of integrity management. In recent years, burgeoning and disparate local integrity innovations began to emerge and have been generally encouraged by the Chinese government (王春英 2009). The Chinese government under Xi Jinping’s leadership has intensified its anti-corruption crusade by combining 81

82  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China the rule-based and value-based strategies of integrity management. Although it is too early to tell the effectiveness and implications of the latest anti-corruption campaign, the current drive apparently differs from the previous ones in that it is more of a sustained effort than a swift one-off battle. Local governments have been called upon to take various integrity measures including bans on extravagance to prevent corruption, while the discipline inspection agencies at various levels are empowered to capture corrupt officials at all ranks of the government, no matter “big tigers” or “small flies.” The departure of China’s anti-corruption endeavor from its earlier campaign-style and conformity-seeking mode toward more emphasis on innovative corruption prevention brings some important questions to the fore. What are the local anti-corruption initiatives and ethics programs that emerged in recent years? What has triggered their development? More importantly, why has China’s central leadership become receptive to local initiatives in cadre management, an area where political conformity has long been deemed essential for an authoritarian system? Given the country’s size and its relatively underdeveloped governing institutions, the Chinese central government has adopted decentralized and experimentalist methods from time to time (Heilmann 2008; Florini, Lai, and Tan 2012), but it has rarely done so in the area of cadre management. While the notions of “adaptive authoritarianism” (Shambaugh and Brinley 2008, 38) and “authoritarian resilience” (Nathan 2003, 6) in China studies may help explain the institutional flexibility of the Chinese state to some extent, there has been little emphasis in the literature on the institutional flaws in China’s governance as the underlying causes of the seemingly adaptive moves of the central leadership. Analyzing China’s effort to promote locally based integrity management, this study argues that the new strategic move testifies to the institutional failure of the earlier anti-corruption regime. In the past decades, although the central government intensified its anti-corruption crusade, stipulated numerous formal-legal integrity standards, and strengthened punishment for corrupt officials, anti-corruption effectiveness has nonetheless been far from satisfactory. A comprehensive analysis of the causes of corruption is beyond the scope of this chapter, but “where corruption is widespread, implementation of anti-corruption strategies is also inherently problematic” (Manion 2004, 22). Thus, this study focuses on, inter alia, a particular issue in China’s anti-corruption enforcement – the agency loss problem – in order to understand the context in which locally based integrity management has been encouraged to replace the campaign-style approach to controlling corruption. It suggests that the spread of local integrity innovations has paradoxical institutional causes. It undoubtedly reveals some new thinking on the part of the central leadership in encouraging local governments to play a more active role in fighting corruption. Just as clearly, however, it also indicates that the change is driven by the center’s concern about losing control over individual malfeasance or organized power abuse at local levels due to implementation hurdles. Empirically, this chapter draws on cases of local anti-corruption initiatives collected from Guangdong province in China. As a coastal area and due to its high level of economic integration with overseas markets, Guangdong is prone to corruption risks. Because of that, the province has actively explored new ways to combat corruption and has consequently accommodated various local anti-corruption innovations and experiments. The author interviewed more than 30 local party and government officials who had engaged in various capacities in making and implementing local anti-corruption initiatives. The interviewees were selected as a purposive sample, based on the author’s knowledge about the integrity programs in which

Integrity management under state hierarchy  83 they engaged. They were chosen for an interview before they all had extensive experience with local integrity initiatives. Specifically, among the interviewees were two types of cadre: those who served as leading officials at the city or district level and were involved in the planning and design of local integrity programs; and those who were lower-level civil servants and were required to participate in the programs. The empirical data of this chapter also came from official documents and media reports on more than 40 major integrity programs in various localities in Guangdong where the author conducted the fieldwork.

THE AGENCY LOSS PROBLEM IN CHINA’S ANTI-CORRUPTION REGIME Corruption has been a grave challenge in post-reform China since the 1980s. In the early reform years, corruption was perceived mainly as individual lapses from the CCP’s moral standards caused by extrinsic capitalist influences or resulting from the chaotic Cultural Revolution, which greatly distorted the moral values in society. The central government deemed it necessary to carry out merciless cleanups in order to decontaminate party and state organizations. This led to many nationwide sporadic anti-corruption campaigns, which were usually carried out in a swift and stormy manner, followed by investigations of tens of thousands of suspected corruption cases and the dismissal of cadres from government posts and party membership. Despite intensified anti-corruption endeavors, corruption continued to evince a trend of acceleration in China, as indicated by some alarming situations. For example, the number of corruption cases implicating high-level party and government officials soared; corruption continued to cause a huge drain on the state coffers; some old forms of corruption, such as buying and selling government posts, reemerged; corrupt activity became a collective undertaking as a result of increasing collusion between officials and business people; and the latency period, defined as the time from when corruption was committed to when the case was uncovered, became increasingly longer, indicating the greater difficulty in detecting corruption (Shieh 2005; Gong and Ma 2009; Wedeman 2013). Ineffective control over corruption reveals not so much weak political will in fighting corruption as poor governing capacities. It is ironic that in China there is in fact no shortage of strict central rules to regulate official behavior. Gong and Ren (2013) find that in the past three decades, the central government issued more than 170 anti-corruption regulations, roughly five or six new provisions each year. However, few of these regulations were practically effective. It is particularly devastating for centralized anti-corruption strategies to encounter the “agency loss” problem where local agents fail to act in accordance with their principal’s demands. Agency loss may take a variety of forms in different policy areas (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991; Brehm and Gates 1999), but it often brings two prominent risks to policy implementation. One is adverse selection, which occurs when the center delegates its power to wrong agents because the latter withhold information about themselves and their performance; and the other is moral hazard, meaning that the agent engages in “shirking” or “slippage” by acting differently from what the principal expects (Héritier 2007). As Kiewiet and McCubbins (1991) suggest, these risks occur because the upper-level authorities can neither find all that local agents do, nor can they know all that the agents know. At the same time, the central authorities have no effective way to prevent agents from misusing or abusing the delegated power.

84  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China China’s top-down anti-corruption crusade suffered the problems caused by agency loss. The first and foremost was the information asymmetry (Eisenhardt 1989) between the center and the local as the central government was often ill-informed of what was going on at local levels. The national authorities were unable to gather and cope with the overwhelming amount of information about corruption in a country as vast and complex as China: “[T]he central actor may confront vast information overload in terms of its capacity to aggregate different information, especially if peripheral actors have subtly different problems” (Lazer et al. 2011, 315). It was virtually a “mission impossible” for the central government to effectively manage the battle against corruption due to the pervasiveness of corruption all over the country. As expressed by a Chinese saying, the Center was “too far away to be able to do everything local” (鞭长莫及). Second, information asymmetry loomed large in China’s anti-corruption battle not just because of information overload; in fact, there was also a problem of how to comprehend information. The Center often faced difficulties in discerning authentic reports from false ones and was therefore unable to detect the actual scope and level of corruption nationwide. Chinese scholars point out the existence of many “hidden cases of corruption,” including both unreported and undiscovered corruption cases. It was estimated that only one out of five corrupt officials was actually uncovered (李成言 2006). The situation was summarized by the Chinese saying that the central supervision over corruption was too remote, public supervision was too difficult, and disciplinary action was too late (上级监督太远，下级监督太难，纪 委监督太晚). A third problem underlying the implementation deficit was that local officials tended to develop coping strategies and even colluded with each other in ways that could sidetrack central policies. They might, for example, set their own priorities in policy implementation processes, performing “selective policy implementation” (O’Brien and Li 1999). Central rules and regulations were sometimes treated as showcases by local officials and implemented only as a matter of formality (走过场). All these problems attested to the deficiencies of the campaign-style anti-corruption strategy and prompted the central leadership to review and recalibrate its drive against corruption.

PATTERNS OF LOCAL INTEGRITY MANAGEMENT The CCP Central Committee enacted the Decision to Strengthen and Improve the Building of the Party’s Integrity in as early as 2001 to emphasize the urgency of institutionalizing integrity measures, which was officially endorsed by the Party’s National Congress in the next year. Signs of reorientation were indicated by several ensuing changes in the official terminology of anti-corruption policies in the following years. First, the term “fighting corruption” was replaced by “fighting and preventing corruption” to urge governments at various levels to prioritize corruption prevention by developing preemptive measures. Furthermore, fighting corruption was no longer referred to as just a “battle” but as a long-term major mission of the state which local governments were obliged to undertake. Last but not least, the central government put more emphasis on rule-based corruption prevention by calling upon local authorities to be more innovative in developing integrity programs and measures. All these changes set the stage for a strategic shift from campaign-driven corruption control to locally based integrity management.

Integrity management under state hierarchy  85 Local anti-corruption initiatives and experiments consequently mushroomed, ranging from new integrity measures, reinvented ethics programs, novel enforcement procedures, to attempts at restructuring local anti-corruption agencies. These innovative programs have indicated a more active role of local governments in rule-setting and institution-building in the areas of cadre management, particularly with regard to regulating officials’ integrity performance. Some local officials were very proud of being able to do so as they told the author during the interviews, “…our initiatives are entirely indigenous as they have received neither substantial input from the center nor imported recipes from other localities” (Interview, May 2012). Based on the author’s fieldwork in Guangdong, five types of local integrity innovation may be identified, including initiatives and programs that aimed to: (1) enhance internal reporting mechanisms to manage the integrity performance of government officials; (2) emphasize monitoring measures to identify or prevent official misconduct; (3) promote transparency of government processes and procedures to invite public supervision; (4) provide incentives for government officials to maintain a higher level of integrity; and (5) restructure anti-corruption agencies in order to produce highly integrated integrity management. Type 1 involves new rules and practices aimed to improve internal self-reporting within the government for the purpose of detecting and preventing corruption. Many local governments designed and implemented internal reporting systems. The Guangzhou Municipal Government, for instance, required public officials to disclose to the personnel department their personal information such as changes in their marital status, the foreign residence of their spouse and children, and private visits paid to foreign countries, if any. In another case, the local government in Shenzhen asked the city’s leading officials to report details of individual and family finances to superior authorities. The underlying assumption was that the personal life of a government official was highly relevant to his or her public conduct, as revealed by the fact that corrupt officials tended to have extra-marital affairs. Type 2 includes integrity programs and measures designed to monitor officials’ conduct and hold them accountable for transgression. In addition to self-reporting, local governments established various inspection programs to detect illegal income and corrupt activities. The supervision bureau of Lianjiang City once sent out an inspection team of 50 members to investigate local corruption cases on the spot. Based on the team’s reports, the Lianjiang City Government issued administrative warnings to 21 officials and referred more than 20 suspected cases of official misconduct and relevant evidence to the procuratorial organs for further investigation. Some other local governments in Guangdong took the initiative to revise government approval procedures in order to make information available for detecting corruption. Shenzhen Municipal Government established an online system to handle applications for administrative approval for various personal matters. The system allowed city residents to submit applications and view results electronically and made it possible for the government’s anti-corruption watchdogs to keep a close eye on approval processes. The officials in the Shenzhen Government proudly mentioned during the author’s interview that their City was the very first in the whole country to use such a system. Type 3 consists of integrity measures to increase the transparency of government processes and procedures. Local governments in Guangdong took measures to encourage public participation in government activities to enable citizens to play a certain role in monitoring the conduct of individual officials. The town government of Shatian in Dongguan City launched an online platform for people to give suggestions about government affairs and to make spe-

86  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China cific requests on how the government should improve its services. The e-platform also allowed the public to interact with government officials on issues related to their personal interests. Yunfu City Government was another interesting case. It established an e-forum, referred to as a rural anti-corruption “through-train” to provide the public with local fiscal information. City residents could lodge complaints and make suggestions through this e-forum. At the same time, integrity measures were pursued off-line to broaden public access to government. In another case, Nanxiong City Government invited ordinary citizens to attend the meetings of the local party committee as observers, who did not have voting power but were encouraged to make comments and suggestions. All these efforts were intended to make the public aware of the government’s integrity efforts and accomplishments. Type 4 refers to those experiments aiming to provide incentives for public officials to follow high moral standards and reward those who demonstrate good ethical performance. The author was told by some interviewees that these programs emphasized “encouragement” rather than “punishment”; they used positive incentives to inspire officials to act in accordance with major moral principles such as honesty, integrity, and righteousness. Integrity incentives varied greatly in practice, including oral praises, fringe benefits, and monetary rewards. The “integrity pension fund” in Jiangmen City, discussed later in the chapter, illustrated this type of experiment. Finally, Type 5 initiatives include those aimed at reorganizing government institutions in order to enhance the role of local anti-corruption watchdogs in corruption prevention and integrity management. This may be seen in some measures taken by local governments in Guangdong. In one case, the Shun De District of Fo Shan City merged 41 party and government units into 16 to consolidate their functions and strengthen their capability to oversee the local implementation of anti-corruption policy. In another case, several cities located at the borders of three provinces (Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan) created a joint forum called the “North Bay Forum on Clean Government” to promote cross-regional collaboration and supervision in preventing corruption. Five of them (Zhanjiang, Beihai, Qianzhou, Fangcheng Gang, and Haikou) along the North Bay agreed to exchange information and make concerted efforts to fight corruption in the region.

CASE STUDIES This section details five local anti-corruption initiatives, each of which corresponds to one type of integrity management discussed above. These “representative cases” illustrate anti-corruption rationales behind, and specific mechanisms for, locally based integrity endeavor. Information about these cases was collected through the author’s interviews and also came from the local media, as local innovations tended to attract wide media attention. It should be noted, however, that some of these practices are still being experimented with as local programs and it remains unclear whether they will eventually be institutionalized via the endorsement of the central authorities for nationwide diffusion. Case 1: Personal Assets Disclosure In China, many corruption cases involve property and income with unidentified sources. The possession of big volumes of unaccounted for property is treated as a crime under Chinese law.

Integrity management under state hierarchy  87 This legal practice has nevertheless been criticized, because the punishment for unidentified property crime is much less severe than that for bribery and embezzlement. In addition, if the suspicious property is believed to have unidentified sources, there would be no further investigation and, consequently, possible power-for-money deals may be concealed. Concerned about the bribery and embezzlement of government officials who may have used public power to enrich themselves, scholars and practitioners in China have called for the disclosure of personal assets by public officials as a measure to identify and prevent the possession of income and property with unidentified sources. However, the central government only adopted a few regulations. In 1995, for example, it issued a regulation to require government officials at or above the county level to report personal income to higher authorities. Another regulation in 2001 extended the scope of reporting from individual income to family assets but narrowed its application to leading officials at the provincial level only. These two regulations marked the beginning of establishing an official financial disclosure system, but their implementation was sluggish, largely due to local reluctance. The political will of the central leadership was compromised by the lack of positive response and active support from local officials, as some of them saw the requirement to disclose assets as verging on an invasion of their privacy (Zhu 2010). According to an early survey conducted by the National People’s Congress, over 75 percent of the surveyed government officials opposed the implementation of a disclosure system (汪玉凯 2009). Despite the delay at the national level, Guangdong province moved ahead with its experiment in relation to the disclosure of the income and assets of government officials. In 2010, the provincial government issued a regulation requiring all leading officials in the region to report their income and assets. This means that public officials must disclose information on both personal and family finances, with investments included. They have also been asked to report the employment status of their spouses and children. The Guangdong model of asset reporting was considered more substantial and meaningful than experiments in other areas such as the Aletai region of Xinjiang. While in other localities the declaration of assets only involved low- or mid-level officials and leading officials were often exempted from declaring their properties, the Guangdong experiment brought the personal information and asset situation of major government leaders to the forefront of scrutiny. The effectiveness of Guangdong’s asset disclosure practice has been questioned. It was criticized as merely a passive response to some corruption scandals involving senior government officials in the province. For example, the former mayor of Shenzhen and the former head of the Provincial Political Consultative Conference were both found to have accrued huge assets from unknown sources through corruption. Although asking leading officials to disclose their assets was an important step toward integrity management, in Guangdong as well as many other localities, there was little public access to the disclosed income or asset information because officials were only asked to report the information to the Party organization department. The effect of assets disclosure on integrity management remained questionable as there was neither careful scrutiny of what had been reported nor public access to the reported information. Case 2: Reforming Government Vehicle Management The abuse of government vehicles for personal benefits was a major problem in China, which not only caused a big loss of public money but also seriously tarnished the public image of the

88  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China government and its civil servants. The public money incurred for purchasing and maintaining official vehicles was startling and became a huge drain on the country’s coffers. According to the estimate of some scholars, the spending on government vehicles was as high as ¥344 billion a year, which amounted to 12.08 percent of China’s national revenue and far exceeded the expenditure on national defense or education (Guo 2010). To deal with this special type of power abuse, Guangdong province took the lead in revamping the government vehicle management system. Local governments in the province were called upon to find innovative ways to ensure that official vehicles would be used for public purposes only. In response, some local governments centralized vehicle management by asking their logistical units to closely scrutinize all the requests for using official vehicles. Other governments reduced the number of official vehicles in order to encourage their officials to use public transportation with transport subsidies. In Huizhou City, for example, government officials were provided with subsidies ranging from ¥500 to ¥2,800 per month depending on the person’s job responsibilities. If an official spent more than that, s/he would have to make a payment out of his or her own pocket. The policy makers hoped that these measures could stop the abuse of government vehicles and reduce related public spending. However, the stories told by the interviewees were somewhat different. One interviewee said: We don’t think that providing transport subsidies can really solve the problem. As a matter of fact, after taking the subsidies into their pocket, some officials continue to use official vehicles. In our office where there are only three of us, we still keep an official car. When our Head wants to use the car, we dare not say no. As a result, this car has almost become his personal property. (Interview, May 2012)

The rationale of providing transportation subsidies to public officials was also questioned by the public, and people criticized it as a disguised form of salary increase for government officials (Guo 2010, 503). The Guangzhou Municipal Government adopted a different method in vehicles management. In 2011, the municipal government required all official vehicles in its jurisdiction to install a GPS device as a part of its effort to establish a GPS-assisted government vehicle monitoring system. One interviewee said: This system would allow the discipline authorities to trace the locations of official vehicles and the routes they took. If a driver parks an official vehicle near some sensitive areas, such as a nightclub, the electronic system will inform us immediately. The monitoring system can thus hold the driver accountable if misuse is found. We believe that this system has helped reduce the spending on government vehicles by 24 percent. (Interview, March 2011)

However, questions were raised about the feasibility and effectiveness of this reform measure. For one thing, as some interviewees pointed out, even if the GPS system could record the routes taken by official vehicles, it would be virtually impossible for anti-corruption agencies to go through millions of records to trace a particular one when conducting investigations. For another, installing the GPS system as a monitoring device would show the government’s distrust of its own employees and might adversely affect the morale of government officials – their confidence, cheerfulness, and willingness to perform assigned duties.

Integrity management under state hierarchy  89 Case 3: Special Credit Cards for Official Spending As a local anti-corruption initiative, the Guangzhou Municipal Government began to require its subordinate units to use designated credit cards instead of cash for public expenditures. These credit cards might be used, for example, to pay expenses related to official travel, hotel accommodations, and other miscellaneous spending. The purpose of this measure was to enable the financial department to trace transaction details of public spending, such as where and for what purpose the money was used, in order to prevent financial irregularities. Government officials using these credit cards were expected to abide by the rules set by local financial authorities. They must use designated hotels, restaurants, or shops for duty-related consumption because only those shops would accept this type of credit cards. For each transaction, the official concerned had to submit a receipt, a transaction record, and other expense details if needed, to the financial department for review and reimbursement. Financial officials would then cross check the expenses to make sure that they do not involve any inappropriate use of public funds. Anti-corruption agencies may also access financial transaction records to investigate financial irregularities if there was anything suspicious. The underlying assumption was that cash-based spending tended to create opportunities and incentives for embezzlement and other financial misconduct. A story was told during the author’s interview that some years ago, the disciplinary authorities of the Guangzhou Municipal Government caught an official who claimed to have purchased office supplies but had actually bought personal healthcare products. In addition, it was believed that in comparison with cash-based financial transactions, using credit cards might expedite financial investigations if needed, since records were readily accessible. Public expenditures on official hospitality and the like in Guangzhou reportedly declined by 10 percent after the credit card system had been introduced (Interview, September 2011). The effectiveness of this initiative as an integrity measure was nevertheless subject to debate. Many credit cards were in fact left idle because they were inconvenient to use. Some officials complained that it was in fact not practical to use these cards during their duty trips because not all shops were willing to accept them. In order to use these cards, sometimes they had to make a big effort to go to hotels in remote locations. One interviewee said even more frankly: Even with these cards, officials can still circumvent the rules to engage in luxury banquets or other irregular activities; they may, for example, use two or more credit cards to settle one large bill so each bill looks small. (Interview, September 2011)

Case 4: Integrity Pension Fund In order to provide government officials with incentives to pursue high integrity standards, the Government of Jiangmen City in Guangdong introduced a unique “integrity pension fund” several years ago. Government officials were encouraged to participate in the scheme and, if they did, they would then be asked to deposit a certain amount of their salary into a pension fund each month and the government would contribute the same amount. The expected contribution varied among officials and, generally speaking, the higher a person’s rank was, the more he or she would be expected to contribute. For example, ¥1,600 per month was set for officials at the bureau level (厅局级), ¥1,400 for those at the department level (处级), ¥900 at

90  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China the section level (科级), and ¥400 for ordinary civil servants. These amounts were deducted directly from their salaries each month. They could withdraw a certain amount from the fund after a period of time if they remained “clean,” which meant that they had not engaged in any corrupt activities during the period. Specifically, participating officials could receive as much as 70 percent of the accumulated amount in the fund every five years as long as they did not have any misconduct during these years. They could receive the rest when they retired or changed jobs provided that they continued to be “clean.” Once punished for corruption or any other related wrongdoing, an official could only receive a reduced amount or none of the accumulation in the fund, depending on the nature of the wrongdoing. For example, if an official received a warning (警告) as a penalty from the Party or the government, s/he would lose 50 percent, but not the total, of the accumulated amount because a warning was considered to be the least serious of all the disciplinary penalties. Government officials in Jiangmen responded to the scheme enthusiastically. As officially reported, about 4,600 local officials joined the scheme immediately after it was introduced. However, this experiment attracted a lot of criticism from the general public and local media. People questioned why the government should give additional money (the matching contribution) to public officials who already had relatively higher incomes. Some even pointed out that since “integrity” was a basic requirement for public officials, there was no reason to reward them with extra money for staying away from corruption. The Jiangmen experiment was criticized for channeling more public funds into the individual pockets of public officials in addition to their formal salaries. The public criticism made the top leaders of Guangdong province uneasy. They conducted an investigation of the case by holding public hearings. Most of the people who were consulted strongly opposed this kind of pension fund. Under pressure, Jiangmen City suspended the experiment two months after it had been introduced. The city officials who had participated in the design and implementation of the scheme were confused, frustrated, and unconvinced, as they stated during the interviews: We spent so much time designing and implementing this scheme and did it with really good intentions, why it ended in such a disappointing way?! Why could not other people understand us? (Interview, September 2011)

They also complained about the lack of support from the upper-level governments. The failure of this short-lived experiment indicated the importance of both the endorsement of higher authorities and the public understanding for any reform attempts in China’s context. Case 5: New Institutional Design Modeling after the Hong Kong ICAC Hong Kong is one of the few clean societies in the world. Its success in combatting corruption and, especially, the independent power and key role of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in Hong Kong have been admired by local governments and officials in Mainland China. For example, the leaders of Foshan city in Guangdong province discussed the possibility of forming an independent commission against corruption in their city that would, to a large extent, mirror the ICAC model (Scott 2013). They planned to merge the anti-corruption bureau of the local procuratorate with the local CCP disciplinary inspection

Integrity management under state hierarchy  91 committee to make an integrated and powerful anti-corruption agency under the latter’s leadership. The merger proposal came out of a report prepared by 30 local government officials, pressing for the reorganization of anti-corruption institutions. In their view, the existing practice of transferring cases from the Party’s disciplinary authorities to the anti-corruption bureau of the local procuratorate for further processing was highly inefficient and ineffective. They argued against this practice on the grounds that a lot of public resources were wasted due to the lack of collaboration among these separate anti-corruption bodies. As practitioners, they saw the urgent need for restructuring the government’s anti-corruption network. At the same time, at a symposium convened by the local Party Committee, the possibility of forming a city-level mega independent commission against corruption, similar to the ICAC in Hong Kong, was explored. It was believed that merging the existing anti-corruption agencies into a major one would be the first step toward that goal. However, the representatives from the provincial and city procuratorates were neither interested nor convinced. They saw the proposed merger as unconstitutional because keeping anti-corruption agencies separate was stipulated by the Constitution. They also believed that the proposed revamping was against the mainstream of judicial reforms in many countries in the world where an independent procuratorate was being promoted because, if the proposal were adopted, the procuratorate would become a sub-unit of the Party’s disciplinary inspection system rather than being independent of it. The associate director of the city procuratorate stated clearly that the nature and content of the investigations carried out by the Party’s disciplinary inspection committee were starkly different from those carried out by the procuratorate; therefore, the proposed merger was a mismarriage and unacceptable. There was no doubt that the Foshan proposal was inspired by the anti-corruption practice of the Hong Kong ICAC and aimed at more effective anti-corruption enforcement. However, as noted above, Foshan’s innovative idea for making a mega anti-corruption agency received no endorsement from higher authorities and was actually beyond the political and institutional parameters set by the Center. The legitimacy of Foshan’s proposal was challenged not only because the Chinese Constitution would not allow such a merger but also because an independent anti-corruption agency would be impossible in China’s current political setting.

IMPLICATIONS BEYOND THE LOCAL ANTI-CORRUPTION INITIATIVES The universe of local initiatives is huge in China, especially in the various domains of economic development and management, because of the ongoing market transformation and administrative decentralization. Power devolution requires the active involvement of local agents: “In China’s decentralized structure, national policies are implemented only if there are vested interests and powerful agents pushing for change at the local level” (Florini, Lai, and Tan 2012, 135). Post-reform China has been regarded as being “highly innovative” in finding policies and institutions to deal with the complex challenges of large-scale economic change at the macro level while avoiding systemic breakdown (Heilmann 2008). At the micro level, there are more cases of entrepreneurship and innovative programs. Managerial, service, and collaborative innovations in the public sector have attracted increasing attention (Wu, Ma, and Yang 2010). As shown earlier in this chapter, cadre management, one of those areas where

92  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China the agenda and policy were traditionally set strictly in a top-down manner, has experienced innovative changes as well. Some may argue that local innovations are showcases for political performance (政绩工 程), meaning that they are window-dressing measures used by local authorities to show off their political achievements (张峰 2005). Such a view holds true to some extent but is rather simplistic. It may also be argued that other countries have such experimental anti-corruption policies as well and their practice is unrelated to the agency loss problem but rather results from the strong political will of the state leadership. The findings of this study nevertheless suggest that the development of a “local” approach to integrity management in China is contextually embedded and has its institutional logic rooted in the country’s specific conditions. To begin with, the development of locally based integrity management in China was largely driven by the disappointing situation of corruption in the country where, despite the effort for several decades since the onset of market reform, controlling corruption has remained a daunting task and an unaccomplished mission for the central leadership. There is no evidence that the government’s various anti-corruption measures were effective. The haphazard political campaigns against corruption yielded only meager results. When institutions succeed or fail to shape individual behavior in a desirable fashion, the explanations are likely to be found within the institutions themselves (Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth 1992). Underlying the failure is an inherent institutional flaw of the top-down campaign-driven approach; that is, it is almost inevitable for the national orchestration of anti-corruption management to suffer “agency loss” problems. Agency loss, a problem often associated with authoritarianism, is nevertheless hardly perceived as tolerable by an authoritarian regime itself. The stakes are particularly high for an authoritarian regime when it loses information about, and actual control over, its local officials. For this reason, local initiatives and accountability for corruption prevention become not only possible but also imperative in cadre management, an area subject to political uniformity for a long time in China. Facing the need to overcome agency loss and to improve the efficacy of anti-corruption endeavor, the central leadership has to abandon its “one-size-fits-all” anti-corruption mindset to pursue multifaceted and multifarious anti-corruption strategies by engaging local agents more actively in the battle. A local approach to integrity management serves practical purposes. The top-down anti-corruption enforcement in China has long been criticized for being a one-man show (‍独 角戏), assigning the CCP Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission a dominant role in everything from policy design to implementation (张磊 2006). A powerful central watchdog is necessary for overseeing local anti-corruption moves, but the central agency can hardly handle everything by itself, especially in detecting corrupt activities at local levels. The active involvement of local governments can ease the burden on the Center for effective corruption control. First and foremost, it may lead to the creation of integrity programs and measures that better suit local conditions and needs without suffering institutional “isomorphic” pressure from above. Second, it may also bridge missing links between policy design and policy execution by facilitating the formation of stronger accountability relationships locally; that is, local agents will be held responsible and accountable for the outcomes of integrity programs of their own design. A third, but by no means insignificant, advantage of local integrity management is that by pressing local authorities to come up with innovative measures to combat corruption, some new and effective methods may emerge for possible replication on a larger scale or even at the national level. In a sense, locally based integrity management echoes the new public management paradigm, which favors mission-driven institutions that leave members “free

Integrity management under state hierarchy  93 to pursue the organization’s mission with the most effective methods they can find,” while leaders “create a clear sense of mission” and “steer more, row less,” and the “[b]oats travel much faster when everyone is pulling their oar in the same direction” (Osborne and Gaebler 1992, 113; Gore 1993, 74). That being said, it should be noted that the emergence of locally based integrity management is not going to replace the top-down approach in China; nor is it possible for locally based integrity management to resolve the agent loss problem. What distinguishes the current approach from the previous top-down one is the Center’s encouraging attitude toward local anti-corruption innovations and a more active role of local governments in initiating integrity measures. However, the Chinese local states’ capacity for innovation is conditioned by the same institutional logic behind the change; namely the Center’s concern about losing control over its agents and its desire to continue to “manage” government integrity under hierarchy. Thus, while local governments work on the scripts for their officials’ behavior by providing substantive guidelines, their intended institutional changes cannot go beyond centrally prescribed policy templates. Local initiatives still need the blessing of higher authorities to be considered valid and appropriate; otherwise, they won’t be able to survive, as shown by the cases of the integrity pension fund in Jiangmen and the new institutional design in Foshan. In China’s context, the formation and diffusion of local initiatives require centrally conferred legitimacy. Some have endured because they became “legitimate” through the endorsement of some authoritative or powerful individual or organization (Clemens and Cook 1999). Whether local initiatives can succeed depends on the “green light” of the central government as a pre-condition. Otherwise, local innovation will never move beyond the experimental stage. This also explains why only local governments, rather than any grassroots forces, can acquire a significantly more active role in the battle against corruption in China’s current setting. Given the nature of the Chinese state, tasks concerning cadre management must be performed by state agencies or agencies authorized by the state. Local governments could serve as agents of change, but they are still part of the state hierarchy and are expected to behave in accordance with the prevailing political norms or centrally prescribed templates. It is in this way that the Center has continued to exercise its overarching monitoring power through the Party’s discipline inspection system composed of anti-corruption watchdogs at various levels of the government. Evidence of this can be found in the adoption of two accountability mechanisms to hold local governments responsible and accountable. One mechanism is the inclusion of anti-corruption effectiveness into local officials’ performance evaluation; the other is the creation of an inspection system that involves sending central officials to various localities on a regular basis to perform anti-corruption check-ups. Anti-corruption assessment and inspection carried out by central authorities have become more regular and frequent. By doing so, the Center hopes to minimize agency loss problems and to hold lower-level officials accountable for anti-corruption effectiveness.

CONCLUSION The strategic move of China’s anti-corruption drive from campaign-style corruption control to locally based integrity management has sparked a vast array of innovative integrity programs and schemes. Some of them are brand new, while others are revamps of traditional methods. Regardless of their origins, the variety of local initiatives reflected in the different types of

94  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China anti-corruption endeavors and major cases discussed above shows a more active role of local governments in integrity management. Local agents’ appetite for active participation in integrity engagement has been strongly encouraged by the central authorities, who have attempted to improve anti-corruption effectiveness by alleviating the agency loss problem. While investigating the rise of locally based integrity management and its underlying causes, this analysis by no means suggests that it can offer a solution to corruption. To be clear, this study does not seek to assess the effectiveness of local integrity initiatives. What it hopes to achieve is a better understanding of why the central leadership has embraced decentralized integrity management. Clearly, the central leadership understands the importance of local governments in integrity management, but it also knows that the task of integrity management has to be performed through the state hierarchy. Managing government integrity under state hierarchy only may cause the neglect of social empowerment and public participation and cannot be expected to fundamentally resolve agency loss problems. Corruption, as a social malady, can be suppressed only if the larger public embraces, and actively engages in, the course against it. “Police patrol” by state agents is more costly yet less effective than “fire alarms” sounded by the public. The change in China’s anti-corruption strategy leaves the questions of how to engage the public in monitoring official conduct and how to obtain social recognition and support for local anti-corruption initiatives unanswered.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is grateful for Taylor & Francis Group for granting permission. The author acknowledges the research support of the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Projects No. 11603219 & 11605917) and City University of Hong Kong (Project No. 7005144).

ENGLISH REFERENCES Brehm, John O. and Scott Gates (1999) Working, Shirking, and Sabotage: Bureaucratic Response to a Democratic Public. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Clemens, Elisabeth S. and James M. Cook (1999) “Politics and Institutionalism: Explaining Durability and Change.” Annual Review of Sociology 25, 441‒466. Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. (1989) “Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review.” Academy of Management Review 14(1), 57‒74. Florini, Ann M., Hairong Lai, and Yeling Tan (2012) China Experiments. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Gong, Ting and Stephen K. Ma (eds.) (2009) Preventing Corruption in Asia: Institutional Design and Policy Capacity. London: Routledge. Gong, Ting and Jianming Ren (2013) “Hard Rules and Soft Constraints: Regulating Conflicts of Interest in China.” Journal of Contemporary China 22(79), 1‒17. Gore, Albert (1993) From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less. Washington, DC: National Performance Review. Guo, Yong (2010) “Political Culture, Administrative System Reform and Anti-corruption in China: Taking the Official Car Management Institution Reform as an Example.” Crime, Law and Social Change 53(5), 493‒508. Heilmann, Sebastian (2008) “Policy Experimentation in China’s Economic Rise.” Study of Comparative International Development 43(1), 1‒26.

Integrity management under state hierarchy  95 Héritier, Adrienne (2007) Explaining Institutional Change in Europe. New York: Oxford University Press. Kiewiet, D. Roderick and Mathew McCubbins (1991) The Logic of Delegation. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lazer, David, Mergel Ines, Ziniel Curtis, Kevin M. Esterling, and Michael A. Neblo (2011) “The Multiple Institutional Logics of Innovation.” International Public Management Journal 14(3), 311‒340. Manion, Melanie (2004) Corruption by Design: Building Clean Government in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nathan, Andrew J. (2003) “Authoritarian Resilience.” Journal of Democracy 14(1), 6‒17. O’Brien, Kevin J. and Lianjiang Li (1999) “Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China.” Comparative Politics 31(2), 167‒186. Osborne, David and Ted Gaebler (1992) Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Paine, Lynn Sharp (1994) “Managing for Organizational Integrity.” Harvard Business Review 72(2), 106‒117. Quade, Elizabeth A. (2007) “The Logic of Anti-Corruption Enforcement Campaigns in Contemporary China.” Journal of Contemporary China 16(50), 65‒77. Scott, Ian (2013) “Institutional Design and Corruption Prevention in Hong Kong.” Journal of Contemporary China 22(79), 77‒92. Scott, Ian and Ting Gong (2015) “Integrity Management in the Public Sector: Organizational Challenges and Public Perceptions.” International Journal of Public Management 18(3), 386‒389. Shambaugh, David and Joseph Brinley (2008) China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shieh, Shawn (2005) “The Rise of Collective Corruption in China: The Xiamen Smuggling Case.” Journal of Contemporary China 14(42), 67‒91. Steinmo, Sven, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth (1992) Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press. van Dooren, Wouter (2009) Integrity in Government: Towards Output and Outcome Measurement. GOV/PGC/ETH(2009)4, April 27. Paris: Expert Group on Conflict of Interest, OECD Conference Centre. Weaver, Gary R. and Linda Klebe Treviño (1999) “Compliance and Values-oriented Ethics Programs: Influences on Employees’ Attitudes and Behavior.” Business Ethics Quarterly 9(2), 315‒335. Wedeman, Andrew (2013) “The Challenge of Commercial Bribery and Organized Crime in China.” Journal of Contemporary China 22(79), 18‒34. Wu, Jiannan, Liang Ma, and Yuqian Yang (2010) “Innovations in Contemporary Chinese Public Sectors.” Paper presented at the conference on The Reform and Transition in Public Administration Theory and Practice in Greater China. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong. Zhu, Zhe (2010) “Officials Must Account for All Assets Held in the Family.” China Daily, http://​www​ .chinadaily​.com​.cn/​bizchina/​2010​-07/​12/​content​_10094353​.htm.

CHINESE REFERENCES 李成言 (2006) 《廉政工程: 制度、政策与技术》. 北京: 北京大学出版社. 王春英 (2009) “论改革开放以来地方政府的反腐败创新.” 《新视野》第4期， 208‒214. 汪玉凯 (2009) “财产申报: 二十多年难有结果的改革.”《炎黄春秋》第7期, 4. 张磊 (2006) “聚焦中国省级纪委书记调整: 中纪委不再演独角戏.” 中国新闻网, November 23. http://​ www​.chinanews​.com/​gn/​news/​2006/​11​-23/​825713​.shtml. Accessed June 30, 2019. 张峰 (2005) “论政治浮躁 – ‘形象工’现象分析.” 《求实》第3期, 64‒65.

6. Beyond governance for economic growth: understanding incentive distortions in the Chinese bureaucracy Shui-Yan Tang and Bo Wen

It has been commonly argued that an important institutional setup driving the rapid economic growth in China over the past three decades has been the alignment of local government incentives to promote markets and productive enterprises (Xu 2011). There are two dimensions to these local government incentives. One dimension relates to the fiscal (budgetary) system in which local governments are given both considerable leeway to develop business-friendly policies and the rights to retain substantial portions of the fiscal revenues. There have been changes in the past two decades in terms of the relative freedom and the shares allotted to local governments from total tax revenues. Yet in the main, local governments have been fiscally rewarded by increasing their local tax revenue base. The other dimension relates to the personnel system in which the career advancement of local officials depends on meeting performance targets (mostly in the form of tangible GDP growth figures) set by higher-level governments. Working within a highly centralized personnel system, local officials are strongly motivated to meet or exceed economic growth targets so that they can advance rapidly through the party-state personnel hierarchy. More recently, as scholars and policy makers began to ponder prospects for the next stage of development, many have started to pinpoint inherent weaknesses in the current fiscal and personnel systems in China. Many of the selfsame features that have favored economic growth have begun to show their negative impacts on other finer governance issues – environmental protection, the struggle against corruption, widening income gaps, and widespread social unrest (Liu and Tang 2011; Wang, Zheng, and Zhao 2011). In their relentless effort to finance infrastructure projects, for example, local governments have accumulated enormous debts, many of which are likely to face eventual default, threatening China’s overall fiscal stability. Relying on revenues generated from converting agricultural lands to commercial and residential uses, local officials have helped fuel real estate bubbles nationwide, resulting in an over-supply of housing stocks in many cities. While cross-jurisdictional competition has promoted innovation and economic efficiency, it has also led to highly uneven patterns of social and economic development, widening the gaps between the prosperous coastal regions and the inner provinces. When arising simultaneously, these worrisome phenomena have undoubtedly created tremendous challenges to China’s governing regime. In view of these emerging governance conundrums (Miao et al. 2014), a key research and policy question is how to systematically identify the types of incentive distortions created by the current administrative systems, and more importantly, what strategies can be developed to alleviate these distortions. To address this question, this chapter draws on four in-depth case studies, including three counties and one township, to highlight the dominant incentive distortions in the fiscal and personnel systems of the Chinese government in the post-1994 era and their variations across 96

Central Region

Central Region

1978‒2009

Low Economic Base: agriculturally related animal husbandry and cotton

Levels

External investment was the main driver of local economy In-depth interviews Archival investigation Analytical observation The logic behind government’s gamesmanship behavior (distorting

200 million Owned the biggest high-quality cotton production base in China In-depth interviews Archival investigation Participant observation Trajectories of local cadres’ political careers

180 million Strived to develop its secondary industry In-depth interviews Archival investigation Analytical observation How the government handled fiscal deficits due to the elimination of agricultural tax in 2006

57 million

A “national-level poverty-stricken county”

Archival investigation

Analytical observation How the structure of government’s power

Study Focus

distribution influenced the ways local

officials fulfilled stipulated goals

directives from higher-level authorities)

140 million

Fiscal revenue (1999):

Fiscal revenue (2008):

Fiscal revenue (1999):

Main Research Methods In-depth interviews

Fiscal revenue (2008):

production

business

manufacturing and tertiary industry

Very High Economic Base:

Coastal Region

2000‒2009

张丙宣 2011

J Town in Zhejiang

agriculture and animal husbandry

Economic Base:

Economic Development Very Low

Size: 1,000 km2 High Economic Base:

Northern Region

Geographical Features

2008‒2009

冯军旗 2010

Central County in Henan

Size: 11,882 km2

1994‒2000

Study Period

何慧丽/赵晓峰/魏程琳 2011

Mo County in Henan

Population: 0.8 million

周庆智 2004

Population: 0.47 million

W County in Neimenggu

Sources

Profiles of the four cases

County

Table 6.1

Beyond governance for economic growth  97

98  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China socioeconomic contexts. Although these four case studies were originally written for different scholarly purposes, they all provide extensive details about the operations of their respective local governments, the patterns of communication among local officials, and their interactions with higher-level governments. Specifically, W County is located in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northern China. Recognized as one of the “national-level poverty-stricken counties” in China, W County is 1,182 square kilometers in size, with a population of 0.47 million. Mo County and Central County are both located in Henan Province. Mo County’s economy was based primarily on agriculturally related businesses, akin to other inland counties in China’s central region; Central County’s economy relied mainly on animal husbandry and cotton production due to its mild, warm-temperate climate, and peripherally supplemented by emerging industrial development. Geographically, Mo County is fairly large and multicultural; it consists of five towns and 11 townships, typical of China’s less-developed region. Central County is relatively small compared with other counties in Henan Province. It covers an area of 1,000 square kilometers and has a population of 0.8 million, mirroring the majority of China’s subnational governments at the county level with a medium level of economic development. Finally, J Town is situated in Zhejiang Province on the southeastern coast of China, which is a prosperous region with a relatively high level of economic development and ample financial resources. In 2008, J Town collected an annual fiscal revenue of 1.4 hundred million, which was almost equivalent to the total revenues that Mo County generated in the same year. Table 6.1 provides a summary of the four jurisdictions’ key socioeconomic features. Based on a comparison of these four cases, we identified not only the key incentive distortions rooted in the current fiscal and personnel systems but also their variations across regions at different levels of economic development. In the rest of this chapter, we first outline the theoretical and historical backgrounds of the study, which is followed by patterns identified in the four cases. We conclude by examining theoretical lessons and practical implications.

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS Many scholars contend that a relatively decentralized fiscal arrangement has been conducive to China’s economic growth at a record-setting rate since 1978 (e.g., Lin and Liu 2000; Xu 2011). Among existing theories on China’s intergovernmental fiscal system, the one on market-preserving federalism (or what is more generally called the second generation of fiscal federalism) advocated by Barry Weingast (1995, 2009) is perhaps the most influential to date.1 Since the early 1990s, Weingast and his colleagues have argued that China in the reform era represents an exemplary case of market-preserving federalism, which is characterized by (F1) a delineated scope of authority between different levels of governments; (F2) subnational autonomy; (F3) common market; (F4) hard budget constraints; and (F5) institutionalized authority allocations (Qian and Weingast 1997; Weingast 1995). In theory, this set of characteristics matters as a whole because they mutually support each other in promoting economic development and the general welfare of the entire country. By encouraging inter-jurisdictional competition, market-preserving federalism motivates local officials to maintain a healthy local economy and efficient provision of public goods in order to ensure stable revenues for their respective local governments. Likewise, when facing hard budgetary constraints, local officials are expected to act prudently since they bear the negative fiscal consequences for failing to manage the local economy properly. Additionally, institutional

Beyond governance for economic growth  99 safeguards must be in place against the national government from unilaterally and arbitrarily intruding on pre-designated local autonomy, which in turn provides credible incentives for “government officials at all levels to encourage market growth” (Xu 2011, 1105). As each level of government is also subject to budgetary constraints and competitive pressure, market-preserving federalism limits “the exercise of corruption, predation, and rent-seeking” (Weingast 2009, 282), making it difficult for officials to dole out favors to cronies. Lastly, market-preserving federalism supports a common market that facilitates efficient economic transactions. A key weakness in Weingast and his colleagues’ arguments, however, was that they were mostly based on the institutional setting and data from the early 1980s through 1994. During that period, the Chinese central government set in place a decentralized tax-sharing system with local governments. This began with the central government signing “intergovernmental fiscal revenue-sharing contracts” with subordinate governments (Oi 1992), by which the central, provincial, and sub-provincial governments agreed to share annual fiscal revenues based on specific contractual agreements. These contracts helped motivate provincial and local governments to promote economic development and infrastructure investment, which in turn, attracted businesses and provided taxable revenues to the local government. Between 1981 and 1992, the first ten years of China’s economic bloom, “Chinese provinces on average retained 89 percent of additional tax revenue generated within the province and that 68 percent of all provinces faced a marginal retention rate of 100 percent” (Weingast 2009, 284). Since the early 1990s, however, the central government started to realize the need to overhaul the fiscal contract system. Although the system doubtlessly yielded sufficient incentives for local governments to foster economic growth in their respective jurisdictions (Ong 2012b), the central government itself ironically faced a severe tax revenue reduction (Shen, Jin, and Zou 2012). Many local authorities, for example, adopted a variety of quasi tax-exemption programs to attract outside businesses and investment, resulting in an erosion of tax revenues to the national government. Statistics showed that the central government’s fiscal revenue as a percentage of GNP plummeted dramatically from 31.6 percent in 1978 to 14.1 percent in 1993 (Tsang and Cheng 1994). Faced with these issues, the central government launched a revised version of the tax-sharing system in 1994, titled “tax assignment system.” Premised on maintaining local authorities’ incentives to promote economic growth, the system helped restore the central government’s fiscal power, as indicated by the statistics that the aggregate share of subnational governments’ tax revenues accounted for merely 40 percent, as compared to 70 percent in previous years, of national tax revenues (World Bank 2002).2 According to this system, taxes collected by local governments fall into three categories: central taxes, local taxes, and shared taxes. In addition to the central taxes, which are fixed categories partitioned exclusively for the central government, shared tax revenues also go disproportionately to the central government. The value-added tax, for example, is shared roughly under the adjusted scheme of a three to one split between the central and the local government (Zhang 2006). While strengthening the revenue sources of the central government, this revised system has also created its own problems. First, the new system lacks legal stability, meaning that no legal document explicitly stipulates the specific amounts (proportions) of local tax revenues that go to the central government. This leaves room for higher-level authorities, especially the central government, to modify and adjust the shared amounts decidedly in their favor (姚洋/杨雷 2003). Assuming the dual roles of being both “principal” for their subordinates and “agent” for their superior entities, in addition, governments at each subnational level are inclined to act strategically and often opportunistically (Williamson 1985). A higher-level government, for instance,

100  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China may funnel most of its spending targets down the administrative hierarchy while intercepting the subordinate governments’ revenue sources by adjusting the retention rate of the local tax revenues (Gao 2010). As a result, “the cascade of bureaucratic pressure falls most heavily on the lowest rank in the state hierarchy” (Lee and Zhang 2013, 1484), meaning that lowest-level officials, who are unable to push responsibilities any further down, are put in charge of many underfunded mandates. In addition to various forms of fiscal pressure, local government officials also face overwhelming pressure from the hierarchical personnel system, which serves as the central government’s “trump card” to help ensure political loyalty and policy compliance from local cadres (Li and Walder 2001). The Chinese personnel system is based on the principle of personnel subcontracting, that is, a “one-level-down management system,” in which the promotion, transfer, and turnover of subordinate officials are entirely decided by those at a higher level of authority. This system is designed to guarantee that higher-level officials have strong leverage over lower-level officials by assigning them specific performance targets. A common practice is for lower-level leaders to sign annual performance contracts with the government immediately above them. Accordingly, they are “held accountable for the accomplishment of the established targets. At the year-end evaluation, all organizations that have signed performance contracts are ranked by their actual performance achievements. Reward and penalty decisions are then made based on the results of the ranking” (Gao 2010, 58S). Using clearly defined targets for evaluation purposes, the performance-based contract not only encourages local officials to meet demands from higher authorities, it also creates a competitive environment, often referred to as a “promotion tournament,” which instills a sense of urgency for them to accomplish their stated goals (周黎安 2007). The underlying rationale is that the earlier a local official gets promoted, the more opportunities he or she will have to climb the administrative ladder. Since Weingast’s original study was unable to foresee at the time that (1) China would fiscally deviate from several of the key characteristics of market-preserving federalism in subsequent years, and (2) China’s personnel management system plays a pivotal role in shaping incentives for local administrations/officials, some scholars have pointed out the necessity to examine the joint effects of the current fiscal and personnel systems to fully understand the drivers of China’s economic growth and to account for their related problems. Tsui and Wang (2004, 75), for instance, credited the success of China’s fiscal decentralization to its “vertical-control paradigm,” by which higher-level administrations maintain tight control on “the appointment, evaluation, promotion, and dismissal of local cadres.” Working under the target responsibility system (TRS), local officials are incentivized to act in alignment with the key priorities of the central government. Similarly, Cai and Treisman (2006, 525) suggested that career concerns are the major driving force for local (especially provincial-level) officials to both implement nationwide market reforms and pursue regional economic growth. By itself, a fiscally decentralized system would be insufficient to motivate local officials to focus on economic growth given that: (1) tax bases between the central and local governments often overlapped, and (2) “a complicated system of compensatory transfers made it hard to tell what the net retention rates actually were” (also Li and Zhou 2005; Yao and Zhang 2015). Notwithstanding these scholarly efforts, several limitations of the current literature can be identified. First of all, most of the quantitative studies on bureaucratic incentives in China have focused on the relationships between the central and provincial governments prior to 1994. There are case studies at the sub-provincial level, but they: (1) are mostly single-case studies (e.g., Göbel 2011), or (2) examine behavioral responses of local officials who reside in villages that are

Beyond governance for economic growth  101 geographically and economically similar to each other (O’Brien and Li 1999), making it difficult to generalize the findings. Moreover, some recent articles published in English (e.g., Heberer and Trappel 2013) implicitly attribute the behaviors of local officials exclusively to personnel incentives, treating fiscal factors merely as a backdrop. In the Chinese literature, admittedly, there are discussions about general features of both fiscal and personnel systems, but they normally lack any systematic scrutiny of the impacts of socioeconomic differences across regions. Our study, therefore, helps to fill a gap in both the Chinese and English literature by undertaking a small-N comparative case study of the key patterns of incentive distortions in post-1994 China across diverse contexts. Overall, the experiences of these four cases show that China in the post-1994 era has not even remotely begun to match most of the necessary conditions for market-preserving federalism as suggested by Weingast. To further China’s development, one must consider feasible ways to adjust its fiscal and personnel systems so that intergovernmental relations can resemble more closely the ideal conditions of market-preserving federalism and that local officials are motivated to tackle finer governance issues. In the next section, we detail how the four cases illustrate incentive distortions deriving from China’s fiscal and personnel management regimes, and how local administrations vary in both their levels of transparency in the promotion-based tournament and their degrees of bargaining power over fiscal autonomy.

BUREAUCRATIC INCENTIVES AND INCENTIVE DISTORTIONS Bureaucratic incentives are a commonly referenced term with context-specific meaning touching primarily on the behavioral aspect of individuals or collectivities in a bureaucratic system. In their words, for example, Meier and Morton (2015, 96) asserted that bureaucratic incentives are “the key variable in determining bureaucratic decision-making” and in making sense of organizational performance. When explaining China’s spectacular economic development and relatively stable social conditions over the past decades in spite of the nation’s widening income gap and deteriorating environmental quality, scholars led by Naughton (2017, 10) similarly lauded the arrangement under which “a set of bureaucratic incentives that reward officials for growth (of GDP and revenue)” are put forth and decisively implemented. They believe that these incentives help the central authority of China solicit political allegiance and desirable actions from local governments and officials, overcome the principal–agent problem inherent in a gigantic hierarchy, and maintain sufficient flexibility in priority shifts and personnel churning (e.g., Jiang 2018; Kung and Chen 2011; Li 1998; 周雪光 2013). That being said, scholars often supplement the adoption of bureaucratic incentives with a cautionary tale. For instance, high-powered incentives must be used gingerly, because their elicited bureaucratic outcomes may be lopsided toward favoring one or two salient objectives at the expense of others (e.g., Acemoglu, Kremer, and Mian 2008). This concern is not expressed in a vacuum but partly reflects the Chinese bureaucratic reality. As Naughton (2017, 10) observed, “China’s system of incentives for local bureaucrats to encourage growth is extremely unusual and seems to exist only in China. It is a blunt but powerful instrument, encouraging growth and indirectly promoting investment and high-profile development projects.” Imaginably, the ramifications resulting from the use of these aggressive, one-dimensional incentives are immense and far-reaching. Table 6.2 provides a summary of the incentive distortions reported in the four cases.

Regardless of Outcomes

Making the Numbers

Excessive Borrowing

for other policy areas such as environmental protection played a much smaller role in calculating the

targets

performance indicators, as those for other policy areas such as environmental protection played a much smaller role in calculating the total performance score

and creative accounting to meet

performance targets

maintenance

the one-veto target of stability

their hometowns in order to meet

to confine potential petitioners to

Used court orders and police force

total score

performance indicators, as those

of time Resorted to data fabrication to meet hard GDP Focused on meeting economic

repay loans over extended periods

Focused on meeting economic

forcing the township government to

excessive borrowing, subsequently

Subordinate governments engaged in

No specific examples

repayment

No specific examples

No specific examples

expenses, often without intention for

fund public projects and administrative

Engaged in excessive borrowing to

burden on existing enterprises No specific examples

Imposed unreasonable tax and fee

viability

consequences and their business

Resorted to data fabrication

No specific examples

profit-making activities

and engaged in, sometimes illegal,

administrative charges and fees,

budgetary revenues by imposing

Underfunded agencies raised extra

since 2004

of environmental and societal

mandated by the central government

new external investments, regardless

Disfavored foreign enterprises to avoid granting tax exemption status as

J Town

Central County No specific examples

Granted preferential treatments to

No specific examples official efforts in attracting businesses

Mo County Developed tournaments to encourage

W County

Major types of incentive distortions

Extra-budgetary Revenues

Reliance on

Entrepreneurship

Bureaucratic

Table 6.2

102  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

(domestic) investors

well-specified awards systems to encourage officials to attract external

important, but reaching the assigned GDP target growth was key for promotion

as a formality, but focused on

developing networking skills and

Transparency

Variations in Levels of

township’s favor Used relatively clear and

Networking skills and social skills were

transfers by dishonest tactics

investment. Promotion opportunities favored award recipients

social ties as a way to enhance

chances for promotion

Viewed performance contracts

fiscal revenue-sharing contracts in the

contracts, officials sought fiscal

Powers

authorities, leading to adjustments of

for more favorable revenue sharing

No specific examples

own jurisdiction

development programs With limited power to negotiate

Negotiated with higher-level

efforts to attract investors from their

to implement long-term social No specific examples

Blocked neighboring jurisdiction’s

Failed to devote sufficient resources

No specific examples

treatments to attract outside

consequences

investors

Variations in Bargaining

Short-sightedness

Offered extensive preferential

without considering environmental

J Town

treatments to attract outside

Central County

Offered extensive preferential

Brought in speculative industrial projects

Mo County No specific examples

W County

Beyond governance for economic growth  103

104  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

BUREAUCRATIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP Local governments are transformed into market-driven players whose primary goal is short-term profit maximization. Instead of focusing on the provision of public goods and services, local governments swing for the fences to attract external investments. Given their administrative power, local authorities can also easily become rent-seeking bureaucracies, cutting the quality and quantity of public services and siphoning off local enterprises’ profits through taxes and fees (Chan 2004; Frye and Shleifer 1996). In the long run, however, such behaviors will seriously undermine market efficiency and quell outside entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm for investing, which in turn will accelerate local bureaucracies’ greed in relation to local businesses and lock them into a vicious cycle (Chen, Hillman, and Gu 2002; 周黎安 2008). The Mo County government, for example, had several bureaucratic incentive schemes for attracting outside investors. One such scheme involved a tournament for attracting the most investments within one hundred days as a way to boost its economic growth performance. The aim of the scheme was to capture at least 100 new investment projects, each of which should be valued at no less than five million RMB. Those who acquired a qualified investment would be immediately awarded 1 percent of the investment’s value; those who introduced investment worth between a hundred million and two hundred million RMB would be awarded 150,000 RMB; those who introduced investments worth more than two hundred million would be awarded 300,000 RMB. Given Mo County is located in an underdeveloped region, it is hardly attractive for business investments. To attract sizable outside investments, local officials relied heavily on preferential policies, including such incentives as free land, free electricity, and free water. Some enterprises were given permission to extract groundwater for free, regardless of the potential impact on the groundwater basins. These policies have created many unintended problems. First, they escalated the conflicts between the government and local farmers and residents. As the government was offering lands to these investors at low prices, it could only provide very low compensations to current farmers and residents, thus causing strong resistance from them. As a result, the number of land-related conflicts has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2009 alone, residents initiated 18 petitions to higher-level authorities, even though this means of citizen appeal was actively discouraged by all levels of government. Second, many of these projects turned out to be established only for reporting performance. As a cadre in Mo County mentioned: To accomplish our mission of developing the industrial areas in our county, we tried our best to appeal to the businessmen. In some cases, we even provided them with capital. As a result, many manufacturing facilities were built, but have not been put into production. As far as I can tell, only a quarter of the enterprises in our industrial areas are actually in operation. (何慧丽/赵晓峰/魏程琳 2011, 55)

Although the overarching intent underlying the incentives is for local governments to foster economic growth, some local governments may succumb to short-term fiscal pressure by extracting whatever they can from existing enterprises within their jurisdictions. Mo County’s budgeting system was, for example, not at all investor-friendly. Using the principle of “using expenditures to determine revenues,” the county government estimated the annual expenditure first and then used it as the “target” for tax and fee collection. All governmental departments were required to collect targeted amounts of taxes and fees. Not surprisingly, larger companies

Beyond governance for economic growth  105 were seen as the main targets; officials often imposed unreasonable tax and fee burdens on these larger companies, thus undermining the jurisdiction’s long-term business environment. Similarly, since 2004, J Town and its subordinate government units have disfavored foreign enterprises as a result of a major policy change at the national level that provided foreign enterprises with different types of tax exemptions. As a result of this policy, these local government units prioritized their goals of attracting domestic enterprises that generated high levels of local taxes. Among them, real estate companies became favorites among the local officials.

RELIANCE ON EXTRA-BUDGETARY REVENUES In areas that are economically disadvantaged yet insufficiently destitute to qualify for significant subsidies, large companies are scarce, and the local government is forced to shoulder spending programs arbitrarily imposed by higher-level governments. An easy way, then, to maximize the “residual” revenues beyond the threshold stipulated by higher-level government(s) is by levying various administrative charges (Hurst et al. 2014). Many local governments have resorted to inconsistent charges, fund-raising quotas, and unreasonable fines as tools for raising revenues. Budgeted fiscal allocations in the W County government, for example, covered only a small fraction of its administrative costs, making it heavily dependent on extra-budgetary revenues, such as administrative charges, fines, and other profit-seeking opportunities. As estimated by the Head of the Animal Husbandry Bureau, which provided crucial agricultural services in this rural county, the total administrative costs for the Bureau were approximately 40 million per year, whereas the budgeted allocation was less than two million. The budgeted amount could barely cover the costs of the telephone bills, let alone all the other bills. To partially fill in this budgetary gap, the Bureau leased out some of its offices to commercial enterprises. While it was illegal to use that kind of income to support the bureau’s general operations, the bureau chief frankly acknowledged the practice, claiming that there was no other way to meet the operational expenses (周庆智 2004, 191). The auditing agency from the superior government came to investigate, but the bureau continued the practice after the county government intervened on its behalf.

EXCESSIVE BORROWING According to the statistics provided by China’s National Audit Office (2014), borrowing by provinces, counties, and townships reached 17.9 trillion Yuan ($2.96 trillion) in June 2013.3 Bloomberg’s analysis (Panckhurst 2013) further indicates that local governments indeed possess few incentives to repay the debt unless it becomes a regional or systemic problem. Even if it does reach this level, as argued by Bardhan (2002, 202), local governments would not be affected because “upper tier governments will have difficulty ignoring the political pressure that will be generated in favor of bailing them out.” For instance, J Town spent almost ten years (1994‒2004) helping its subordinate villages pay off their bank loans. Although the specific amounts of debt were unknown from the case, the long duration suggested that it was a pervasive problem.

106  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Given that borrowing is virtually risk-free, local governments tend to employ this method as a way of eschewing the inadequacies of intergovernmental transfers or hiding their fiscal mismanagement, which ironically distorts the initial purpose of the budgetary incentives (e.g., Wang 2017). In 2007, for instance, all six newly built roads in Mo County were financed by bank loans, totaling around 60 million. The total annual revenue for the county at the time was approximately 137 million, whereas the total expenditure teetered around 630 million, resulting in an enormous gap of approximately 500 million. Such huge gaps can never be filled entirely by administrative charges and tax levies. For many financially strapped local governments, getting loans from banks has become the de-facto procedure for dealing with financial shortfalls.

MAKING THE NUMBERS REGARDLESS OF OUTCOMES Although the “desired outcomes” for a local government are naturally multifaceted, using quantitative indicators is a convenient method for higher-level officials to measure their subordinates’ performance. GDP growth, given its measurability (Eisenhardt 1989), is heavily valued in the current target-based measurement system. As GDP growth and related economic performance indicators account for the largest portion of the performance evaluation system, local (especially the county level) officials are encouraged to utilize their administrative power to promote industrial development projects, even if their jurisdictions are ill suited for these projects or if these projects pose a great threat to the environment. For the target-based measurement system in Mo County, economic goals accounted for 40 points on a 70-point scale, while environmental protection accounted for only two points. In J Town, economic performance served as the base value in the grading rubric of the target-based measurement system, whereas performance on other policy areas (e.g., social affairs, environmental protection) had only a marginal effect on the total score. The formula for calculating the final score was quite complicated, but worth explaining. For example, the completion of economic tasks equaled 200 points, while taking appropriate measures in lowering local factories’ carbon dioxide emissions equaled 300 points in total. One might be pleased to see that environmental protection had been placed as a top priority in J Town government’s agenda. However, this was not exactly the case. In fact, points gained from the completion of economic tasks were 100 percent transferred into the total score, whereas points gained from other measured aspects were transferred into the total score merely as coefficients. For example, if J Town received 150 points in its completion of economic tasks and 250 points in its work on environmental protection, the total score for J Town = 150 * 1.25 = 187.5.4 This score would be even lower than that for a certain county that obtained 0 from environmental protection but 190 points from economic tasks. Furthermore, as the performance evaluations of non-economic accomplishments usually did not vary much across jurisdictions, the total score and relative rankings were indeed determined mainly by economic performance. In recent years, some non-economic performance targets have become increasingly important for local officials, but those targets may not be directly beneficial to the residents. For example, stability maintenance has become a major performance target for local officials. In 2009, J Town was assigned the task of guaranteeing “zero Beijing petitions” on the National Day that celebrated the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic. This goal, as mentioned in the performance contract, was subject to the one-strike veto rule, meaning that if local cadres

Beyond governance for economic growth  107 failed to ensure that no one in their jurisdiction petitioned the central government on that day, all other accomplishments would be negated, and all chances for bonuses, promotions, and eligibility to compete for honors would be denied. Given this performance target, local officials pressured the local judicial branch to issue subpoenas to potential petitioners, reminding them of the legal consequences of leaving their homes without authorization. In addition, they threatened the use of police force and blocked off “key villages” to make sure that these potential petitioners did not even have a chance to leave their hometowns (张丙宣 2011, 177).5 In W County, fabricating numbers was a means frequently used by local officials to satisfy auditors sent from higher-level governments. Creative accounting, such as using the appropriated budget for the subsequent year to fill the gap for the current year, was also commonly used. In Central County, a former party secretary complained to the interviewer that performance fabrication was ultimately caused by higher-level governments that imposed unrealistic growth targets on their subordinate units. In his words: When you are handed a 100 million GDP target, how can you ever achieve it, unless you ask each shoe repairer to be responsible for 1 million? At my time, many cadres got promoted by fabricating performance…Since I was a peasant before, I know their difficulties. Even under this tremendous burden, I insisted on not taking a cow from them, nor robbing their grains. At that time, I was like sitting at the mouth of a volcano every day. Therefore, I insisted on not being a party secretary anymore. (冯军旗 2010, 150)

During the time of the case investigation, performance fabrication continued unabated. A leading official in the county admitted that township and village officials often burned trash in the industrial area when county officials came for inspection as evidence of industrial development. Alternatively, when there were site visits, the local officials would turn the machines on, but once visitors had left, production would also be over (冯军旗 2010, 144).

SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS Meeting measurable targets is critical for a local official’s prospect for promotion, and the promotion tournament is time-sensitive. Local officials must accumulate sufficient “achievements” in the shortest time possible to stay competitive in the tournament. Given this urgency, local officials tend to be less concerned about long-term social development projects such as those related to science, culture, and health. According to 周黎安 (2007), local governments’ total spending on these areas in 2005 was less than that in 1998, although GDP itself experienced a threefold increase. Under the guise of creating market competition and lessening the effects of government monopolies, many local governments sought to commercialize the supply of educational and healthcare resources (Su, Walker, and Xue 2013), making it increasingly inaccessible to disadvantaged populations. Additionally, given that the opportunities to advance in a given period are fixed, local officials compete with one another in zero-sum games: one official’s promotion reduces the likelihood that his or her peers will be promoted. Some local officials thus resorted to local protectionism as a method for reducing competition in this political tournament. In J Town, for example, local officials competed for investment projects that were worth more than five million, and they sought to raid potential investors from other jurisdictions by offering them such benefits as preferential tax incentives and exemptions from environmental

108  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China regulations. Officials in other towns were known to have taken countermeasures against such raids, for example, by placing security guards near fancy office buildings to monitor, report, and prevent the entrance of unauthorized persons. In Central County, officials hastily decided to establish several large-scale paper mills in 1995 upon hearing stories about their profitability, without carefully considering the local geographic conditions and environmental consequences. These paper mills discharged large amounts of alkaline water and caused massive livestock death, eventually leading to orders from a higher-level government to shut them all down. Likewise, in W County, local officials were enthusiastic about attracting external investments on which their achievements were predominately measured. Excessive preferential policy terms were thus often offered to attract investors. As local cadres’ attention was fully committed to this single subject, other equally important issues in local governance, albeit less likely to be assessed and recognized by their administrative superiors, were largely ignored. One example was a program, titled “Bring technology to the village,” tasked by the central government. Since the county government was not provided with extra funds for administering the program, it lacked the motivation to support it. The program resulted in no more than the county government sending some old computers, refrigerators, and electronic books/brochures to the villages.

VARIATIONS IN BARGAINING POWERS In general, local governments in China do not have the power to either adjust local tax rates or expand taxable categories (Lin, Tao, and Liu 2006). Specifically, local tax revenues depend mostly on value-added taxes, sales taxes, and corporate income taxes, all of which are subject to fixed and centrally mandated rates. Total tax revenues thus depend heavily on the absolute size of the underlying tax base. Since larger tax bases (i.e., more profitable enterprises) are more likely to stay in economically prosperous regions where the residents’ purchasing power is stronger and the local infrastructure is better, collecting adequate tax revenues tends to be easier for local jurisdictions that depend less on transfers from higher-level governments. More fiscal self-sufficiency, consequently, provides local jurisdictions with more bargaining powers when they negotiate with higher-level authorities. Located in an economically advanced region, the J Town government is a case in point. It undertook an eight-month-long negotiation with its higher-level authorities concerning the fiscal revenue-sharing contracts in 2007. As a result, the H District government made significant concessions to J Town concerning the property tax sharing formula6 and promised to pay for a number of underfunded projects, demonstrating the significant bargaining power of local governments in an economically advanced region. In contrast, local governments in economically less-developed regions lack bargaining power and are obliged to accept the tax-sharing contract imposed by higher-level governments, resulting in an ever-increasing financial imbalance between revenue sources and expenditure mandates (Fedelino and Minassian 2006; Shen, Jin, and Zou 2012). Several factors are relevant. First, local residents in less-developed regions are politically and economically vulnerable, meaning that their tax contributions to the local government are quite limited (Park et al. 1996). Second, a shortage of funds reduces both the local officials’ opportunities to receive higher education and the likelihood that professional staff and college graduates will transfer to the area (Wong 2009).7 A lack of local talent further restricts the local government’s ability

Beyond governance for economic growth  109 to maximize the benefits of established projects, ironically turning their subsistence into new sources of financial burdens. As a result, local governments in these regions are limited both in bargaining power with their administrative superiors and in their abilities to seize opportunities for economic development. These dire conditions further motivate the local governments to behave recklessly. Both located in less-developed regions, Mo and W Counties are two examples. In 2008, Mo County retained only 180 million in tax revenues after higher-level governments took a significant portion. Yet over 200 million was required to cover just the payroll, not to mention other overhead costs for multiple social programs. Faced with a similar financial situation, W County addressed its financial challenges by encouraging its agencies to engage in profit-making activities and in generating “extra-budgetary revenues” through various types of fines and administrative charges. In 2003, W County's value-added tax was approximately three million, and other kinds of taxes totaled seven million. Nonetheless, extra-budgetary revenues generated by government-affiliated organizations, under the guise of “administrative charges and fines,” reached 17 million! When faced with underfunded administrative projects, severe fiscal shortages, and a lack of negotiating powers with higher-level authorities, these local governments are likely to become bureaucratic entrepreneurs. Another common strategy was to lobby for added appropriations from higher authorities, sometimes in a dishonest fashion. Rather than bargaining with its administrative superiors concerning tax retention rates, W County often used the following two approaches. One approach was “fake matching”: whenever a matching grant was available, the county would apply for it. However, once the money was granted, the county would fail to provide the stipulated matching funds or would use the grants for other purposes. The other approach was for the county to encourage its agencies to destroy or trash usable equipment in order to justify requests for additional fiscal appropriations.

VARIATIONS IN LEVELS OF TRANSPARENCY As Cai and Treisman (2005) pointed out, Chinese local officials’ promotion prospects vary based on the economic and cultural conditions of their geographic regions. Local officials’ efforts are likely to go unrewarded in underdeveloped areas due to fiscal imbalances and the region’s unattractiveness to outside investors. As compared with those in more developed regions, officials in less-developed regions face more difficulties in promoting economic development and consequently have grimmer prospects for career advancement. Paradoxically, the marginal benefits local officials in underdeveloped areas derive from promotion tend to be significantly larger than those for officials in economically advanced areas. Since employment and investment opportunities in less-developed regions are minimal, local officials in these regions highly value their governmental positions, which come with steady pay. A small promotion may significantly improve one’s financial situation and monthly pension payments after retirement. Given its being less reliant on easily documented economic performance indicators and its high stake among officials, the promotion-based incentive system in less-developed regions tends to be subject to a certain level of opacity. In these regions, one’s informal networks and interpersonal connections play a more critical role in deciding whether or not one will be promoted.

110  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Based on multiple interviews with local officials in W County, the most underdeveloped among the four cases, 周庆智 (2004, 132) found that when they were asked to present their contracts in which their assigned annual tasks were spelled out, some of them searched in vain through dusty piles of paper. Shockingly, quite a few officials had no idea where they put them. Perhaps, due to W County’s inherent economic disadvantages and the resulting difficulty for local officials to complete assigned tasks, higher-level officials never took the contract seriously. As a result, county officials viewed their performance contracts as a formality and saw factors such as networking skills and social ties as more significant for their promotion potential.8 As opined by a retired official in W County, it was common for cadres with no outstanding achievements to get promoted. Put differently, a key reason why a local official would fail to get promoted might be that he failed to form a “close” relationship with the key personnel, namely the party secretary. In Central County, which is in the mid-level of development among the four cases, although to some extent networking skills and social ties played a role in advancing local officials’ careers,9 the majority of the promoted officials between 1998 and 2008 were those who had exceeded their assigned GDP growth targets. Moreover, many local officials may have changed their promotion philosophy, evidenced by the fact that their children have a more extensive array of employment and investment choices than they did. Based on Feng’s investigation (冯 军旗 2010), most of these children are now living and working in Beijing and Shanghai. Many local officials believe that larger cities provide more career opportunities. Even if their kids do not choose to pursue a government career, other career paths are equally promising. A positive impact of this trend may be that future bureaucratic incentive systems are moving toward greater transparency, beginning from the economically advanced jurisdictions, as climbing the hierarchical ladder is gradually losing its unique appeal for individuals in these areas. The awards system utilized by the H District government, the most prosperous among the four cases, to encourage J Town officials to attract external investments adds empirical support to this conjecture. Local officials’ completion of the assigned tasks was subject to various monetary awards with precise cutoffs. Specifically, different levels of awards were given to individual officials who accomplished between 130 percent and over 230 percent of the stipulated goal.10 The recipients of these awards naturally then became the favorites for subsequent promotion. Apparently, a relatively transparent reward system for performance has been in place for officials there.

BROADER INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT Weingast and his colleagues have popularized the idea that China has created its own “style” of fiscal federalism with market-preserving attributes, and that China can be a model of reform for other transitioning economies (Montinola, Qian, and Weingast 1995; Qian and Weingast 1997). In a more recent article, Weingast (2009, 289) explicitly stated that “Under some circumstances, a formerly predatory government may seek reform. How is it to improve economic performance? China’s successful creation of market-preserving federalism suggests one way around these problems.” This argument is by no means his first claim about China as a positive example of market-preserving federalism. Back in the mid-1990s, Montinola, Qian, and Weingast (1995) already attributed China’s miraculous economic growth to its decentralized fiscal system.

Beyond governance for economic growth  111 Many scholars at the time raised doubts about how a nondemocratic government might maintain a credible commitment to fiscal decentralization, but Montinola, Qian, and Weingast (1995, 61) defended that a lack of democratic institutions would not hinder the success of fiscal decentralization at large: “Market-preserving federalism in no way depends on these factors [i.e., political freedom, representation, and democratization]. Instead, it depends on the political relationship among levels of government, with no reference to an explicit or constitutional basis or its promotion of individual rights and political freedom.” Their confidence that a decentralized fiscal system would continuously serve as the institutional driver of China’s economic growth stemmed mainly from their belief that recentralization was no longer politically feasible in China. In their view, the Chinese people had gained economically from a variety of reforms/experimentations in multiple arenas and hence had tasted the irresistible flavor of pro-market policies and a fiscally decentralized governance structure. Even though China had not yet attained a complete version of market-preserving federalism due to the absence of an institutionalized delineation of intergovernmental fiscal authorities/responsibilities, any attempt at recentralization would potentially cause popular discontent, putting the central government’s ruling legitimacy at risk. Montinola, Qian, and Weingast (1995, 60) argued that the possible factors that could potentially thwart the momentum of China’s economic development included: (1) China’s limited experience with market-oriented economy; (2) “the absence of centralized control over the monetary system,” which could soften the budgetary constraints on local governments; and (3) over-competition between local governments under the layout of fiscal decentralization and various kinds of accompanying local protectionism. In retrospect, however, Montinola, Qian, and Weignast (1995) had not correctly specified all the antecedents and consequences relevant to China’s experience over the past twenty years. First, China can hardly be considered now as a novice in the use of markets given its additional experience during the past 20 years. Second, the problem of soft budgetary constraints for local governments persists, but a centralized monetary system has been well established11 and has not been an effective remedy for the soft budgetary constraint problem (Ang 2009; Ong 2012b).12 Third, trade barriers are more pervasive among governments at the township level, and this partially contradicts the prediction that township governments are most likely to face a hard budgetary constraint and are least likely to set trade barriers. Thus, a key puzzle arises as to why a governing system with experience in using markets and maintaining monetary stability still faces many incentive distortion problems. Based on the case analysis covered earlier in the chapter, Table 6.3 provides a summary of the extent to which post-1994 China has mismatched the five necessary conditions that characterize market-preserving federalism. As can be seen in the table, the mismatch is more prevalent than what was suggested by Weingast and his colleagues. The mismatch did not create only economic problems; it also created different incentive distortions that made it more difficult for the Chinese government system to tackle finer governance issues such as those related to redistribution, social service provision, and environmental protection. First of all, Weingast and his colleagues failed to recognize that although the central government may not announce explicitly its intention to recentralize all fiscal powers, it can do so subtly. The tax assignment system introduced in 1994 was a prominent example. In the sheep’s clothing of enacting a more formal system of fiscal federalism, the tax assignment system has essentially restored predominant fiscal powers to the central government. This recentralization of fiscal powers either reduced incentives for local governments to foster economic growth

lower-level governments.

their viability.

provision” (Weingast 2009, 281)

encourage local officials to use local protectionism to increase their odds of getting promoted.

281)

“The allocation of authority is institutionalized” (Weingast

2009, 281)

F5: Institutionalized

Authority

budget constraints” (Weingast 2009, 281)

leaving room for the central government to adjust shared amounts in its favors.

revenues that go to the central government under the tax assignment system adopted since 1994,

Absent: (1) No legal document explicitly stipulates the specific amounts (proportions) of local tax

implement underfunded mandates.

bank loans for their subordinate entities, thus motivating the latter to rely excessively on borrowing to

authorities. (2) The joint-responsibility principle incentivizes higher-level administrations to pay off

unconditionally accept the service responsibilities of unfunded or underfunded mandates by superior

Compromised: (1) A hierarchical personnel system encourages subordinate governments to

residential status other than the area in which he or she was born. (2) Promotion tournaments

market that allows factor product mobility” (Weingast 2009,

“The national government provides for and polices a common Compromised: (1) The household registration (hukou) system limits citizens’ ability to seek

strong leverage over their subordinates by assigning them specific performance targets, regardless of

of the economy and authority over public goods and service

“Subnational governments have primary both local regulation Compromised: (1) The principle of personnel subcontracting ensures that higher-level officials have

F4: Hard Budget Constraints “All governments, especially subnational ones, face hard

F3: Common Market

F2: Subnational Autonomy

governments. (2) Higher-level governments maintain authority to readjust tax-sharing formulae. (3)

a delineated scope of authority” (Weingast 2009, 281)

Higher-level governments maintain authority to imposed unfunded and underfunded mandates on

Fulfilled with limits: (1) Higher-level governments maintain authority to restructure subordinate

“A hierarchy of governments exists with each level having

China Since the Tax Assignment Reform in 1994

Specific Requirements

F1: Hierarchy

Mismatching necessary conditions of market-preserving federalism

Necessary Conditions

Table 6.3

112  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Beyond governance for economic growth  113 or forced local officials to raise extra-budgetary revenues from local enterprises. Particularly for local governments in economically impoverished areas where tax benefits obtained from their subordinate administrative units are trivial, they have resorted to raising extra-budgetary revenues to survive. As recorded by the National Bureau of Statistics, the aggregate local fiscal incomes accounted for 53 percent of national revenues in 2017, whereas aggregate local spending consisted of 85 percent of total national spending. Moreover, the central government spent approximately 22 billion on education, while local governments spent 300 billion, which was 14 times as much as the central government. Apparently, when F1 and F5, clear and institutionalized delineation of authority across levels of government, were not safeguarded, higher-level authorities have acted opportunistically by retaining a predominant portion of financial resources, while pushing responsibilities down through the administrative hierarchy (吴晓波 2013; Zheng, De Jong, and Koppenjan 2010), regardless of whether the local units have the fiscal capacity to handle these responsibilities, thus compromising the subnational autonomy (F2) condition. In addition, although Montinola, Qian, and Weingast (1995) were aware of the importance of a common market (F3), they attributed its formation almost exclusively to the elimination of local protectionism. Admittedly, within the framework of promotion-based competition in which leading officials must reach assigned targets within short time limits, local officials are motivated to comply with highly unrealistic targets or seek to falsify records if needed. As illustrated in our case analysis, local protectionism has also been a means by local officials to ward off competitors in the promotion tournament. A strong bureaucratic incentive for local protectionism, unfortunately, hinders the development of a common market environment, which is crucial for China’s attempt to both “upgrade industry as a whole” (Chan 2004, 718) and to maximize public welfare by virtue of the economies of scale (Lu and Chen 2009). Yet, as China’s rate of urbanization accelerates, local protectionism becomes less a problem than the restriction of household registration in metropolitan regions. As argued by Tiebout (1956), local government competition through the “voting with your feet” mechanism may help to promote the efficient provision of local public goods that meet the needs of residents. However, for the competitive mechanism to function, production factors must be highly mobile across jurisdictional boundaries. In China, the current household registration (hukou) system severely limits citizens’ ability to attain residential status outside their area of birth.13 Although this system ensures the relative stability of local tax bases, such restrictions often result in local officials’ willful neglect of the needs and discontentment of residents. In a deeper sense, since democratic elections might not be politically feasible at this point, a common market becomes the only leverage for citizens to “throw the rascals out” (Weingast 2009, 287). The absence of this mobility factor provides local officials with little incentive to honor citizens’ rights, evidenced by J Town officials’ utilization of the police forces to clamp down on local petitioners (also see: Chen 2017). Furthermore, local officials are utterly unmotivated to cater to the needs of the local residents if those needs are incompatible with key criteria for their promotion evaluation. Moreover, Weingast (2009) has mostly neglected the pivotal role that the personnel system plays in softening local administrations’ budgetary constraints (F4). Local officials in China are subject to the joint responsibility system, in which the adjacent higher-level government is jointly held accountable for the mistakes committed by their immediate subordinate administration. While this system motivates officials to closely supervise the actions of their immediate subordinates, it also creates incentives for them to hide their subordinates’ mistakes

114  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China when they inevitably arise. As a result, officials are motivated to protect their lower-level subordinates even when they raise revenues illegally, or to bail them out when their unit fails to meet its debt obligations. This partly explains the excessive borrowing by local governments over the past two decades despite the presence of a relatively centralized banking system. The resulting attenuation of F4 “the hard budgetary constraint” condition has created considerable threats to China’s economic stability. As argued by Weingast (2009), well-developed market-preserving federalism also facilitates the effective functioning of intergovernmental transfers aimed at helping the disadvantaged. Yet as demonstrated in our case analysis, the current intergovernmental transfer system has faced many incentive distortion problems. For example, much of the current system aims at supporting local social service projects. Unfortunately, this system has failed to address many severe regional inequity problems as disadvantaged populations in poor regions have ironically received limited benefits from these programs (马栓友/于红霞 2003). Making matters worse, fiscal transfers travel through many layers of government before reaching their target populations. Many local governments have thus set up various schemes to siphon off transfer funds by developing “industrial improvement projects” that are a ruse to affect the transfer decisions but have little real impact on the local economy. Some have also used funds to set up representative offices in Beijing, where they can entertain officials from the central government and lobby for transfers. Although the central government has recognized W County as “poverty-stricken,” for example, its budget for entertaining higher-level officials is staggering. Based on rough estimates, the annual spending on “greeting” higher-level officials during inspections, which are golden chances to lobby for fiscal transfers, was between 700,000 and 800,000 RMB (周庆智 2004, 159). Lastly, although the current decentralized fiscal system has motivated local government officials to support pro-market policies and to promote local economic growth, the personnel system ironically encourages local officials to adopt a short-term perspective in their economic development strategies (Xiong 2018). Specifically, given the policy preference for promoting younger cadres, local officials are forced to reach and even surpass the stipulated targets quickly so that they do not exceed the acceptable age limit at their next promotion opportunity. Under such time pressure, they may expand efforts to attract external businesses on the one hand, while trying to extract extra-budgetary revenues from local enterprises on the other. This helps explain why Mo County officials put forth preferential policies to attract sizable outside investments in the first place while switching their attitudes afterward and imposing unreasonable burdens on existing enterprises. Notably, local officials inevitably find the promotion-based tournament less attractive as they grow older, leading to the “Age 59 phenomenon.” That is, according to statistics, the average age of Chinese officials found guilty of corruption is approximately 59. Having lost their motivation to continue to climb the administrative ladder given the mandatory retirement age of 60, local employees begin to use their remaining political power to grab as much cash and property as possible before retirement. It is interesting to note that out of the 32 local officials who were investigated or convicted over the past thirty years in Central County, 17 were the former heads of internal departments within the county. In the context of the Chinese bureaucracy, being head of an internal department usually signifies that someone has a limited chance for further promotion. As the likelihood of promotion becomes slimmer, especially during the later years of their careers, officials are more likely to think about lives after retirement and become more susceptible to corruption.

Beyond governance for economic growth  115 In sum, the current fiscal and personnel systems have undeniably helped promote the rapid development of China’s economy. They have provided local governments/officials with strong incentives to create signs of economic prosperity within their respective jurisdictions. Many local economic success stories accumulated in the past thirty years have indeed increased the price of recentralization and anti-market policies of any kind. Yet as illustrated in our case analysis, China is still missing several critical preconditions for fully developed market-preserving federalism. Particularly when the institutionalized demarcation of intergovernmental fiscal authority is not fully in place, governments at each level are inclined to act opportunistically in the face of incentive distortions, which in the long run will create many economic and non-economic governance issues. Although Montinola, Qian, and Weingast (1995) might disagree, one may assuredly argue that well-developed market-preserving federalism ultimately depends on a stable and reliable constitutional framework.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This study contributes to the current literature in several ways. First, it provides ample case-based evidence to illustrate the unintended consequences of China’s bureaucratic incentive system. Second, it provides an initial analysis of how the identified incentive distortions may vary across socioeconomic contexts within the same country.14 Highlighting the vital role of bargaining power in mitigating incentive distortions, the study shows the divergent paths of development in different regions. Additionally, we place the incentive distortions within the broader intergovernmental framework, emphasizing the need to develop institutional safeguards against opportunistic behaviors from all levels of government. This discussion contributes to a deeper understanding of what Weingast (2009) called the second generation of fiscal federalism by examining how personnel-related incentives may shape intergovernmental relationships, particularly during the post-tax reform era when the tax assignment system has dominated the fiscal relationship between central and local governments. Lastly, this study also examines several aspects in which China is still lacking in attaining a fully developed market-preserving federalism, more so than what Weingast and his associates have presumed. In the final analysis, most of the incentive distortions identified in this chapter are rooted in China’s predominant reliance on a vertical, single-party accountability system to shape bureaucratic behavior. This system is premised on long chains of principal–agent relations from Beijing down to the township and village level. As argued long ago by Downs (1967), a centralized control system inevitability suffers from the law of authority leakage and the law of counter control – the former referring to the inevitable distortions of information and orders as they are passed up and down a steep hierarchy, and the latter referring to the extra efforts subordinates will exert to counteract increased monitoring efforts by their superiors. In the absence of institutional guarantees preventing the central government from arbitrary interventions, the Chinese governing system may have already reached its limit in terms of using its centralized personnel system, in combination with a relatively decentralized fiscal system, as the institutionalized device for fostering economic growth. This system has created many distortions especially in relation to local officials’ lack of interest in tackling other long-term and fine-grained governance issues such as environmental protection, social justice, and various social development issues. Viewed in this way, governance reform in China should not be focusing entirely on fixing problems with the vertical accountability system. In addition

116  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China to delineating more clearly the respective authorities and responsibilities at different levels of government, the Chinese governing system needs more horizontal accountability mechanisms by increasing the oversight authority of the local people’s congresses, introducing democratic elections of elected representatives, enhancing government transparency, protecting open media, and facilitating citizen participation in public policy making (Tang 2012; 邓穗欣 2019). Although these institutional reforms clearly ought to be the long-term goals for governance reform in China, it is less clear how China may accomplish these goals in an orderly fashion. It is also noteworthy that market-preserving fiscal federalism is an ideal type, meaning that no country would perfectly attain all five institutional prerequisites. Different countries, including the United States, resemble market-preserving fiscal federalism only to a certain extent by partially meeting these ideal-type characteristics (Fornasari, Webb, and Zou 2000; Rodden 2002). Given China’s fishbowl-like political environment, much research remains to be done to identify actionable solutions that can strike a delicate balance between maintaining the current system’s positive effects on economic development and nudging it toward being more sensitive to other finer issues in governance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Previous versions of this paper were presented at the academic conference on Quality of Government: Understanding the Post-1978 Transition and Prosperity of China (2015) in Shanghai and the conference on Public Policy and Public Administration in China (2019) in Suzhou. The authors would like to thank the discussants for their constructive insights and comments.

NOTES 1.

On December 22, 2019, three of Weingast’s many articles on China as a system of market-preserving federalism received more than 1,800 citations on Google Scholar: Weingast (1995); Qian and Weingast (1997); and Montionola, Qian, and Weingast (1995). Weingast (1995) had over 3,100 citations and has been regularly cited in the past fifteen years with around 150 citations per year. 2. As a corollary, as detailed by Lou (2008, 158‒159), “between 1994 and 2005, national fiscal revenues increased from 521.8 billion to 3161.8 billion, an average annual increase of 17.8 percent. Total government revenue as a percentage of GDP increased from 12.3 percent in 1993 to 17.3 percent in 2005. Central government revenue as a percentage of total government revenue grew from 22.0 percent in 1994 to 52.3 percent in 2005, dramatically reducing the central government’s reliance on local governments to turn over tax revenues.” 3. While a major reason behind this humongous amount was China’s stimulus package and monetary easing amid the global financial crisis between 2008 and 2010, local governments were advised to refrain from any further use of debt in the post-crisis era. Nonetheless, Xiong (2018, 1) suggested that “local governments managed to use even more debt, albeit from the less transparent shadow banking sector, to finance their investment booms.” 4. The formula was specified as follows: total score = (points earned in economic task completion) * 100% * [1+ (aggregated points earned in other measured aspects/1,000)]. The maximum score for economic completion was 100, whereas the maximum total score assigned to other measured aspects was 1000. In this way, the points earned in other measured aspects were heavily discounted.

Beyond governance for economic growth  117 5. In J Town, the conflicts between government and local residents were caused mainly by disputes over land acquisitions (张丙宣 2011, 166). Hurst et al. (2014, 465) echoed this phenomenon by suggesting that “collective petitioning has likely become more common in wealthier areas, where land requisitions…are concentrated.” 6. After several rounds of negotiation, J Town was approved to retain 6 percent, instead of 5 percent as initially determined by the H District government, of the revenue generated from property taxes (张丙宣 2011, 118‒125). 7. For example, the head of the Agricultural Bureau in Mo County explained, “the budget our bureau receives each year is barely sufficient to maintain its internal operations. When we were at our wit’s end, we had no other options than asking for higher-level governments’ support, mainly in the form of special projects. That being said, it has become impossible for us to invest in our personnel, such as providing them training opportunities. As a result, new graduates rarely want to come to our bureau. A lack of talents further cripples our bureau’s ability to develop innovative practices that warrant higher-level entities’ attention, both administratively and financially. A vicious circle is thus at work” (何慧丽/赵晓峰/魏程琳 2011, 35). 8. In addition to the fact that performance contracts in W County had not been taken seriously, some specific items listed on these contracts were hardly inspiring. For example, one item was about “1‒2 point penalties for local officials who do not submit their study notes on time” (周庆智 2004, 142). As the case author mentioned, performance contracts of this nature can hardly be seen as an instrument for incentivizing individuals to perform, but more of a study plan for underperforming students. 9. The case author noted, “When I was trying to figure out whether they [local officials in Central County] would be willing to accept my interviews in the afternoon, they told me that afternoon was not an option. Most likely, I would not find my interviewees in their offices. The typical schedule for local officials in Central County was as follows: they started reaching out to people for lunch at 11. During lunch, they would drink and exchange information. Afterward, they always went back home to take a nap. Another round of gathering started at night” (冯军旗 2010, 165). 10. The award system in J Town included three types of prizes: top-tier, second-tier, and third-tier. Top-tier winners were those who more than doubled the stipulated goal (accomplished 230 percent of the goal), second-tier winners were those who exceeded the stipulated goal by at least 60 percent (accomplished 160 percent of the goal), and third-tier winners were those who surpassed the stipulated goal by 30 percent (accomplished 130 percent of the goal). In 2007, top-tier winners were given a personal bonus of 100,000, second-tier winners a bonus of 60,000, and third-tier winners a bonus of 40,000. 11. This is evidenced by the fact that China’s central government recentralized its banking industry in the mid-1990s. As Ong (2012a, 200) suggests, loan decisions, previously determined solely by governments at the county level, have been recentralized “at the prefectural level and above,” particularly since 2000. 12. Although the centralized budgeting system in China plays a pivotal role in transferring and earmarking grants to local governments in a more reliable and transparent manner, Ang (2009, 271) bluntly pointed out that the system by itself won’t be sufficient in achieving this envisioned goal. According to her analysis, it takes tremendous amounts of time for the system to “percolate to lower level governments.” Hence, countermeasures can be devised by local governments during the course of this very process. 13. Although the household registration system is currently under heated debate and is highly likely to be reformed soon (e.g., Jiangxi Province drafted the reformed provincial household registration system on January 11, 2015), its negative impact is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. First, top-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are unlikely to ease their respective restrictions on household registrations due to their overpopulated situations. For people who already possess “hukou” in top-tier cities, they are unlikely to move to second-tier cities where the medical and educational resources are much inferior; but most of the migrant workers are working exactly in those top-tier cities where getting “hukou” is extremely difficult, regardless of whether the related policy will be reformed. For residents living in second-tier cities, nonetheless, moving to top-tier cities is not necessarily ideal either. The skyrocketing housing prices plus fierce

118  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China competition in the employment market (particularly the high-end labor market) become the major obstacle to the formation of a truly “common market.” 14. The importance of regional variations has been increasingly recognized as crucial for understanding development in China. Hurst et al. (2014, 474), for example, argue, “it would be an invalid part-to-whole mapping to ascribe the virtuous set of organizational roles and relationships uncovered in some areas of one province to all of China.”

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7. Digital governance in China Liang Ma

Electronic government (or e-government) is a new form of government in the digital era that is characterized by the use of various information and communication technologies (ICTs) in administrative procedures, public-service delivery, and public participation (West 2005). E-government is also called digital government, virtual government, or, in the era of mobile internet and smartphone, mobile government (m-government). ICTs are internet-based hardware and software that are used to facilitate information dissemination, communication and dialogue, and service delivery. By using ICTs, government can deliver public services and respond to public requests virtually, in a 24/7 manner (Fountain 2001). The technological advances in e-government are expected to make it more efficient, effective, equitable, transparent, responsive, and citizen-centric (Ho 2002). E-government can be developed in many directions and forms, and it is often classified by the actors and their relationships, which include G2G (government to government), G2B (government to business), and G2C (government to citizen) (Reddick 2004). G2G primarily involves information sharing and interoperation across jurisdictional boundaries, government agencies, and administrative tiers, which are usually dealing with back-office business or management information systems. G2B covers government services to businesses (e.g., registering, taxing). G2C is the primary focus of e-government, and it is about information exchange and interactions between a government and citizens, as well as the government delivery of public services to citizens. Both G2B and G2C are front-office operations and the core themes of e-government, whereas G2G, being primarily internal ICT applications, is less discussed (Moon, Lee, and Roh 2014). China has lagged behind in e-government, but in the past decade it has been catching up rapidly in many aspects. This chapter reviews the current literature on e-government in China, identifies the key gaps in theories and research methods, and suggests future research avenues in this field. The chapter has four sections. First, it briefly summarizes the evolution of e-government in China over the past three decades. Second, it reviews the key theoretical debates in the studies of e-government. Third, it assesses current practices in Chinese e-government research. Lastly, it concludes with suggestions for future research directions in the study of e-government in China.

THE EVOLUTION OF E-GOVERNMENT IN CHINA China was among the first countries in the world to use the internet to modernize government affairs. In China, e-government is mainly used to boost economic development and strengthen top-down administrative monitoring (Ma, Chung, and Thorson 2005). The earliest uses of e-government were digitization of government archives, office automation (OA), and paperless work. With the ubiquitous use of internet and browsers, government is also keen on presenting itself online. In 1999, the central government (State Council) required government agencies at 122

Digital governance in China  123 all five tiers of government (central ministries and commissions, provinces, prefecture-level cities, counties and districts, and townships and subdistricts) to present a certain portion of their portfolios on the internet. On August 5, 2002, the Central Committee of The Communist Party of China promulgated the Guideline about the development of e-government in China. On January 1, 2006, the State Council officially released the central government website. On the one hand, this requirement significantly increased the online exposure of government agencies (there were 850,000 government websites by 2016), but on the other, it also bred “ghost websites,” which are seldom updated and badly maintained. Meanwhile, various nationwide networking and connectivity projects, known as golden projects (e.g., Golden Tax, Golden Agriculture, Golden Finance, Golden Social Security), were implemented, resulting in many “silos” that are vertically integrated but horizontally isolated from each other. These golden projects are helpful for bottom-up reporting and top-down commanding, but they look like chimneys or honeycomb briquettes and impede interagency data exchange and information sharing.

E-INFORMATION, E-SERVICE, AND E-PARTICIPATION E-government serves at least three functions: provision of e-information, provision of e-service, and stimulation of e-participation (or e-democracy) (Zheng 2017). Government websites help to disclose government information, which enables citizens and other external stakeholders (e.g., media) to track government performance, if not to hold government accountable. Nowadays government transparency has been increasingly computer-intermediated, and the development of e-government facilitates information dissemination and sharing among external stakeholders. The Regulation on Government Information Disclosure in China (《政府信息公开条例》) was enacted in 2007 and implemented in 2008 by the State Council, and e-government plays a key role in improving government transparency (Piotrowski et al. 2009). The regulation was revised in 2019 to give the public more rights to hold the government accountable via transparency and scrutiny. For instance, citizens are now allowed to request more information from the government, and government is required to release more machine-readable data to facilitate commercial development and public use. Online web portals are also used to integrate, simplify, and streamline provision of public services, but China’s e-government is not well equipped for this task. Administrative procedures are not well digitized and integrated into e-government applications, and citizens and businesses prefer offline face-to-face interactions with civil servants. Given the underdevelopment of formal institutions, Chinese people prefer to use personal ties (guanxi) with acquaintances working at government agencies to get things done through informal channels or by knowing hidden rules of the game (Bian 2019). Online participation, deliberation, and consultation are also a core component of e-government, and its development helps strengthen public accountability (Su and Meng 2016). China was among the first nations to initiate online petitions, and the government’s performance in responding to citizen grievances is on a par with that of developed countries (Distelhorst and Hou 2017). Many local governments initiated a mayor’s mailbox, online petition platforms, and other online channels for citizen participation (Göbel 2016). Local governments aim to divert citizen complaints from mainstream letters and visits (xinfang) and

124  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China other informal offline grievances, as doing so helps to maintain social stability, the bottom line for the ruling party (Hartford 2005). As shown in Figure 7.1, China has been consistently in the median in e-government development in the world. The United Nations releases the results of its E-Government Survey of member countries every two years. These results include an e-government development index (EGDI) and an e-participation index (EPART). China’s national web portal ranks well in e-participation, at around 30th (the 2012 ranking is the lowest, at 66th). In contrast, its e-government is not well developed, ranking around 70th (UN 2018). This pattern is consistent with the trends observed above in that it shows that e-information and e-participation are better developed than e-service. Part of the reason for this may be that the central government in China does not directly deliver public services to citizens and enterprises, but in any case, this disparity seems to be an important point for further investigation.

Source: UN E-Government Survey, various years.

Figure 7.1

The global rank of China in the UN E-Government Survey

CONTEXTUAL FACTORS AFFECTING E-GOVERNMENT IN CHINA The development of e-government is highly embedded in political regimes, social structures, and technological circumstances. E-government in China is mainly shaped by three key contextual factors. First, China has a one-party unitary regime, and horizontal and vertical relations within the government are complex. Each agency has to be structured and presented online both vertically (tiao tiao) and horizontally (kuai kuai), which hinders e-government development. For instance, a provincial health commission reports vertically to the National Health Commission and horizontally to the provincial government, but the two superior authorities are not well coordinated. The delayed responses of Wuhan city government and

Digital governance in China  125 the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus can be partially attributed to this fragmentation and to information silos. The internet is also subject to political censorship by the ruling party (Gueorguiev and Malesky 2019), which designates the boundary of e-government development. The development and use of ICTs in China is an interesting puzzle. On the one hand, China is leading in many cutting-edge technologies, including the use of face recognition, e-payment, AI, and so on. Government at all tiers in China is keen on adopting these emerging, albeit uncertain, technologies, about which their counterparts in Western countries are often skeptical and hesitant. On the other hand, foreigners visiting China find it inconvenient to be unable to easily access Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other mainstream global applications. Several giant global internet companies are excluded from accessing China’s market due to political censorship, and domestic companies successfully meet the market demand with comparable applications (Baidu, Weibo, Tencent WeChat, and Youku as Chinese versions of Google, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, respectively) (Stevens, Xie, and Peng 2016). This puzzle suggests that the authorities in China are more concerned about cybersecurity than efficiency in using ICTs (Ma, Chung, and Thorson 2005). Second, China is well provisioned in ICT infrastructure, but its digital divide is multifaceted and chronic. China’s three main telecommunication giants (China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom), which are state-owned enterprises, are keen on building and maintaining ICT infrastructure across the country. But internet access remains limited in rural and inland areas, and the elder population and disadvantaged social groups are also largely excluded from internet access (Ma 2018). The internet is believed to be a great equalizer, but in reality, the digital divide may sharpen social inequity. Disabled persons, low-income residents, and other disadvantaged groups are usually excluded from internet access either because they cannot afford telecommunication services (e.g., broadband) or due to lack of internet knowledge and skills. This exclusion expands the gap between them and advantaged groups. It is thus imperative to narrow the digital divide and enable everyone to access the internet and e-government. Third, China’s ITC industry is dominated by a handful of technological giants. Alipay is advanced in online payment and transactions, Tencent is ubiquitous in social media, Baidu is China’s most-used search engine, and so forth. These giant internet companies almost monopolize their respective niches in the ICT industry, and they collaborate with government agencies to develop various e-government applications. For instance, Alipay and Tencent WeChat have developed internet-plus-urban-service platforms to help municipal government agencies to streamline and integrate their mobile services, which substantially reduces the administrative burden on citizens and businesses in interacting with local authorities (郑跃平/ 马亮/孙宗锋 2018). Unexpected disasters and crises, such as the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the 2019 Novel Coronavirus, contributed significantly to the development of e-government in China. Given that urban communities were quarantined to curb the spread of SARS, government had to use web portals to disseminate information and eliminate rumors. With social-media use on the rise, government agencies have also been presenting themselves in more interactive and multimedia forms (Mergel 2013). The government using social media is referred to as Government 2.0, as distinguished from Government 1.0, which comprises government websites. Government 2.0 is more customized, more interactive, and more multimedia than Government 1.0, which is relatively standardized, one-way broadcast, and static (Eggers 2007).

126  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 7.1 Dimension

The key applications and modalities used by e-government in China Website

Weibo

WeChat

APP

Toutiao

Short video

Year

2003

2011

2013

2014

2016

2018

N

130,000

>80,000

>10,000

>80,000

>10,000

Page views

10,000

100,000

100,000

10,000

100,000

1,000,000

Platform

Govt.

Sina

Tencent

Alipay

Toutiao

Douyin

Ownership

Govt.

Business

Business

Govt. or business

Business

Business

e-information

High

Medium

Medium

High

High

Medium

e-service

High

Low

Medium

High

Low

Low

e-participation

Low

High

Medium

High

Medium

Medium

Multimedia

Low

Medium

Medium

Medium

Medium

High

Cost

High

Low

Low

High

Low

Medium

AI

Low

Low

Low

Medium

High

High

Impact

Low

Medium

Medium

Low

Medium

High

Source: 马亮 (2019a), 3. Year is the first year or the landmark year of this e-government application or modality. AI refers to the use of artificial intelligence.

In 2015, the State Council kicked off a national government website census to reduce the number of ineffective government websites and improve the online presentation of government at all tiers. Township governments and county government agencies were no longer permitted to maintain an official web portal, and the total number of government websites declined from more than 150,000 to be less than 18,000. At present, government websites are scrutinized quarterly to ensure they are up to the technological standards required to continue being online, and the public is mobilized to help to identify “bugs” on government websites (Ma and Wu 2020). In the era of mobile internet, government agencies are required to use platforms other than official websites to disclose information and deliver services. For instance, Toutiao, a news and information platform, is commonly used by government agencies to release short-form news, and Douyin (known in the West as TikTok) is adopted to post short videos (fewer than 15 seconds). These digital platforms leverage their ecosystem-specific advantages, lowering transaction costs and amplifying economies of scale (Li et al. 2019). A comparison of the different applications and modalities used by e-government in China suggests that there are notable differences among them (see Table 7.1) (马亮 2019a). For instance, government websites and Toutiao are strong in e-information, APPs score high in e-service, and Weibo and WeChat are good platforms for e-participation. They are also different in terms of operational cost and in the use of artificial intelligence, multimedia, and impact, giving government various alternatives from which to choose. The relationships between these platforms are both competitive and complementary, and government agencies can leverage them together for different purposes.

THEORETICAL DEBATES ON E-GOVERNMENT RESEARCH E-government research focuses primarily on three interrelated topics, namely the antecedents, characteristics, and consequences of e-government. The first assesses the evolution of e-government, to see what stage it has reached and where it is heading. The second explains the evolution and development of e-government. The third evaluates e-government adoption.

Digital governance in China  127 Various concepts have been used to discuss the evolution of e-government, including e-government maturity, readiness, performance, and development. In the literature, scholars have proposed two-stage (Reddick 2004), four-stage (Layne and Lee 2001), and five-stage (Lee 2010) models of e-government. Researchers also investigate whether e-government is incrementally changing or radically transforming (Norris and Reddick 2013). The concept of Government 2.0 – the transition from reliance on an official web portal to use of social media and smart-government applications – is one aspect of e-government evolution. A recent review suggests that digital government evolves in four stages: digitization, transformation, engagement, and contextualization (Janowski 2015). The evolution of e-government is driven by both ICTs and government per se, and there is a coevolution of ICTs and the public sector (Liu and Yuan 2015). The Technology Enactment Framework developed by Fountain (2001) is often used to explain the evolution of ICTs in the public sector, and institutional changes induced by the implementation of ICTs are the key components of these processes (Fountain 2001). The second stream of e-government research focuses on explaining the adoption, implementation, assimilation, development, and diffusion of e-government across jurisdictions, sectors, and individual civil servants and citizens (Zhang, Xu, and Xiao 2014). The technology acceptance model, the diffusion of innovation theory, and the theory of planned behavior are the theories and models most commonly used to explain potential users’ behaviors in adopting, implementing, and assimilating e-government applications (Rana et al. 2012). For instance, the diffusion of innovation theory highlights the attributes of innovation, the characteristics of potential adopters, and their relationships with other actors in the social system (Rogers 2003). What is more important and relevant in this stream of e-government research is the exploration of the postadoption behavior of public-sector entities and target users, meaning whether and to what extent e-government applications are assimilated and utilized in desirable ways. The third stream of e-government research examines the varying impacts of e-government use on the outcomes of public administration, as well as the processes and mechanisms through which e-government affects these outcomes. Outcomes of e-government use include changes in citizen satisfaction, government trust, government size and structure, business processes, public-service effectiveness and efficiency, transparency, responsiveness, corruption, and so forth. Citizens using e-government are more likely to perceive government to be transparent, responsive, and user-centric, which may encourage them to trust government. Organizational restructuring and business processes reengineering are often the key mechanisms through which e-government brings about these outcomes. For instance, ICTs facilitate organizational communication, which may help to reduce the number of middle managers and broaden the span of their control (Im 2011). It is useful to use the supply–demand framework to examine e-government, as it elaborates well on all three streams of e-government research. E-government comprises the online and mobile services provided by government agencies, which are expected to meet the demands of government agencies, businesses, and citizens. Whether and to what extent the supply side is congruent with the demand side is the key to assessing e-government development (Ma and Zheng 2018). Similarly, the pull–push model is relevant in understanding e-government development, because technological push and market pull jointly shape the supply of e-government. Many e-government projects fail because they only consider the supply side and do not equivalently incorporate the demand side into the design and implementation processes.

128  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

THE STATE OF THE ART OF E-GOVERNMENT RESEARCH IN CHINA E-government is a multidisciplinary research field, attracting scholars from different theoretical perspectives and research traditions (e.g., intelligence and library, information science and engineering, public administration, management information systems). Scholars from different background disciplines and fields pay attention to different aspects of e-government development and use various theories and methods, which makes this field very cosmopolitan and vibrant. The interdisciplinary composition of the e-government research community means that there are many outlets for publishing across disciplines. Chinese articles about e-government are mainly published in journals in the fields of public administration, library and intelligence, and computer and information science. E-Government (电子政务), a monthly Chinese academic journal dedicated to e-government research in China, was founded by the National Science Library at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2004 and accepted by the China Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) in 2019. E-Government has been the main outlet for e-government research in China, and it is proactive in publishing theme-based articles on emerging topics in e-government. Smart cities, government short videos, and regulation of the sharing economy are some of its recent themes. International publications that cover e-government in China are burgeoning, with dozens of articles published in Government Information Quarterly, Public Administration and Development, Public Management Review, and Journal of Contemporary China, among others. It is interesting that China studies journals like China Quarterly and China Journal publish relatively few articles on e-government in China; instead the main outlets are international public-administration journals. The number of international journal articles on e-government in China, however, is not equivalent to the rapid expansion and development of e-government in China, suggesting we should encourage international publications to publish more, so as to deepen the understanding of e-government in China among English readers. In terms of research methods, diverse methods have been used in the study of e-government in China. Primary research methods include surveys (online, face-to-face, and telephone), content analysis, interviews, observation, and big-data analytics. Few studies make use of the type of experimental design that would make it possible to infer causal relationships among variables. Big-data analytics can be used to help monitor behavioral changes in civil servants’ and citizens’ use of e-government. A comparison between studies done in China and those done and published by international scholars suggests nuanced differences in research approaches, methods, and insights gained. International scholars use more empirical methods than domestic studies, and they are more critical of China’s digital-government practices. Potential reasons for this difference include more standard peer review procedures adopted by international journals and more open debate among international scholars (马亮 2019b).

HOW SHOULD E-GOVERNMENT IN CHINA BE ASSESSED? Many frameworks, metrics, and methods have been developed to evaluate the accessibility (Shi 2007) and readiness of e-government in China (Liu, Chen, and Wang 2012). The China Software Testing Center (CSTC) annually releases the Performance Assessment of

Digital governance in China  129 Government Websites in China, which rates and ranks the websites of all central ministries and commissions, all provincial governments, all prefecture-level governments, and selected county-level governments. Scholars at Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, and the University of Electronic Science and Technology have developed similar means of ranking e-government performance. These assessments primarily use website monitoring and expert ratings to evaluate e-government applications, and they have only limited ability to predict users’ actual behavior. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) biannually releases the Statistical Report on Internet Development in China, which includes a section on e-government development. CNNIC mainly uses telephone interviewing to assess the digital divide in internet access and e-government use. Apart from these assessments, there are also ratings and rankings developed by internet giants such as Alipay and Tencent, which collect, store, and analyze big data on users of their platforms. E-government in China has an ambiguous record regarding meeting citizen demands and exerting political control. On the one hand, e-government is used extensively to boost government transparency, reinvent the processes of public-service delivery, and to engage the public online (Ma, Chung, and Thorson 2005). On the other hand, ICTs are also leveraged by the government to strengthen political surveillance and monitoring of societal activities, which may encroach on personal privacy and social autonomy. ICTs are instrumentally neutral and can be used both for democratic engagement and for authoritarian control. It is debatable whether and to what extent e-government in China contributes to democratic progress or authoritarian surveillance (Zhang 2002; Lollar 2006). A recent study shows that government-initiated online public engagement is limited by government’s censorship. The censorship aims to secure social stability, but the result is “online participation chaos” (Zhang et al. 2016). Government responses to citizens’ online petitions are found to be selective, whereas complaints involving collective actions are more likely to be responded to quickly and effectively (Su and Meng 2016). Given the rapid progress and extensive transformation of e-government in China, it is not easy to comprehensively assess its development in a timely and consistent way. The fact that one goal of e-government in China is state and political control complicates assessment of its direction and progress. Furthermore, China’s e-government has been catching up and leapfrogging Western counterparts simultaneously, which stage-based models cannot easily account for. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to keep tackling the task of assessing the development of e-government in China to gain clarity on its direction, whether it is incremental or radical, and what implications can be drawn from its developmental processes.

HOW CAN E-GOVERNMENT IN CHINA BE UNDERSTOOD? The development of e-government varies substantially across regions, administrative tiers, and agencies in China. Additionally, the adoption and use of e-government features vary across civil servants, citizens, and businesses, driven by a combination of individual, organizational, and environmental factors. It is worthwhile both from the perspective of theory and policy to understand these patterns. Many studies examine particular features of e-government adoption by local governments, including social media (Zheng 2013), police microblogging (Ma 2013), municipal microblogging (Ma 2014), open innovation (Zhang et al. 2017), and e-government cloud (Liang et al.

130  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 2017). These studies reveal that organizational motives and capacities play pivotal roles in driving e-government adoption. However, postadoption behaviors within the government have not yet been fully examined. Those are more complicated and difficult to observe and could vary by administrative level and policy area. Further study could generate more nuanced understanding of variations and contingencies. At present, studies mainly rely on archival and statistical data, with strong assumptions about government behaviors and without attempting to penetrate into the decision-making processes behind the adoption of various e-government features. It is imperative to interview and survey decision makers to learn about their motivations in adopting (or not adopting) e-government. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is also a relevant tool for exploring the combinations of factors affecting e-government functions and performance (谭海波/范梓腾/杜运周 2019). The adoption of e-government among target users (e.g., citizens, businesses) has been extensively examined in the literature. Among the findings are that m-government is seldom adopted among rural residents, largely because of their demographic and social attributes (Liu et al. 2014), and that the use of e-government among rural migrant workers is mainly driven by their perceptions and awareness of information accessibility (Wang and Chen 2012). These studies mainly test and extend the existing theories of e-government adoption (i.e., the diffusion of innovation and technology acceptance model), with few studies developing original theories to explain varying behaviors among e-government users (Wang 2014). The policy implications of these findings are not explicit or well established, and future studies should pay more attention to policy interventions that may help to boost the uptake of e-government by citizens – for instance, making e-government the mandatory method of access for frequently used public services may help to raise public awareness, actual adoption, and continued use of e-government features.

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF E-GOVERNMENT IN CHINA? The adoption and use of e-government may generate both short- and long-term impacts, internal and external ramifications, and positive and negative consequences. The introduction of ICTs not only affects internal structures and processes of government, but also impacts perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of external stakeholders, particularly citizens and businesses. Zheng (2007) found that the internet empowers both government and society, and that internet-mediated interactions are subtle and complicated. The adoption of ICTs in government catalyzes changes in organizational structures and business processes, which in turn reduce organizational size and accelerate institutional change. The introduction of ICTs also impacts the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of external stakeholders, particularly citizens and businesses. Yang (2009) found that the introduction of ICTs in China facilitated a change in state–society relations, empowering citizens to hold government accountable to a greater degree. Similarly, Schlæger (2013) found that e-government changes the power relations within the government and between government and society. A recent study shows that citizens’ online participation leads local governments to be more responsive in policy priorities and budgetary allocation (Jiang, Meng, and Zhang 2019). Although e-government is expected to boost citizen trust in government through the improvement of transparency, responsiveness, interaction, integrity, and public-service per-

Digital governance in China  131 formance, sometimes e-government disclosures lead to mixed reactions: Wang and Niu (2020) report, for example, that budget information disclosure is negatively related to citizens’ satisfaction with the budget, but positively associated with citizens’ perceptions of government performance. Although e-government has resulted in many organizational and behavioral changes, few studies have empirically examined its impacts. The impacts of e-government on organizational structures and business processes should be assessed to see whether and to what extent e-government leads to organizational downsizing and delayering, as well as interagency information sharing and functional interoperation (Wang 2018). The Chinese government undergoes restructuring almost every five years, yet we know little about how e-government facilitates or impedes organizational restructuring (米加宁/彭康珺/章昌平 2020). The impacts of ICT use are contingent on power relationships and conflict of interest, which shape the interplay among actors at different layers (谭海波/孟庆国/张楠 2015). The changing behavior of government leadership should also be examined as leadership becomes increasingly ICT-intermediated, a phenomenon that is conceptualized as e-leadership (Van Wart et al. 2019). Turning to citizens and other external stakeholders, it would be meaningful to examine the impacts of e-government on citizens’ perceptions of government performance and integrity, as well as citizen trust in government (马亮 2016; 朱春奎/毛万磊/李玮 2017). E-government simultaneously increases citizens’ expectations of and satisfaction with government performance, and it would be interesting to see to what extent e-government makes citizens more satisfied with government performance. Given the increasing embeddedness of internet companies in e-government projects, it would also be relevant to examine their relationships with and impacts on e-government operations. Also, it would be good to further explore the political aspect of digital government, given that the use of e-government reshapes political relationships among key stakeholders. What impacts, for instance, does e-government have on political trust, political dialogue, public negotiation, political institutional change, and social transformation?

FUTURE STUDIES OF E-GOVERNMENT IN CHINA Future studies of e-government in China have at least four avenues for fruitful investigation. First, because cross-boundary collaboration is pivotal to the success of administrative reform (e.g., one-stop service center) (Liu and Zheng 2018), the driving forces behind cross-agency and cross-jurisdictional collaboration in e-government development should be explored (Fan 2013). The “Visit Once” or “Once Only” administrative service reform in Zhejiang Province, which stresses horizontal data sharing and interoperability across government agencies, is a good example (Huang and Yu 2019). The whole-of-government approach is the core component of the post New Public Management (NPM) reform, which aims to strengthen cross-agency collaboration to streamline public-service delivery (Christensen and Lægreid 2007). Given the context and complexity of e-government in the current and next stages (Janowski 2015), future studies should pay more attention to collaboration mechanisms among different players. The Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework (Feiock 2013), for instance, can be used to explain the collaboration risks and transaction costs in e-government. Second, the methods and insights of behavioral science should be applied to e-government research. Behavioral science uses experimental design to test the effects of policy interven-

132  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China tions on target groups’ behavior, and the “nudges” thus developed are often leveraged in policy design (Battaglio Jr. et al. 2019). E-government is primarily used to elicit desired behaviors from citizens and businesses, and future studies should examine this process. WeChat and other social media have become deeply embedded in daily bureaucratic and administrative practices, blurring the boundary between work and personal life, public and private roles, and internal and external activities, and the consequences of this are worth investigating. It would also be meaningful to examine the behavioral changes of civil servants in e-government and m-government contexts. Third, design science is another field whose approaches could be used in studies of e-government in China. E-government can be seen as an interactive interface between government and citizens (or businesses), and the approaches to designing this interface matter in e-government development. Design science is a creative and prospective approach for public administration (Romme and Meijer 2019) that could help in thinking, modeling, verifying, and improving policy interventions to amplify the intended impacts of e-government features. Fourth, future studies should pay more attention to cybersecurity, privacy protection, and crisis management in e-government. Given that information silos built by different government agencies have been increasingly connected and integrated into a coherent system, similar to putting all eggs in one basket, data security has become more challenging. It is critical that we understand how to ensure data exchange is secure and how to protect citizen privacy, business secrets, and national security. This review reveals that although China’s e-government has evolved admirably over the past two decades, current studies of it are fragmented and isolated from studies of e-government elsewhere in the world. China’s e-government is deeply embedded in its unique technological, socioeconomic, and political contexts, which shape the processes and outcomes of its development. Theories that describe and explain various Chinese e-government phenomena should be designed and tested, with the goal of uncovering what aspects are different from e-government in other contexts. The findings from studies of e-government in China are valuable to other developing countries, which are in the same process of catching up with and leapfrogging developed countries. The research methods used in e-government studies can also be expanded to include experimental design, big-data analytics, and mixed methods. The existing studies mainly use archival and secondhand data, case study and interviewing, and survey methods, which limit our understanding of e-government phenomena. Survey methods are commonly subject to common method/source bias, and they cannot be used to infer causal relationships among variables. Archival data is far from the real world of e-government operations, and case studies are often limited in external validity. Using other methods to study e-government may not only help to verify and triangulate prior findings using conventional methods, but may also diversify our perspectives by highlighting different aspects of e-government. For instance, experimental design can be used to test how effective policy interventions are in stimulating e-government use among citizens. Big-data analytics are able to monitor and identify large-scale user behavioral patterns. Overall, mixed methods bring together qualitative observations and quantitative analyses, which makes for a richer, more well-rounded, and complete understanding of e-government in China.

Digital governance in China  133

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Hon S. Chan, Ruiping Fan, Jie Gao, Xigen Li, and Jianliang Ye for helpful comments and suggestions. The author is grateful to financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No.: 71774164). The author thanks Francesca Forrest for a nice copy-editing service. All remaining errors are the author’s.

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134  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Liu, Shuhua Monica and Qianli Yuan (2015) “The Evolution of Information and Communication Technology in Public Administration.” Public Administration and Development 35(2), 140‒151. Liu, Xinping and Lei Zheng (2018) “Cross-Departmental Collaboration in One-Stop Service Center for Smart Governance in China: Factors, Strategies and Effectiveness.” Government Information Quarterly 35(4), S54‒S60. Liu, Yong, Hongxiu Li, Vassilis Kostakos, Jorge Goncalves, Simo Hosio and Feng Hu (2014) “An Empirical Investigation of Mobile Government Adoption in Rural China: A Case Study in Zhejiang Province.” Government Information Quarterly 31(3), 432‒442. Liu, Yuan, Xi Chen and Xiaoyi Wang (2012) “Evaluating the Readiness of Government Portal Websites in China to Adopt Contemporary Public Administration Principles.” Government Information Quarterly 29(3), 403‒412. Lollar, Xia Li (2006) “Assessing China's E-Government: Information, Service, Transparency and Citizen Outreach of Government Websites.” Journal of Contemporary China 15(46), 31‒41. Ma, Liang (2013) “The Diffusion of Government Microblogging: Evidence from Chinese Municipal Police Bureaus.” Public Management Review 15(2), 288‒309. Ma, Liang (2014) “Diffusion and Assimilation of Government Microblogging: Evidence from Chinese Cities.” Public Management Review 16(2), 274‒295. Ma, Liang (2018) “Digital Divide and Citizen Use of E-Government in China’s Municipalities.” International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age (IJPADA) 5(3), 16‒31. Ma, Liang and Xia Wu (2020) “Citizen Engagement and Co-Production of E-Government Services in China.” Journal of Chinese Governance 5(1), 68‒89. Ma, Liang and Yueping Zheng (2018) “Does E-Government Performance Actually Boost Citizen Use? Evidence from European Countries.” Public Management Review 20(10), 1513‒1532. Ma, Lianjie, Jongpil Chung and Stuart Thorson (2005) “E-Government in China: Bringing Economic Development through Administrative Reform.” Government Information Quarterly 22(1), 20‒37. Mergel, Ines (2013) “A Framework for Interpreting Social Media Interactions in the Public Sector.” Government Information Quarterly 30(4), 327‒334. Moon, M. Jae, Jooho Lee and Chul-Young Roh (2014) “The Evolution of Internal IT Applications and E-Government Studies in Public Administration: Research Themes and Methods.” Administration & Society 46(1), 3‒36. Norris, Donald F. and Christopher G. Reddick (2013) “Local E-Government in the United States: Transformation or Incremental Change?” Public Administration Review 73(1), 165‒175. Piotrowski, Suzanne J., Yahong Zhang, Weiwei Lin and Wenxuan Yu (2009) “Key Issues for Implementation of Chinese Open Government Information Regulations.” Public Administration Review 69(s1), S129‒S135. Rana, Nripendra P., Michael D. Williams, Yogesh K. Dwivedi and Janet Williams (2012) “Theories and Theoretical Models for Examining the Adoption of E-Government Services.” e-Service Journal 8(2), 26‒56. Reddick, Christopher G. (2004) “A Two-Stage Model of E-Government Growth: Theories and Empirical Evidence for U.S. Cities.” Government Information Quarterly 21(1), 51‒64. Rogers, Everett M. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed. New York: Free Press. Romme, A. Georges L. and Albert Meijer (2019) “Applying Design Science in Public Policy and Administration Research.” Policy & Politics 48(1), 149‒165. Schlæger, Jesper (2013) E-Government in China: Technology, Power and Local Government Reform. Oxford: Routledge. Shi, Yuquan (2007) “The Accessibility of Chinese Local Government Web Sites: An Exploratory Study.” Government Information Quarterly 24(2), 377‒403. Stevens, Charles E., En Xie and Mike W. Peng (2016) “Toward a Legitimacy-Based View of Political Risk: The Case of Google and Yahoo in China.” Strategic Management Journal 37(5), 945‒963. Su, Zheng and Tianguang Meng (2016) “Selective Responsiveness: Online Public Demands and Government Responsiveness in Authoritarian China.” Social Science Research 59(1), 52‒67. UN. 2018. United Nations E-Government Survey 2018. New York: United Nations. Van Wart, Montgomery, Alexandru Roman, XiaoHu Wang and Cheol Liu (2019) “Operationalizing the Definition of E-Leadership: Identifying the Elements of E-leadership.” International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(1), 80‒97.

Digital governance in China  135 Wang, Fang (2014) “Explaining the Low Utilization of Government Websites: Using a Grounded Theory Approach.” Government Information Quarterly 31(4), 610‒621. Wang, Fang (2018) “Understanding the Dynamic Mechanism of Interagency Government Data Sharing.” Government Information Quarterly 35(4), 536‒546. Wang, Fang and Yongbo Chen (2012) “From Potential Users to Actual Users: Use of E-Government Service by Chinese Migrant Farmer Workers.” Government Information Quarterly 29, Supplement 1, S98‒S111. Wang, Qiushi and Meili Niu (2020) “Exploring the Relationship Between Government Budget Information and Citizens’ Perceptions of Public Service Performance in China.” Public Management Review 22(3), 317–340. West, Darrell M. (2005) Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yang, Guobin (2009) The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online. New York: Columbia University Press. Zhang, Hui, Xiaolin Xu and Jianying Xiao (2014) “Diffusion of E-Government: A Literature Review and Directions for Future Directions.” Government Information Quarterly 31(4), 631‒636. Zhang, Junhua (2002) “Will the Government ‘Serve the People’? The Development of Chinese E-Government.” New Media & Society 4(2), 163‒184. Zhang, Nan, Xuejiao Zhao, Zhongwen Zhang, Qingguo Meng and Haibo Tan (2017) “What Factors Drive Open Innovation in China’s Public Sector? A Case Study of Official Document Exchange Via Microblogging (ODEM) in Haining.” Government Information Quarterly 34(1), 126‒133. Zhang, Wei, Xiaolin Xu, Hui Zhang and Qiang Chen (2016) “Online Participation Chaos: A Case Study of Chinese Government-Initiated E-Polity Square.” International Journal of Public Administration 39(14), 1195‒1202. Zheng, Lei (2013) “Social Media in Chinese Government: Drivers, Challenges and Capabilities.” Government Information Quarterly 30(4), 369‒376. Zheng, Yongnian (2007) Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zheng, Yueping (2017) “Explaining Citizens’ E-Participation Usage: Functionality of E-Participation Applications.” Administration & Society 49(3), 423‒442.

CHINESE REFERENCES 马亮 (2016) “电子政务使用如何影响公民信任：政府透明与回应的中介效应.” 《公共行政评论》 第6期, 44‒63. 马亮 (2019a) “政务短视频的现状、挑战与前景.” 《电子政务》第7期, 2‒10. 马亮 (2019b) “2019年第三季度中国公共管理研究佳作推介.” 《公共管理评论》第3期, 153‒164. 米加宁/彭康珺/章昌平 (2020) “大数据能驱动地方政府机构改革吗?” 《电子政务》第1期, 13‒19. 谭海波/范梓腾/杜运周 (2019) “技术管理能力、注意力分配与地方政府网站建设-​一项​基​于​ TOE框​ 架​的​组​态分析.” 《管理世界》第9期, 81‒94. 谭海波/孟庆国/张楠 (2015) “信息技术应用中的政府运作机制研究 – 以J市政府网上行政服务系统 建设为例.” 《社会学研究》第6期, 73‒98. 郑跃平/马亮/孙宗锋 (2018) “移动政务的发展和扩散：基于空间视角的解释与分析.” 《公共管理 学报》第2期, 130‒140. 朱春奎/毛万磊/李玮 (2017) “使用电子政务能够提高公众的政府信任吗?” 《公共管理与政策评 论》第4期, 60‒70.

8. Regulation in China May Chu and Pak Wan Major Pau

Regulation is broadly defined as the imposition of controls such as rules by governments or private authorities to modify or restrict certain activities or behaviors of individuals or groups. The academic consensus is that this concept is a modern concept as reflected by the transformation of the role of governments over the past decades. Previously, the state performed a “positive function,” in that it provided services directly. Recently, it has transformed itself and become a regulator which monitors social and economic practices. This chapter introduces the concept of regulation in the contemporary world and covers various versions and components of the concept. In the following sections, we will first explain the rise of a regulatory state. Then we will explore why regulation exists, followed by a discussion about who should exercise the authority to regulate. After that, we will introduce the main components of an effective regulatory regime, namely standard-setting, information-gathering and behavior-modification. We will exemplify these features with the food safety regulatory regimes of China. A further question we ask is whether and how China has been influenced by the internationalization of regulation and converges itself with global regulation. China is selected as an example for analysis in the chapter because China has been rapidly developing its economy, but its state regulatory capacity is relatively weak. Furthermore, the changes China has undergone in the past few decades, including in the economic, political and social spheres, have been phenomenal. More importantly, given that China is an authoritarian state, its development of the regulatory regimes in response to marketization and international forces is worth analyzing.

THE REGULATORY STATE The concept of “regulatory state” has gained attention in the fields of public administration and regulation in recent decades. The state now has assumed a new role: it used to direct and command the market; now it does so indirectly, by setting up regulatory agencies to influence social and economic activities (Ayres and Braithwaite 1992; Majone 1997; Hood et al. 1999; Braithwaite 2000; Mattli 2015). This emergence of regulatory states affects public policy in two ways (Lodge and Wegrich 2012). First, there are changes in the goals of public policy and administration. Previously, the objective was to maximize fairness. This maximization was achieved through different means such as redistribution. Currently, the goal is to meet an objective while spending the least resources. The switch is associated with the change in the use of tools in a regulatory state. Legal ways are now preferred. Financial and organizational devices such as tax stimulus and state-owned production are less used. Second, the parties that act as the regulators have changed. The role of the government is more as establishing independent regulatory agencies, which supervise the regulation conducted by private self-regulators. These agencies are set up by statutory rules. This independence allows them to be more immune to political forces. 136

Regulation in China  137 Accompanying these changes in positions is the formalization of actors in the field of regulation. Levi-Faur (2005, 13) summarized these changes succinctly, “governance is no longer about the delegation of authority to elected representatives but a form of second-level indirect representative democracy – citizens elect representatives who control and supervise ‘experts’ who formulate and administer policies in an autonomous fashion from their regulatory bastions.” Regulators, therefore, face less electoral pressure and have more room for assertive actions.

WHY REGULATION? With this rise of regulatory states, it is natural to ask why regulation emerges in the first place. To answer this question, a functionalist approach may help. Regulation is often seen as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, regulation is regarded as barriers to and constraints on a competitive and business market. On the other hand, people view regulation as necessary in mitigating risks in a “risk society” and correcting market failures. Scholars have also explained the rise and decline of regulation with “interest theory” (Baldwin and Cave 1999; Lodge and Wegrich 2012). Two theories under this umbrella are introduced here: the public interest theory and the private interest theory. Public Interest Theory Public interest theory assumes that regulation arises to serve public interests (Baldwin and Cave 1999). The idea is that in some instances the market may fail to realize publicly important goals, and regulations are to correct the failure. The corollary is that the enforcers, the regulators in this case, are expected to be impartial. In designing the rules, the regulators are to exclude their self-interests. Regulators thus have to be trustworthy and disinterested in private interests; this way, public confidence is built up, leading to efficient and effective regulation (Landis 1938). In practice, however, the validity of this theory has been questioned. The criticisms are threefold. The first criticism focuses on the definition of public interest. Critics find it hard to define public interests, and point out that regulation causes conflicting interests, something inconsistent with the public interest theory (Landis 1938). The second criticism casts doubts on whether regulators are indeed impartial and competent. Corruption may exist, and regulation may be in place to serve the regulators or their associates personally rather than the public (Mitnick 1980). Incapable regulators may also design public policies that could not serve their original intentions. The third criticism lies in the limited attention the theory gives to the influence of outside parties. Lobbyists and others exert economic and political pressures on the regulators and those who supervise them, such as regulators; indeed, according to capture theorists, regulation may benefit some private parties more than the public (Redford 1952). In the above context, public interest theory appears to serve as a best-practice model, rather than fully explain the activities in the real world.

138  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Private Interest Theory The second theory under the interest theory umbrella is the private interest theory. This approach focuses on competition for power. Also known as interest group theory and capture theory, the framework suggests that regulation is a result of competition among various players, rather than an equipment furthering public interests. Stigler (1971) and Peltzman (1976) equate regulation to unavoidable capture by private interest groups. These groups attempt to modify regulation with their power. The purpose is to maximize their utility. In the words of Stigler (1971, 3), “as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit.” Policies that could serve private interests include direct monetary subsidies, control over the entry of rivals, and restrictions to growth rates of new firms. The reason why small groups could achieve this feat is found in Olson’s (1965) theory of “logic of collective action,” which argues that small interest groups are better in mobilization over large and diffuse groups. As a result, small groups outpower larger ones in lobbying. The large group concerned here is the public, which is captured by small businesses. These businesses may attempt to use their position to create market barriers for new entrants. The private interest theory, nevertheless, has drawbacks. One problem it encounters is the paradox that regulated parties are willing to be regulated in the first place; this is especially strange in the area of environmental regulation, where private interest is clearly undermined (Williams 1976; Wilson 1984). The regulated parties may also not be entirely amoral, or socially irresponsible. In this sense, explanations provided by the private interest theory have gaps. Public and private interest theories are not necessarily contradictory. Bernstein (1955) tried to combine the two. In his view, regulators act according to the outcomes of power jockeying among legislators, who are influenced by their constituents and stakeholders. Despite this power struggle behind the scenes, the final regulations are framed as attempts to protect the public interests. Another approach that combines the two theories refers to the evolution of regulation. This “life-cycle theory” proposes that four periods exist in the rise and fall of regulations, in which external and internal forces interact (Bernstein 1955; Huntington 1952). These periods are gestation, youth, maturity, and old age. In the beginning, the theory assumes that a market failure needs correction by regulation. The gestation period then follows, and stakeholders start to be concerned about the issues that the regulatory body may cause. The period youth then comes next, whereby the regulators act actively, despite their inexperience. The next stage is maturity, whereby regulation matures and takes into account voices of the regulated parties. The final stage is age, which indicates the falling standard of the regulation as private rather than public interests take hold. In this context, a way to measure whether regulation is successful is to make use of the classification regime of Wilson (1984). He identified four types of politics, depending on whether the costs and benefits of a policy or regulation are widely distributed or narrowly concentrated. These types are: majoritarian politics, interest politics, client politics, and entrepreneurial politics. Which one of these categories a regulatory regime falls into can partly indicate the extent of its success or failure.

Regulation in China  139

WHO DOES REGULATION? The above sections mostly refer to the public (i.e., the government or public agencies) that act as the regulator. This is not necessarily the case. The candidates for the posts of regulators can be private or public. Appointing public agencies as the regulator seems to originate from the idea that they are less likely to be biased toward private interests. In reality, this assumption is flawed. In many instances, the problem of “revolving door” exists, meaning that people may switch between the public and private sectors in their career, and in this case from being a regulator to a regulatee (or reverse) (Makkai and Braithwaite 1992). It thus follows that self-regulation is not necessarily bad. Since insiders know the subtlety of the industries, they know what works and what does not. The result may be more effective enforcement. By way of background, self-regulation can be seen as the control that a group of firms or individual experts exercise on their own memberships (Black 1996; Ogus 1995; Ayres and Braithwaite 1992). This practice can operate in various formats. The first format is self-regulation by an association over its members with governmental constraints. An example would be statutory rules designed by the state which restrain the autonomy of the associations and subject it to a government body or the law. The second format is the full involvement of the self-regulators in designing regulations with enforcement carried out by the government, or vice versa. The third format is informality and voluntariness of professional bodies. In this context, while the associations can set up rules and impose sanctions, it is up to individual entities to decide whether to join as members to be subject to the associations’ control. While these formats may have different specific merits, people have come up with arguments in favor of self-regulation as a general principle. One such argument concerns the expertise of the regulators concerned. Industry insiders are thought to be more familiar with the sector than bureaucrats and understand better what counts as appropriate regulation. Another argument is that since the rules are made by the insiders, they are more likely to follow them voluntarily. This is related to the above argument because the rules set are more likely to be reasonable from their perspective, and therefore easier to comply with. Still another argument concerns the cost-effectiveness of regulation. Government officials are thought to be less able to know as well about the industry and the cost spent on learning and updating would be high. The final argument has to do with the issue of trust. Self-regulators are expected to be easier to win the trust of its members, than outsiders. Nevertheless, there are arguments against self-regulation. This type of regulation is seen as inefficient and insecure. It has to do with its voluntary nature. The industry players have the option of opting out of this regime. Research has confirmed that consumers are concerned about firms that are unregulated by self-regulation, as this exclusion, voluntary as it may be, may harm the consumers’ interests (Baldwin and McCrudden 1987). Another argument opposing self-regulation focuses on the issue of legitimacy. Since these organizations regulate themselves, they may neglect public interests. Although these self-regulators may also be monitored by non-member controls (Baldwin and Cave 1999), and could face rules that they themselves do not draft, or be accountable to outside agencies or mechanisms that deal with complaints, the presence of non-members may not help much. The reason is that outsiders may be poorly informed of the regulatory process, or lack sufficient say in the decision-making procedure. Worse, generally there is no legal protection to ensure consultation with non-members or to justify their actions. In the end, self-regulators harm public interests, for example, by

140  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China limiting competition so that the interest of the industry, rather than the public, is served (Ogus 1995). In short, no single type of regulator fits all the scenarios.

THE REGULATORY REGIME To build an effective regulatory regime, three components are essential (Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin 2001), namely, standard-setting, information-gathering and behavior-modification. Standard-setting A well-designed standard clears our thinking and actions. Hood, Rothstein and Baldwin (2001) suggest that standard-setting refers to the system desired to be achieved and in turn the facets of performance concerned to be evaluated. It does so by providing guidance on the objectives that we want to meet, on the behavior we would like to perform, and the actions we want to take should our ideal scenario differ from the reality. This process, while simplistic on the surface, can be challenging. Hood (1986) outlines a few conditions in which standards are thought to be precise and effective. They are: ●● ●● ●● ●●

being knowable and stable; being acceptable and visible; being consistent and verifiable; and providing robustly defined categories.

We discuss each criterion in turn below. The first condition is being knowable and stable. In essence, it means precision and clarity of the regulation. When the wordings of the standards are precise, misunderstanding or ill-information can be avoided. As a result, the chance of unnecessary disputes is minimized. To this end, two categories of standards are designed. The first type is rule-based ones, which provide specific prescriptions. The second type is principle-based ones, which provide broad but relatively vague guidance. This vagueness may sound contradictory to the condition of preciseness. However, in real-life applications, a balance is struck. Since rule-based standards are relatively inflexible and that the regulatory environment is rapidly evolving, in reality, both categories of standards supplement each other. That said, precision is not universally valid. In some situations, informal understanding is preferred, because of its flexibility (McBarnet and Whelan 1991). Another problem brought by precision is that it may lead to problems such as opportunistic behavior, whereby the regulated parties exploit loopholes or linguistic ambiguity of the standards concerned (Lodge and Wegrich 2012). The second criterion of a good standard is being acceptable and visible. It means the standards have to be seen as appropriate and commonsensical. This could create a problem. The cause is the inter-subjectivity of different parties, who may consider the same policy to be different. The third criterion is consistency. This means that the standards should not contradict each other. Inconsistency is hard to avoid, though. The standards are designed to respond to different needs and behavior, and thus may become conflicting. The solution is the provision of discretion to regulators, who prioritize different objectives based on their assessments. The fourth and last criterion is validation. Enforcement of standards depends on whether the regulated parties are aware of possible instances of violation. It then leads to the question of how

Regulation in China  141 proactive a regulator should be. Should it eliminate a behavior before harm is done, or permit it until a certain level of harm is done? An example is food safety regulation. A food manufacturer could be sanctioned for its failure to adhere to food safety regulation, even though it may not have actually harmed the health of its customers. Standard-setting in China’s Food Safety Regulatory Regime To explain the process and logic of standard-setting, an example from the food sector in China is useful. From the 1980s to early 2000s, the government and large-sized producers monopolized the food standard-setting procedures. This monopolization allowed a speedy establishment of basic standards in the food sector. This swiftness provided the parties with a set of official standards to adhere to. In turn, consumers were protected because the qualities of certain food were guaranteed. However, despite the high speed, the process was non-transparent. In the course of the design process, conglomerates had an outsized influence on the final wordings. This might have impacted the medium and small-sized businesses, which did not have much say in the decision-making process. This problem was recognized in the late 2000s. To resolve this, the setting up of standards has become more transparent and inclusive. An illustration of this change is the evolution of hygiene standards in China. These standards included the 1982 People’s Republic of China (PRC) Food Hygiene Law (Trial Implementation), the Quality Safety Standards (QS) which is legally based on the 1993 PRC Product Quality Law. The laws were modified in the 2000s, as China witnessed a series of food scandals, such as the melamine milk contamination in 2008. Partly in response, the process in which the PRC Food Safety Law was legislated was accelerated. The new law unified existing food hygiene standards and quality standards, and a new compulsory “food safety standards” was in place from 2009 onwards (中华人民共和国 卫生部 2009, Articles 19 and 22). This change was consistent with the evolution of the wider regulatory frameworks. Previously, state agencies monopolized their design and the procedure, therefore, was non-transparent. This was necessary, though. The enactment took place against the background of rampant food scandals without regulation in place. In the early years of the founding of the republic, state-owned enterprises monopolized the provision of food. In the early 1980s, however, because of the reform and economic opening-up, small-scale food businesses started operation. Centralization could thus spearhead regulation and kick-start the protection of domestic customers. This swiftness came at a cost. Medium and small-sized businesses were not represented and their interest was compromised. An example of the neglect of the interests of small producers was the regulation over some Guangdong-style cured meat (Chu and Wang 2018). The voices of small manufacturers were originally neglected, leaving a standard that was too strict for them to comply with. The standards subsequently provided different standards for different types of food products after lobbying. Later on, this non-transparent and centralized approach changed. The turning point was the enactment of the PRC Food Safety Law in 2009. This process showed new features – it was more transparent, standardized, scientific-based, consensus-based, and inclusive. This change was witnessed in the role of the Standardization Administration of China (SAC). Before 2009, SAC exclusively made the standards. Since that year, nevertheless, both SAC and the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) jointly came up with the standards. This joint effort exemplified the intention of the central government to unify and standardize

142  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China regulation. Leading food enterprises also got less power in the process. The change in status was specified by the Law, which states that consumers, traders and consumers have to be consulted prior to the creation of national food safety standards. This requirement was made more specific in 2010. The Ministry of Health (中华人民共和国卫生部 2010) laid out rules and regulations over public consultation in the food safety standard making process, which stated that public opinion had to be sought in writing and online in two of the stages of the process. In 2015, the process became even more inclusive with associations of both consumers and the food industry becoming representatives on the National Food Safety Standard Review Committee (Article 28). While the above analysis focuses on the regulation of domestic food, another standard applies for export goods. This standard is stricter. This strictness is to ensure the food quality of these exports. Since foreign markets are concerned, often international practices are adopted directly. The voices of local manufacturers are less heard. The Chinese government referred to international standards when designing regulations for Chinese exporters. To ensure compliance, local interests were seldom considered. The government upheld the standard by promising severe and certain punishment for infringement. Failure to adhere could result in suspension or even revocation of exporters’ licenses. In short, this standard-setting process is “exclusive” in nature, in that many stakeholders are excluded from the decision-making process.

INFORMATION-GATHERING In information-gathering, regulators collate and provide information about policy issues and problem areas and their relevant changes (Hutter and O’Mahony 2004). Examples of ways to collect information are licensing/registration, inspection, log-book records and food tests. During this process, data becomes information, which becomes knowledge. That said, the goal is not to maximize the amount of information or to minimize it. A balance is needed so as to avoid information deprivation and information overload. Either situation could impede a control system. Information-gathering in China’s Food Safety Regulatory Regime Again, we will illustrate information-gathering with the example of the food safety regime in China. In the country, local governments are responsible for food safety enforcement. By local governments, we mean branches of governments below the central government, namely those in the provinces, municipalities, cities and counties. Their job functions are dual – responsibility for supervision and administration of food safety within their jurisdiction; and responsibility for information sharing. This decentralization could pose problems. One such problem is the uncertain level of honesty of local governments. The local regulators may falsify the passing rate of food inspections, or shirk responsibility by hiding information on food issues that should be reported (Quan and Zeng 2016). Factors that allow such dishonesty are distance and information asymmetry between levels of government. Prompt remedial actions are therefore harder to take. A related example is the 2008 Sanlu Incident. The local officials in the city of Shijiazhuang attempted to hide the scandal of milk-powder contamination. As a result, the local government

Regulation in China  143 only informed the central government a month after the incident, while the rule stated that they should have done so within two hours. The implication is that the central government could not delegate this task completely to the local branches. To counter the information asymmetry problem, the government is aided by members of the public. Two such groups are the most prominent. The first group is netizens who engage in microblogging. The second group is non-governmental organizations. One such entity is Zhuo Mu Niao (‘woodpecker’), which publishes reports on food safety from time to time. The state has not cracked down on these activities all the time. Rather, the Food Safety Law 2015 contains an article which spells out the right of an organization or individual to report suspected food safety issues to the authorities. That said, the government is still the main information gatherer. To this end, the Chinese government keeps informed of the food sectors, both domestic and export, through a range of measures. These measures include licensing/registration, inspection, record keeping and food testing. Licensing/registration provides regulators with access to essential information, such as production scale, location, and components of sales. The next step is inspection and record keeping. In this process, regulators monitor and ensure compliance of the regulatees. Records are maintained so that in the future if food issues arise, the origins can be traced. The regulator also performs scientific testing and analysis of food. The purpose is to guarantee the safety of food products. These tools are applied differently in different food regulatory regimes. One differentiating factor is the size of the regulatee. An example that exemplifies this difference is the inspection of farmlands. Farmland inspection on small-scale farms and farming households is infrequent and lax. One reason for this laxity is that they pose a smaller public health hazard than larger ones and have a lower level of risk. Another reason is that it is hard to know whether the farms are for self-consumption only. As a result, regulators are less inclined to identify their locations, especially those in faraway places. Indeed, after one inspection at the initial stage, they may never be visited again. For example, our study found that inspections were a lot less frequent than stated because of lack of resources (Chu and Wang 2018). Their larger counterparts are, however, harder to escape monitoring by authorities. These organized food producers include large-sized factory farms and rural cooperatives of more than ten staff. They experience more regulatory visits which could be as high as twice a week. The scale of the inspection also differs. Larger food producers are both inspected by the local and municipal levels. Different types of food producers face different levels of scrutiny, though. Individual farmers and farming households had the option of recording a log-book, while the requirement is mandatory for larger entities such as cooperative economic organizations, rural cooperatives, and factory farms. While the above analysis focuses on domestic food producers, regulation on food exporters is more stringent. They are inspected regardless of their sizes. As an exporter, these food producers are monitored with “police-patrol” measures. The exporters have to ensure that the ingredients they use are from registered farms. These exporters also need to apply for licenses from different government bodies. Another area of difference is record keeping. The requirement is mandatory for all types of producers. The exporters are expected to be able to produce these records for random inspections. Inspections also take place more frequently than for domestic food. The inspector is China Entry–Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureaus (CIQs). The institutional structure of CIQs is vertical, which means the Chinese central government has a centralized command-and-control over the quality of Chinese food exports. This ensures

144  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China that local interests would not compromise food safety. The result is that if an exporter has been rejected at the border in its exports, the subsequent inspection would be more detailed and stringent. All food batches, rather than merely random samples, are tested. None could be exported if it does not contain the certified declaration forms and/or identification tags about quarantine and inspection (Yang 2004; 中华人民共和国食品卫生法 1995, § 31). Behavior-modification Behavior-modification is the third component we discuss here. Behavior-modification involves changing the behavior of the regulated parties. The aim is that they will follow the regulations, which makes the fulfillment of regulatory goals possible. The principle is obvious. As Gunningham (2010) suggests, social objectives cannot be realized if regulations are left unenforced or unenforceable. To Hood (1986), two approaches are useful to explain behavior-modification. The first approach is persuasion-based. The idea is to implant the reasoning for compliance in the minds of the regulated parties. An assumption here is that rule-breaking stems from insufficient knowledge. Another thinking is also present here. Practitioners of this method believe in preventing harm before its emergence (Hawkins 1984). According to this thought, it is better to encourage mediation and negotiation before punishment. They believe that while persuasion and education soothe the relationship and promote trust between the two parties, punishment antagonizes the relationship (Kelman 1981). This persuasion-based approach has a drawback, nevertheless. Persuasion takes time and effort to be effective. The process could prove costly. The second approach is deterrence-based. The idea is to deter regulated parties from breaking the rules. A form of rational calculation could also be involved. If it is discovered that regulated parties deliberately break the rules because they find the relative costs low, the regulators can increase the costs. An assumption exists here. Individuals are thought to be “amoral calculators.” They calculate whether the utility will be higher to break the rule or to conform (Kagan and Scholz 1984). Also relevant are the likelihoods of being caught, and the severity of punishment. When the two values are high, compliance is more likely. As to the actual choice, much depends on the attitudes of the regulatees. If they are reluctant to act according to rules, then a deterrence-based method seems more appropriate. If they are willing to be persuaded but lack the relevant information, then a persuasion-based approach could prove more promising (Haines 1997). In real-life applications, both approaches are used. Ayres and Braithwaite (1992) proposed the concept of responsive regulation, a combination of the two approaches. According to this thought, enforcement is an “iterative interaction” between the regulators and regulatees. During this process, the behavior of the regulated parties affects the response of the regulators. In other words, it is a “tit-for-tat” game. If the regulated parties show the willingness to comply, persuasion will be preferred to effect changes in compliance. However, if the regulated parties do not react in good faith, then the regulators will step up their response. Behavior-modification in China’s Food Safety Regulatory Regime As in information-gathering, the local Chinese governments bear the responsibility for reacting to the misconduct of regulated parties. To this end, both approaches discussed above – persuasion and deterrence – are made use of in China. The choice corresponds to the size of the

Regulation in China  145 regulatee. Chu and Wang (2018) show small businesses in the domestic sector tend to receive persuasion first, while their larger counterparts would receive deterrents if they did not show signs of compliance. Small production entities receive persuasion first because it is believed that imposing too high a standard on them would drive them out with their low incomes in the first place. Should such a high standard be insisted upon, social unrest may follow. The central government also seemed to recognize the possible impact of stringent regulations on rural businesses and acknowledge the difficulties of regulating them (Chu and Wang 2018). Therefore, regulators resort to persuasion. The tools include education, leaflet distribution, display of banners, and talks on relevant knowledge. They explain in clear terms that non-compliance means law-breaking and inform them of ways in which to act properly. This way, regulators find it easier to change how farmers and producers of small food workshops behave. That said, the regulators have limited tolerance. If they discover that the farmers cheat, they are not hesitant to impose heavy sanctions, as well. In this sense, the regulators’ role is that of a facilitator toward compliance (Hutter 1997). Domestic larger farms and food factories receive less lenient treatments. They are medium to large-sized. By nature, they are better resourced and have a larger market share. The effects of food scandals, should there be any, would also be larger. This large size of the prospective consequences leads regulators to be more stringent. As an aside, fines are also a major source of revenue to them. However, in China, extreme actions such as forced closure of producers are rarely employed. The economic impact of such closure could be high, and the decision required approval from the city government, something that is not within the scope of the regulator (Chu and Wang 2018). Another concern was that closure of businesses would affect tax revenues; partly as a result, the punishments for non-compliance, if any, would be light and often not implemented (Ming 2006). The case is especially so when the promotion (or demotion) of government officials is affected by the GDP growth and employment rate of their jurisdiction. The situation is different for food exporters. The level of deterrence is high. As can be imagined, the goal is to minimize the chances of scandals involving another country. Therefore, a rule-breaking exporter can expect to receive serious consequences. Fines, confiscation of produce, temporary suspension of operation, warnings and confiscation of products are common. To resume business, the violators have to carry out remedies swiftly. To increase the deterrent power, multiple violations would result in revocation of a license, and the relevant violators would be named and shamed publicly on the website of General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). Domestic and export producers face a different regulatory regime in the food sector. The domestic food sector has seen more transparency and inclusiveness in rule setting; yet depending on the company’s size, the scale and frequency of inspection differ. Exporters receive different treatments. They face an exclusive and inflexible standard. Regardless of their business size, regulation is consistent. Problems Relating to Enforcement The assumption behind the enforcement of regulation is that if regulatees are aware that their activities are monitored and violations could result in serious consequences, they would be less inclined to rule-breaking (Becker 1974). That said, prescriptions from regulation often differ from actual enforcement. Beck (1992) suggests that in some developing economies, economic development could be prioritized over strict enforcement of regulation. In this sense,

146  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China regulators may deliberately choose not to enforce certain regulations (or as stringent as they should). They do so to avoid mass unemployment that may result from the closure of these companies. Chu (2018) therefore argued that in the context of industrializing economies like China, incumbents’ interests and vested government interests could impede regulation. Furthermore, the type and amount of resources devoted to enforcement effort affect actual enforcement. The background is that enforcement implies costs. It then follows that if a rule-breaking behavior is not that serious, it may be tolerable, given the impossibility of perfect enforcement. Cost is a factor here. The budget allocated to enforcement is affected by the wider environment. Politics determines the allocation of resources, and in turn, the size and capacity of regulators. Another constraint, especially to developing countries, is resources, both in financial and human terms (Tan 2004). This paucity could, for example, cause regulatory bodies to just focus on just some specific areas for higher efficiency. Other areas are sacrificed accordingly. Some areas that in theory should be regulated may then “fly under the radar” (Baldwin, Cave and Lodge 2012, 89). The regulated parties may sense this selective use of regulation, and violate rules not actively enforced.

IMPACTS OF THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF REGULATION ON CHINA The above sections confine discussions on regulation to the national setting. Globalization, nevertheless, means that external forces may change national regulation. Countries now increasingly share similar regulatory frameworks. One catalyst is global regulation (Singleton and Verhoef 2010; Clifton, Comín and Díaz-Fuentes 2011). A pair of concepts are useful in describing this internationalization of regulation. The first concept is “shallow integration,” which is a somewhat superficial economic integration that involves the elimination of trade barriers at the border, with domestic level experiencing a “principle of equivalence” which offsets disadvantages from trade concessions (Majone 2006, 40). The second concept is “deeper integration,” which involves modification to the national regulatory measures that may pose difficulties to international trade. In history, shallow integration took place mostly in the 1970s. From the 1990s onwards, regional harmonization followed. The concept refers to the promotion of free trade that comes as a result of different jurisdictions’ alignment of government initiatives, including regulatory requirements or public policies, rules or standards, policy objectives and “institutional structures, procedures, or methodologies” (Majone 2006, 47). These alignments were reflected in the development of international arrangements, such as the European Union Market and the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement). China has experienced a “shallow integration” in recent decades. Take food safety regulation as an example. While in a number of areas China is becoming closer to the world in terms of international standards on food safety, differences exist among various types of regimes, depending on whether the food is intended for domestic consumption or exports. In this context, it is worth visiting the idea of policy and regulatory learning, which can lead to regulatory harmonization and convergence (Majone 2006). China has engaged in policy learning (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000). While the country participates in international standard setting, the relevant knowledge is learnt and used in the domestic setting. Two examples show

Regulation in China  147 the Chinese attempts to learn from its Western counterparts in this regard. The first example is that it took the Federal Reserve as its model for the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese central bank. The second example is the China Food and Drug Administration, which failed in becoming the Chinese version of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The failure stemmed from its underestimation of the uniqueness of China, which faced problems of resource constraints and technical capacity limitation (Yang 2007). This idea of regulatory learning does not apply across all sectors in China though. Some scholars go so far as to question whether internationalization of regulation really has taken place in China. In Potter’s (2003, 120) words, China underwent a “selective adaptation,” which is “a complex process of selectively adapting foreign norms to local needs.” In his analysis of the situation of China after its accession to the WTO in 2001, he showed that the measures that China adapted from the world were contextualized in order to suit the domestic conditions and policy goals (Potter 2003, 121). To Hsueh (2011), China created a prima facie image of being liberal so that it could be seen as adhering to WTO standards. Again, it is illustrative to analyze the food regulatory regimes in China. The approach of the Chinese government is selective, or accommodative. A variety of standard-setting processes exist. Which one is chosen depends on whether the market concerned is strategically important, for domestic consumption or for food export. This classification is partly an answer to the Chinese government’s desire to ensure political stability. The reference to international standards and decision-making processes assists in the creation of a food standard that protects food safety, and minimizes the chance of social unrest. Indeed the impetus for many of the changes to the regulation has been high-profile food scandals. In other words, incidents drive policy changes. That said, policy design and implementation in China have become more inclusive, scientific-based, and consensus-based. The international world has contributed to regulatory reforms in China as well. They act by pressuring the Chinese government. An example is the enactment of the PRC Agricultural Product Quality Safety Law in 2006. One goal of the law was to resolve non-tariff trade barriers restrictions that other countries had imposed. This move was politically necessary. China was a WTO member, and thus under the obligation to harmonize its standards with those of the WTO, unless scientific evidence suggested otherwise (World Trade Organization 1995; Reich 2004). However, strategic industries are still determined exclusively by the government, and directly following the international standards by harmonization. This accommodative approach suggests that, despite decades of reforms both in the market and administrative arenas, China has still retained some authoritarian features and logic. This mixture of both inclusive and exclusive regulatory regimes leads one to conclude that China is engaged in shallow integration in the internationalization of regulation.

CONCLUSION This chapter introduces the concept of regulation, with the Chinese food safety regulatory regime as an example. The regulatory state is used to describe the new function that a state assumes in regulation. The state used to direct and command the market, but now does so indirectly through standard-setting and often enforcement. Two theories explain the rise of regulation – public and private interest theories. The former more serves as a blueprint for an ideal situation; while the latter is an empirical account of

148  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China regulation in the real world, even though it still fails to explain problems such as the regulated parties’ willingness to be regulated. The question of who does the regulation then follows. Generally, the public agencies both set and enforce the rules, but self-regulation is also common. Both types of regulation have advantages and disadvantages and should be chosen depending on the context and expertise concerned. Regardless of who the regulator is, there are three main elements of a regulatory regime. They are standard-setting, information-gathering, and behavior-modification. Standard-setting has to be knowable and stable; acceptable and visible; being consistent and verifiable, and providing robustly defined categories. In China, the process has become pluralized over the years, with voices of more representatives reflected in the system, even though this just applies to the domestic food sector but not the export sector. Information-gathering involves the collation of information useful for regulation, including inspection, log-book records, and food tests. In China, information about small farms is less strictly gathered, while that for larger food producers and exporters is sought more aggressively, reflecting differences in the regulatory regime. Behavior-modification refers to the modification of the behavior of the regulatees. Through this, regulatory goals are hoped to be achieved. To this end, two approaches – persuasion-based and deterrence-based – are used on their own or in combination. In the Chinese food safety regulatory regime, the strength of regulation corresponds to the type of food producers – whether they are small-scale, large-scale, or for exports. In actual enforcement, problems exist. They relate to economic priorities, resources available, and amount of attention regulators pay to a specific area. In this sense, we discussed the extent of internationalization of the regulatory regime of China. China has undergone “shallow integration” in the food safety regulatory regime. The country selectively adapts and adopts international standards, in order to suit its local political, economic and social needs.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was supported by the Direct Grant under the Faculty of Social Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the editors and reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Regulation in China  149 Bernstein, Marver H. (1955) Regulating Business by Independent Commission. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Black, Julia (1996) “Constitutionalising Self-regulation.” The Modern Law Review 59(1), 24‒55. Braithwaite, John (2000) “The New Regulatory State and the Transformation of Criminology.” British Journal of Criminology 40(2), 222‒238. Chu, May (2018) “Regulatory Policy.” In: Ali Farazmand (ed.), Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Cham: Springer, 76‒82. Chu, May and Jianhua Wang (2018) “Central–Local Collaboration in Regulating Food Safety in China.” Public Money & Management 38(6), 437‒444. Clifton, Judith, Francisco Comín and Daniel Díaz-Fuentes (2011) “From National Monopoly to Multinational Corporation: How Regulation Shaped the Road towards Telecommunications Internationalization.” Business History 53(5), 761‒781. Dolowitz, David and David Marsh (2000) “Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy-Making.” Governance 13(1), 5‒23. Gunningham, Neil (2010) “Enforcement and Compliance Strategies.” In: Robert Baldwin, Martin Cave, and Martin Lodge (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Regulation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 120‒145. Haines, Fiona (1997) Corporate Regulation: Beyond “Punish or Persuade.” Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hawkins, Keith (1984) Environment and Enforcement: Regulation and the Social Definition of Pollution. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hood, Christopher (1986) Administrative Analysis: An Introduction to Rules, Enforcement, and Organizations. Brighton, Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books. Hood, Christopher, Henry Rothstein and Robert Baldwin (2001) The Government of Risk: Understanding Risk Regulation Regimes. New York: Oxford University Press. Hood, Christopher, Henry Rothstein, Robert Baldwin, Judith Rees and Michael Spackman (1999) “Where Risk Society Meets the Regulatory State: Exploring Variations in Risk Regulation Regimes.” Risk Management 1(1), 21‒34. Hsueh, Roselyn (2011) China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. (1952) “The Marasmus of the ICC: The Commission, the Railroads, and the Public Interest.” The Yale Law Journal 61(4), 467‒509. Hutter, Bridget M. (1997) Compliance: Regulation and Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hutter, Bridget M. and Joan O’Mahony (2004) “The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Regulating Business.” LSE, CARR Discussion Paper Series 26, 1‒13. Kagan, Robert and John Scholz (1984) “The ‘Criminology of the Corporation’ and Regulatory Enforcement Strategies.” In: Keith Hawkins and John Thomas (eds.), Enforcing Regulation. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff, 67‒95. Kelman, Steven (1981) Regulating America, Regulating Sweden: A Comparative Study of Occupational Safety and Health Policy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Landis, James M. (1938) The Administrative Process. New Haven: Yale University Press. Levi-Faur, David (2005) “The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598(1), 12‒32. Lodge, Martin and Kai Wegrich (2012) Managing Regulation: Regulatory Analysis, Politics and Policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Majone, Giandomenico (1997) “From the Positive to the Regulatory State: Causes and Consequences of Changes in the Mode of Governance.” Journal of Public Policy 17(2), 139‒167. Majone, Giandomenico (2006) “The Internationalization of Regulation: Implications for Developing Countries.” In: Martin Minogue and Ledivina Cariño (eds.), Regulatory Governance in Developing Countries. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 39‒60. Makkai, Toni and John Braithwaite (1992) “In and Out of the Revolving Door: Making Sense of Regulatory Capture.” Journal of Public Policy 12(1), 61‒78. Mattli, Walter (2015) “Beyond the State: Are Transnational Regulatory Institutions Replacing the State?” In: Stephan Leibfried, Evelyne Huber, Matthew Lange, Jonah D. Levy, Frank Nullmeier, and John D. Stephens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State. New York: Oxford University Press, 286‒301.

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9. The development of fiscal transparency in China: a critical review Hanyu Xiao and Jingyuan Xu

Scholars and international organizations believe that transparency is a remedy for corruption. Because almost all governmental activities and public goods and services entail fiscal resources, and financial management in a certain sense affects the quantity and quality of public services (Andrews 2010; Ma and Ni 2008; Xiao et al. 2020), fiscal management is the key to understanding the government’s activities and behavior. In order to enhance fiscal management and reduce corruption, fiscal transparency is an important measure (Ma and Hou 2009). This chapter focuses on fiscal transparency, a key aspect of transparency initiatives, in China. Fiscal transparency is defined as “openness towards the public at large about government structure and functions, fiscal policy intentions, public sector accounts and budget projects” (Kopits and Craig 1998, 1). Since the 1990s, international organizations have made intensive efforts to promote fiscal transparency. Believing in the importance of fiscal transparency to good governance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have created and published practical guidelines for countries to follow in their efforts to enhance fiscal transparency and economic outcomes. The International Budget Partnership (IBP), an international nongovernmental organization (NGO), is dedicated to promoting fiscal transparency by regularly evaluating the levels of fiscal transparency for countries and advocating fiscal reforms. Echoing that international trend, China implemented the Regulation on Open Government Information (ROGI) in 2007. Contents, fiscal plans, budgets, final reports, and other important fiscal information have been required to be disclosed to the public, and upon citizens’ application, government agencies should respond to their demands for disclosing fiscal information. Thus, it is imperative to evaluate the progress of fiscal transparency and to examine the factors that contribute to it, explore its effects and discuss its future in China. This chapter is organized as follows. The first section briefly reviews the literature on fiscal transparency. The second section summarizes the background of fiscal transparency reforms and examines the progress of fiscal transparency in China. The third section employs a cost and benefit framework to examine why fiscal transparency has not met expectations. The fourth section discusses the impacts of fiscal transparency on governance and an open administrative culture. The final section discusses our findings and presents our conclusions.

LITERATURE REVIEW ON FISCAL TRANSPARENCY The literature about fiscal transparency is rich, particularly on the definition, progress, driving factors, and effects of fiscal transparency. In recent years, international organizations and researchers have put increased effort into evaluating fiscal transparency, thereby expecting to 151

152  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China promote a higher level of fiscal transparency at the country level (Gomez et al. 2005; Carlitz et al. 2009). For example, the International Monetary Fund launched its Fiscal Transparency Code in 1998 and revised it subsequently, believing that fiscal transparency is a potential remedy for corruption. Recognizing the importance of fiscal transparency for economic and social outcomes, the OECD published the OECD Best Practices for Budget Transparency in 2002. The IBP developed the Open Budget Survey in 2006 and used the instrument to biennially measure the Open Budget Index across the world. The 2017 index, which is the most recent and covers 115 countries, showed that the previous progress toward greater transparency had modestly declined. Many studies have concentrated on factors that either drive or hamper fiscal transparency. At the macro level, multiple studies have examined the impact of political factors on fiscal transparency. Researchers have found that fiscal transparency is positively associated with political competition and small jurisdictions (Esteller-Moré and Polo Otero 2012), higher challenges from opposition parties, and unstable executive offices (Berliner 2014). Chen and Han (2019) found that by using panel data from the U.S., while political polarization had a negative association with fiscal transparency, divided governments and democratic mayors exerted positive impacts. Interestingly, Arapis and Reitano (2017) found that democracy had a negative association with fiscal transparency, arguing that elected politicians may selectively disclose fiscal information to society. A lack of accountability mechanisms leads to lower fiscal transparency (Heald 2012). Echoing that argument, Wehner and de Renzio (2013) confirmed a positive and significant impact of free and fair elections and political competition in the legislature on fiscal transparency at the country level. Hood (2007) argued that bureaucrats in reality often employ blame-avoidance tactics when they are required to disclose fiscal information, thus increasing the difficulties in implementing transparency. More generally, studies have found that the attitudes of politicians and agencies are also crucial for fiscal transparency (Heald 2012; Piotrowski et al. 2009). Different from the extant literature, Deng et al. (2012) discovered institutional and legal barriers against fiscal transparency in the Chinese context. This study pays attention to an authoritarian context instead of democratic societies and enriches the intellectual understanding of institutional factors affecting fiscal transparency. Social and economic conditions also affect fiscal transparency. It has been found that the economic crisis provides an opportunity to promote fiscal transparency reforms (Arapis and Reitano 2017). Deng et al. (2012) found that gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment (FDI) affect fiscal transparency at the provincial level in China. Influenced by citizen participation theory (e.g., Yan and Xin 2016), researchers believe that citizens can play a crucial role in the process of fiscal transparency. A study based on citizens’ self-reported evidence reveals that several demographic variables (such as age and political ideology) and personal experiences and perceptions toward government information transparency are associated with the demand and actual requests for government information (Piotrowski and Van Ryzin 2007). Ma (2012) argued that the rise of social organizations has led to an increased demand for fiscal transparency in China. Looking at local governments in the U.S., Welch (2012) found that citizens’ participation was positively associated with transparency. Based on 21 cases supported by the IBP, Van Zyl (2014) demonstrated that civil society organizations can enhance transparency by accessing, interpreting, and distributing fiscal information. However, Etzioni (2014) claimed that citizens are too busy to devote sufficient time to public affairs, including fiscal transparency.

The development of fiscal transparency in China  153 Studies have also identified managerial and fiscal factors that contribute to fiscal transparency. Yu (2011) argued that new human resource management methods, including new leadership, training, and performance management, are required to effectively implement an open government policy. Certain fiscal factors, such as fund balance per capita and foreign aid per capita, have been found to affect fiscal transparency at the country level (Arapis and Reitano 2017). Studies based on the U.S. context have also found that the fiscal performance of local governments, such as government debt and budget balance, can affect fiscal transparency (Alt et al. 2006; Chen et al. 2019). In addition, studies have investigated the effects of fiscal transparency. Fiscal transparency is an important component and a necessary condition for fiscal accountability, particularly in terms of establishing social accountability (Ma and Hou 2009). Ferry and Eckersley (2015) argued that the demand for fiscal information in rural India led to an increase in accountability and a decrease in corruption, with the active engagement of grassroots organizations. Transparency may lead to greater legitimacy under certain conditions (De Fine Licht et al. 2014). Better fiscal transparency is associated with lower levels of sovereign debt, lower public debt, and higher levels of FDI because it is able to reduce uncertainty and cheating (Bastida et al. 2017; Montes et al. 2019; Huang and Chang 2018). Studies have also empirically confirmed that fiscal transparency can reduce corruption (Cimpoeru and Cimpoeru 2015; De Simone et al. 2017). Recently, a study with panel data from 95 countries confirmed that fiscal transparency, particularly the final budgetary process, reduced the perception of corruption (Chen and Neshkova 2020). However, some findings are contradictory. Grimmelikhuijsen (2012) found that governmental transparency had little effect on citizens’ trust in government. By examining the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in the UK, Worthy (2010) discovered that although the law had brought increasing transparency, the impact on accountability and other governance objectives, such as trust in government and increased participation, was very limited because its implementation was embedded in and affected by the political environment. Similarly, Roberts (2006) examined whether fiscal transparency met two bold claims – changing the “culture of secrecy” and increasing trust in the government. However, he found that governments often adopt various methods to resist the demand of transparency, and the results are, hence, disappointing. Following the existing literature on fiscal transparency, studies about China’s situation have gradually emerged in recent years. With the implementation of the government information disclosure reform in 2008, several studies have examined government officials’ attitudes and institutional resources (such as personnel training) pertaining to the implementation of the policy (Piotrowski et al. 2009; Yu 2011). Some observers have also found that China’s transparency reform has resulted in the active participation of citizens who use the ROGI (Horsley 2010; Rana 2015). In 2008, a research team from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics began to measure and release fiscal transparency information annually at the provincial level. Their results, however, have shown that fiscal transparency has been maintained at a low level (Deng et al. 2012). China only had a score of 13 (out of 100) and ranked at the bottom of 115 countries in the Open Budget Index of 2017. Nevertheless, insufficient attention has been paid to exploring the impacts and factors contributing to fiscal transparency in China. While the literature on China that is published in English is scant, fiscal transparency studies published in Chinese are largely descriptive or prescriptive and lack theoretical analyses and rigorous research methods. The public administration literature has highlighted the importance of cultural, political, and administrative con-

154  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China texts in shaping policy reforms (Ongaro and Van Thiel 2018; Ongaro 2017). A meta-analysis has highlighted the important role of administrative culture in affecting fiscal transparency (Rodríguez Bolívar et al. 2013). The development of fiscal transparency in China has been significantly shaped by its unique political structure and administrative context. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all approach may mislead us in understanding the situation in China. This calls for more rigorous investigation. Thus, this chapter aims to bridge the intellectual gap. In what follows, we will answer several questions. Since the ROGI was issued in 2007, the Chinese government has been implementing the open law to promote government transparency for more than a decade. What progress of fiscal transparency has occurred during that period? What are the factors contributing to fiscal transparency in China? By employing a framework of concentrated cost and dispersed benefits, this chapter finds that in the Chinese context, fiscal transparency lacks driving forces. Thus, this chapter will discuss to what extent fiscal transparency has led to good governance. Finally, we will discuss the new trends of performance budgeting and big data applications that may provide new avenues for the effective and sustainable development of fiscal transparency in China. Our empirical data consist of four parts. First, we conducted interviews with some government officials at the ministry and city levels to understand their views and perceptions about fiscal transparency. Second, we interviewed individuals in an NGO called Volunteer Observers to understand the engagement of citizens. Third, we collected secondary data. Finally, we designed a questionnaire and circulated it through an online survey platform to collect more recent views of government officials in China. Although the survey used a convenient sampling method, we successfully collected 294 valid replies from different provinces in August 2019. Approximately 45 percent of the respondents were male, and 95 percent had obtained a bachelor’s degree or above. The respondents were from the provincial, municipal, and district/county levels. Their average age was approximately 33 years, and they had worked in government for eight years, on average.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FISCAL TRANSPARENCY IN CHINA Disclosing fiscal information to the public has never been accorded importance in the government’s agenda, which traditionally has emphasized a culture of secrecy (Yu 2011). The Chinese government long insisted that budgetary information was a state secret. Even though the State Secret Law of China, which took effect in 1989, no longer considered state fiscal plans, budgets, final reports, and other fiscal information to be state secrets, the government did not disclose fiscal information to the public. Most likely due to the SARS health crisis in 2003, the Opinion on Further Promoting the Opening of Administrative Affairs was immediately promulgated by the central government in 2005. Later, in 2008, the ROGI was authorized by the State Council and took effect in May of that year. The ROGI outlines the responsibility of local governments to disclose government information and specifies that citizens can apply for the government to disclose governmental information. The goal is to make government information available to the public as a common practice and make nondisclosure exceptional. On the other hand, the pace of fiscal transparency has sped up due to fiscal reform in China. China has officially joined the IMF’s General Data Dissemination System and committed to disclosing its fiscal information as required by

The development of fiscal transparency in China  155 international principles since 2002 (杨志勇 2014). Subsequent government measures have been implemented to enhance fiscal transparency at the central level. In 2009, the National Audit Office made a commitment to the National People’s Congress that the State Council’s agencies would disclose their departmental budgets to the public within three years.1 In 2010, as many as 40 agencies disclosed their departmental budgets to the public. Several documents promulgated by the State Council further specified that the disclosure of budgeting and final reports to the public should be significantly enhanced. The central government also issued several circulars, set the policy agenda, and created a timetable and guidelines for local governments to release their fiscal information. More recently, the third plenary session of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 2013 defined public finance as “the foundation and important pillar of national governance” for the first time and proposed the framework for achieving the goal of establishing a modern fiscal system. Among others, fiscal transparency has been taken as the cornerstone for establishing a modern fiscal system and improving the nation’s governance capacity (陈隆近/周小林/冯力沛 2015; 杨志勇 2014). The new Budget Law, promulgated in the next year, enshrined fiscal information disclosure into the law. It clarified the subject, content, and time limits for disclosing fiscal information and especially required the disclosure of information of high public concern, such as transfer payments between governments, government debts, and operating expenses of government agencies; it further stipulated legal liabilities for violating the law (杨丹芳/吕凯波/曾军平 2015). Subsequent government measures have been implemented to enhance fiscal transparency at the central level. Furthermore, after 10 years of implementation of the ROGI, the State Council revised it and put a new ROGI in effect in May 2019. The new ROGI recognizes that citizens and civil society have the right to monitor, criticize, and advise on information disclosure. It also specifies the responsibility of government in implementing the fiscal release policy. Local governments have also made some progress in fiscal transparency. Our survey shows that for officials who were familiar with fiscal transparency, most (92.7 percent) were aware of the organizational support for fiscal transparency at the local level, 81 percent knew of the specialized regulations for it, and 60.9 percent had received targeted training for relevant work. However, challenges remain. Our survey results show that only 23.8 percent of the respondents were familiar with fiscal transparency. The ratings on the fiscal transparency performance of their provinces and their departments were also not very high, at 6.53 and 6.44 (out of 10), respectively, on average. Some studies reveal that the overall performance of information disclosure is still far from satisfactory, as reported in Figure 9.1 (杨丹芳/曾军平/温娇秀 2012; 温娇秀/郑春荣/曾军平 2013; 郑春荣/蒋洪/彭军 2014). Despite 10 years of top-down efforts, the average scores of provincial fiscal transparency are still below a basic level (lower than 60 out of 100). The most recent report on municipal financial transparency shows that 45 percent of city governments have published their debt limits and debt balances, while most of them have failed to explain their specific debt structure and project conditions (清华大学 2019). Some main issues have been identified at the local level. First, due to ambiguous enforcement standards, significant differences in progress exist among the 31 provinces. Conflicting with the newly revised “Secrets Act” (保密法) that claims almost all of the items to be state secrets, the new Budget Law failed to refine the scope of information disclosure, and therefore, it hinders fiscal transparency (邓淑莲 2016). Second, the performance of provincial fiscal transparency is unstable. The provinces at the top and the bottom of the ranking change every

156  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Sources: 邓淑莲/杨丹芳/曾军平 (2011); 邓淑莲/曾军平/郑春荣/朱颖 (2018).

Figure 9.1

Average fiscal transparency scores for 31 provinces in China, 2009‒2018

year, suggesting that local governments are very arbitrary in disclosing fiscal information (Deng et al. 2012). Third, the content of budget information disclosure is highly unbalanced. The most transparent items are often the large and general ones with good financial management, while the sensitive items with weak management or that are crucial for understanding fiscal activities are seldom discussed.

FACTORS AFFECTING FISCAL TRANSPARENCY IN CHINA This section employs the framework developed by Fung et al. (2007) to analyze the sustainability of fiscal transparency in China. According to that study, transparency policy often imposes costs on a small group of disclosers to yield benefits for a large group of dispersed users (Fung et al. 2007, 110). This approach essentially adopts an institutional perspective to analyze the benefits and costs of fiscal transparency reform. Thus, it is appropriate to employ this framework to analyze fiscal transparency in China, taking the specific contexts into account. The sustainability of fiscal transparency depends on the supply and demand of fiscal information. First, government agencies and officials are the suppliers of fiscal information, and they bear the costs related to disclosing fiscal information, which then leads to costs being concentrated. Concentrated costs indicate that only a few decision-makers will bear the cost of disclosing fiscal information. Government agencies that make a great effort to implement the fiscal disclosure policy may attract more attention from the public and receive more criticism. Therefore, agencies and officials tend to use the blame-avoidance tactic in their responses to fiscal transparency policies. This behavior further leads to the slow development of transparency.

The development of fiscal transparency in China  157 Second, social demand for fiscal transparency may be high, but it faces dispersed benefits. Some NGOs, the general public, and the media are the primary actors who advocate for fiscal transparency. Fiscal transparency is a public good, and thus, it is subject to the tragedy of the commons. It encounters the free-rider issue, and thus, individuals lack strong incentives to promote fiscal transparency. Moreover, NGOs and the media often have disparate benefits and motivations. For example, NGOs may want to promote fiscal transparency and enhance fiscal accountability, while the media may wish to report on the topic primarily to attract audiences. In summary, the benefits to all stakeholders are dispersed. Following the above logic, we will elaborate the concentrated costs and dispersed benefits associated with the development of fiscal transparency in China. Concentrated Costs for Disclosers China’s central, provincial, and local governments have been required to disclose their fiscal information to the public since 2008. Local governments at the county level and above are expected to disclose their fiscal information to the public within three years. In addition, their disclosures include spending information on position-related consumption, which is sensitive information (Gong and Xiao 2017). Fiscal disclosure is implemented in a top-down manner, and local governments are given a high level of discretion in implementing the policy. In that context, policy entrepreneurs have played an important role in promoting fiscal transparency, just as they did in boosting budgeting reforms at the local level (Ma 2009). Some government officials were more open-minded and willing to support fiscal transparency reform. For example, the founder of an NGO named Volunteer Observers provided the following description: Guangzhou did a very good job in fiscal transparency. The communication with the director of its Finance Bureau was very pleasant, and the director was very polite. Although we didn’t get the fiscal information from Guangzhou in 2008 after four times of communication with the Finance Bureau, we found a hope there. Thus, when we applied in 2009, the bureau immediately disclosed all departmental fiscal information through its website. This has become a remarkable event.2

The team encountered similar cases when it applied for fiscal information from the Ministry of Health (MOH). Detailed communications with the MOH are shown in Table 9.1. The ministry could simply reject applications from the very beginning without any explanations in the first round of response. The long application and response process demonstrate that the decision-maker in the MOH was open-minded and ready to follow the fiscal disclosure policy. Our survey also provides some supportive evidence. More than 88 percent of the respondents in our survey believed that “fiscal transparency is an essential measure for government.” Among the respondents who were familiar with fiscal transparency (N=70), 95.6 percent supported the idea. Nevertheless, disclosing fiscal information to the public is not an easy job, and the practice goes against China’s long history of an administrative culture of secrecy (Roberts 2006; Yu 2011). Government officials were long accustomed to keeping information away from the public. An interviewee who worked in a ministry admitted that “some government officials who hold the traditional views believe that they have followed the rules and regulations in fiscal management, and they don’t understand why they should open fiscal information to the public.”3 There may also be “informal rules” within departments with respect to fiscal deci-

158  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 9.1

Applications for the MOH’s 2008 departmental budget

Round

Actions by Volunteer Observers

1

Applied for the 2008 departmental budget of the MOH Rejected the request because the departmental budget was not in (July 16)

2

Responses from the MOH the scope of disclosure

Asked for the specific justification for the rejection Sent a five-page summary report of revenue and expenditures and insisted that the departmental budget was a public (‍收支预算总表) to the applicant by fax budget and should be disclosed to the public

3

Requested explanations of the summary report and Claimed that explanations were not available and that the applied for the central-level departmental budget of departmental budget was beyond the scope of disclosure the MOH

4

Asked for an explanation about why the departmental Article 10 of the ROGI articulates that budgeting and final budget of the MOH was not in the range of disclosure reports (预决算报告) are subject to disclosure, but not other and reapplied for the departmental budget

fiscal information; According to Article 14 of Some Opinions of the General Office of the State Council regarding the Practicing of ROGI,a the application for the MOH’s departmental budget was denied

5

Requested an explanation about why the departmental The five-page summary report of revenue and expenditures had budget was beyond the disclosure scope based upon sufficient information; with the permission of the Minister of Article 14

Finance (MOF), the MOH provided An Overview of MOH’s 2008 Departmental Budget Officially Replied by the MOF (2008 年财政部批复卫生部部门预算一览表)

6

Repeatedly requested the MOH departmental budget, Stated that the departmental budget of the MOH was beyond including basic expenditures (personnel and operation) the disclosure and program expenditures

7

Asked which ministry should be responsible to Provided the basic expenditure in the departmental budget and disclose the MOH’s departmental budget if it was not explained it and some fiscal figures, according to functionary the MOH. They also indicated that they were advised category (功能分类) by the MOF to contact the particular ministry for its budget information. Otherwise, they would disclose all application records online and invite netizens to discuss whether it was the MOH’s responsibility to disclose its departmental budget

8

Requested personnel information at the ministry level The official in the Finance Division (预算司) replied that the

9

Requested more detailed information of the program The MOH refused to provide the information because some

Division was not in charge of the information expenditures in the departmental budget, including the programs were confidential number, titles, and expenditures of programs

Note: a Article 14 articulates that “administrative agencies could deny the application for government information which is irrelevant to the applicants’ special demands, such as life, production and research; for government information which may endanger national and public security, economic safety and social stability, administrative agencies could deny the applications in accordance with rules and regulations, and inform the applicants that the information requested is beyond the disclosure range.”

sions and implementation, and the disclosure of fiscal information thus could lead to the exposure of these informal rules.4 Due to the loopholes in the budgetary system, the spending in some areas or departments is rather arbitrary, and fiscal misconduct becomes common. Thus, fiscal disclosures may uncover fiscal misconduct and entail penalties for the officials involved. In other words, the costs of disclosing fiscal information to the public are concentrated within a small group of decision-makers who then resist to the practice of fiscal transparency.

The development of fiscal transparency in China  159 Moreover, government officials are often pessimistic about the effects of fiscal transparency. An official expressed that the “government should disclose fiscal information if it wants to enhance transparency and fight against corruption. However, budgeting is very professional. I have no confidence in the current discussion from the media and the public. They also misunderstand fiscal issues.”5 Supporting this view, approximately 61.3 percent of the respondents in our survey agreed that “public budgeting is very professional, and it is very difficult for the public to fully understand the budgeting activities through fiscal transparency.” That result also held true for those respondents who were familiar with fiscal transparency, with 66.7 percent of them in agreement. Moreover, another official in our interviews believed that society failed to provide a supportive environment to encourage the government to disclose fiscal information. The problem is that fiscal disclosure will always get criticism from the society. Then few departments would be active in disclosing fiscal information. This is a vicious cycle. The media always want to attract more audiences and thus put too much attention on the problems and weaknesses of fiscal disclosure. This is not a good thing for fiscal disclosure and is unfair to us. Now what motivates departments to disclose fiscal information to the public? If disclosure only receives criticism, then who will be willing to open the information?6

Our survey results also support the official’s opinion, with more than 50.2 percent of the respondents believing that the “media and the public more often criticize than appreciate the performance on fiscal transparency.” Moreover, the guidelines for fiscal transparency inevitably lead to concentrating the costs among the disclosers. China’s Finance Ministry promulgated an important guideline for fiscal disclosure in 2009, specifying that each department should be responsible for disclosing its fiscal information to the public. That guideline actually concentrates the costs on each department. In 2009, before the guideline, the Finance Bureau of Guangzhou disclosed all the fiscal information for its 113 departmental budgets on its website in reply to an application for fiscal information, and the disclosure attracted unprecedented page views from citizens. Due to that guideline, however, finance bureaus are no longer tasked with responsibility for disclosing their information. Because local governments have discretion in fiscal information disclosure and bear the related costs, they tend to employ various blame-avoidance tactics to implement fiscal transparency policy, especially when approval from their superior is required before fiscal information is disclosed (more than 90.7 percent of the respondents mentioned that approval was required from their department’s leader before disclosure). At the very beginning of fiscal information disclosure, we observed many cases of passive disclosure at the local level. Many departments delayed disclosing their departmental budgets. Baiyun district of Guangzhou, for example, disclosed its district budgeting information on the last day, as required by the Guangzhou government (南方都市报 2013). Second, many departments often refuse to provide relevant fiscal information to applicants, claiming that the disclosure of such information is not allowed by the Secret Law. Finally, local governments and departments have learned disclosure lessons from their peers. “As long as the fiscal disclosure is not too good or too bad, we are safe. We won’t attract social attention and won’t receive criticism from the media and the public.”7 This attitude is not exceptional, according to our survey. Among the respondents, 27 percent agreed that “if fiscal information disclosure is not too good or too bad, it will not cause trouble.” If we take into account those whose answers were “half and

160  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China half,” the proportion is much higher. The above evidence demonstrates that local governments are able to employ some tactics of blame avoidance in implementing the fiscal transparency policies launched by the central government. Dispersed Benefits for Users China has fostered some active social organizations after four decades of economic growth (Ma 2009). Some NGOs, social organizations, and media are very enthusiastic about fiscal transparency in recent years. For example, Volunteer Observers (预算观察志愿者), a Shenzhen-based NGO, has sought to promote fiscal transparency since 2006. Frustrated by the absence of fiscal information, Volunteer Observers sent hundreds of applications for fiscal disclosure to ministries and local governments in 2008. More often than not, the NGO received either rejection letters or no response at all from the governments. Although that was disappointing, the organization asked for explanations and repeatedly stated that the purpose of the application was in line with the ROGI. Table 9.1 summarizes their nine rounds of communication with the Ministry of Health, which was quite a successful case because the MOH finally decided to provide some basic departmental budget information. Volunteer Observers also applied for the departmental budgets from Guangzhou, and their Finance Bureau decided to disclose all 113 departmental budgets on its website in 2009. The number of page views on the first day of that disclosure was higher than the total for the previous year.8 In addition, certain citizens have been active in applying for fiscal information. A lawyer, for example, submitted an application to the Finance Ministry seeking disclosure of spending by the Civil Aviation Fund. The ministry rejected the request, claiming that the information was secret. The lawyer then took the case to court. The verdict requested the Finance Ministry to reconsider the disclosure request (北京晨报 2013). It has been reported that the applications of fiscal information disclosure accepted by the Ministry of Finance increased from 17 to 1,362 from 2008 to 2014 (朱颖/赵颖博/邓淑莲/李奇璘 2018). The results of our survey also reveal that 50.7 percent of the respondents who were familiar with fiscal transparency believed that “the public has a high demand for fiscal transparency,” and 65.2 percent of them agreed that “increasingly more citizens are applying for fiscal information disclosure.” The media have also been crucial in promoting fiscal transparency. Sometimes, they can amplify the demand from citizens and generate some social pressure on the government. At the very outset, many newspapers and social media platforms were active in reporting the progress on fiscal disclosure. Some even questioned the government’s limited effort regarding fiscal disclosure. For example, the Southern Metropolis Daily requested the General Office of the Guangzhou government to disclose its departmental budget (南方都市报 2012). In a more detailed story, the media paid attention to the contrasting responses of Guangzhou and Shanghai to the disclosure requests submitted by Volunteer Observers. In 2009, Volunteer Observers again submitted applications to government agencies, as it had before, including to Guangzhou and Shanghai. Guangzhou responded promptly. A government official from the Bureau of Finance informed the NGO that, as requested, the government had decided to disclose the budgets of 113 first-level departments via its official website. Guangzhou thus became the first local government to reveal all of its departmental budgets to the public. In contrast, Shanghai rejected the request and claimed that the information was a state secret. “It is very strange. They had contrasting responses. Guangzhou readily opened the information, while Shanghai rejected it. Aren’t they both ruled by the Chinese government?”9

The development of fiscal transparency in China  161 Volunteer Observers shared the experience of the different responses with a journalist. A day later, the NGO told the story to another newspaper. Soon after the reports were published, newspapers and citizens were actively discussing Shanghai’s negative response. “The first news report was relayed by more than 200 news media, including China Central Television, Xinhua News Agency, and Kuangming Daily (光明日报). A journalist from the China Central Television asked the spokesman of Shanghai directly why the fiscal information was a state secret.”10 The intense coverage yielded tremendous pressure on the Shanghai government. A week later, Shanghai admitted that its fiscal information was no longer a state secret and that the government would disclose its budget in the coming year. In addition, academic institutions contribute to fiscal transparency. Among others, an academic team from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics has made an intensive effort. Since 2008, it has regularly evaluated and ranked the fiscal transparency of 31 provinces. The team has searched public records and sent information requests to provinces to collect all necessary information for the assessment. The scoring is based on two parts: the survey sent to each province and the overall attitudes toward the survey (Deng et al. 2012). The research team publishes the ranking of fiscal transparency annually and attracts extensive attention from the media, academicians, and the public. For the provinces that rank at the bottom, the ranking and media attention may generate a certain amount of social pressure, particularly when their performance is low. However, the annual ranking does not seem to have greatly changed the government’s behavior. In the first three years, the average scores remained approximately 20 points (out of 100). It seems that the provinces have paid little attention to such rankings. The average score has increased gradually and reached 53 points in 2018, indicating some progress, but overall, transparency remains at a very low level. The team has also found that a significant volatility of fiscal transparency exists among many provinces. For example, Ningxia ranked last in 2010 and rose to first in 2016. Such volatility indicates that the disclosure of fiscal information is very arbitrary (邓淑莲 2019). In a similar vein, Tsinghua University published a report of fiscal transparency for 81 cities in 2012. More fiscal transparency reports at the city level were released in the following years. Clearly, NGOs, some active citizens, the media, and certain academic institutions are the main stakeholders who intensively promote fiscal transparency in China. They are only somewhat satisfied with the results of their efforts. For example, Volunteer Observers was happy that its efforts could make a small contribution to fiscal transparency. Nevertheless, its inputs were largely ad hoc, indicating a lack of long-term plans. Volunteer Observers does not have its own registered association, and it has no funding to support long-term efforts for fiscal transparency. At the very beginning, it operated a website called Budget of China as a platform for communicating with citizens, but that website no longer exists. Search results from the search engine of Baidu show no recent activities by that team, as well. Other efforts by individual citizens to promote fiscal transparency are more fragmented and feature irregular, occasional efforts. This situation echoes the argument of Etzioni (2014) that citizens may be too busy to continuously focus on fiscal transparency. The media sometimes amplify the social demand for fiscal transparency, but their first goal is to attract audiences to ensure their survival in the severe competition. They may consider fiscal transparency if that attention is in line with their commercial goals. Compared with other stakeholders, the Public Policy Research Center of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics stands out. First, it provides a reliable ranking of fiscal transparency for 31 provinces and publishes the report every year. The ranking provides solid evidence by

162  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China which society can judge the performance of provincial fiscal transparency. Therefore, both the center and society in general benefit from that ranking. However, a problem arises regarding the extent to which the ranking can put sufficient pressure on the provinces to stimulate them to make changes if their performance is poor. The effect seems minimal at best, as we can see from the above analysis. To summarize, the demand from society for fiscal transparency is not well organized and is largely fragmented. The benefits for the users are dispersed. We cannot expect that the demand will yield significant changes to fiscal transparency at this phase and in the near future.

THE IMPACT OF FISCAL TRANSPARENCY IN CHINA This section further analyzes the potential impacts of fiscal transparency in China. Echoing the literature, we will discuss the impacts of fiscal transparency on administrative corruption, fiscal accountability, and an open administrative culture. Theoretically, fiscal transparency can solve the problem of information asymmetry (Li 2019). Fiscal transparency should enable officials at higher levels to monitor the officials at lower levels. By reviewing and monitoring fiscal information, officials can check whether fiscal misconduct has occurred and whether all fiscal activities are in line with fiscal discipline. Therefore, fiscal transparency can hold officials within bureaucratic organizations accountable. Furthermore, fiscal transparency enables outsiders and society at large to know the details of governmental fiscal activities, and by analyzing the available information, they can detect whether fiscal misconduct and malpractice are taking place. Citizens can further criticize inappropriate spending and fiscal decisions. Under the social pressure generated by fiscal transparency, governments would be forced to respond to social criticism and take appropriate actions. Moreover, fiscal transparency could increase the cost of fiscal misconduct if government officials knew that their actions would be disclosed to the public. In summary, fiscal transparency could theoretically prevent corruption and enhance accountability. This might explain why approximately 90 percent of the respondents in our survey believed that fiscal transparency could prevent corruption, and approximately 96.4 percent of them agreed that fiscal transparency could strengthen fiscal discipline within the government. Nevertheless, we have found that fiscal transparency has a minimal impact on curbing corruption in China. The impact of fiscal transparency hinges not only on the level of transparency but also on other facilitating mechanisms. Unfortunately, both are weak. First, fiscal transparency is still in its infancy, and the fiscal information available is very limited. Many details are not reported in the documents disclosed to the public–particularly the spending items that might raise social concerns and that often entail corruption, such as the information of position-related consumption. Those types of spending items are often either included in the category of “other spending” or hidden in more general categories. Second, although governments are required to disclose fiscal information to the public, they have high discretion regarding how to implement disclosure policies. As a tactic, they often make their disclosures as ambiguous as possible. Third, the accounting method used can make it easier to hide any fiscal misconduct. For example, position-related consumption could be included in different categories. To achieve accountability, reliable and timely information is required. The currently low level of fiscal transparency cannot guarantee effective information for effective accountability.

The development of fiscal transparency in China  163 The literature has highlighted that the legislature and citizens can play an active role in fiscal transparency (Wehner and de Renzio 2013; Ma and Lin 2015). However, at this time, local people’s congresses only have a minimal role in fiscal transparency, thus indicating that the horizontal accountability mechanism is ineffective. Our survey found that only 52.9 percent of the respondents agreed that the local congress has a positive impact on fiscal supervision. Although the ROGI allows citizens to apply for fiscal information, it provides no details on how citizens can monitor fiscal transparency and make officials accountable. In other words, the regulation does not create societal accountability mechanisms for fiscal transparency. Finally, fiscal transparency policy does not include any effective penalty mechanisms for punishment when local governments are found guilty of fiscal misconduct. To summarize, fiscal transparency lacks certain necessary conditions and supplementary accountability mechanisms, without which it cannot exert a significant impact on curbing corruption and enhancing fiscal accountability. Our survey results show that a conservative attitude prevails regarding the impact of fiscal transparency on citizens’ satisfaction and trust in the government. An official also expressed that “under the fiscal transparency pressure, it is very likely that spending departments may have two accounts, one disclosed to the public, one for the real spending.”11 Another official put it in a more straightforward way: “The implementation of fiscal disclosure in our department first considers how to protect our leaders.”12 That said, fiscal transparency has some positive impacts. Fiscal disclosure has broken down the monopoly status that governmental control formerly held over fiscal information. Citizens and the media can now gain access to some fiscal information, and with their accumulated information, they can criticize the problems found in the fiscal information. That opportunity will further help foster the awareness that the government should disclose fiscal information to the public. In our survey, 64.9 percent of the respondents believed that “the criticism from the public and media is beneficial to fiscal transparency,” and 88.9 percent agreed that “fiscal information disclosure will make the government more accountable to society.” The fiscal transparency policy established in 2008 works against the traditional culture of “secret finance” that prevailed following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Admittedly, some government officials, particularly officials from developed areas, have gradually come to realize that citizens have the right to know fiscal information.13 Indeed, 96.8 percent of the respondents in our survey recognized that fiscal transparency promotes an administrative culture of openness. With the ongoing practice of fiscal transparency, an increasing number of officials will realize that fiscal transparency is inevitable. That said, we should not underestimate the difficulty that the government encounters in becoming accustomed to China’s open administrative culture.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS This chapter finds that the development of fiscal transparency in China has made some progress over the last decade. It has become a national policy, and governments at the county level and above are required to disclose their fiscal information to the public. Moreover, this chapter finds that the concentrated costs and dispersed benefits in fiscal transparency have led to ineffective implementation and slowed the development of fiscal transparency. Unsurprisingly, fiscal transparency cannot yet significantly enhance fiscal accountability or curb corruption due to the low level of transparency and the lack of accountability mechanisms. Nevertheless,

164  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China in the long run, fiscal transparency may help foster the notion among officials and the public that the government should disclose its fiscal information to the public. The policy implication is that while fiscal transparency could help enhance China’s local governance in the long run, we should be realistic about its potential in the short run given the constraints. Fiscal transparency can adopt many forms, and such reform is more meaningful at the local level because the interactions between citizens and the government mainly occur at that level. In recent years, the Chinese government has adopted various policy innovations, with at least two new developments that could boost fiscal transparency. The first is the performance budgeting reform, which is an international trend of budgeting reform (Ho et al. 2019; Ho 2018). Local governments have practiced the performance budgeting reform in the past two decades (牟治平/肖汉宇 2015). Although different regions emphasize different components, the main idea is that the spending departments should collect their spending information and evaluate the performance of that spending and that performance information should be important in allocating fiscal resources. To implement the reform, finance bureaus and spending departments jointly established comprehensive indicators and collected information to measure and evaluate the performance of the spending departments and spending programs that are using a large amount of public money. Guangzhou was the first local government to introduce the performance budgeting reform in 2003, and the performance budgeting reform became a national strategy in 2018. The disclosure of performance information seems more promising than the general disclosure of fiscal information. First, the reform is results-oriented and focuses on the performance of program spending and spending departments. Evaluation is based on administrative agencies and thus is easy to link to follow-up actions and accountability. Second, comprehensive indicators are introduced, and various stakeholders are involved in the evaluation process. Finance bureaus, spending departments, local people’s congresses, and independent evaluation parties are engaged in the evaluation process, making the process more transparent and rendering performance information fair and reliable. Third, local governments have highlighted the importance of performance information in allocating future financial resources in their budgetary processes. The need for improving the reward and punishment mechanisms, as a major approach to promoting performance budgeting, was also frequently mentioned in the survey. Performance information thus could provide a strong incentive for spending departments. Moreover, from the perspective of civic engagement, citizens may find performance information about programs and government agencies easier to understand because they have direct experience with public services. Approximately 79.1 percent of the respondents in our survey believe that fiscal transparency and performance budgeting could promote each other. For the above reasons, the promotion of fiscal transparency in performance budgeting reform may represent a promising new direction because it has the potential to establish the link between transparency and accountability, decision-making, and civic engagement. Second, local governments have adopted big data applications in various policy domains, with the purpose of enhancing local governance and the quality of public services. More than 82.2 percent of the survey’s respondents believed that big data could be used to promote fiscal transparency. They suggested that big data technology can be applied for fiscal information storage, supervision, and analysis, including the flow of funds, comparisons between budget and final accounts, and performance evaluations. Mayang County (麻阳县) of Hunan Province, for example, has introduced an internet+ monitoring platform. An important component of the platform is to collect all local affairs information on the platform and disclose

The development of fiscal transparency in China  165 it to citizens, including all information about spending items. Citizens can visit the website or use its official app to view all of the details. If citizens find any suspicious cases, they can report the cases directly through the platform. Moreover, citizens can easily search their transactions of various subsidies received from the government through the platform. This big data platform has been found to enhance citizens’ trust in the government and effectively curb corruption (Xiao and Wu 2020). This indicates the promising potential for using big data applications to boost fiscal transparency and local governance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT Dr. Hanyu Xiao would like to thank the funding support from the Department of Asian and Policy Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong for this project.

NOTES 1. Departmental budgets are the budgets of government departments. They consist of basic and program expenditures. Basic expenditures, including personnel and operation costs, maintain the operations of bureaucratic organizations. Program expenditures, however, are more important because they fulfill departmental functions and policy goals, such as the provision of public services. For more information, see Ma and Yu (2012). 2. Interview with a leader of an NGO on fiscal transparency, December 2012. 3. Interview with an official from the Justice Ministry, May 2013. 4. Interview with a scholar, January 2014. 5. Interview with an official from the Finance Ministry, June 6, 2013. 6. Interview with an official from the Education Bureau in Guangzhou, July 19, 2012. 7. Interview with an official from a district police bureau, August 2012; interview with an official from the Finance Ministry, May 2013. 8. Interview with a leader of an NGO on fiscal transparency, December 2012. 9. Interview with a leader of an NGO on fiscal transparency, December 2012. 10. Interview with a leader of an NGO on fiscal transparency, December 2012. 11. Interview with a leader of an NGO on fiscal transparency, December 2012. Due to the weak accounting management in the public sector and under the requirement of fiscal transparency, spending departments may use fake accounting reports for information disclosure, while the real spending is recorded as confidential for its internal use. 12. Interview with an official from a district police bureau, August 2012. 13. Interview with an official from the Education Bureau in Guangzhou, July 2012; interview with an official from the liaison office of Guangdong in Beijing, May 2013; and interview with a leader of an NGO on fiscal transparency, December 2012.

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The development of fiscal transparency in China  167 Ma, Jun and Muhua Lin (2015) “‘The Power of the Purse’ of Local People’s Congresses in China.” The China Quarterly 223, 680‒701. Ma, Jun and Xing Ni (2008) “Toward a Clean Government in China.” Crime, Law and Social Change 49(2), 119‒138. Ma, Jun and Li Yu (2012) “Why Money Cannot Be Spent as Budgeted?” Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management 24(1), 83‒113. Montes, Gabriel Caldas, Júlio Cesar Albuquerque Bastos, and Ana Jordânia de Oliveira (2019) “Fiscal Transparency, Government Effectiveness and Government Spending Efficiency.” Economic Modelling 79, 211‒225. Ongaro, Edoardo (ed.) (2017) Philosophy and Public Administration: An Introduction. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Ongaro, Edoardo and Sandra Van Thiel (eds.) (2018) The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Piotrowski, Suzanne and Gregg G. Van Ryzin (2007) “Citizen Attitudes toward Transparency in Local Government.” The American Review of Public Administration 37(3), 306‒323. Piotrowski, Suzanne J., Yahong Zhang, Weiwei Lin, and Wenxuan Yu (2009) “Key Issues for Implementation of Chinese Open Government Information Regulations.” Public Administration Review 69, S129‒S135. Rana, Renu (2015) “China’s Information Disclosure Initiative: Assessing the Reforms.” China Report 51(2), 129‒143. Roberts, Alasdair (2006) “Dashed Expectations: Governmental Adaptation to Transparency Rules.” In: Christopher Hood and David Heald (eds.), Transparency. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 107‒125. Rodríguez Bolívar, Manuel Pedro, Laura Alcaide Muñoz, and Antonio M. López Hernández (2013) “Determinants of Financial Transparency in Government.” International Public Management Journal 16(4), 557‒602. Van Zyl, Albert (2014) “How Civil Society Organizations Close the Gap between Transparency and Acc ountability.” Governance 27(2), 347‒356. Wehner, Joachim and Paolo de Renzio (2013) “Citizens, Legislators, and Executive Disclosure.” World Development 41, 96‒108. Welch, Eric (2012) “The Relationship between Transparent and Participative Government.” International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(1), 93‒115. Worthy, Ben (2010) “More Open but Not More Trusted?” Governance 23(4), 561‒582. Xiao, Hanyu and Bin Wu (2020) “Fiscal Transparency, Civil Engagement, and Control of Corruption.” Unpublished manuscript. Xiao, Hanyu, Xiaohu Wang, and Cheol Liu (2020) “Budgetary Punctuations: A Fiscal Management Perspective.” Policy Studies Journal. DOI: 10.1111/psj.12362. Yan, Xiaojun and Ge Xin (2016) “Participatory Policy Making under Authoritarianism.” Policy & Politics 44(2), 215‒234. Yu, Wenxuan (2011) “Open Government Information.” International Journal of Public Administration 34(13), 879‒888.

CHINESE REFERENCES 北京晨报 (2013) “财政部拒绝公开民航发展基金败诉被判重新处理.” October 2. http://​finance​.sina​ .com​.cn/​china/​bwdt/​20131002/​101716902389​.shtml (accessed March 29, 2020). 陈隆近/周小林/冯力沛 (2015) “财政透明度与预算改革: 基于四川省县级政府的调查研究.”《中央 财经大学学报》第9期, 10‒16. 邓淑莲 (2016) “财政公开透明, 制度障碍及破阻之策 – 基于对我国省级财政透明度的 7 年调查和 评估.”《探索》第3期, 62‒68. 邓淑莲 (2019) “政能亮报告: 地方财政公开十年‘体检’.” January 18. https://​gov​.ifeng​.com/​c/​ 7jZBv6OX0V6 (accessed March 29, 2020). 邓淑莲/杨丹芳/曾军平 (2011) “中国省级财政透明度评估 (2011).”《上海财经大学学报》第13卷 第 4期，51‒60.

168  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 邓淑莲/曾军平/郑春荣/朱颖 (2018) “中国省级财政透明度评估 (2017).”《上海财经大学学报》第 20卷第 3期，18‒28. 南方都市报 (2012) “市府办公厅,你为啥不晒‘三公’?” June 21. http://​news​.gd​.sina​.com​.cn/​news/​ 20120621/​1315721​.html (accessed March 29, 2020). 南方都市报 (2013) “赶在限期最后一日广州白云区晒‘三公’.” November 2. http://​news​.sina​.com​.cn/​ c/​2013​-11​-02/​031028598834​.shtml (accessed March 29, 2020). 牟治平/肖汉宇 (2015) “绩效预算改革中政府部门行为与观念的差异: 基于 A 市的个案分析.” 《公 共行政评论》第4期，134‒152. 清华大学 (2019) “2019 年中国市级政府财政透明度研究报告.” September 1. http://​ www​ .sppm​ .tsinghua​.edu​.cn/​eWebEditor/​UploadFile//​20191209040932765​.pdf (accessed March 29, 2020). 温娇秀/郑春荣/曾军平 (2013) “中国财政透明度评估 (2013).”《上海财经大学学报》第15卷第3期, 50‒57. 杨丹芳/曾军平/温娇秀 (2012) “中国财政透明度评估 (2012).” 《上海财经大学学报》 第14卷第4 期, 58‒66. 杨丹芳/吕凯波/曾军平 (2015) “中国财政透明度评估(2015).” 《上海财经大学学报》第17卷第5 期, 4‒14. 杨志勇 (2014) “我国预算管理制度的演进轨迹: 1979‒2014年.” 《改革》第10期, 5‒19. 郑春荣/蒋洪/彭军 (2014) “中国财政透明度评估 (2014).” 《上海财经大学学报》第16卷第6期, 4‒11. 朱颖/赵颖博/邓淑莲/李奇璘 (2018) “公众诉求与地方财政透明度 – 基于中国省级面板数据的经验 分析.” 《财经研究》第44卷第11期, 90‒106.

10. Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age Xigen Li

The media landscape in China has changed rapidly due to the advancement of media technology and emerging media usage patterns. While the mainstream media such as newspapers and television are still in the domain of official media organizations, and deliver key messages to the public for the government, their influence is fading, and they have gradually slid to the sideline and given way to the emerging online and social media, which have become popular channels for people to get information, exchange ideas and express views in public on different aspects of life (Cuffe 2019). Compared to the age of the traditional media, the fundamental changes with regard to the media landscape are: besides the newspapers and television controlled by the Chinese government, online and social media in various forms have emerged, and it is no longer the case that official media dominate information production and delivery. Along with the growth of online and social media, users of the Internet and social media can produce and publish information and express views in information channels other than the traditional media. Such information publication and sharing has changed the media landscape significantly and created a different social context in which people are oriented and influenced by the information delivered through digital media and by the messages produced and exchanged on various forms and channels of information (Shih 2020). Such changes in media landscape have brought about a scenario that the information production and delivery is no longer totally under the control of the Chinese government and could sway far away from government guidelines. Along the different stages of the online and social media development and the media landscape change, the Chinese government has instituted a series of laws and regulations to frame and direct the information production and dissemination via the Internet and social media. Through a document analysis of the rules and regulations initiated and enacted since 1994 by the Chinese government and its subunits on the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media, this chapter answers several key questions regarding how the rules and regulations were implemented to control the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media in China. It explores how technology advancement enables people to communicate and share information through different digital platforms and create issues that concern the Chinese government; how the Chinese government rules online and social media in the digital age with its Internet and media policies and regulations initiated and adapted to the changing media landscape to gain control over the information accessibility, production and distribution in the digital world; and how the rules and regulations constrain the way that people communicate and share information through different digital platforms to prevent that information production and distribution online affect the party regime and social stability.

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170  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE ALONG WITH TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES China’s media landscape has gone through rapid changes during the last two decades starting from 2000, when personal computers entered daily life, and the digital age of communication came along with the growth of the Internet. Before people were able to access news information through the Internet and the World Wide Web, newspapers, television and broadcast, termed as the traditional media, served as the mainstream media to deliver information to the public. Newspapers, television and broadcast were the only channels for people to obtain news information at the time. Because of the one-way nature of the traditional media, while the audience could receive news information from the traditional media, scarcely had they had chances to respond to the news and air their views through the media. Working as the mouthpieces of the party, the traditional media were the efficient means for the Chinese Communist Party and the government to publish policies and guidelines for the whole nation to abide by and popularize the exemplar cases they identified for all walks of life to follow. After 1978, when China started to implement a policy of open-door to the world, the traditional media underwent some sort of reform in their coverage focus and reporting style, while the one-way nature of information delivery remained unchanged. The onset of the digital age changed the scenario that the traditional media dominated the information dissemination and monopolized the news channels that delivered news to the public. With the advent of the Internet, a variety of news information sources emerged on the World Wide Web, including news sites of the traditional media, news portals such as sina.com, and news forums. Starting from the late 1990s, when personal computers became affordable in China and the Internet enabled people to seek and access information from the World Wide Web, people in China could obtain news from various information sources on the Web, including the news media in Western countries. The Internet continued to grow while the connection speed improved constantly. By the early 2000s, Web 2.0 changed the scenario on the Internet in terms of information delivery and exchange. Web 2.0 is the second stage of the Internet development, characterized especially by the change from static web pages to dynamic or user-generated content and the growth of social media. With Web 2.0, Internet users could not only access information from a variety of news channels on the Internet, they began to interact with the news content, such as commenting on the news items published, communicating with the information producers, exchanging ideas with other users, and sharing information with anyone on the Internet. Web 2.0 opened a new horizon for people to interact with the information received on the Internet, and other Internet users who are engaging in information access and sharing. What is more important is that Web 2.0 enables Internet users to produce and publish information online, which opened a door for anyone to be an information publisher online. Technology advances provide media users the opportunities to access information from anywhere in the world and from growing information sources and make the barrier to becoming a news information publisher very low. The scenario fundamentally changed the monopoly of the traditional media in China as the dominant sources of information for people to get the latest news and other information essential to their lives. While the changing media landscape afforded media users more options to access and share news information and produce information to be delivered through various information channels, a serious issue arose from the expanded freedom of information access and production in the perspective of the government. When anyone can publish information on the Internet, how do the traditional

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  171 media as the Party and government’s mouthpiece maintain a leading status in the digital world and deliver information to the public through online media channels? How to control the information that anyone can publish online within the boundary of the party line? Technology develops faster than what people can imagine and follow. When many people enjoy surfing the Internet to get all kinds of information from different channels, participate in forum discussions and express their views on issues they care about, mobile media gradually entered people’s lives in the late 2000s. With the popularity of mobile phones, people migrated from the World Wide Web to the mobile platforms to continue their media use, information sharing and production. Weibo, the Chinese microblog and the platform that attracted a large number of Internet users through computers, became available through mobile media later. Social networks established through the World Wide Web applications such as Weibo gradually got connected through mobile applications and grew into a noticeable public sphere for people to get important news information from the online community and discuss issues critical to them. Computer applications progressively gave way to mobile applications, such as WeChat, the communication platform mainly based on mobile phones for instant messaging and information distribution. By the end of 2019, there were 1.15 billion active users of WeChat (CNNIC 2020). WeChat is a communication channel based on social connections. People connected as WeChat users know each other to some degree and establish a relationship through the WeChat application for various communication purposes. Through WeChat, people do instant messaging and information sharing, interacting with the information they received, and most importantly, continue their roles as information producers, publishers and distributors since the Internet enabled them to do so. WeChat gives people the freedom and efficiency to distribute information, exchange ideas and express opinions within the social networks. With its function of relaying, the information distributed and exchanged far exceeds the realm of the original social network and the scale that once the traditional media could attain. As people log into the social networks for communication, more issues arise with flourishing online social networks such as WeChat. Within the online social networks, people publish their own works, discuss with other users the information received or shared, and redistribute the information to a larger audience. Yet such information exchange is exercised at a lightning speed. Based on the Party’s guidelines for media operation and online communication, some of the information distributed might not be politically correct, while other information could be deemed harmful to the society. The consequences of online communication through social media became a serious concern of the government. How to regulate the information distribution through online communication platforms as the media landscape changes rapidly emerged as a task that the government needs to handle regularly.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Theory of Institutional Change With the changes in media landscape brought by technology advances, new policies and regulations are installed to deal with the issues regarding information production, distribution and exchange through various digital communication channels. The theory of institutional change could help explain the process of policy and regulation initiation and implementation.

172  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China According to North (1990), institutions are the rules that are devised to shape and regulate human activities, mainly in the form of constraints. Institutions include both formal rules such as laws and constitutions, and informal constraints such as conventions and norms. Generally, institutions are rules that are purposefully designed and centrally implemented by an administrative authority to regulate human interactions. Regulation refers to the whole process of control or guidance, by established rules and procedures, implemented by governments and other political and administrative authorities to all kinds of media activities (McQuail 2007). Thus, regulations work in some way to interfere in various activities, with a goal of serving “public interest.” Such regulations could also serve the needs of the market (for instance, to facilitate competition) or for attaining technical efficiency (for instance, to establish technical standards). The forms of regulation could vary from clauses in national constitutions and laws to administrative procedures and stipulations in specific fields. The institutional change in terms of establishing rules and regulations goes through negotiations of all actors involved. Any change in an institution will lead to different distributional consequences. Therefore, individuals and groups who have a stake in the institutional change engage in bargaining, lobbying, and political action to try to shape the rules in their favor. The process of rule change is like “contracting” (Libecap 1989). The actors involved negotiate for a deal within the framework of a higher level of political rules such as rules that define the political system of a state. While all actors are involved in the process of negotiation for the institutional change, the higher level of political rules and the perceptions of the decision makers who created the political rules are the key determinants of an institutional change. For an institutional change in any specific area, the process will go along the line set up by the higher level of political rules. The actual causes for the institutional change to initiate are external occurrences such as technological changes and the perceived effects of such occurrences and the consequences of the change of rules by the decision makers (Libecap 1989). The higher level rulers, mainly the decision makers in government and specific administrative units, together with the perceptions and the actions of all parties, shape the direction of the institutional change of the rules that apply to a specific realm. Ruttan (2006) proposed a framework in which different external factors such as resource endowments, technology, and cultural legacy could all interact with each other along the way of institutional changes. The informal rules also play a role in the institutional change. North (1990) emphasized the role of informal rules in the institutional change. Formal rules are established as a result of collective negotiation through political deliberations among all actors involved. At the same time, informal rules develop as supplements to formal rules. Informal rules are generated though a slow process amidst situational changes and have an essential role in institutional changes because they gradually emerge and lead to a situation where formal rule change becomes necessary. After a change of formal rules, the informal rules adjust to suit the formal rules – to form a new equilibrium that both formal and informal rules work together to control the situation. Therefore, institutional change is generally implemented step by step rather than through an unexpected big change. Application of the Theory to the Chinese Context The changes in media landscape since computers and the Internet entered people’s lives and enabled people to become both information consumers and distributers, and the corresponding

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  173 changes in policies and regulations in China could be well explained by the theoretical framework of institutional change in the following aspects. First, the need for changes in policies and regulations is due to technological advances and communication pattern changes. The Internet and the subsequent changes in communication patterns were the new phenomena of the digital age. In China, the laws and regulations regarding information production and distribution used to be scant because the traditional media were monopolized by the Party and the government, and the players in the media field were few (Chin 2018). Scholars and journalists attempted to initiate a law to regulate media practice in the 1980s, but the attempt was aborted because of the pro-democracy movement in 1989. When facing the new media landscape where traditional media no longer dominated news distribution while emerging media such as online and mobile media pervaded, and people could easily become information producers and distributors, a new order needs to be established through rules and regulations in line with the fundamental laws that guarantee the governance of the Party and the government in the information dissemination realm. Second, the changes in policies and regulations regarding Internet and mobile media are gradual rather than abrupt. Since the Internet allowed people to get information online and become both information producers and distributers, there was a pressing need to establish new rules to regulate online information distribution and exchange activities. The regulations initiation started from relatively simple terms and gradually covered more aspects of online communication and media practices as more communication platforms became available for information exchange, and online and social media allows users to do more in online communication. For example, during the early years of the Internet, people could only access content from the World Wide Web. The rules were related to what kind of content could be published online. After the debut of Web 2.0, the rules were gradually expanded to cover a broader range of online activities, including guidelines on the Internet information services and the liability of information service providers and the producers on the content presented on online platforms. Third, the rules and regulations changes regarding media practice in the digital age are within the framework of a high level of political rules and were initiated by the decision makers in the governing authorities. Any change in a law pertaining to a specific area follows the principles in the Constitution. In China, Party leadership is the priority principle of the Constitution, and everything is under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Any change in the rules and regulations should reflect such guidelines. The rules and regulations changes regarding Internet information services and Internet and social media use are also in line with a high level of political rules. For example, the Regulations on Internet News Services is based on the Regulations on Internet Information Services and Law of Network Security while Law of Network Security is established based on Law of National Security. The high level of laws and political regulations are approved by the National People’s Congress and its standing committee. The rules and regulations in a specific area are approved by special committees in an administrative department of the State Council of China. Fourth, the informal rules precede the formal rules to set constraints on the practice of media use and online communication and work together with the formal rules to establish control over the changing media practices. When something new emerges as a communication tool, issues also arise as more people use it. For example, after the World Wide Web became popular by offering news information and entertainment, people without a computer and Internet access at home would go to Internet bars to surf the Web. Regulations were initiated by the local

174  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China authorities to deal with the issues of public Internet bars as informal rules. When similar issues emerged on a national scale, and the high level decision makers realized that some rules needed to be established to reduce problems, formal rules were proposed and enacted to deal with the issues of public Internet access at the national level. Technology advanced quickly and the corresponding issues were dealt with through informal rules first, and eventually led to the initiation and the establishment of formal rules to regulate media usage along with the development of media technology. The views of the new institutionalism (March and Olsen 1983) on government regarding the high level decision makers in most of the key institutional changes should also be noted. March and Olsen argued that government is in the business of forming its environments, not adapting to them. Public administration is led by societal visions and political projects. Therefore organizations that handle public affairs should be “conceptualized as institutions rather than as instruments” (Brunsson and Olsen 1997, 20). That is, government departments should take a guiding instead of trailing role in institutional change. They produce and execute solutions that define how the game is played. Who are acceptable participants? What are the appropriate agendas? What punishments should be exercised in case of disagreement? Which processes would allow yielding actual changes? Brunsson and Olsen claimed that the way people think, interpret facts, act and cope with conflicts are influenced and unified by public administration. Their view could be true at the time when no quick and fundamental changes, whether politically or technologically, occur on the societal level. However, in the case of communication technology and media landscape changes, the government may not be able to handle them as political projects well ahead of the occurrences, and societal vision will be difficult to form as the technology advances so fast and the new media landscape emerges before the government can envision or realize them. In the realm of institutional change due to media technology innovations, the quick adaptation of the Internet policies and regulations to the changes are sometimes inevitable.

RESEARCH ON INTERNET USE POLICY IN CHINA Regulating Internet Use and Media Content Since the Internet entered people’s lives in China in the mid-1990s, regulating Internet use has always been on the agenda of the governing authorities. The Chinese government initiated a number of policies for content control and regulations to exercise the power of setting the constraints over the creation (production), processing (transportation, distribution, storage), and access to and use (seeking, sharing) of information (Tai 2006). China is considered to have the most sophisticated and effective online censorship in the world, along with the rapid growth of the Internet (Zittrain and Edelman 2003; King et al. 2013). The restrictions varied by the target of a regulation. Some stipulate on what content is allowed to be presented on the Internet, while others set restrictions on the uses of the Internet, technology standards and physical Internet connections (Qiu 1999; Feir 1997). The regulations are categorized to target the specific content according to content structure and the function of the regulations (Sohmen 2001; Gomez 2004). The regulations on the content also adapted to the stage of the Internet growth and the development of communication channels. The scope of the regulations corresponded to the technology advances and Internet development such as tech-

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  175 nology updates, online service availability, and the scale of users (Harwit and Clark 2001; Endeshaw 2004; Cheung 2006). The Chinese government employed a variety of means of control over the Internet including blocking, reporting, filtering, and redirecting (Zittrain and Edelman 2003; Feng and Guo 2013). Apart from the ways of interfering with the use of the Internet, the Chinese government also devotes tremendous human resources and equipment to exercise online censorship mechanisms (Hunt and Xu 2013). Studies have found that China’s “networked authoritarianism” (MacKinnon 2011) works effectively to contain online communications. Li and Robbin (2013) examined the content and citation of the policies to analyze the implementation of Internet policies established by the Chinese government over the two decades since 1994. They found between 1994 to 1999, new policies on Internet infrastructure and new online establishments based on existing laws and regulations were the main focus of the first stage of China’s Internet age. From 1999 to 2011, the policies changed their main targets as the online services developed. The regulations started from the control of infrastructure in the early years to gradually moving toward direct control of information content. As the Internet expanded in its applications, more indirect control of online services and markets is observed. It is also found that a few policies serve as the foundation for the entire regime (Wen 2010). Two regulations are especially noteworthy in establishing direct control over the Internet use and information services: (1) Legislation on Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services, formally known as the Telecommunications Regulations of the People’s Republic of China issued by the State Council of China on September 25, 2000; (2) the Provisions on the Administration of Internet News Information Services issued by the State Council of China, the Ministry of Information Industry, and the State Council Information Office (SCIO) on September 25, 2005. The 2000 Regulation on Internet Information Service is considered the core of the Internet regulations. The application of old policies and the establishment of new policies along with regulations varied in level of constraints constituted the implementation of the Internet control over time. Li and Robbin’s (2013) analysis provides a longitudinal view of the policy development to control the Internet use in terms of type of the policies and regulations and the areas to control, but did not offer a comprehensive view on how the development of the policy and regulation help the Chinese government deal with the issues arising with the technological advances and Internet growth. As Deibert and Rohozinski (2010) noted in their study, cyberspace controls devised and implemented by the Chinese government can be categorized into three different generations based on the target and sophistication. The first generation of controls focused on filtering Internet content such as the “Great Firewall of China.” The Firewall refers to the virtual wall that the Chinese government set to block people in China from accessing any information that the government considers harmful and inappropriate. The second generation aimed at legalizing control over the Internet and establishing technical capabilities to block access to websites and resources deemed threatening to the Chinese regime. The third generation of controls attempts to launch ideological campaigns to fight against or eliminate potential threats. The second- and third-generation controls are most essential for the Chinese Communist Party and the government to maintain their political regime through intervention and manipulation of the Internet use activities.

176  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Issues and the Need to Control The growing Internet and the changing media landscape brought about new communication patterns as well as issues that concerned the Chinese government. The term issue refers to a particular matter of dispute or conflict which occurs in the “public sphere” and which requires regulatory actions to solve the problems that caused the conflicts (McQuail 2007). With regard to the communication capacity and information production and dissemination, the Internet provides the opportunity for anyone to become a producer of information (Johnson et al. 2007) and enables people to share information, exchange opinions, and deliberate on important issues in their life. While anyone can be an online publisher, and people can exchange information and discuss important issues in public easily through online and mobile media, a “public sphere” emerges as never before and goes well beyond the control of the government with the rules and regulations applied to the traditional media. Online and social media platforms become venues for people to gather and discuss issues of public interest. They could post their thoughts immediately after the news published by online news media or distributed by social media users on online platforms such as Weibo, the Chinese version of a microblog. Such posts on issues regarding current affairs and public concerns could depart significantly from the guidelines set by the government. Therefore, those Internet users who post thoughts on Weibo not in line with the government guidelines, and any large-scale movement of a social group initiated through online and social media, are seen as a new threat to the country if they are not immediately contained (Sun 2010). The Internet has succeeded in facilitating people to participate in public and political events, and the effectiveness and power of the Chinese government’s control over media decreased when compared with its control over mainstream media due to rapidly advancing technology that empowers people to go online to publish information and voice their views they deem relevant and important (Shambaugh 2007; Xiao 2011; Yang 2009). Yang (2009) argues that the Internet has emancipated individual expression in China, and the online political events with massive participation have created both a communication revolution and a social revolution in China. Xiao (2011) also noticed that online activities against social problems and the infliction on people from those with power have significantly influenced Chinese society. The social activities initiated and preceded on the Internet include the campaign to “Tear Down This Firewall!” before U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to China in November 2009 and the massive online protests due to immediate threats to the residential environment and social injustice. As the new technology enables people to express in public and online media channels and allows people to publish and distribute information, the Chinese authorities faced a variety of issues on how to deal with the new media landscape. Such issues included: how to contain the media content that Internet users produce and publish on the Web? How to judge the nature of the vast amount of information appearing on the Internet from all sorts of sources? How to prevent media content published on the Internet from stirring up social unrests? How to clear up all potential threats to the political regime which arise from the publication and expression by Internet users through online and social media? Establishing new rules and regulations became essential tasks as the technology shapes the new media landscape. Feintuck (1999) proposed to differentiate the main issues for policy and regulation according to two dimensions. First, do they relate to public or private concerns? Second, do they have a positive or negative direction? The issues that have arisen with the growth of the Internet and

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  177 from the changing media landscape certainly have a public nature. It concerns both Internet users and the governing authorities, the Chinese government. But it has different connotations to different parties. For the Internet users, the Internet and the media technology give them the opportunity and the power to publish what they want to say to the general public as the traditional media could do at a low cost. For the Chinese government, while the technology enables it to deliver information to the public more efficiently, they have to face the situation that an enormous amount of Internet users have the capacity to produce media content and publish or broadcast on the Internet without being checked by a gatekeeper, and the cost of checking and controlling the information before and after publication is tremendous. The second dimension is the direction of the issues. For the general Internet users, the power and freedom to express and publish is generally positive while differentiating information that is beneficial from that of harmful may incur some cost. For the Chinese government, the cost of controlling the overflow of information produced by Internet users far exceeds the benefit that the government can utilize the communication channels to reach the public more effectively. As the new media landscape and communication patterns unfold, the Chinese government uses all means and resources to ensure that online activities are properly contained (King et al. 2013). The first is technological: When technology empowers people to access and distribute information online, the Chinese government also takes advantage of the latest technology to exercise control over the Internet. The censoring system interferes with online and social media communication, monitors information posted on social media around the clock, and taps into private communications on social media platforms. The second is legal: The laws and regulations are updated frequently to adjust the framework of information control on the Internet and social media, and tackle the issues that have arisen out of the changing media landscape, especially the control of information distribution on social media. The power over the Internet and social media is centralized in the hands of high level decision makers. The third is ideological: To legitimize the control of the Internet and social media, the Chinese government advocates the idea “cyber sovereignty” on various international occasions that each country has the right to establish an order on the Internet according to their own rules within its own border. No other nations have the right to interfere with what occurs on the Internet and social media within China’s borders. Expected Order of Digital Communication To deal with the potential threats to the political regime that have arisen from the information distributed on the Internet, the Chinese government initiated regulations to establish guidelines for online activities. The telecommunications legislation established in 2000 created three systems to regulate Internet use, including licensing and site registration, pre-approval for certain types of site, and exclusive approval for the function of specific sites (Wen 2010). These three systems set rules to prohibit any organization or individual from using telecommunication networks to produce, reproduce, distribute, or transmit information against the interests of the state consisting of the following nine aspects: 1. Opposing the basic principles stipulated in the constitution. 2. Threatening state security, revealing state’s confidential information, subverting state power, or devastating national unity. 3. Infracting the state dignity and interest.

178  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 4. 5. 6. 7.

Inciting ethnic hatred, racial discrimination, or undermining interethnic unity. Sabotaging the state religion policy or propagating the heresy or feudal superstition. Spreading rumors, disturbing social order, or disrupting social stability. Disseminating obscenity, pornography, encouraging gambling, violence, murder or spreading fear, and inciting crime. 8. Insulting or defaming third parties or infringing upon the legitimate rights and interests of third parties. 9. All other related content prohibited by the laws or administrative regulations (Sun 2010). Censorship systems were set up to control information on the Internet and later on social media, and to monitor the information distribution of various online communication channels. Three censorship projects have been established to regulate the activities on the Internet and social media in China: The Great Firewall, The Golden Shield, and Keyword Blocking. The Great Firewall was initiated in the late 1990s. It is a censoring system of the Internet that blocks certain domain names, IP addresses, and foreign websites such as social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, video sharing site YouTube, and online media websites including Radio Free Asia, Voice of America in Chinese, and international human rights sites. The Golden Shield is a system of domestic surveillance established by the Ministry of Public Security of China in 1998 to fight against crimes as well as dissident activities. Keyword Blocking is a content blocking system using keywords or phrases to filter out the unwanted content. The filter software maintains a database comprising keywords and phrases that are prohibited. Online content is scrutinized and any content that matches such keywords and phrases will be blocked. The system is widely used for checking computer applications, websites, email, online forums, social networking sites, blogs and microblogs, instant messaging, and search engines. The database continues to grow as new keywords and phrases are added regularly after new events and issues arise. The government uses its regulatory power along with new technology for enhancing the censorship system to muffle the dissident voices and manipulate online expression (Zhang and Zheng 2009; Fei et al. 2009). Besides the technology and legal resorts, a few control strategies were implemented to ensure that the expected order in online communication is in place. The established regulations stipulate that domestic social media companies have the responsibility to align the use of the social media with the guiding regulations, and the companies need to set up special units for monitoring their users to keep the network secure under their operation. Chinese companies have to follow the guidelines and utilize a considerable amount of resources in surveilling the activities on their social media in accordance with the government’s demands. The government also brings up criticism related to various domestic and international issues to orient public opinion in order to divert the public attention from the discussion of controversial issues and scandals that may tarnish the image of the government (Hearns-Branaman 2009), for example, the criticism on the universal value of human rights and total Westernization denounces public demand for democracy and freedom, and the blame on U.S. unilateralism in U.S–China trade friction stirs up nationalism. The government set up numerous centers for surveilling public opinion and was able to effectively assess public opinion about certain topics in no time. “Cyber sovereignty” is a key point that the Chinese government argues for the legitimacy of its censorship system and information control over the Internet. As Chinese officials argue that the surveilling system over the Internet is dedicated to “strengthening national sovereignty,

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  179 and enhancement of economic prosperity” (Minteh 2008). “Cyber sovereignty” becomes the ideological framework to establish the control mechanism. China’s practice of controlling the Internet based on cyber sovereignty has restrained public expressions and discussions on important issues concerning public interest and people’s daily lives, and made it difficult especially for writers, journalists and political activists to publish and present their work on the Internet. As the audience moves to the online platforms, writers, journalists and political activists have to interact with this audience and distribute their work of social significance through online and social media. The Party’s centralized control over online expression imposes substantial constraints for those online presenters, for whom free expression is essential both personally and professionally. Some of the online information producers were restricted on social media platforms while others were affected in their professional practice (Anonymous 2018). Despite strict control over the Internet imposed by the government, Internet users continue to voice their views through online media such as discussion forums run by various websites, especially those by the online news media. More recently, they express their opinions through social media such as Weibo and WeChat. A social media account publishing information not in line with the guidelines could be closed immediately, while new accounts are set up to continue the expression and discussion. Because millions of users are online and participate in online activities at the same time, official Internet control cannot be fully implemented and effective at all times. New communication technologies sometimes challenge the existing censorship system, while Internet users work tactfully to share and distribute information. In addition, a control gap appears when local officials want to hide problematic issues from central government to avoid being held responsible for the problem (Xiao 2011). When the above scenarios appear from time to time, absolute control is impossible (Lacharite 2002).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS Based on the discussion of the Internet development, the changing media landscape and the policies and regulations established by the Chinese government to control Internet use and online communication, and the literature on regulating Internet use and media content in China, the following research questions are asked: 1. What are the key concerns of the Chinese government in regulating the information delivery and exchange in the digital world? Technology advancement and the development of new communication channels allow anyone to be an information producer and disseminator in the online and social media. The online community also allows users to share and exchange information on various topics. Such information dissemination and sharing could go beyond the boundary of the government guidelines and create unwanted effects on online and social media users. The key concerns of the government could include political, financial and social risks generated from the information distribution and exchange, especially the concern of the ideological security that could be undermined by a free market of ideas. To understand how the key concerns of the Chinese government developed along with the digital media advancement will be the initial step to analyzing how the Chinese government rules online and social

180  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China media in the digital age with its Internet and media policies adapted to the changing media landscape. 2. What aspects of the governing policies are changed to adapt to the new communication context, the new communication patterns, and the Internet information services that allow media users to produce and distribute information online? Since the Chinese government initiated regulations governing online activities in 2000, the rules have been reviewed periodically, and changed following the growth of online and social media. The changes occurred mainly after the significant technology development and media platform advancement that brought about new issues. For example, with the emergence of online and social media, the information distribution, access and sharing occurred on the online and mobile platforms on a massive scale. The functions and features of the new information channels led to the communication activities in the virtual world far exceeding the media use in the age of traditional media. The most fundamental change is that the Internet users are not only the information consumers, but also information producers and publishers. When the communication technology enables anyone to publish information on online and mobile platforms, the communication activities that people engage in within the new context create issues for information control with the concern that the public opinions generated through the Internet and social media may affect or even threat the political regime. It will be crucial to understand media control mechanisms by analyzing how regulations were changed to adapt to the new communication context, the new communication patterns, and information produced and delivered by the digital media users. 3. How are the new policies to rule the digital and social media implemented? Policies and regulations have been issued and implemented periodically since 1999 when the growth of online communication started to pick up speed and more people went online to share and exchange information. Policies and regulations were established following the development of media technology and the changes of communication patterns. After the issuance of policies and regulations, what matters the most is the implementation of the policies and regulations through specific approaches and procedures to achieve the goals of establishing such rules. Different strategies were applied to implement the policies and regulations smoothly and effectively. Analyzing the approaches and procedures of implementing policies and regulations regarding the Internet and social media use and the communication activities on the digital platforms provides a better understanding of how the information production, sharing and exchange on the Internet and social media were contained, and how a new order of digital communication through various media platforms was achieved. 4. To what effect do the new policies work to establish a new order of digital communication? Each policy and regulation on the Internet use and information service has its specific goal set to solve certain issues. For each stage, some expected order will be established upon implementation of the policies and regulations. The observation of the new order of digital communication and the effect of the policy and regulation implementation reflected in the new order will help understand if the policies and regulations work in solving the identified issues, and to what extent they match the original goal of information control and online communication manipulation.

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  181 5. To what extent are the information production, sharing and distribution and online communication patterns are controlled by the government policies and regulations over the Internet and social media? All policies and regulations serve the goal of containing activities on the Internet, and specifically, controlling information production, sharing and distribution on the Internet and social media. With the changing media landscape, the policies and regulations regarding Internet use and information service are updated frequently with different approaches for implementation and goals at the different stages of technology development and digital communication. The extent to which that Internet use and information control vary upon the implementation of policies and regulations at different stages reflects how successfully the Chinese government rules the online and social media in the digital age through policies and regulations adapted to the changing media landscape.

METHOD This study was conducted with an analysis of the laws and regulations regarding Internet use and information services since China started to open the Internet service to the public in the 1990s. The laws and regulations that this study focuses on are those serving the purpose of regulating the Internet and information services, the use of the Internet and other online services by the public, the information production, presentation and distribution through online communication channels, and the online information security maintenance. The laws and regulations to be collected for analysis include the state laws, administrative regulations, Party and government departmental regulations, and industry rules. The legal documents were obtained from Chinalawinfo.com (http://​www​.Chinalawinfo​.com) on October 4, 2019. Chinalawinfo.com is an online database administered by the Legal Information Center of Peking University (http://​www​.pkulaw​.cn). The database maintains Chinese national laws, administrative regulations and policies, and other legal documents related to various aspects of public administration issued by the authoritative institutions in the Chinese legal, Party and government, and other public administrative systems. Some of the documents were further verified with the laws and regulations published on the website of Cyberspace Administration of China (http://​www​.cac​.gov​.cn/​zcfg/​xzfg/​A090902index​_1​.htm). The legal documents were retrieved from the database using two groups of keywords: (1) Internet and information services, including keywords Internet, Network, Internet/Network and Information Services, Internet/Network Platform, Network Communication, and Internet/ Network Management; (2) Media and public opinion, including keywords Media, New Media, Weibo, WeChat and Public Opinion. The database search covered all legal documents related to the Internet and information services since China’s network connected to the Internet in the 1990s. The specific period for the document search and retrieve was between January 1994 and October 2019. The obtained documents were put into two categories corresponding to the two groups of keywords used to search, and labeled with the type of legal documents identified by the database including (1) Law, the legal rules established and approved by the authority of National People’s Congress of China; (2) Administrative regulation, the regulations issued by the State Council of China; (3) Judicial explanation, the notice issued by the Supreme Court of the People’s Republic of China on how to execute a law or a regulation in a specific

182  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China field; (4) Departmental rule, the guideline or notice issued by a ministry of the State Council of China on how to execute a law or a regulation in the realm governed by the ministry, and (5) Party, (6) organizational and (7) industry rule, the notices and the guidelines issued by the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party, the official organizations established with the approval of the state authority, and industry associations on how to carry out specific tasks defined by a rule or a regulation in the respective domain. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to analyze the legal documents obtained. The data regarding the type and the number of legal documents retrieved from keyword searches were organized into three tables and analyzed by the type and the number of documents to show the emphasis of the specific areas and the institutions that were responsible for implementing the rules and regulations. The data obtained by three keywords, Information, Internet, and Internet Services were organized by five time periods of the 25 years examined to show the trend of changes of the rules and regulations and which institutions played the most important role in implementing the regulations through issuing notices and guidelines on executing the rules and regulations. For the qualitative analysis, the titles of the retrieved legal documents issued by different institutions were scanned first. The most important and relevant documents, the laws and regulations that set the framework for the Internet information services and the Internet and social media use were downloaded and carefully examined. The themes, the associated issues and the specific clauses to deal with issues were identified for answering research questions. Those legal documents with revisions were carefully checked and the different versions were closely compared to investigate how the rules and regulations were changed to adapt to the communication scenarios with technology advances and the changing media landscape. Table 10.1 shows the legal document search results for Internet Service and Management; Table 10.2 presents the legal document search results for Media and Public Opinion. Key issues were identified for each keyword search result by examining the list of the documents found and locating the most relevant and important laws and regulations for the area labeled by the keywords. Table 10.3 displayed the document search results by five time periods during 1994 and 2019 for three keywords: Information, Internet, and Information Service. The documents were checked for the area they cover and the documents that appeared in more than one category and in more than one type were marked for analysis of different key issues. The three tables showing the search results of the relevant legal documents provide the basis for analyzing the policies and regulations regarding Internet and information services developed along with the communication technology advances and media landscape changes and answering the specific research questions.

3

76

Law

Administrative

12583

Crime through Internet service

Other

Total

Key issue

cloud

3

Industry rule

management

188

2

101

1045

Organization rule

10

35

Party rule

1497

81

4

10

12 1365

11251

23

2

Internet

Departmental rule

174

2

Info. service

Judicial explanation 69

regulation

Info.

3

41

1533

1

172

25

13

1265

protection communication right protection

Network information protection

information network

security;

75 Network

4

70

23 Information

4

14

2

3

management

15

1

5

8

provider

Internet service Network

29

15

1

10

13

3

1

platform

service 1

communication info.

Network

Network

Network

Network

Internet/

Internet/ Network

Legal document issued regarding Internet and Information Services (1994‒2019)

Keyword

Table 10.1

67

1

2

61

3

Internet info.

21

2

19

management

Network

Internet/

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  183

2

2

9

14

Party rule

Organization rule

Industry rule

Weibo for public administration

Use of WeChat by policemen

of platforms

administration

for public

12

1

1

11

Development

1

Weibo

119

10

10

Social media

Key issue

18

1

3

12

2

Internet News

Total

Other

90

Departmental rule

Judicial explanation 2

regulation

Administrative

New media

36

8

4

24

WeChat

Media

Keyword

Law

Legal document issued regarding media and public opinion (1994‒2019)

Table 10.2

evaluation

security

Watchdog;

12

3

2

7

Public opinion

1

1

analyst training

on food safety

Public sentiment; Rumor refuting

9

2

6

1

Public sentiment Rumor

184  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

9

884

182

23

1915

445

25

6

5

404

4

1

Internet

63

1

2

60

Service

Internet

5116

335

41

7

4686

22

23

2

Info.

56

14

2

336

7

3

1

Internet

2010‒2014

420

43

100

21

4

1773

9

8

Info.

2005‒2009

Total

260

22

1

Service

Internet

1

13

1

1

156

11

Internet

2000‒2004

Other

3

5 64

2

Info.

795

10

7

Organization rule

11

7

Service

Internet

Industry rule

4

30

4

1

2

6

Internet

Departmental rule 229

3

13

Info.

1994‒1999

Legal document issued by year (1994‒2019)

Party rule

explanation

Judicial

regulation

Administrative

Law

Keyword

Table 10.3

43

2

40

1

Service

Internet

4309

531

36

15

3686

22

19

Info.

433

73

4

4

330

17

3

2

Internet

2015‒2019

49

5

44

Service

Internet

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  185

186  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

FINDINGS Quantitative Analysis of Legal Documents According to the quantitative analysis of legal documents, the findings provide answers to the questions regarding the policies and regulations on the Internet and information services adapted to the rapidly changing digital communication scenarios. 1. Policies and regulations regarding the Internet and information services were issued as Administrative regulations, department rules and industry rules more than laws. There was a total of 10 law items retrieved under five keywords regarding Internet information services during the 25 years. After careful examination of the items retrieved and excluding the same items listed under different keywords, it is found that three laws were adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China. They are (1) Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Strengthening Information Protection on Networks (2012); (2) Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China (2016) and (3) Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Preserving Computer Network Security (2000 and 2009) under the keyword Internet/Network. All of them are related to information protection and network security. Most of the other important regulations were issued by the State Council of China as administrative regulations, such as Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services (2000 and 2011); Regulations on the Administration of Business Premises of Internet Access Service (2002, 2011, and 2019); Notice of the State Council of China on Charging the Cyberspace Administration of China with the Content Management of Information on the Internet (2014). More specific guidelines were established as Departmental rules and Industry rules, such as The General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council of China Issuing the Opinions on Promoting the Sound and Orderly Development of the Mobile Internet (2017) as a Party rule; and Provisions for the Administration of Internet News Information Services (2005, and 2017) as Departmental rules. 2. Departments of the State Council of China played a more important role than other institutions and industries in implementing the policies and regulations regarding the Internet and information services. The department rule is the field that contains the largest number of legal documents concerning the Internet and information services. The rules and regulations issued by The National People’s Congress and the State Council of China are implemented by the departments of the State Council of China on behalf of the State. It is also because the Internet and information services are associated with the regular business of various departments of the State Council of China. To implement laws and administrative regulations issued by the National People’s Congress and State Council of China, the departments of the State Council of China need to provide specific guidelines for the laws and regulations to be executed smoothly in different areas of business. These guidelines are associated with various rules and regulations, and are crucial for the rules and regulations to become regular practices of daily business concerning the Internet and information services (Table 10.1).

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  187 3. Social media became the most important communication channels to be regulated through rules and administrative regulations. In the digital age, communication channels expand significantly beyond the traditional media. Three keywords were used to identify the legal documents concerning information delivery and exchange on the Internet: (1) Internet news; (2) Weibo, the Chinese version of microblog; (3) WeChat, the instant messenger that allows information distribution to a large audience while being a chatting tool between and among friends. WeChat as a keyword retrieved the largest number of legal documents (36 items), Weibo, the second (12 items), and Internet news, the third (10 items). The number of legal documents retrieved indicates that WeChat has become the most important communication channel in the digital age. It is not only used for interpersonal communication, but also for information distribution to a large audience. The noticeable number of legal documents concerning WeChat suggests that WeChat needs more regulatory attention compared to Internet news. News is an area with boundaries clearly defined by the rules and regulations on Internet news, and few players are allowed to distribute news online. WeChat is a new communication channel that enables users to deliver information to a large audience. The nature of the information distributed through WeChat can vary significantly and some of the information may go beyond the Party’s guidelines. Yet its relay function can increase the circulation of the information at an exponential rate. It therefore becomes the first communication channel under strict control in terms of information delivery and exchange. 4. Public opinion has attracted more regulatory attention in recent years as new media extend their influence. Public opinion had not been a notable issue that the Chinese government needs to pay close attention to until the Internet communication platforms enabled Internet users to express their views online. There were legal documents that specifically address the issue of public opinion (13 items), and its derivative public sentiment (8 items). In the age of traditional media, a limited number of media outlets existed, and they were completely controlled by the Party and the government. Public opinion was what were delivered through newspapers and television in accordance with Party guidelines. There was no outlet for ordinary people to express their views to the public to form public opinion, which is supposed to be a combination of different views on issues of social significance. In the digital age, online communication platforms proliferate, and enable people from all walks of life and various political dispositions to voice their views, which eventually form a comprehensive understanding of an issue important to the public. The online expression and discussion by people of different backgrounds also show public sentiment toward the issue, and such sentiment could lead to certain beliefs and even a social movement. That’s why the government and the related departments need to address the issue of public opinion and public sentiment with designated rules and regulations. Under the keyword public opinion, there are corresponding administrative regulations such as Provisions on the Security Assessment for Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization (2018). Under the keyword public sentiment, Notification from the General Office of the State Council of China on Enhancing the Responses to the Public Sentiment in Government Affairs (2016) was issued as an administrative regulation (Table 10.2). 5. Policies and regulations regarding the Internet and information services have increased significantly in numbers since 1994 as more communication channels become available to the public, and more people engage in online communication and discussion of issues impor-

188  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China tant to society. The legal documents retrieved started from 1994 when the World Wide Web debuted with the Web browser Mosaic. The number of total legal documents under the keyword Information grew from 260 during 1994‒1999 to its peak of 5,116 during 2010‒2014. The legal documents grew at least three times every five years. The increase of the legal documents corresponded to the rapid growth of the online and social media platforms and the changing media landscape with millions of people participating in online and social media communication and information production, sharing and exchange. The regulation number rose to its peak during 2010‒2014, when users of social media such as Weibo and WeChat grew exponentially. The regulations on Internet and information services were mostly executed through the rules and policies established by the Departments of the State Council of China, with numbers starting from 229 during 1994‒1999 to 4,686 during the peak years 2010‒2014. The governance over online and social media was also exercised through industry rules, which grew from 11 during 1994‒1999 to 531 during 2015 to 2019 (Table 10.3). Qualitative Analysis of Legal Documents The retrieved legal documents from the China Law Information database were examined and a few key documents were identified and analyzed qualitatively to answer the research questions. The selection of the key documents was based on the following criteria: (1) relevance to regulating Internet and information services and the use of the Internet and social media for communication and information delivery, sharing and exchange; (2) importance of the issue addressed; (3) substantiality of the issue addressed; (4) hierarchy of the institution that issues the regulation. The selected key documents were issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, the State Council of China, and Cyberspace Administration of China. Other relevant legal documents were retrieved and consulted to provide additional information for policy and regulation analysis. The information in the key documents was extracted and carefully analyzed to answer research questions. The eight key documents selected are listed as follows: 1. Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services (2011 Revision) issued by the State Council of China. 2. Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Strengthening Information Protection on Networks (2012). 3. Measures for the Administration of Content Management Practitioners Working for Internet News Information Service Providers (2017) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China. 4. Provisions for the Administration of Internet News Information Services (2017) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China. 5. Provisions on the Administration of the Safety Assessment of New Technologies and Applications for Internet News Information Services (2017) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China. 6. Opinions on Promoting the Sound and Orderly Development of the Mobile Internet (2017) issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council of China.

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  189 7. Provisions on the Administration of Microblog Information Services (2018) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China. 8. Provisions on the Security Assessment for Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization (2018) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China, and the Instrumentalities of the State Council of China. Key Concerns of the Chinese Government The research question on the key concerns of the Chinese government was answered by identifying the key issues that the Chinese government focused on in regulating the information delivery and exchange in the digital world from the list of the legal documents retrieved and the content of the selected key documents. The following concerns of the Chinese government in controlling the information delivery and exchange through Internet and social media are identified: Service providers: these are professionals who are in the position to provide Internet and information services to the public. They are considered the gatekeepers of information delivered to the public both technologically and literally. The key document No 3. specifically addresses the issue of Internet News Information Service Providers. Four other key documents concern Internet Information Services. People in charge of Internet information services are noticed in most of the key documents in the following two aspects: (1) Credential of service providers. Service providers include the managers of the Internet services and communication platforms, and the professionals who produce, approve and distribute news information to the public. The managers of Internet service are required to register to ensure that qualified people operate the Internet information services. The professionals in charge of news reporting and editing, publishing, content review and approval and other content management are also registered with specified professional qualifications, and their credit profiles on file. A blacklist of professionals who violated the rules is maintained by the local authorities to scrutinize professionals periodically and when hiring for the Internet information services. (2) Safety insurance of the service and content through joint liability. The information service providers are required to monitor the users of the information services to keep information content that users produce, share and exchange within the government guidelines. Service providers are also alert on technology security to make sure that technology for information distribution is always under control, and protective measures, backup means and facilities, ready at all times to restore normal operation, are attended. Internet and social media users: compared to the Internet service providers, the government is more concerned about the users for several reasons. (1) The number of Internet and social media users is huge, now over a billion in China, a daunting task to manage; (2) The purpose of use varies by computer application, communication channel, communication party involved and expected result; (3) Pattern of use differs by device, software, platform, location, frequency and user profile; (4) Diverse background of users in political stance, involvement in social issues and embedded interest from social changes. To identify the Internet and social media users who distribute and exchange information, and deal with the users varied in ideology and political stance are the most challenging task for the government which wants to control how information is accessed by and shared and exchanged among the users. At least three of the key documents address the common task in dealing with the challenges in controlling Internet and

190  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China social media users, and identity validation through: (1) registration for service with true identity and (2) recording identity information when information distribution and exchange occur. The Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Strengthening Information Protection on Networks (2012) stipulates that Internet service providers should require users to provide true identity information when completing the procedures of network enrollment such as broadband connection, landline and mobile phone services, or enabling the service of information distribution through the network. Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services (2011 Revision) issued by the State Council of China specifies that the Information Service provider should record the information of the users who publish on the Internet, the content published, time of publishing, and URL or domain name connected for publishing; Broadband service providers should record time, account, URL or domain name when users connect to the Internet. Provisions on the Administration of Microblog Information Services (2018) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China requires that microblog information service providers should establish a system to manage microblog users by the type of microblog, content theme, fan number, and credit score. Such management systems should be kept on record by national and provincial cyberspace administration. Provisions on the Security Assessment for Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization (2018) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China and the State Council of China also stresses the importance of identity validation in the use of Internet and social media for information distribution. Internet and social media content: the content on the Internet and social media can affect people’s perception, attitude and behavior and possibly stir up social movement. Therefore, content is what concerns the government the most and the actual object that the government spends a great deal of resources to regulate. The rules and regulations set the framework to control the Internet and media content in the following aspects: (1) Guideline for content evaluation. Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services (2011 Revision) stipulates that Internet information service providers are prohibited to produce, copy, distribute and spread nine types of content including: (i) Opposing the basic principles stipulated in the constitution; (ii) Threatening state security, revealing the state’s confidential information, subverting state power, or devastating national unity; (iii) Infracting the state dignity and interest; (iv) Inciting ethnic hatred, racial discrimination, or undermining interethnic unity; and (v) Spreading rumors, disturbing social order, or disrupting social stability. Internet information service providers who find any information disseminated through their websites falls into one of the nine types, should stop the dissemination immediately and report to the administrative authorities. (2) Guideline for content orientation. Opinions on Promoting the Sound and Orderly Development of the Mobile Internet (2017) issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council of China specifies that mobile Internet should align with the Party’s guideline and serve the purpose of strengthening cohesion and consensus and gaining people’s support. Based on the regulations on content evaluation and orientation, the surveillance on the content is maintained at all times. Stipulations on the Internet Information Content Ecology Administration issued by Cyberspace Administration of China (2019) and implemented on March 1, 2020 symbolizes stricter control over the Internet information content. It reaffirms that the Internet content ecology administration needs to be strengthened, and the content produced and distributed on the Internet should align with the guiding principles of the socialist thoughts with the Chinese characteristics and the core values of socialism. The punishments for the content that violates

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  191 the stipulations are reemphasized. The stipulations also highlight the responsibilities of the Internet service providers in establishing the mechanism for controlling the Internet content ecology with specific measures on user administration, content checking and approving, follow-up posts examination, real-time content patrol, emergency handling and the Internet content ecology administration. Function of Internet information service and media platform: Internet information service and social media enable ordinary people to publish online and distribute information to a large audience. While the content produced for online and social media distribution is monitored by the information service providers and online media professionals, and checked by the content producers themselves, there are occasions that the information violating the guidelines and stipulations still passes through the gate and is published on the Internet and social media. Such information could produce unwanted consequences against the government’s directives. The government is especially concerned with Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization. Provisions on the Administration of Microblog Information Services (2018) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China restricts the function of news reporting and social mobilization of the Internet information services such as microblogs. Provisions on the Security Assessment for Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization (2018) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China, and the Instrumentalities of the State Council of China stipulates that when Internet information service providers start the service with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization or add such a function should have a security assessment, and the Internet service providers are responsible for the result. The security assessment refers to the level of risk to be evaluated on the characteristics of public opinions or capable of social mobilization of the new technology and the applications and the security risk they may produce. The assessment also covers the system of information security management and the measures of technology support. The Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization include online forum, blog, microblog, chatting room, communication group, public account, short video, online live broadcast, information sharing and small applications. The conditions that security assessment is mandatory also include: (1) the application of new technology changes the function of the service, technology implementation, resource allocation so that the characteristics of public opinions or capable of social mobilization change significantly; (2) Increase of the scale of users that leads to a substantial change of the characteristics of public opinions or capable of social mobilization. Opinions on Promoting the Sound and Orderly Development of the Mobile Internet (2017) Issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council of China also emphasizes the importance of risk prevention, early warning, and network security responsibility systems. Changes in Rules and Regulations The changes in rules and regulations adapted to the new communication context, communication patterns, and the Internet information services that allow media users to produce and distribute information online are reflected in two aspects: (1) establishing new rules and regulations along with the growth of the Internet and social media and according to the new functions that the new media offer; (2) amending the existing rules and regulations to adapt to

192  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China the new situation brought by the changes in Internet information services and the use of new applications in news information dissemination. New rules and regulation establishment. Starting from 1994, a total of 12,583 legal documents with the keyword Information have been issued. Two major areas that the legal documents were associated with were Internet and Network. The legal documents include laws, administrative regulations, judicial explanations, departmental rules, and organizational and industry rules. The rules and regulations were normally established immediately after the new Internet information services started. For example, Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services (2000, and revised in 2011) was issued by the State Council of China after the Internet information services began to be adopted on a national scale. Regulations on the Administration of Business Premises of Internet Access Service was first issued by the State Council of China in 2002 when Internet access services were offered to the public in business premises, which allowed people without Internet access at home to use the Internet at Internet bars, business premises with computers equipped with Internet access for public use. When Internet news services became popular in the early 2000s, the State Council Information Office and Ministry of Information Industries issued Provisions for the Administration of Internet News Information Services in 2005. After mobile media emerged in China as a major communication platform for people to get and exchange information, Promoting the Sound and Orderly Development of the Mobile Internet was issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council of China in 2018. When the Internet and social media developed news functions with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization in the 2010s, Provisions on the Administration of Microblog Information Services (2018) was issued by Cyberspace Administration of China, and Provisions on the Security Assessment for Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization (2018) was issued by Cyberspace Administration of China, and the Instrumentalities of the State Council of China to contain the information with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization distributed through the Internet and social media. As the users of microblog and WeChat grew, Provisions on the Administration of Internet User Public Account Information Services (2017) and Provisions on the Administration of Microblog Information Services (2018) were issued by Cyberspace Administration of China to regulate the activities on microblog and public account information services based on WeChat, the popular instant messenger application. Update of existing rules and regulations. The revision of the existing rules and regulations reflects how the government policies and regulations adapt to the changing media landscape and communication patterns of the Internet and social media users. To analyze the update of the existing regulation, Provisions for the Administration of Internet News Information Services issued by Cyberspace Administration of China in 2005, and its revised revision issued in 2017 were selected. During the 12 years, the Internet news information services grew exponentially, from news websites of the traditional media to news portals, and later blogs, microblogs and WeChat user public accounts. The revisions of the document are reviewed to examine how this government regulation was amended to meet the need for controlling information production and exchange on the Internet and social media due to the new technology

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  193 development and the new functions that the Internet information services offered. Comparing the two versions, the following changes are identified: 1. New media platforms added for regulation. New media platforms are required to apply for Internet news information services, including microblogs, WeChat and user public accounts. News refers to reports of and comments on social and public affairs concerning politics, the economy, military, and foreign affairs and reports of and comments on any breaking social event. For any new media platform, news dissemination is prohibited unless the platform receives approval from the authorities beforehand. News dissemination includes news reporting and redistributing news from other media outlets. 2. Qualification for applying for the Internet news information services. Only news organizations and their subordinates are allowed to apply for the Internet news information services. News organizations in China are all state-owned and have news licenses. No non-state-owned organizations and joint ventures are allowed to apply for the Internet news information services. Any joint ventures involved in the Internet news information services need to go through security evaluation by the Cyberspace Administration of China and get special approval for the Internet news information services. 3. Criteria for Internet news information providers. To apply for the Internet news information services, the service provider needs to satisfy several criteria: (1) a Chinese citizen as the editor-in-chief; (2) a comprehensive service program; (3) a sound information safety management system and technological protective measures; (4) qualified news editing and reviewing professionals; (5) premises, facilities and capital for the services. 4. Content management. The Internet news information services providers should establish a sound information safety management system with protective measures, including checking and approval, real-time inspection, and emergency disposal. Any information distributed and transmitted that was found violating laws and regulations should be blocked and removed immediately, and the record of disposal be reported to the authority in charge. 5. Real-name registration for using the Internet news information service. The service providers should sign an agreement with anyone who registers to use the Internet news information services on the responsibilities and obligations. All users must register in real names. 6. User public account on record. User public account is a new form of information distribution. A user public account can publish on a specific topic like an online media platform and distribute information to thousands of WeChat users who subscribe to the user public account. While a user public account is able to distribute information to the public, it is not allowed to publish or redistribute news of current affairs. The Internet news service providers should review the opening of user public accounts which provide news services to the public, and submit a record to be kept at provincial cyberspace administration. 7. Surveillance and warning system enhancement. The Internet news information service providers should establish a sound surveillance and warning system against activities and information published not in line with the laws and regulations and should accept and process such reports on time. The national and local cyberspace administrations also accept and process such reports from the public. 8. Information sharing for Internet information management. The provisions emphasize information sharing and department collaboration for effective Internet information

194  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China management. It requires that the Cyberspace Administration of China, together with the departments of the State Council of China in charge of telecommunication, public security and news publication and broadcasting, establish a mechanism of information sharing to ensure communication and collaboration between the departments, online activity and information surveillance and inspection, and effective management of the Internet information services. Policy and Regulation Implementation The policies and regulations regarding the Internet and social media use, the Internet news information services, and information production, sharing and exchange of Internet and social media users were implemented in four aspects: (1) issuing directives to guide the practice; (2) specifying responsibilities of institutions, organizations and firms on different levels; (3) regulating activities of the Internet and social media users; and (4) monitoring and manipulating media content in real time. Directive issuance. The laws and regulations issued were implemented with the help of directives, which are the guidelines on how to implement the laws and regulations, and the explanations on the specific procedures and cases. The directives were issued by different departments of the government, organizations, institutions and industries. For example, among the legal documents retrieved with the keyword “information,” 69 documents were issued by the Supreme Court of China as the judicial explanations. These explanations provide direction on how to handle specific issues and cases that a law or regulation covers. Directives were also issued by the departments of the State Council of China as departmental rules corresponding to the regulations issued. More directives were released by organizations, institutions and industries as the guidelines to implement laws and regulations in specific fields. For example, 1,045 industry rules were issued, of which a number of rules were directives that govern the activities in designated sectors. Responsibility specification. The rules and regulations specify the responsibility of the Internet information services and news information services providers. They need to utilize all means to ensure the safety and security of the services and the activities occurring within their domain. Such responsibilities include: (1) real-name registration of all users; (2) recording all activities of the users using the services and the related information; (3) monitoring the information dissemination and exchange originated from the domain; (4) taking action immediately if anything not in line with the rules and regulations occurs; (5) reporting to the authorities of any events related to information safety and security. All information distribution and exchange are originated from an information service provider. With the service providers working as the gatekeepers and real-time monitoring and on-time reporting, the majority of the information-related events are under control with fewer resources spent by the government. Activity regulation. The Internet and social media users utilize the Internet information services to engage in online communication, including distributing, sharing and exchanging information with other users. The regulations stipulate that no one is allowed to disseminate news of current affairs except those media organizations with a news license. The regulations specify that no organizations or individuals are allowed to use the Internet and social media to produce, reproduce, distribute, or transmit information against the interests of the state consisting of nine aspects. Any activities violating the regulations will be stopped immediately

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  195 and bear the consequences caused. The regulations pay special attention to news information and the Internet information services with the capacities of public opinion and social mobilization. From the perspective of the government, news of current affairs with a political and social nature could have unwanted negative effects on the political regime and social stability. The Internet information services providing applications with the functions of public opinion and social mobilization are put on security evaluation. Social media applications such as microblog, WeChat, and user public accounts are put on constant watch for ongoing activities. Content surveillance. Keeping a close eye on content at all times is the actual step to control information on the Internet and social media in China. Software filtering systems block any information deemed harmful by the government that could be identified by keywords. The list of keywords is used in real-time surveillance systems to check and identify harmful or unsuitable information produced and distributed by the Internet and social media users. Such information will be blocked or removed immediately if found, and the information senders could be punished, and their account be closed immediately without notice. Depending on the level of offense, the information senders could be prosecuted with a criminal charge if the information disseminated falls into the nine categories specified by the Administrative Measures for Internet Information Services (2000 and 2011 revision). Because users of the Internet information services are registered in their real names, and the content uploaded to the Internet and social media is watched and recorded in real time, the harmful and unsuitable information and the producers could be identified immediately, and actions to take to remove the information and prosecute the information senders could be done effectively with no delay. Digital Communication in Order With the implementation of the policies and regulations regarding the Internet and social media use, news information services, information production, distribution and exchange, the security concerns have been reduced. While new media platforms offer more alternatives for the Internet and social media users to express their views and disseminate and exchange information with a large number of other media users, the Chinese government could manage to regain order in the digital world by controlling information dissemination and the communication activities online. The order established for digital communication is reflected through the following aspects: Strict boundary for an Internet news services. Based on Provisions for the Administration of Internet News Information Services issued by Cyberspace Administration of China in 2005, and revised in 2017, only news organizations with a news license can publish news on the Internet and social media. All other organizations and individuals are prohibited from publishing news, especially news of current affairs. The regulation has been executed strictly since 2005. With the growth of the Internet and social media, people get news more often from the Internet and social media than from the traditional media and their websites. Baidu News and Tencent News, the two most popular Internet news portals, carry front-page news from the mainstream media and update their news feeds frequently. However, these popular Internet news portals do not have news licenses. While they publish news of all kinds daily and possess a readership larger than any mainstream news organization, they are not allowed to cover and publish news of current affairs. All news published on these portals is furnished by the licensed news organizations. A more recent development of the Internet and social media is Headline Today with over 200 million users. While it sounds

196  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China like an Internet news information service, it is a news portal to deliver filtered news to readers who specify their interests. Headline Today without news license only transmits news from news organizations to its readers. Because of the large number of users of news portals, the government pays close attention to their operation of news service, and they cannot cross the line of providing their own news. Besides carrying news of current affairs from the official news organizations, the news portals devote more resources to offer entertainment to avoid political risks. For example, Headline Today set up sections for users to upload their pictures and videos of an entertainment nature. From time to time, some Internet service providers crossed the line of news service and were punished with penalties of various degrees. Curiosity Daily is one of such cases. In summer 2018, the Cyberspace Administration of Shanghai received a report of an illegal Internet news information service by an online business called “Curiosity Daily.” While the website focused on introducing modern arts and the latest fashion, it opened a news column by publishing articles on current affairs from international media. It also formed its own crew for news gathering. Curiosity Daily was operated by a commercial company and was not qualified to apply for approval for an Internet news information service. Curiosity Daily was blocked for its online content, microblog and WeChat public account and asked for rectification for one month. Its application was also removed from app stores. Rigorous containment of content. Three key regulations on Internet information services (2011), Internet news information services (2017), and microblog information services (2018) make specific rules for content on the Internet and social media. In addition to stipulations on the content that are prohibited on the Internet, special measures are taken to contain the content on the Internet and social media. The regulated results include: (1) No content can be found on certain topics because of the use of the filtering system. Two routes are used to block certain content. One is the surveillance system of the information service providers, such as Weibo on sina.com. Anything violating the rules will be blocked before it can be posted. For those messages already posted, if violation is reported, removal is immediate. The other is search engine filtering. People often try to get information starting from a search engine. Baidu, the monopolized search engine in China is the only place to go. Even if the information is available on the Web, if a keyword on the blacklist is identified from the content, the information will be blocked, and the search returns no result. (2) No content can be delivered to the Internet and social media if the content triggers an alert of the filtering system. On Weibo, the Chinese microblog, the content to be posted will go through a check before it can be published. On WeChat, the content may not be transferred to other users if it contains certain words, even though the message is not politically offensive. (3) No offensive users are allowed to continue posting messages. When a user is found to be offensive for several times, his/her account will be closed without notice. Such control over offensive content is extended to WeChat user groups. When offensive messages are found from the content of a user group, the group account will be closed without notice. When something of social significance occurs, discussions on the Internet forums and social media often trigger an alert from the surveillance system, and closure of the topics on Weibo or user group accounts on WeChat follow. For example, U.S.–China trade friction is not a topic for discussion on public forums on the Internet and social media. A Baidu search will return no results of public discussion of the issues. WeChat will close a user group account if U.S.–China trade friction becomes a main topic for discussion, and articles with substantial content on the topic are circulated in the user group account.

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  197 Restriction on group communication. The Internet and social media allow group communication. On Weibo, the Chinese microblog, one microblogger could possess over 10 million fans. Therefore, messages from one microblogger can reach 10 million or more Internet and social media users, far exceeding what most of the traditional media can do. The capacity of delivering messages to millions of people becomes a severe concern of the government, as specified in Provisions on the Security Assessment for Internet Information Services with Characteristics of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization (2018) issued by Cyberspace Administration of China, and the Instrumentalities of the State Council of China. The microbloggers who have a large number of fans are considered in a position to affect public opinions and capable of social mobilization. Those microbloggers with a number of fans exceeding a certain number are on the watch list of the information service providers as well as the government. Some of them have been advised for what they are supposed to say on microblog to avoid problems. The other platform that the government pays attention to is WeChat group account. A limit set for a WeChat group account is 500 users. Only those who register with real names are allowed to establish a WeChat group account and be invited into a group account. The restriction is due to the concern of group communication that may stir up social unrest and start a panic. The COVID-19 epidemic started from Wuhan, China is a notable case of the control of information distribution through WeChat. Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, posted a message on December 30, 2019 in a WeChat group of fellow colleagues graduated from Wuhan University Medical Unit, warning that seven cases that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), later acknowledged as COVID-19, were confirmed, and raising the alarm about a possible outbreak of the disease around the central Chinese city of Wuhan. He also emphasized not to spread the message. The message was eventually shared publicly, and Dr. Li Wenliang was admonished by the police according to the Law of Punishments in Public Order and Security Administration of PRC for “making false comments on the Internet” that severely disturbed public order. The information on the epidemic was held back by the authorities until the cases similar to SARS burst out exponentially in Wuhan and other parts of China after a few weeks and eventually became a public health emergency of international concern declared by the World Health Organization on January 31, 2020. The widespread transmission of the coronavirus across China and other parts of the world could have been contained had the initial message by Dr. Li Wenliang not been suppressed, and had the public in Wuhan been warned earlier. In addition to WeChat group account, WeChat public group accounts receive more attention from the government. While there is no limit on the number of users who subscribe to a WeChat public group account, there is a limit on how many messages a public group account can send to its subscribers per day. In November 2018, Tencent, the service provider of WeChat, announced that the number of WeChat public group accounts that an individual can register was reduced from 2 to 1, and the number of WeChat public group accounts that a company can register was reduced from 5 to 2. When reaching a certain number of subscribers, a WeChat public group account, as with the microblogger accounts, falls into a category to be more closely watched. All the regulations regarding social media set restrictions on group communication to avoid the function of public opinion and social mobilization of the social media platforms that allow one user to reach millions of people simultaneously. Taming Big Vs. There was once a time when Big Vs were active on the Internet and social media, especially on Weibo, the Chinese microblog. Big V refers to VIPs on the Internet and

198  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China social media with a large number of followers on microblogs, a public forum or other popular public communication platforms, and their opinions could exert influence on people’s views and behaviors in certain areas. Xue Manzi was one of such Big Vs before August 2013. Xue was considered a successful investor in several areas and a symbol of the civil voice in the virtual world. His Weibo at Sina.com published comments on extensive topics and many of the comments concerned current affairs and public interests. At one time, his followers exceeded 12 million. In August 2013, Xue was arrested for whoring. Xue has been silent on commenting on current affairs ever since, occasionally updating his Weibo with trivia. The Weibo accounts of a few other Big Vs were also closed for different reasons or no reason. Xue and a few other Big V cases gave warning to other activists who have a number of followers on Weibo and publish comments on current affairs regularly. Not only the Big Vs active in commenting on current affairs, but also the Big Vs based on their star status in entertainment became cautious in publishing microblog messages. The movie star Yao Chen, once having over 20 million followers, refrained her voice from issues of a political nature, and focused only on issues concerning public good. After Xue Manzi’s case, no microbloggers try to accumulate a large member of followers and continue distributing messages of a political nature on Weibo or other public forums. Attainment in Internet Information Service Management The need for information control comes from government concerns on the Internet information service and the media technology that give the Internet and social media users the ability to get information from the Internet and the capacity to publish, distribute and exchange information on the Internet and social media. What worries the government more is the number of Internet and social media users in China that grow to reach an unprecedented level, and the technology that continues to give the users the power of accessing information on the Internet and distributing information to millions of users worldwide. The Chinese government initiates and continues to update the policies and regulations to contain the growing power of the Internet and social media users on information access and distribution. With the policies and regulations on the Internet information services and communication activities on the Internet and social media, the Chinese government managed to attain a certain level of information control on the Internet and social media in the following aspects: 1. Information service providers work diligently with the government to control online activities in their domains. Internet information service providers monitor the activities all the time to ensure nothing goes out of the guidelines of the government. They also attend to the equipment carefully to ensure the proper use of the technology and the facilities. Companies and institutions in charge of any communication platforms bear special responsibility for the information safety of their domain. 2. Media users registered with real names have no place to hide and bear all responsibility for anything they say or do in the online world. Users may choose to be anonymous to other users, but they are transparent to the governing authorities. Those who violate the regulations are punished immediately ranging from account closing to criminal charge. 3. Media content is monitored both technically and humanly. A database of keywords will automatically filter out the content that is identified as inappropriate or harmful and keep the content away from the Internet and social media accessible inside the “Great Firewall

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  199 of China.” In addition, people at various positions in the Internet service companies work diligently for the same purpose, identifying and removing the inappropriate content that cannot be identified by the filtering system. 4. The Internet and social media with the characteristics of public opinion and capable of social mobilization is under the closest surveillance from the government and the related departments. The Internet communication platforms, whether public forums, microblogs or WeChat public group accounts that could gather a large number of people are all on such list. With the surveillance of public sentiment by research centers all over the country, those platforms that are not on the watch list can draw surveillance attention immediately when a crowd of people gather, and the discussions of some political topics become heated.

DISCUSSION This study examined policies and regulations regarding the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media since 1994 issued by the National People’s Congress, the State Council of China and its departments, and the organizations and industries. The findings show to what degree the policies and regulations were implemented effectively, and how the Chinese government managed to control the Internet information services and information production, sharing and dissemination through the Internet and social media with the rules and regulations adapted to the changing media landscape. The results provide a comprehensive understanding of policy and regulation issuance and implementation and the attainment of the administrative goals with regard to control over the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media in the Chinese context of growing and changing media platforms and increasingly diversified and sophisticated media users. The quantitative analysis provides an overall picture of how the rules and regulations regarding the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media were initiated, who were responsible for implementing the regulations, and which areas received the most regulatory attention. From the summary of the rules and regulations issued during 1994‒2019, it is clear that the departments of the State Council of China played a most active role by issuing the largest number of department rules in dealing with the issues that arose from the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media for information distribution and exchange. The rules and regulations were established to meet the challenges brought by the Internet and social media users growing at an exponential rate and the communication channel tremendously expanded due to the technology advancement. Industries followed the departments of the State Council of China closely in issuing rules because smooth operation of business relies on a stable environment defined and maintained by rules and regulations. Social media, as a popular communication channel that attracted millions of users, received more attention than other channels due to its social impact and the function of public opinion and social mobilization. Public opinion also becomes a key area of the government concern because the Internet and social media are able to stir up social sentiment and form public opinion that could significantly affect social stability. The findings suggest that the areas that move the fastest receive the most attention for regulations, and the higher the social impact of a media channel, the more need to surveil and regulate.

200  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China The summary of the rules and regulations also shows the trend and pace of regulation issuance during the 25 years. In the early years of the Internet, the number of rules and regulations issuance regarding the Internet information service was relatively low. The number of rules and regulations grew quickly and increase three times every five years. The trend and pace of regulation issuance reflect two things in the process of establishing policies and regulations in an emerging area: 1. Gradual understanding of the issues arisen. The Internet and the information services based on the Internet were a new phenomenon that needed careful observation and a clear understanding before new rules could be initiated and applied to maintain an order of digital communication. The issues and problems emerged as more people used the new media. It took time for the government and the relevant departments to identify issues and find measures to solve them. Along the process, the Chinese governments set up various departments to handle the issues regarding the Internet information services and online and social media activities. These departments issued rules and regulations to solve problems within their own domains. The order of digital communication was gradually established as more policies and regulations were issued and updated to effectively manage problems as they emerged. 2. Negotiation and deliberation. According to the theory of institutional change, the process of establishing rules and regulations goes through negotiations of all actors involved. To establish rules and regulations for a new area like the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media, negotiations and deliberations will take place among the relevant social actors who have a stake in the process. Any change in the rules governing business will generate different consequences for different sectors. While social order could be one of the key objectives in initiating rules and regulations on the Internet and social media, business interests could also be a competing factor in the process of establishing rules and regulations. As the Internet information services offer more options for people to do business online and the users engage in more diversified activities online, more political entities and business sectors are involved in consequent gains and losses. With negotiations and deliberations among the political and business leaders and their advocates, the departmental rules issued by the departments of the State Council of China and the industry rules both extensively cover business associated with the Internet and offer relatively balanced solutions for all parties involved if the issues are not concerning ideology and the political regime. The qualitative analysis provides answers to five research questions on different aspects of rules and regulations on the Internet information services and the Internet and social media use. These answers offer a clearer understanding of why the Chinese government initiated and enacted the rules and regulations to contain the information production, sharing and distribution on the Internet and social media, how the policies and regulations were implemented, and to what degree the Chinese government attained in information control on the Internet and social media. The answer on the key concerns of the Chinese government elaborates on the different aspects that caused the concerns and what kind of issues were associated with these concerns that needed rules and regulations. For the Internet information service providers, two things were the biggest concerns: First, whether the service providers were reliable politically and professionally. Politically refers to whether the service providers align with the government in

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  201 ideology. Professionally means if the people working in the services are qualified to be gatekeepers of the media content. Second, whether the service providers were reliable on network safety to ensure that the Internet information services work in the way that the department demanded. For the Internet and social media users, the biggest concern was the identification of who they are and what they do on the Internet and social media. The registration with the Internet information services with real names and accurate recording of what they do online were the key solutions. The content on the Internet and social media was the actual target that the government wanted to control. Rules were set to specify what types of content were prohibited. To establish rules and regulations was not enough, the mechanism to monitor the content and block and remove the inappropriate content were on the highest priority in regulating the online and social media content. In addition to the concerns on the above three tangible objects, one more concern was the nature of the Internet and social media with the characteristics of public opinion or capable of social mobilization. This concern arose in recent years after the government saw that the information on the Internet and social media could agitate social sentiment, change the direction of public opinion and even stir up social movement. With the increasing number of mass events and the capacity of the Internet and social media reaching the broadest public, the concern of the function of public opinion or social mobilization has been made a priority of regulating the Internet and social media. The Chinese government gives more attention to the issues associated with this media function and rules and regulations have been issued to deal with the issues arisen due to the media function. As the Internet and social media users become more sophisticated with the help of technology and the threat of social mobilization becomes imminent, the Chinese government devotes more resources to solve issues regarding media function that may produce media content eroding the dominant ideology and political regime than filtering and blocking media content. The answer to the changes in rules and regulations confirms the theory of institutional change. First, it is a process of high level decision making. The key changes in rules and regulations were made by the top administrative departments such as the departments of the State Council of China and the Cyberspace Administration of China. Second, the issuance of the rules and regulations involved negotiations among relevant stakeholders. For example, Internet service providers were included in several key legal documents on the Internet news information services and the use of the Internet and social media. The Internet information service providers were asked to be responsible for several aspects of information control and network security. The Internet information service providers had to cooperate with the Chinese government based on some contract terms if they want to do business in the sector. Third, the changes stemmed from adaptation. The changes in the key rules and regulations reflect governing authorities’ adaptation to the expansion of the Internet and social media communication channels, the growth of the number of users, and the shifting pattern of digital communication. New institutionalism (March and Olsen 1983) on government specifies that high level decision makers lead in most of the key institutional changes. Government forms the environments, and does not adapt to it. In the case of policy and regulation changes regarding the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media, the government needs to take account of the rapid changes in the field and change the rules and regulations to adapt to the environment. For example, as the Internet and social media expand, more content needs to be put under surveillance. How to define the scope will be reflected in the updated rules to govern the online activities concerning information distribution. As new functions

202  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China were developed for information production, sharing and distribution, new rules should follow to achieve the goal of information control and network safety. The answer to how the policies and regulations were implemented explains the role that different institutions play in the process of controlling information on the Internet and social media. The top-level administrative departments issue directives with the general rules that cover all areas of Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media. The subunit issues the rules that guide the practices in special sectors. The finding also clarifies the specific tasks in implementing the rules and regulations. For each task, there is a clear target to work on. For example, responsibility specification needs the efforts and devotion of the Internet information service providers. They bear the responsibility to ensure user real-name registration, monitor and record the whole process of the use of the Internet and social media, and take action immediately if anything goes wrong. The activity regulation sets a clear boundary for operation of news services, that is, which organization is eligible to publish news, and what kind of news needs to be closely watched. For the surveillance of the Internet information services with the capacities of public opinion and social mobilization, microblogs, WeChat, and user public accounts are on the watch list for ongoing activities concerning news information of current affairs. The answer to the question on the established order in digital communication provides an overview on the attainment of the tasks in implementing rules and regulations to govern the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media. With the newly established and updated regulations, no corners of Internet and social media communication are left out for containment. News has a clear boundary and no organization or business entities can cross the line. With the ever-enhancing measures to control the content on the Internet and social media, and the information to be distributed and exchanged, it becomes very effective to monitor and take action to deal with any inappropriate content immediately. Two practices of control are worth noting from the established order of digital communication. One is the restriction of group communication, which can reduce the political risks of forming unfavorable public opinion and unwanted social mobilization. Technology enables people to have group communication through various platforms and applications. Rules and regulations follow to effectively contain such group activities. The other is taming Big Vs. The rise of Big Vs was a phenomenon that could surpass the influence of the traditional mainstream media. Big Vs were taken as a symbol of the civil voice at some stage of digital communication development. The information delivered by the Big Vs could significantly affect social sentiment and increase political risks. Most Big Vs were not tamed by specific rules and regulations, but by measures out of the judicial scope. The result indicates that the order of digital communication in China could be attained by both legal rules and regulations and non-legal measures. The answer to the attainment in Internet information service management provides an overall picture on the results of information control by the Chinese government through implementing the rules and regulations on the growing power of the Internet and social media users on information access and distribution. While the attainment of information control is evident, the complete control of information access and distribution is impractical. The content on the Internet and social media is cleared with the information filtering system and the manual monitoring at all times. But thousands of Internet and social media users cross over the “Great Firewall” to access information beyond the controlled domain by the Chinese government. They establish accounts on Facebook and participate in discussions on all kinds of forums. They also bring back the information they obtain from the outside world to the walled zone and

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  203 advocate the ideas they discover from the marketplace of ideas. To counterstrike the information filtering system, the Internet and social media users utilize a variety of strategies to deliver information without being blocked or removed immediately, for example, to use homophones or decomposed characters to express the ideas that could be blocked. After one public group account is closed, another account opens with a different name to continue the discussion of the same topics. The Chinese government and the departments in charge of the Internet information services and the use of Internet and social media learn from the observation, and issue new rules and regulations to contain the unwanted online activities. The restriction on the use of virtual private networks (VPN) was on the list of new rules to prevent the Internet and social media users from accessing the information outside the “Great Firewall.” The rule leads to the removal of VPN applications from the app stores and the termination of VPN services for the ordinary Internet and social media users in China. As Hu Xijin, the editor-in-Chief of Global Times, a subsidiary of People’s Daily, the party organ, and a tabloid covering international issues and events in line with the government directives, said it is not a secret that those who want to access information outside the “Great Firewall” can find their way to do so. It is noteworthy to observe an historical event that occurred in China on WeChat on March 10, 2020 when China was still in the COVID-19 epidemic. An interview published by People (人物) magazine titled “The Person Who Gives out the Whistle” was deleted immediately by the authorities after it appeared on the Internet and social media. The story was a recount of Ai Fen, a doctor and the Director of the Emergency Department of Wuhan Central Hospital, who spotted SARS-like symptoms of a patient from a virus test report on December 30, 2019 and passed the report to a fellow colleague. The report was quickly circulated among doctors in Wuhan, and Dr. Li Wenliang, known as a whistle blower, was punished for redistributing the message. Dr. Ai Fen was rebuked by the hospital disciplinary committee for releasing the information, and had to keep silent about the epidemic as she witnessed the tremendous sufferings of patients and their families who were infected by COVID-19. The Internet and social media users were enraged by the deletion of the story and created over 80 versions of the story in various languages, codes and scripts for re-posting to keep the story alive in the virtual world. Of the 80 versions, there is one version in block chain, which no one will ever be able to delete.

CONCLUSION Ruling public information access on the Internet and social media in the Chinese context is not an easy task. After issuing a number of laws and key rules and regulations on the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media, the Chinese government managed to control information production, distribution and exchange on the Internet and social media to a degree in line with the boundary they set. The Internet information service providers work hard to cooperate with the government to monitor and contain the information within their domain; the Internet and social media users have to register in real names to use the online and social media channels; the online activities are closely watched before they go beyond what the government allows; and WeChat user groups, especially those groups of large size with the characteristics of public opinion or capable of social mobilization, are under close surveillance to eliminate political risk and the threat to the political regime.

204  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Policies and regulations issued since the Internet information services debut play an essential role in ruling online and social media in China in the digital age. These policies and regulations have their positive effects in establishing order in the digital communication and ensure the information safety of both public institutions and individual users. In many aspects, they have been successful in governing organizational and civil activities in the digital world. They also set limits for the public to access the information they want to get and express their views on important issues of social significance and public interests. Some argue that political and social stability are more important than information access from and free expression on the Internet and social media. Others note that information is a precious asset for people living in the digital age, and the development of society cannot do without a marketplace of ideas and the exchange of information and debate on issues critical to all citizens of society. How the rules and regulations of the Internet information services and the use of the Internet and social media can facilitate information exchange, promote social advancement and avoid the negative effects brought by technology in the Chinese context need more observation and exploration on the establishment, implementation, adaptation and updating of the rules and regulations according to the ever-changing media landscape to achieve their expected goals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author would like to thank Yimu Zhang for his assistance in collecting data for completing the chapter.

REFERENCES Anonymous (2018) “Forbidden Feeds: Government Controls on Social Media in China.” Pen America, March 13. https://​pen​.org/​research​-resources/​forbidden​-feeds/​. Date accessed: June 16, 2020. Brunsson, Nils and Johan P. Olsen (1997) The Reforming Organization. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press. Cheung, Anne S.Y. (2006) “The Business of Governance: China’s Legislation on Content Regulation in Cyberspace.” International Law and Politic 38(1), 1‒38. Chin, Yik Chan (2018) “The Legitimation of Media Regulation in China.” Chinese Political Science Review 3(2), 172‒194. CNNIC (2020) The 45th China Statistical Report on Internet Development. Beijing: China Internet Network Information Center. http://​www​.cnnic​.net​.cn/​h​l​w​f​z​y​j/​h​l​w​x​z​b​g/​h​l​w​t​j​b​g/​2​0​2​0​0​4/​t​2​0​2​0​0​4​2​8​ _7​0​9​7​4​.htm. Date accessed: June 17, 2020. Cuffe, James (2019) Media in China. London: Routledge. Deibert, Ron and Rafal Rohozinski (2010) “Cyber Wars.” Index on Censorship 39, 79‒90. Endeshaw, Assafa (2004) “Internet Regulation in China: The Never-Ending Cat and Mouse Game.” Information & Communications Technology Law 13(1), 41‒57. Fei, Shen, Ning Wang, Guo Zhongshi, and Guo Liang (2009) “Online Network Size, Efficacy, and Opinion Expression: Assessing the Impacts of Internet Use in China.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 21(4), 451‒476. Feintuck, Mike (1999) Media Regulation, Public Interest, and the Law. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Feir, Scott E. (1997) “Regulations Restricting Internet Access: Attempted Repair of Rupture in China’s Great Wall Restraining the Free Exchange of Ideas.” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 6(2), 361‒389. Feng, Guangchao Charles and Steve Zhongshi Guo (2013) “Tracing the Route of China’s Internet Censorship.” Telematics and Informatics 30(4), 335‒345.

Ruling online and social media in China in the digital age  205 Gomez, James (2004) “Dumbing Down Democracy: Trends in Internet Regulation, Surveillance and Control in Asia.” Pacific Journalism Review 10(2), 130‒150. Harwit, Eric and Duncan Clark (2001) “Shaping the Internet in China.” Asian Survey 41(3), 377‒408. Hearns-Branaman, Jesse (2009) “A Political Economy of News Media in the People’s Republic of China.” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 6(2), 119–143. Hunt, Katie and C.Y. Xu (2013) “China Employs 2 Million to Police Internet.” CNN World, https://​edition​ .cnn​.com/​2013/​10/​07/​world/​asia/​china​-internet​-monitors/​index​.html. Date accessed: June 16, 2020. Johnson, Thomas, Barbara Kaye, Shannon Bichard, and Joann Wong (2007) “Every Blog Has Its Day.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1), 100‒122. King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts (2013) “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review 107(2), 326‒343. Lacharite, Jason (2002) “Electronic Decentralisation in China: A Critical Analysis of Internet Filtering Policies in the People’s Republic of China.” Australian Journal of Political Science 37(2), 333‒346. Li, Xiaoyu and Alice Robbin (2013) “How China Regulates Online Content.” IADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet 11(3), 35‒45. Libecap, Gary (1989) Contracting for Property Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacKinnon, Rebecca (2011) “China’s ‘Networked Authoritarianism’.” Journal of Democracy 22(2), 32‒46. March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen (1983) “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life.” American Political Science Review 78(3), 734‒749. McQuail, Denis (2007) “Regulation of Media.” In: George Ritzer (ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. London: Blackwell, 2911‒2916. Minteh, B.S. (2008) “Internet Censorship and Economic Growth in China.” Global Vision Institute. http://​www​.globalvisioninstitute​.org/​uploads/​2/​3/​2/​5/​2325547/​internet​_censorship​_and​_economic​ _growth​_in​_china​-b​_minteh​.pdf. Date accessed: August 30, 2019. North, Douglass C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Qiu, J. Linchuan (1999) “Virtual Censorship in China: Keeping the Gate Between the Cyberspaces.” International Journal of Communications Law and Policy 4, 1‒25. Ruttan, Vernon W. (2006) Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? New York: Oxford University Press. Shambaugh, David (2007) “China’s Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficacy.” China Journal 57, 25‒58. Shih, Hui Min (2020) “Social Media in China.” In: L. Zhao and D. Qi (eds.) Chinese Society in the Xi Jinping Era. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 43‒75. Sohmen, Philip (2001) “Taming the Dragon: China’s Efforts to Regulate the Internet.” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 1(1), 17‒26. Sun, Helen (2010) Internet Policy in China. Lanham: Lexington Books. Tai, Zixue (2006) The Internet in China. New York: Routledge. Wen, Yunchao (2010) “The Art of Censorship.” Index on Censorship 39(1), 53‒57. Xiao, Qiang (2011) “The Battle for the Chinese Internet.” Journal of Democracy 22(2), 47‒61. Yang, Guobin (2009) The Power of the Internet in China. New York: Columbia University Press. Zhang, Xiaoling and Yongnian Zheng (2009) China’s Information and Communications Technology Revolution. London: Routledge. Zittrain, J. and B. Edelman (2003) Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China. Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center for Internet & Society. https://​cyber​.harvard​.edu/​filtering/​ china/​. Date accessed: June 16, 2020.

11. Authoritarian transparency: a comparative survey on open government information regulations in China Fen Lin

On April 24, 2007, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) published the Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information (政府信息公开条例, OGI, “The Regulation”). Since the OGI regulation went into effect on May 1, 2008, it has become one of the most important legal documents defining authoritarian transparency as well as one of the most frequent legal citations in China’s courts. The popularity of OGI in courts has sparked heated debates among scholars about the paradox of authoritarian transparency in China. Is the Regulation a promise of a window into the government decision-making or merely a strategic window-dressing? With the tightening censorship of information, could the Regulation help improve the quality of governance without the risk of overthrowing the regime? This apparent paradox compels us to search for a solid understanding of OGI legislation, its implementation and impacts in China. This chapter aims to offer a review of China’s OGI in three comparative aspects, and then suggests further research directions on authoritarian transparency. First, it outlines the history of OGI regulations in China and compares China’s OGI legislation with the trajectory of the global diffusion of Freedom of Information (FOI) Laws. Second, with a specific focus on China’s OGI, this chapter synthesizes the existing studies on Freedom of Information laws across nations and highlights three research themes: (1) innovation by studying the diffusion of OGI legislation; (2) responsiveness by examining implementation of OGI regulations; and (3) accountability by evaluating the impacts of OGI regulation. Third, this chapter discusses research challenges and opportunities in studying China’s OGI regulations and authoritarian information regime.

OPEN GOVERNMENT INFORMATION LEGISLATION IN CHINA On January 17, 2007, China’s 165th State Council executive meeting passed the Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information (政府信息公开条例, OGI, “The Regulation”). Three months later, the OGI regulation was published and then became effective on May 1, 2008. This was the first time the PRC state adopted a regulation on government information disclosure. Before the Regulation took effect, citizens rarely had nation-wide legal bases to request the information from the governments, or to litigate against a government when their requests for information were denied. Domestically, it took China nearly two decades to legislate OGI after many trials on releasing government information throughout the country (Horsley 2007). The OGI legislation makes China a crucial part of the third wave of global diffusion of Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. 206

Authoritarian transparency  207

THE GLOBAL CONTEXT OF CHINA’S OGI LEGISLATION The progress of China’s OGI legislation is embedded in the global context. There have been three waves of Freedom of Information legislation worldwide, and China’s OGI legislation is a crucial part of the third wave of FOI diffusion. The first wave occurred in the Scandinavian countries where the roots of freedom of information can be traced back to the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment (Manninen 2006). Throughout much of the last century, governments in most liberal democracies have operated under a broad mantle of secrecy. The early decades of the century were, in many cases, marked by the build-up of statutory provisions intended to restrict the flow of government information. Only towards the late 1940s did more and more democratic countries start to adopt FOI laws, also known as right-to-information laws, which provided individuals in positions of authority with the right to obtain copies of governmental documents and in principle support transparency and information flow (Roberts 2003). In 1949, Sweden passed a new version of FOI law, which was followed by Finland in 1951 (Banisar 2006). However, from then to the mid-1980s, only a handful of developed countries, mostly OECD countries, adopted FOI laws. The second wave ranged from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. This was an era when there was an upsurge in the establishment and dissemination of FOI laws in most European democratic countries, such as Italy (1990), the Netherlands (1991), and Belgium (1994). This was also a period when countries that were newly transformed into democratic regimes began to pass FOI legislation, including the Czech Republic (1999), Slovakia (2000), Poland (2001) and other countries in Central Europe. From the late 2000s, the global spread of freedom of information laws entered the third wave. This is the period when the FOI legislation has spread to many developing countries and non-democratic regimes with a long history of restricting citizens’ access to government information (Dimitrov 2013; Michener 2011, 2015; Miller 2015; Xiao 2012). Many of these countries adopted actionable FOI regulations rather than laws, such as China (2007), Nigeria (2011), Tunisia (2011), and Rwanda (2013). By 2018, 119 countries and regions had national-level right-to-information laws or regulations. The third wave differs from the previous two waves in many aspects, ranging from the mechanisms of FOI legislation to the implementation and impacts of FOI laws. Thus, the third wave of diffusion has invited further nuanced studies on FOI laws and triggered many comparative studies across nations.

THE EVOLUTION OF OGI REGULATIONS IN CHINA The PRC’s efforts to disclose government information date back to the late 1980s, as shown in Table 11.1, starting with the openness in government affairs (OGA) in villages. The practice of OGA in China was first initiated by a project dealing with Openness in Two Areas and Supervision by the Public (OTASP) that commenced in the late 1980s. The OTASP was extended to OGA at the village level when the Notice on Comprehensively Implementing Openness in Village Affairs and Democratic Management was issued in 1988. In the early 1990s, facing challenges brought by the market economy and an increase in information, the state council began an informatization project. In 1998, the then Ministry of Information of Technology and Telecommunications was established to design a regulative and effective government information management system, and to guide the populace

2004

2004

2004

2003

2000

1998

1998

1998

Notice of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on

1994

5-Nov-94

5-Nov-94

14-Oct-98

6-Nov-02

(上海市政府信息公开规定)

Provisions of Shanghai Municipality on Opening Government Information

(关于贯彻落实全面推进依法行政实施纲要的实施意见)

Comprehensive Implementation of Administration by Law

Opinions on Implementing the Outline of the Implementation of the

(关于印发全面推进依法行政实施纲要的通知)

Administration in Accordance with Law

20-Jan-04

22-Mar-04

Notice on Printing and Distributing the Outline of the Implementation of the 22-Mar-04

(广州市政府信息公开规定)

Provisions of Guangzhou City on Opening Governmental Information

(关于在全国乡镇政权机关全面推行政务公开制度的通知)

1-May-04

22-Mar-04

22-Mar-04

1-Jan-03

Shanghai Government

State Council

State Council

Guangzhou Government

of the State Council

Central Office of the CCP & Office

Government Throughout the Country

People’s Congress 6-Dec-00

Notice on the Promotion of Opening Administrative Affairs in the Township 6-Dec-00

Standing Committee of the National

CCP Central Committee

of the State Council

Central Office of the CCP & Office

Central Committee of the CCP

Institution

(中华人民共和国村民委员会组织法)

4-Nov-88

14-Oct-98

18-Apr-98

Effective

Promulgated

18-Apr-98

Date

Date

Organic Law of the Villagers Committees of the People’s Republic of China 4-Nov-88

(关于农业和农村工作若干重大问题的决定)

Several Major Issues Concerning Agriculture and Rural Work

Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on

(关于在农村普遍实行村务公开和民主管理制度的通知)

Democratic Management System in Rural Areas

Notice on Widespread Implementation of Opening Village Affairs and

(关于加强农村基层组织建设的通知)

Strengthening the Construction of Rural Grassroots Organizations

Regulation/Policy

OGI key regulations in China

Year

Table 11.1

208  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

2016

2015

2014

2014

2011

2008

2007/2008

2005

Notice on Printing and Distributing the Outline for the Implementation of

2005

3-Jan-05

3-Jan-05

17-Mar-14

29-Jul-11

29-Apr-08

5-Apr-07

(关于印发2016年政务公开工作要点的通知)

in 2016

Notice on Issuing the Key Points in the Opening Government Affairs Work

(关于印发2015年政府信息公开工作要点的通知)

Work in 2015

Notice on Issuing the Key Points in the Opening Government Information

(关于加强和规范政府信息公开情况统计报送工作的通知)

Opening Government Information

2-Apr-16

3-Apr-15

2-Apr-16

3-Apr-15

23-Jun-14

17-Mar-14

13-Aug-11

29-Apr-08

1-May-08

24-Mar-05

Effective

Promulgated

24-Mar-05

Date

Date

Notice on Strengthening and Regulating the Work of Statistical Reporting of 23-Jun-14

(关于印发2014年政府信息公开工作要点的通知)

Work in 2014

Notice on Issuing the Key Points in the Opening Government Information

(最高人民法院关于审理政府信息公开行政案件若干问题的规定)

Trial of Administrative Cases about Opening Government Information

Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues concerning the

(关于施行《中华人民共和国政府信息公开条例》若干问题的意见)

Information Regulation of the People's Republic of China

Opinions on Some Issues about Implementing the Opening Government

(中华人民共和国政府信息公开条例)

China

Opening Government Information Regulation of the People’s Republic of

(关于进一步推行政务公开的意见)

Opinion on Further Enforcing Opening Government Administration

施纲要》的通知)

(关于印发《建立健全教育、制度、监督并重的惩治和预防腐败体系实

Education, Rule and Supervision

the System of Punishing and Preventing Corruption with Equal Stress on

Regulation/Policy

Year

Office of the State Council

Office of the State Council

Office of the State Council

Office of the State Council

Supreme People’s Court

Office of the State Council

State Council

of the State Council

Central Office of the CCP & Office

CCP Central Committee

Institution

Authoritarian transparency  209

(关于印发2019年政务公开工作要点的通知)

in 2019

Notice on Issuing the Key Points in the Opening Government Affairs Work

(中华人民共和国政府信息公开条例 (2019修订))

China (2019 Revision)

Opening Government Information Regulation of the People’s Republic of

(关于印发2018年政务公开工作要点的通知)

in 2018

Notice on Issuing the Key Points in the Opening Government Affairs Work

(关于推进社会公益事业建设领域政府信息公开的意见)

Welfare Construction Field

Opinions on Advancing Opening Government Information in the Public

(关于推进公共资源配置领域政府信息公开的意见)

Resource Allocation Field

Opinions on Advancing Opening Government Information in the Public

(关于推进重大建设项目批准和实施领域政府信息公开的意见)

Approval and Implementation of Major Construction Projects

Opinions on Advancing Opening Government Information in the Field of

(关于印发2017年政务公开工作要点的通知)

Source: PKU law database.

2019

2019

2018

2018

2017

2017

Notice on Issuing the Key Points in the Opening Government Affairs Work

2017

in 2017

Regulation/Policy

Year 9-Mar-17

9-Mar-17

17-Apr-19

3-Apr-19

8-Apr-18

9-Feb-18

19-Dec-17

17-Apr-19

15-May-19

8-Apr-18

9-Feb-18

19-Dec-17

4-Dec-17

Effective

Promulgated

4-Dec-17

Date

Date

Office of the State Council

State Council

Office of the State Council

Office of the State Council

Office of the State Council

Office of the State Council

Office of the State Council

Institution

210  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Authoritarian transparency  211 to use government information. In 2000, the PRC central government issued the Notice on Promoting Openness in Government Affairs around All Government Agencies at the Township Level to officially endorse and standardize OGA at the township level. This set the foundation for OGA at a high level (Xiao 2012). The World Trade Organization (WTO) gave a final push for China to release its information. China spent 15 years preparing to join the WTO, which requires legal and administrative transparency from applicant countries. In order to join the WTO, the PRC central government had a strong incentive to fulfill the WTO requirements, at least superficially. Provinces and municipalities that had a high proportion of foreign direct investments and international trade, such as Guangdong and Shanghai, became the first to pass legislation on the disclosure of government information (周汉华 2000). In total, 13 provinces issued their own versions of OGI regulations before the national OGI became effective in 2008. At the central level, inter-department interests and power struggles to gain control of information have triggered multiple rounds of debate. The State Council Information Office (SCIO) commissioned the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to draft OGI regulations and the first draft was submitted to the State Council Legislative Affairs Office (SCLAO). The draft went nowhere until Premier Wen Jiabao committed to establishing a disclosure system for citizens to exercise their rights to know. Then, the State Council listed the OGI regulation as a priority in its legislative plan. The SCLAO joined the SCIO to revise the drafts which eventually evolved into the Regulation that was passed in 2007 and took effect on May 1, 2008. From then on, the Regulation has become a top-down transparent inquiry mechanism to rein in local government officials. Late-comer provinces gradually passed their own local versions. As of 2019, 22 provinces, four municipalities directly under central government administration, and five autonomous regions promulgated the OGI regulation. Some provinces designed their own local versions of OGI regulations by following the general guidelines of the national regulation; others copied the national regulation verbatim. Ten years after the OGI regulation came into effect, the government published a revised version. The 2019 revision broadens the scope of releasing government information. For example, Article 5 embraces the principle of “openness as the norm and non-disclosure as an exception (以公开为常态, 不公开为例外).” Article 20 adds items into the list of government information that the administrative agencies should voluntarily disclose. The 2019 revision reduces the requirements for releasing government information upon application by removing the prerequisites to accessing government information in Article 13. The revision makes it more convenient for the public to access government information by promoting internet-based platforms and integrating government information platforms and government service platforms.

EXISTING STUDIES ON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAWS As noted, the existing studies on FOI laws center around three sets of themes: (1) innovation by studying the diffusion or adoption of FOI legislation; (2) responsiveness by examining the implementation of FOI laws/regulations; and (3) accountability by evaluating the effectiveness and impacts of impacts of FOI laws/regulations. This section discusses research findings

212  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China on global FOI laws, and then highlights the findings on the three sets of research on China’s OGI regulations. On Innovation: Diffusion of Freedom of Information Laws The rapid spread of an innovation, such as FOI laws, around the globe in a short period of time has been perceived as a “bandwagon effect” (Ikenberry 1990; Horsley 2008), a “ripple effect” (Bennett 1997), or “norm-cascades” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Such effects have invited heated scholarly discussions on the prerequisites and mechanisms that contribute to the diffusion of FOI laws across countries in a short period of time. This line of study is closely connected to the “diffusion analysis” (for example, Rogers 1962; Walker 1969) that dates back to the 1960s. In recent years, due to a more integrated world economy, rapid development in communication technology, the global trend of democratization and modernization, and the mounting influence of supra-national institutions such as the European Union, diffusion scholars have been emphasizing the effects of coercion, competition, learning and emulation in shaping the policy diffusion (Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett 2006). In the case of FOI laws, some studies focus on individual adoption countries’ intrinsic characteristics, and others on the external economic and communication networks of adoption countries with the world (Banisar 2006; McClean 2010; Perritt and Rustad 2000). Based on the tradition of comparative politics research, the intrinsic approach often highlights the unique domestic features of adoption countries as prerequisites of adoption. An individual state seeks to adopt new ideas, practices and innovations that are developed outside their jurisdictions to address domestic problems. A given state’s intrinsic characteristics, such as its political regime, local power relations, economic development, citizens’ and political participation, social imbalances and the local population’s familiarity with laws are frequently regarded as important factors shaping the adoption of many legal and policy innovations (Bennett 1997; Berkowitz, Pistor, and Richard 2003; Berry and Berry 1999; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Eyestone 1977). In the case of FOI legislation, a fundamental commitment to democracy has been regarded as a necessary but not sufficient condition to legislate FOI laws (Bennett 1997). Countries with longer histories of uninterrupted democratic rules tend to embrace these legal innovations earlier since they are obligated to protect citizens’ rights to access information and have the capacity to tolerate the uncertainties that may be yielded by information transparency (Bennett 1997; Mendel 2008). For example, the diffusion of FOI laws among OECD countries has revealed that countries with a higher level of political competition adopted FOI laws earlier than those with a lower level of political competition (Lin 2006). Sam Archibald, staff director of the United States Special Subcommittee on Government Information from 1955 to 1966, attributed the development of FOI legislation in the United States to competition engendered by partisan politics (Archibald 1993). In many democratic regimes, FOI reforms are often used as an election issue (Terrill 1998). A political commitment to democracy as a prerequisite has echoed with the global trends of democracy and modernization. The adoption of FOI laws in Eastern European countries was closely associated with the fundamental transitions in their political regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Grigorescu 2003). However, the surge of modern FOI laws since the start of the new millennium (Allen 2009; Darch and Underwood 2005; Xiao 2010) has shown that idiosyncratic domestic factors are not independently responsible for the FOI adoption in most developing and non-democratic coun-

Authoritarian transparency  213 tries. Nor does the modernization process have the same effects on different states (Bennett 1997). Therefore, many scholars have investigated the impacts of an adoption country’s external connections on the FOI legislation. The external perspective emphasizes how an adoption decision is shaped by the adopter’s interactions with others in the system (Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett 2006) more than by their intrinsic characteristics. These interactions can range from international economic competition, to trade connections, and to global normative pressure. Some empirical studies have shown strong positive effects on trade exchanges following the adoption of FOI legislation among OECD countries (Lin 2006). The penetrative effect of economic connections on FOI diffusion also echoes with the fact that the accelerated diffusion of FOI legislation among Eastern European countries came along with their greater economic integration with FOI communities in Western European countries (Grigorescu 2003). In addition, the global community imposes a shared and legitimate norm on countries, pushing them to adopt certain practices to confirm with these norms (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Grigorescu 2002; Powell and DiMaggio 1991). Halliday and Osinsky (2006, 452) claimed that “As world civilization evolves, diverse societies adopt increasingly uniform legal norms, standards and institutional scripts.” This normative pressure has had penetrative impacts on the non-adopters of FOI legislation among OECD countries. In Europe, the passage of an EU directive in June 1990 on free access to environmental information (Directive 90/313/EEC), which was the earliest regulation granting general but sector-specific information, changed the global policy environment on this issue (Tews, Busch, and Jörgens 2003). The 1992 Rio Declaration (Principle 10) and the 1998 Aarhus Convention further recognized access to information as a part of human rights and required each signatory state to take legal measures to implement its provisions on access to environmental information (Mendel 2008). In addition, numerous conferences, colloquia, books, articles and other channels have created a “Freedom of Information Movement” to nurture the global normative pressure on FOI legislation. In China, the decision to allow public access to government information combines both economic and normative concerns. China’s eagerness to join the WTO and attract foreign investments were the key motivators for the state to pass OGI legislation. Fulfilling the WTO’s normative requirements, OGI legislation exercises a symbolic function – sending foreign investors a message that markets in China are safe, sustainable and reliable under the rule of law (Xiao 2012; 刘恒 2004; 周汉华 2003). On Responsiveness: Implementation of Freedom of Information Laws A second set of research on FOI has focused on the implementation and usage of FOI in different countries. Based on international and comparative data, Neuman and Calland (2007) outlined a framework to study the implementation of FOI laws worldwide. Their framework includes four dimensions: the drafting of the law; the politics of implementation; governmental system building, and the demand for information (Neuman and Calland 2007). Studies on law-drafting compare features of the laws or regulations (Ackerman and Sandoval-Ballesteros 2006; Mendel 2008; Roberts 2005, 2010; Vleugels 2009). With the changes to the information environment, where the new information technology has assisted the easier and more frequent information flow, FOI laws have shifted from the “FOI 1.0” model which focuses on the reactive disclosure to the “FOI 2.0” model that emphasizes proactive disclosure (Snell 2008). However, Xiao (2010) claimed that China’s model grew out of

214  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China its local conditions that include the changing information environment and new public administration reform programs. Horsley (2006) discussed local OGI regulations in China’s three most dynamic cities: Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chongqing, even before the country’s national OGI regulation came into effect. Despite aiming for more proactive disclosure, China’s OGI regulation implementation is still seriously undermined by factors such as a limited access mechanism, broad and vague exemptions and the omission of the maximum disclosure principle (Xiao 2012). Xiao (2010) thus argued that, unlike the “pull model,” a model that stresses citizen-initiated access to information, which was popular in the first two waves of FOI global diffusion in other countries, China adopts “a push model” that emphasizes proactive disclosure and takes access requests as a last resort (Kubicek 2004; Paterson 2005). Studies that focus on the demand side analyze specific groups’ use of FOI laws, including individuals, journalists, campaign groups, businesses, and so on (Hazell, Worthy, and Glover 2010; Lamble 2003; Ricketson and Snell 2002; Spence 2010; Waters 1999). For example, an analysis of the “non-routine” FOI requests in the United Kingdom in 2008 showed that among a total of 34,950 requests, 82 percent of them received a response within 20 days; 60 percent of requests were granted in full; the average request fee was £67, and fees were levied for 2 percent of the requests – 98 percent of these related to National Archives records; and 6,715 requests received over the year were refused in full or in part (Birkinshaw 2010). A comparative analysis of news articles’ information sources showed a much higher percentage of Swedish reporters use FOI laws than that of Australian journalists (Lidberg and McHoul 2003). Lidberg (2009) created an International Freedom of Information Index based on the practices of five countries – Sweden, the United States, and Australia (mature FOI countries), and South Africa and Thailand (FOI newcomers). Given lack of empirical data on information-access applications in China, there are few empirical studies on the specific groups’ usage of OGI. Most Chinese journalists either lack awareness of OGI regulations, or do not trust the effectiveness of the Regulation. As a result, far fewer Chinese media and journalists have applied for disclosure in China than their counterparts in the United States (黄建友 2017). Taking the politics of implementation and governmental system building into consideration, the implementation of OGI regulations in China is likely to encounter more complicated power struggles than other administrative regulations, given that the authoritarian regime has a long history of controlling and manipulating information that could be exposed to the public. Even the understanding of “open information” is likely to vary among individual political leaders according to their age, education, and work experience. The implementation of OGI, similar to other policy implementation in China, would vary by internal power dynamics among political and legislative leaders, both at the local and central levels (Li 2013; O’Brien 1988; O’Brien and Li 1999; Shih, Aldoph, and Liu 2012). Piotrowski et al. (2009, S134) conducted a survey on mid- and upper-level Chinese government bureaucrats and concluded that “while the components of the model manifest themselves uniquely, the Chinese experience is similar in some ways to the experiences other nations have faced when trying to implement new freedom of information regimes.” The survey suggested practical measures to improve the implementation of OGI including “training of government officials on the regulations and the associated technology, streamlining of government systems that encourage officials to release government information, and strengthening of government’s efforts in publicizing the OGI regulations to ordinary citizens” (Piotrowski et al. 2009, S134).

Authoritarian transparency  215 On Accountability: Impacts of Freedom of Information Laws The rapid spread of FOI invites growing interest in measuring and evaluating the impacts and effectiveness of FOI legislation. Impact studies evaluate to what extent FOI legislation and implementation can improve the quality of governance, such as reducing corruption, advancing political accountability, improving press freedom and so on. These studies include in-depth analysis on a specific country and comparative studies across nations. They offer evidence ranging from national statistics, questionnaire surveys, in-depth interviews with stakeholders, to legal documents to specific FOI application cases (Birkinshaw 2010; Grigorescu 2002, 2003; Hazell, Worthy, and Glover 2010; Michener 2011; Nam 2012; Relly and Sabharwal 2009; Stiglitz 2002; Tavares 2007; Vadlamannati and Cooray 2017; White 2007; Worthy 2010). However, these studies offer an ambiguous picture on the performance of FOI laws. Some studies argue that both the direct effects of FOI laws upon individual requesters and the indirect effects on the greater public are quite compelling. For instance, eight years after the Freedom of Information law was passed in the United Kingdom, the 2008‒2009 annual report of the Office of Information Commissioners reported an increasing public knowledge of policies and public confidence in the government (Birkinshaw 2010). The Open Society Justice Initiative conducted a study in 2004 to analyze 1,900 coordinated and standardized test requests in 14 countries and found that requests yielded information more often in countries with FOI laws than in those without (Darbishire and Carson 2006). Using panel data for 132 countries between 1990 and 2011, Vadlamannati and Cooray (2017) found that, after controlling for self-selection bias, adopting FOI laws was associated with an increase in perceived government corruption due to an increase in detection of corrupt acts. But this perception declined over time following FOI law adoption. Other studies are more cautious on the validity of measurements of impacts (Horsley 2008) and argue that the global expectations of FOI laws might be too ambitious (Worthy 2010). Technical, legal and bureaucratic dilemmas “are threatening to consign these laws to the irrelevant status of window dressing – good-looking from a distance, perhaps, but ill-suited to any useful end and even dysfunctional in practice” (Michener 2011, 146). Many comparative studies present a contingency story: the effectiveness of FOI on the quality of governance is issue-dependent and context-dependent. When assessing the achievements of FOI laws in the United Kingdom, studies show that the laws increased transparency and accountability, but had little effect on improving government decision-making and increasing public trust. FOI laws in the UK have been helpful in political campaigns but have had little effect on the public understanding of the government’s decision-making (Hazell, Worthy, and Glover 2010; Worthy 2010). In brief, the study found that the claims of the benefits of FOI were over-exaggerated. In addition, the performance of FOI laws is dependent on individual nations’ political and economic prerequisites. By analyzing the cross-sectional data at the national level of aggregate indicators across 191 countries in 2010, Nam (2012) found that the impacts of FOI laws on press freedom is mostly limited to less corrupt, advanced industrial democracies; while newly adopted FOI legislation is no more than a legislative luxury in some countries. In examining whether enacting FOI legislation reduces corruption in democratic countries, Tavares (2007) found that countries which adopted FOI laws saw an increase in reported corruption in the first

216  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China five years after the legislation was passed. However, this impact of FOI laws was salient in countries with plurality systems but not in those with parliamentary systems. In other words, FOI laws are more influential in countries that have longer histories of stable democracies; while they simply do not work in some other nations – this phenomenon has been described as the “FOI incompatibility rationale” (Tromp 2008). Moreover, a strong authoritarian regime coupled with a weak civil society may allow FOI laws to be misused to legalize censorship and suppress freedom of speech, as in the case of Zimbabwe (Banisar 2006; Tromp 2008). These contingencies invite debates on whether OGI legislation is merely window-dressing in China. Right after the passing of the OGI regulation, some scholars held optimistic views on the effects of the Regulation. They regarded it as a milestone in the “legal construction of administrative openness” (莫玉川/林鸿潮 2008, 113), a law to protect journalists and independent journalism (李良荣/张春华 2008), and a significant step in China’s transparency reform (姬亚平/张萍 2013; 李学 2011). However, others later have cast doubt on the impacts of the OGI regulation and litigation. They have observed that the government selectively provides information responding to the direct demands from citizens under the OGI regulation (Chen and Xu 2017). They argue that such seemingly democratic measures do not “signal a fundamental shift towards liberal democracy, nor necessarily entail a reduction in state power” (Lorentzen, Landry, and Yasuda 2014, 182). Instead, the Regulation is more likely to be used as a strategy for the PRC central government to rein in local governments (Lorentzen, Landry, and Yasuda 2014), to seek a balance between improving the quality of governance and maintaining the stability of the regime (Charron and Lapuente 2011; Nathan 2003; Oi 2003), and to control Chinese citizens and maintain power (Chen and Xu 2017).

FUTURE STUDIES ON CHINA’S OGI REGULATIONS As one of the most important legal documents shaping the authoritarian transparency governance, the OGI regulation and its impacts offer insights into understanding the mechanisms of authoritarian governance. It offers empirical evidence for the ongoing debates on the authoritarian durability (Magaloni and Kricheli 2010). The newly available data, growing institutions and evolving dynamics in China’s information governance have offered opportunities to enrich research on OGI’s diffusion, implementation and effectiveness. The growing OGI scholarship can benefit from engaged dialogues on authoritarianism in three aspects: authoritarian innovation, responsiveness and accountability. Authoritarian innovation research focuses on how new policies and laws are innovated and spread within an authoritarian system. Authoritarian responsiveness studies investigate how an authoritarian regime keeps a balance between opening up social space for public discussion and participation in policy making, and avoiding revolutionary oppositions against the regime (Heurlin 2016; Oi 2003; Reilly 2012; Stockmann 2013; Weller 2008). And authoritarian accountability inquiry emphasizes how power-holders are restrained by various factors (Grant and Keohane 2005; Schedler 1999). In other words, OGI research offers a unique perspective to incorporate all three aspects of authoritarianism and to contribute a more nuanced understanding of authoritarian information governance. There can be three suggestions on the OGI research to engage in the above three dialogues.

Authoritarian transparency  217 First, more nuanced studies on province-based OGI legislation are needed. Most of the current studies analyze China as a whole. However, as mentioned in the first section, some provinces were enthusiastic on designing OGI regulations years before the central government’s imperative; while others have been reluctant to do so even after the national regulation became effective in 2008. Some provinces issued their own OGI regulations to fit their provincial needs, while others were simply relying on the national version. Variation in when and how a local government decides to adopt OGI legislation indicates the central–local dynamics and provincial politics in China’s governance. This line of research will contribute to a more nuanced conversation on the politics of legislative innovation in China. Unfortunately, the province-based analysis has not received enough attention to date. Second, the OGI research needs to shift from doctrine analysis to empirical analysis and search for reliable measurements for comparative studies. Responding to the debate on if OGI regulation is a genuine learning process or merely window-dressing, existing studies usually focus on direct or indirect measures of authoritarian responsiveness – how a government responds to the societal demands. Most existing studies of OGI regulation use information retrieved from official government websites (for example, 姬亚平/张萍 2013), and selective archives such as annual government reports on the disclosure of government information (for example, 傅荣校/吴琦 2014; 李学 2011). However, each province may adopt different standards in implementing the OGI regulations. Finding reliable measurements which allows the comparative study across provinces is a key task. Third, incorporating OGI litigations into analysis on authoritarian accountability. The story of authoritarianism will not be complete without taking accountability into account. However, most accountability studies focus on either vertical or horizontal accountability. The former describes how the less powerful, inferior social actors hold the powerful superior actors accountable, or vice versa (Schedler 1999), while the latter refers to the capacity of state institutions to check abuses by other public agencies and branches of government (Diamond, Plattner, and Schedler 1999). The direct measurement of accountability, especially on the enforcement aspect of the accountability, is rare. The OGI litigations where individual citizens and organizations sue governments in courts offer not only a direct measure of authoritarian accountability but also a window to investigate to what extent and how the governments can be held accountable. In fact, right after China passed the OGI regulation, a new wave of administrative litigation occurred with governments being sued to release classified information. Instances of administrative litigation jumped from 308 in 2008 to 17,174 in 2017. The Regulation has become one of the most popular legal citations in China’s courts. With the recent legal transparency reform, many courts have begun to release their adjudication decisions to the public. These documents form a systematic data source that reveals the logic behind court decisions and offers a lens to observe the effect of societal and political forces on the courts (He and Lin 2017; Liebman et al. 2017). Recent OGI studies have paid attention to the OGI litigation (for example, 董妍 2016; 何渊/张洁莹 2016; 赵正群/董妍 2009). With increasing computational power in social science/big data analysis and newly available litigation data, future studies will hopefully be able to move beyond describing a small number of litigation cases, and to systematically investigate what factors influence the results of lawsuits as well as the impacts of OGI litigation.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is grateful to Bo Wen, Xiaowei Zang and Hon S Chan for their comments, and thanks Qin Zhou, Yiming Wang and Emma Moore for their assistance. The work described in this paper was supported by General Research Fund from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU 11609219) and Strategic Research Grant from City University of Hong Kong (Project No. 7005205).

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12. Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments Alfred M. Wu and Fangzhi Ye

Urbanization in China and high-tech development in the United States were cited by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Ye and Wu 2014), the former chief economist at the World Bank, as the two most crucial forces shaping the development of the 21st century. After being an agrarian economy for several centuries, China has become an urbanized economy with the size of its urban population increasing from less than 20 percent of the total population in 1978 to 60 percent in 2018 (World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, PRC 2014). China’s land policy contributed substantially to this urbanization. Without land reform in China, urbanization would have been less effective in transforming its economy (Ye and Wu 2014). Land matters greatly in local public finance. Local governments around the world often have a wide array of assets on their balance sheets, among which land assets are frequently the most valuable (Peterson 2006, 2009). In a city where the government has great control over land, the sale or lease of publicly owned land to the private sector can raise a substantial amount of money for public projects (Wong 1991; 平新乔 2006). Moreover, using land as collateral for borrowing or as public contributions in public–private partnership (PPP) programs to construct subways, airports, or other large public capital projects are commonly adopted approaches for monetizing land assets around the world. In the development trajectory of Western countries, tapping into land values by selling or leasing land ownership or land use rights had been a large part of the investment strategy for financing urban infrastructure during the 20th century, or even earlier, at times when urban populations grew fast (Peterson 2009). Over the past several decades, in many developing countries where it was hard to receive large long-term loans for urban infrastructure, the revenue generated by land sales or leases seemed to be a good way to fund infrastructure development (Sagalyn 1992). For local governments in China, using land sales or leases for fiscal revenue has both merits and demerits. “[L]ocal governments often have more flexibility in managing their assets than they do in adjusting tax rates, introducing new taxes, increasing user fees or borrowing funds for investment—all of which may require higher-level governmental approval or be prohibited altogether by the intergovernmental fiscal framework” (Peterson and Annez 2007, 284). “When land finance substitutes for borrowing, it reduces the risk surrounding future debt repayment capacity and the need to generate future revenue streams to meet future debt service” (Peterson and Kaganova 2010, 7). From the perspective of intergovernmental fiscal relations, well-disposed land assets and the use of land proceeds in local capital budgets without incurring debt or requiring intergovernmental grants would win applause from higher-level governments and the general public as well. Nevertheless, dependence on land sales or leases for revenue generation may create a variety of problems and potential risks. It poses a threat to financial stability and sustainability at the local level. With a strong incentive to obtain increased land revenue by shoring up 222

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  223 the land market, local governments may create a property bubble. If the bubble bursts, it will, in turn, jeopardize local governments financially. The experiences of both developed and developing countries reveal that the sale and lease of publicly owned land assets have been an important financing tool for local governments around the world. Similar to their counterparts in other countries, Chinese local governments have relied heavily on land leasing revenue since the 1990s, but the magnitude of land finance in China overshadows any other countries in the world. This research analyzes the development trajectory of the land system and land finance, which may reveal the underlying mechanism and impetus for changes in land finance in China. This study explores the following two research questions: First, what major reforms of the land use rights system (LURs) have been carried out in China? Second, what are the implications of the evolution of China’s land management system for China and other developing countries? This study, mainly based on a comprehensive review and analysis of relevant documents, academic works, and historical data, aims to analyze the evolution of the land system in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after 1979. This study will focus on a discussion of the interaction between the state and the market concerning the reform of the LURs and will identify the significant milestones and underlying forces behind the development of the LURs during the past three decades. In the first section, a review of the evolution of China’s land system and the LURs reform will be presented in chronological order. This is followed in the second section by a discussion of the contributions and the risks brought about by the LURs reform and local government land finance activities. The last section concludes and presents policy implications.

THE EVOLUTION OF CHINA’S LAND SYSTEM AND LAND FINANCE The Chinese government gradually eliminated private ownership of land after the founding of the PRC in 1949. After a series of structural and institutional reforms, almost all of the rural land in the country was owned by rural collectives, and urban land by the state, when the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976. During this era, China’s land system featured strict state control over land distribution, land allocation free of charge by the state, and non-transferable land use rights (Xie et al. 2002; Zhang 1997). When China opened its door to embrace foreign investment, land became a bottleneck for the state to attract capital. The Chinese government, modeling itself on Hong Kong’s experience, has promoted a land tenure system with public ownership to deal with this issue (Zhang and Pearlman 2004; Zheng et al. 2019). Under this system, the land use rights in the urban area could be leased to non-state actors, including foreign companies, while rural land could be converted into urban land before the lease of its land use rights to land users. Since the first case of the paid conveyance of land use rights took place in Shenzhen (on the border with Hong Kong) and Guangdong Province in 1987, the land use rights system has experienced substantial institutional changes. In this process, market forces have taken on an increasingly important role in the institutional design of the LURs. The Chinese socialist state has also loosened its tight control over land use rights (Chan 1999; Yeh and Wu 1999). In 1990, the paid conveyance of land use rights became legalized across the country with the approval of the National People’s Congress (Tang 1989). It was not until 2002, more than one

224  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China decade later, that market-oriented land transaction modes became legal requirements for the paid conveyance of land use rights (Wang et al. 2011). In correspondence with these significant milestones, this study roughly divides the development trajectory of the LURs into three phases: 1979‒1990, 1991‒2002, and 2003–present.

THE FIRST STAGE OF THE LURS (1979‒1990) Economic liberalization began with the open-door policy of 1978 and resulted in a demand for land use reform. Since 1979, foreign and overseas Chinese capital has started to flow into China, pushing the Chinese government to re-examine and address the land use issue as state-owned land could not be used for foreign-invested factories (Ho and Lin 2003; Yeh and Wu 1996). On July 1, 1979, the National People’s Congress passed The Sino–Foreign Joint Ventures Enterprises Law (1979), which marked the start of the ‘free’ land use (无 偿使用) policy. In the same year, a real estate company owned by the Shenzhen Municipal Construction Commission, a government entity, signed a contract with a Hong Kong company, in which both parties agreed that the profits of a real estate project, whose land was provided by the Shenzhen Municipal Government, were to be proportionally shared by both parties (Tang 1989). This was the first case in which land was treated as a market commodity and a price for land use rights was charged on the transaction between the Chinese host and a foreign investor. More importantly, this case signified that land had its price, and should not be allocated to users for free. On July 26, 1980, the State Council (1980), the chief administrative authority of the Chinese government, promulgated the Tentative Regulations on Land use for Sino–Foreign Joint Enterprises, requiring all foreign enterprises to pay for land use rights (Zhang 1997). The regulations marked the beginning of the paid use of urban land in China. In the following years, a number of municipalities, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Dalian, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Chongqing, and Nanjing, promulgated their own regulations concerning how to charge fees for urban land use by China-foreign joint enterprises. In the period of 1980‒1987, experiments with charging land use fees were only carried out in the Pearl River Delta region, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Foshan (Dowall 1993; Yeh and Wu 1995), and were mostly limited to land use involving foreign investment. Furthermore, land leasing was still forbidden, and the land use fee was generally set at a level lower than the true land value (Zhang 1997). The Pilot Reform of the LURS in Shenzhen and Shanghai The reform of the LURs was piloted in two important cities in China, namely Shenzhen, next door to Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and then spread to the whole country. This was a fundamental step to establishing the LURs in China. When the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was founded in 1979, Chinese policy makers, such as Deng Xiaoping, pointed out that Shenzhen would function as a role model for other cities in the country during the reform era. Since its founding, the Shenzhen government had initiated a series of reforms in a variety of institutional and socioeconomic aspects, including urban planning, infrastructure construction, the labor market, the capital market, the information market, the foreign exchange market, and so forth. Due to the lack of a legalized open land market, however, land use rights could

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  225 not be traded in Shenzhen (柳臻 2008). Even without a legal land market, land transactions frequently occurred on the black market; but these transactions could not be fully monetized to generate revenue for urban infrastructure because there was no legal land market. By the end of 1986, the Shenzhen government had spent CNY 1.35 billion on infrastructure construction, of which CNY 670 million was bank loans with a total annual debt service (i.e., interest charge) of CNY 50 million. The Shenzhen government, however, had only generated CNY 38 million in total revenue via charging land use fees, which could not even cover the annual debt service (柳臻 2008). Thus, under a significant burden to finance urban infrastructure construction, the Shenzhen government attempted to explore institutional innovations to alleviate the financial burden. In the second half of 1987, the Shenzhen government attempted to separate urban land ownership and urban land use rights, and conveyed land use rights from the state to industrial and commercial users in the form of negotiations (协议), tenders (招标), and auctions (拍卖). On September 9, 1987, the Shenzhen government for the first time (also the first time nationally) conveyed the land use rights of a piece of land to a Shenzhen company at a price of CNY 200 (USD 24) per m2 in the form of negotiation. The tenure of the land use rights was 50 years. In the following several months, the Shenzhen government conveyed the land use rights in the form of tenders and auctions, to industrial and commercial users, respectively. On December 29, 1987, the Land Management Ordinance of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (1987) was promulgated and laid a legal foundation for the leasehold-based land use rights system in Shenzhen; the practice then immediately spread to other cities in the Pearl River Delta region (Zhang 1997). Although Shenzhen’s practice gained much media attention, Shanghai’s method of land use rights conveyance followed a more rigorous procedure. First, in 1987, the Shanghai Municipal Government promulgated a set of regulations coupled with six detailed implementation directives for land use rights conveyance. Later on, in 1988, the Shanghai Municipal Government asked tenders to bid for the land. As a result, three out of six tenders were from overseas, including the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong, which made the auctions competitive. Consequently, the Shanghai government collected more land conveyance fees than initially expected (Zhang 1997). A Nationwide Implementation of the LURs The LURs was promoted across the country after the successful pilot reforms in Shenzhen and Shanghai. A number of laws and the revision of the related chapters in the Constitution were made to facilitate the implementation of the LURs. In 1988, the First Session of the Seventh National People’s Congress of the PRC approved the practice of the paid conveyance of land use rights (土地有偿转让). It meant that the users of land could control and use the land in a certain period by paying the government a certain amount of money. Perhaps more significantly, the clause “the land use right can be transacted according to the law” was inserted in Article 10, Section 4 of The Constitution of the PRC (1988) (Deng and Huang 2004). This amendment to The Constitution of the PRC was endorsed by the National People’s Congress on April 12, 1988 (Tang 1989). Furthermore, on September 27, 1988, the State Council (1988) promulgated A Tentative Regulation of China’s Land use Tax in Cities and Towns, which granted permission to local governments to collect land use taxes and fees. In May 1990, the State Council permitted foreign capital to enter the real estate market in mainland China. In

226  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China June, the State Council (1990) promulgated A Tentative Regulation for China’s Urban Land Rights Conveyance and Transfer, in which the detailed provisions for land conveyance and transfers were articulated. More importantly, this regulation laid the foundation for the establishment of a land market, where the price mechanism could play a role in the process of land use rights conveyance and transfer. These milestone events in the late 1980s, and especially in 1990, opened up urban land markets and a new era for lawful land transactions nationwide in China (Dowall 1993).

THE SECOND STAGE OF THE LURS (1991‒2002) The years between 1991 and 2002 were a critical period for land management in China. Since the early 1990s, under the Chinese-style market economy, an urban land market has developed. The legal framework of the land market has been put in place gradually (Xie et al. 2002). Before discussing the new developments in the land use rights system in the period 1990‒2002, it is necessary to analyze the structure of China’s land market and the role of different actors in its development. The Structure of China’s Land Market and the Role of Different Actors In the existing literature, researchers prefer to divide the current land market into three sub-markets namely, the requisition of rural land, the conveyance of land use rights, and the transfer of paid land use rights (Yeh and Wu 1996) (Table 12.1). The Land-Ownership Market: The Requisition of Rural Land According to Article 2 of the Land Administration Law (1998), rural land, where property rights are collectively owned, could be requisitioned by the state “in the public interest,” whereby villagers who lose their land would be entitled to compensation. The land ownership would then move from being rural collective-owned to being state-owned after the requisition of rural land. The requisition of rural land could serve for administrative allocation or lease arrangement for commercial purposes. The procedure for the requisition of rural land for allocation purposes is as follows: On behalf of the state, local governments acquire rural land from rural collectives and convert it into urban land; local governments then grant the use rights of the requisitioned rural land to the intended users-work units (单位), such as government bodies, public schools, public hospitals, and state-owned enterprises. The holding period for land that has been requisitioned for administrative allocation is unlimited, which is a “freehold.” This requisition procedure existed during the pre-reform era. In requisition of rural land for leasing, the intended land users are industrial and commercial users rather than work units. Due to the monopoly power of the state in this process, the requisition of rural land is neither based on market price nor following market mechanisms. The compensation paid to land-lost villagers is usually lower in the first type than in the second type of requisition (Xie et al. 2002).

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  227 Table 12.1

Urban land markets in China

Transaction types

Land markets

Actors

Subjects of

Transaction prices

transaction I-1 Acquisition of rural

Land ownership market

Buyer: the state

land for administrative

Seller:

allocation

rural collectives

Land ownership

Requisition fee

Land ownership

Requisition fee

Land price

User: work unit I-2 Acquisition of rural land

Land ownership market

Buyer: the state Seller:

for leasing

rural collectives User: industrial and commercial users II-1 Conveyance of LURs by

Market of the

Buyer: land user

Land use rights

acquisition of rural land II-2

conveyance of LURs

Seller: the state

(LURs)

Conveyance of LURs by

Market of the

Buyer: land user

LURs

Land price

LURs

Payment to the state and

acquisition of urban land conveyance of LURs II-3

Seller: the state

Conveyance of LURs

Market of the

Buyer: new user

by marketing of

conveyance of LURs

Seller: the state

Market of the transfer

Buyer: land user

of LURs

Seller: land user

existing user

administratively allocated land III Transfer of paid LURs

Paid LURs

Land price

Source: Yeh and Wu (1996), 340.

Market for the Conveyance of Land Use Rights The major actors in the market for the conveyance of land use rights are the state and urban land users. As the only supplier of land use rights in this market, the government alone conveys land use rights to land users. In practice, local governments represent the state in the conveyance of land use rights and collect land conveyance fees. Specifically, the state-owned land available to the market for conveyance comes from three different sources. The first source is the rural land requisitioned from rural collectives in the aforementioned land-ownership market. The second source is existing urban land, which is taken back by local governments from the existing urban land users with compensation. The third source involves the commoditization of administratively allocated urban land. In this market, users hold the tenancy for a certain period of time. The longest period for land use rights is 70 years for residential land while the period of occupation is 50 years for industrial, educational, cultural, health, sports or mixed-use, and 40 years for commercial, entertaining and touristic use (Zhang 1997).

228  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Market for the Transfer, Sub-Lease and Mortgage of Land Use Rights According to the Land Administration Law (1998), land use rights purchased by industrial and commercial users may be transferred, sub-leased, or mortgaged. The main actors in this market have little to do with the government in theory; thus, it is beyond the discussion of this study. This study mainly focuses on the market for the conveyance of land use rights from which local governments have collected a colossal amount of land conveyance fees as their own-source revenue. It should be noted that the market for the transfer, sub-lease, and mortgage of land use rights has substantially heightened the property boom in China; some enterprises also utilize the land as guarantees for bank loans. These all together contribute to the land-related economy in China.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LAND MARKET From 1988 to 1992, China experienced a “rectification period” and went from having an overheated economy to experiencing an economic downturn (Brandt and Rawski 2008). Even though there was no land boom during that time, the scale of land transactions surpassed that of the late 1980s. Since 1992, inspired by Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour, reasserting his Open Door policy and economic reform, and the 14th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in which the establishment of a socialist market economy was made a national strategy, China entered into a new epoch of fast-track economic development. The land market, as one of the most important components in the Chinese economy, had started a round of high-speed development (Zhang 1997). In 1993, the total number of land conveyance cases reached 440,000 with a total turnover of CNY 123.1 billion (柳臻 2008). Land conveyance activities expanded nationwide, from the coastal to the interior regions. Land conveyance fees had become critical extra-budgetary revenue for local governments (Lin 2007). By the first half of 1994, all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China had implemented the LURs and collected land conveyance fees. For the sake of attracting investment to promote economic development and employment growth, local governments were eager to set up a variety of “development zones” or “economic zones.” Up until the end of 1992, more than 6,000 development zones were being launched across the country, gobbling up more than 1,600,000 hectares of agricultural land (Cartier 2001). The number of land conveyance cases and the total turnover from land conveyance fees had been on the increase from 1987 to 2001, even though it dropped somewhat from 1995 to 1999, according to China Land and Resource Almanac. Among the vast majority of land conveyance cases, to attract investment, local governments arbitrarily undervalued land prices, and even adopted the “zero-premium” strategy when conveying land use rights to investors (Cartier 2001; Chan 1999; Tao et al. 2010). The prices and areas of land involved were not subject to the mechanism of supply and demand, but were largely maneuvered by local governments. “Negotiation,” wherein local governments negotiated with the developers on land prices, was the most commonly used approach in the land conveyance transactions during that time period (Zhu 2005). Table 12.2 reveals the number and percentage of land conveyances based on negotiations in the total number of conveyances for city governments in China.

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  229 Table 12.2

Land conveyance cases by negotiation for municipal governments (No. & %)

Year

Average Number of Cases

Negotiated Transfer

Market-based Transfer

1999

290.3

249.7 (80.0%)

50.6 (20.0%)

2000

374.5

321.1 (85.7%)

53.4 (14.3%)

2001

519.2

442.8 (85.3%)

66.4 (14.7%)

2002

597.4

472.8 (79.1%)

124.6 (20.9%)

Source: Tao et al. (2010), 2228.

The rampant negotiation-based land transactions gave rise to various problems, including corruption, inefficient use of land, land hoarding, the engulfment of prime agricultural land, and so forth. From 1999 to 2000, there were more than 510,000 cases involving land law violations. To solve these problems, it was not until 2002 that the Ministry of Land and Resources promulgated the Provisions for the Conveyance of State-owned Land by Tender, Auction and Open Listing to put a stop to the commonly used negotiation-based conveyance of land use rights. It required that “land conveyance involving commercial, tourist, and residential uses of land must be traded in the form of tenders, auctions, and open listings.” Thus, the year 2002 marked another significant milestone in the development of the LURs. Since then, a market-oriented LURs has been legally established, even though in practice it has encountered strong resistance from local governments.

THE ALLOCATION OF LAND CONVEYANCE FEES The allocation of land conveyance fees among different levels of governments had been bargained for since the fledging stage of the LURs in the late 1980s, and moved toward fiscal decentralization as local governments had later gained more discretion to collect and dispose land conveyance fees (Peterson and Annez 2007; Zhang 1997). Originally, according to The Ordinance Concerning Strengthening the Management of the Paid Conveyance Revenue from State-owned Land Use Rights promulgated by the State Council (1989) in May 1989, the central government retained 40 percent of land conveyance fees. This split, however, incurred widespread indignation and discontent since local governments had to pay the high price of land consolidation, land development, residential demolition, and compensation to land-lost villagers before leasing the land to industrial and commercial users. Thus, to address local demands, the central government modified the ratio from 40:60 to 32:68, with the central government receiving 32 percent (张清勇 2008). However, this minor change did not encourage local governments to lease more land. Many local governments chose to hide the real number of land conveyance cases and the fees they collected to avoid remitting it to the central government. In 1992, the central government announced a compromise in the allocation of land conveyance fees, allowing its local agents to keep 95 percent of the land conveyance fees. The tax-sharing reform was launched by the central government in 1994. Afterwards, the bulk of tax-based revenue has been collected by the central government while local governments shoulder substantial responsibilities for providing basic public services such as education and health care to the general public (Wu 2012, 2019). In order to mitigate local governments’ fiscal budgetary deficits, the central authority has allowed local governments to retain the land conveyance fees (柳臻 2008; 张清勇 2008). The decentralized

230  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 12.3 Year

Price difference between land requisition and land conveyance fees Price of Land

Land Conveyance

Requisition (P1)

Fees (P2)

Price Difference

P2/P1

1987

1.77

223.46

221.69

126.25

1988

1.84

106.98

105.14

58.14

1989

1.92

71.53

69.61

37.26

1990

2.13

32.99

30.86

15.49

1991

2.35

509.35

507.00

216.74

1992

2.49

385.46

382.97

154.80

1993

2.71

89.15

86.44

32.90

1994

2.99

131.44

128.45

43.96

1995

3.83

90.05

86.22

23.51

1996

4.64

102.56

97.92

22.10

1998

7.09

81.81

74.72

11.54

1999

12.03

113.31

101.28

9.42

2000

11.71

122.46

110.75

10.46

2001

10.42

143.36

132.94

13.76

2002

10.89

194.54

183.65

17.86

Average

5.25

159.90

154.64

52.95

Note: Unit: CNY 1/m2. Source: China Land and Resource Almanac and China Statistical Yearbook (1987‒2002).

management of land finance has inspired local governments’ enthusiasm to lease land to gain extra-budgetary revenue. With respect to the financial relationship between local governments and land-lost villagers, the latter are losers in the transaction because the compensation they receive is usually far below the land revenue collected by local governments (Yep and Fong 2009). According to the Land Administration Law (1998), land-lost villagers would be entitled to compensation with the highest level being 30 times the annual average agricultural output value in the three years before the requisition. However, in actual practice, the calculation of the “annual agricultural output value” was problematic, and the compensation was kept very low. Table 12.3 summarizes, from 1987 to 2002, the average price the government paid to villagers for land requisition and the average price collected by the government through leasing land to industrial and commercial users. The price difference is a true reflection of the exploitation of land-lost villagers under China’s land administrative system (Ding 2007; Yep and Fong 2009). To sum up, from 1990 to 2002, China’s land market experienced a stage of fast development, during which local governments were enthusiastic about setting up various “economic zones” to attract investment. However, it caused a series of problems in land administration, in particular, the encroachment on arable land. Due to the lack of relevant laws and regulations, the vast majority of land conveyance cases relied on backdoor negotiation rather than market-oriented transaction during the entire 1990s and the early 2000s. This situation resulted in low transparency, insufficient market competition, inefficient land use, land hoarding, and rampant corruption.

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  231

THE THIRD STAGE OF THE LURS (2003–PRESENT) In the third stage of the LURs, the Chinese central government aims to utilize the Chinese land tenure system to promote economic development while curtailing local governments’ predatory behaviors. To address the problems of negotiation-based land conveyance and to integrate land conveyance fees into the budgetary system, the Chinese central government promulgated a series of regulations governing land conveyance activities beginning in 2002 (Zhu 2005). The market-oriented transaction approaches, the land fund (土地基金), and the land reserve center (土地储备中心) are the three most important institutions established to improve the LURs and land administration. The market-oriented transaction approach plays a fundamental role in the LURs, ensuring a market-based allocation of land resources. The land fund is an institution designed to help consolidate land conveyance fees, an important category of extra-budgetary revenue, into the budget system. It means that local governments cannot hide land revenue from public scrutiny. The land reserve center has been set up for the sake of achieving sustainable utilization of land resources and avoiding intergenerational inequity (柳臻 2008). Market-Oriented Land Conveyance The market-oriented transaction approaches are essential to the LURs, playing a fundamental role in reducing government intervention and manipulation in the land market. In 2002, the Ministry of State Land and Resources promulgated the Regulations Concerning the Approaches of Tender, Auction and Open Listing in the Conveyance of State-owned Land, which mandated local governments to use tender, auction or open listing as the transaction approaches for land conveyance cases involving commercial, tourist, and residential uses of land (Zhu 2005). The procedure of calling for tenders (招标) includes several steps. First, the local land administration bureau publishes a tender notice and provides relevant documents to potential bidders. Second, bidders then turn in sealed bids together with the payment of a deposit to the land administration bureau before the deadline. Third, public officials from the land administration bureau, together with external experts assess and select the finalists based on certain criteria. Fourth, a land use contract will be awarded to the successful bidder. In the meantime, all unsuccessful bidders will be informed about the result in writing (Zhang 1997). Auctions (拍卖) are usually announced publicly by local governments. During an auction, bidders offer their prices against each other. The bidder who offers the highest price obtains the land (Cai et al. 2009). The open listing (挂牌) method is also called a two-stage auction. Open listing is also announced in advance as local governments offer the details of the land parcel. A key difference is that an open listing has two stages. When the auction starts, the first stage takes 10 working days. During the first stage, bids are posted by the land administration bureau. If only one bidder has submitted a bid and the bid price is higher than the baseline price, that bidder is assigned the property at its bid price. In this situation, the open listing process ends, and the second stage will not start. If there is more than one bidder, the one with the highest bid price wins the bid. Similarly, the open listing process ends, and the second stage will not start. But suppose at the end of the 10 working days, there are still more than two bidders trying to update their bid prices; in that case, the second stage, which is the auction, will start. The one who offers the highest price in the auction will win the open listing.

232  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China The promulgation of regulations governing the establishment of tenders, auctions, and open listings as a means of leasing land use rights was a significant milestone in improving the institutional framework of the LURs in China. Nevertheless, it encountered hidden resistance from local authorities because it limited their freedom to grant land to their preferred land users (Zhu 2005). Previously, to attract industrial investment, local governments used the strategy of “low-premium” or even “zero-premium” through negotiation. This new regulation, which was implemented in 2002, prevented them from doing so. Thus, local governments initiated various approaches to circumvent this regulation. For instance, local governments sought loopholes in the regulation, which stated that land conveyance involving “commercial, tourist, and residential use of land” must take the form of tender, auction or open listing; but whether or not this regulation should be applied to “industrial” use of land was legally ambiguous. Thus, local officials tended to tamper with the process by passing off other types of land use as industrial use, and leased land at excessively low prices (雨之 2005). According to the statistics released by the Ministry of State Land and Resources, the number of instances of land conveyance in the form of tender, auction, or open listing accounted for only 28.8 percent of the total number of land conveyance transactions in the first half of 2004. For most cases of land conveyance involving land conversion from agricultural use to non-agricultural use, the negotiation approach was still the most frequently adopted. A report released by the National Audit Office in 2006 revealed that among the 87 investigated development zones, 60 were illegally leasing land use rights at arbitrarily low prices. This resulted in a loss of land conveyance fees of about CNY 5.6 billion (郭威 2006). Over the period of 2002‒2007, the Ministry of State Land and Resources promulgated a series of strict regulations to further rectify the land market and to strengthen the predominant role of market forces on land conveyance activities (周友新 2007). In 2007, market-based land conveyance finally became the major type of land conveyance activity in the land market.

LAND FUND: THE BUDGETARY CONTROL OF LAND CONVEYANCE FEES Since its inception in the late 1980s, the LURs has arguably favored urban areas for two reasons. First, local governments turned a large amount of agricultural land into non-agricultural land, but the land-lost villagers received meager compensation when compared with the price at which the local governments leased the newly requisitioned land to industrial and commercial users. Second, the majority of land conveyance fees flowed into urban regions and financed urban construction rather than public expenditure in rural areas (江峰 2006). To change this urban–rural imbalance, in early 2004, the State Council issued a document requiring local governments to devote at least 15 percent of the net land conveyance fees (i.e., the gross land conveyance fees after deducting the cost of land development) to public expenditure in rural areas (柳臻 2008). Moreover, Wen Jiabao, the then Chinese Premier, emphasized at different government meetings in 2006 that the revenue local governments received by leasing land requisitioned from villagers should be used for public expenditures in rural areas. However, Lin and Ho (2005, 411) observe that “[The] Chinese socialist state is better seen as a dynamic, complex, heterogeneous, and self-conflicting institutional ensemble in and through which the forces and interests of different levels of the state are contested, negotiated, and

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  233 mediated.” As these fees were a type of extra-budgetary revenue, the local People’s Congress had no power to monitor its usage under the legal budgetary framework. In December 2006, the State Council promulgated the Notice Regarding Standardizing the Management of Revenues and Expenditures from the Transfer of State Land Use Rights, stipulating the requirement for local governments to create land funds under the formal budgetary system. This regulation required local governments to turn over the land conveyance fees to the local treasury as one category of “funds” and spend it according to budgetary arrangements. Therefore, since 2007, local governments have integrated most of their land conveyance fees into land funds. Thus, transparency and accountability in the management and the use of land conveyance fees have improved substantially (柳臻 2008). Nevertheless, it should be noted that the management of land conveyance fees is still different from budgetary revenue in China’s local state. Local governments still enjoy considerable discretion over the collection and usage of land conveyance fees, with limited oversight by local People’s Congresses and higher levels of government (Ye and Wang 2013).

CONTRIBUTIONS AND RISKS OF LAND FINANCE IN CHINA Land conveyance fees have functioned as important revenue streams for Chinese local governments in the twin process of rapid urbanization and industrialization, in particular, contributing to capital accumulation and infrastructure construction. However, the dependence of local governments upon land conveyance fees has also resulted in some challenges and potential risks, both economic and political. In this section, this study investigates both the merits and demerits of land finance. Contributions of China’s Land Use Rights System China’s land use rights system contributes substantially to urbanization, industrialization, and broadly to the market economy in China. Since economic reform, the state’s control over the land market has been challenged by the introduction of market-based land allocation. If land could be still tightly controlled by the state and land use rights for commercial users would not be allowed, private enterprises could hardly thrive in this system. Practical considerations of boosting the economy have played a more significant role than political ideology in the institutional design of land use policies. Therefore, land finance and the land use rights system reform have contributed to the growth of China’s transition to a market economy. More importantly, since 1987, land conveyance fees have become a vital source of funding for urban infrastructure projects, greatly contributing to local infrastructure upgrades in China (Zhao and Cao 2011). Table 12.4 presents the revenues that are generated from different sources and invested in urban infrastructure projects. According to official interpretation, the category ‘Other’ contains mixed revenues, including land conveyance fees, urban infrastructure fees (城市基础设 施配套费), and the sale of state-owned assets and other fees (Wang et al. 2011). During the past ten years, land conveyance fees have grown substantially and have been the most important component of the category “Other,” carrying much more weight than other components. Table 12.4 reveals that the amount of revenue from the category “Other” increased substantially from 1995 to 2012. From the same data source, Figure 12.1 shows that the revenue from

84,764

111,034

143,332

162,712

198,893

252,627

315,618

427,619

525,760

542,251

354,063

476,175

561,642

672,769

858,050

1,178,172

1,192,335

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

147,975

133,955

99,703

77,195

74,428

61,706

56,677

55,129

44,629

37,174

31,604

27,094

23,729

21,920

21,532

19,067

15,781

14,091

and Maintenance Tax

Construction

Urban

16,635

15,719

10,906

9,804

8,962

8,243

7,622

5,548

5,903

5,569

4,988

4,881

5,415

6,316

6,040

5,612

5,559

4,474

Grant

Central

Public

24,533

13,832

17,480

10,665

7,560

3,481

5,666

6,216

5,264

7,713

7,595

8,958

11,507

10,520

6,494

1,394

1,037

2,135

272,525

198,176

168,551

223,119

142,473

121,379

107,485

79,589

66,577

53,293

39,273

32,378

20,813

17,146

15,810

11,542

8,626

7,258

Surcharge

Local Grant Utility

Revenue for urban infrastructure by sources (1995–2012)

4,138

7,503

2,953

2,480

2,542

2,795

2,445

2,500

2,069

1,598

1,238

1,111

1,006

778

637

612

605

520

Fee

Resource

Water

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

166,989

144,555

133,183

87,390

74,166

41,470

37,420

30,696

16,574

9,569

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

9,271

7,418

6,811

6,105

5,632

8,471

4,945

7,384

14,072

5,587

2,549

Investment

Loan 4,767

Foreign

Domestic

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

94,603

90,020

76,968

60,076

40,956

33,322

23,748

17,694

10,780

11,947

-

Fund

Raised

Self-

726,529

808,986

558,456

349,506

325,677

278,570

174,167

122,406

159,325

105,311

77,348

57,451

53,160

39,920

37,044

31,381

26,053

41,645

Other

Note: Unit: CNY 1 million. Source: Statistical Yearbook of China’s Urban Construction (2013), Department of General Finance, Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Construction (2014) with reference to Wang et al. (2011), 2982‒2983.

77,437

1995

Year Total

Table 12.4

234  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  235 the category “Other” had been the most important component among the different revenue sources, and accounted for nearly 60 percent of the total revenue for urban infrastructure projects after 2007. In particular, as suggested by Wang et al. (2011), for county-level governments, which more often than not have little financial capital but control a large amount of rural land, revenue generated from converting rural land to urban land has become an essential source of funds for financing infrastructure.

Sources: Statistical Yearbook of China’s Urban Construction (2013), Department of General Finance, Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Construction (2014).

Figure 12.1

Percentage of different resources in infrastructure financing

PROBLEMS AND RISKS Risk of a Property Bubble Burst Although the causal relations between housing prices and land prices are not entirely clear, there is no denying the correlations between these two items (高波/毛丰付 2003; 况伟大 2005). During the past decade, there has been a real estate boom in China, and housing prices in urban regions, especially in the metropolitan cities (e.g., Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen), rose rapidly. The skyrocketing price of houses and apartments was partially attributable to the rising land prices charged by local governments. As a matter of fact, many local governments have relied on continually rising land values for financing local infrastructure. In addition, local government borrowing is often backed up by state-owned land. In order to promote economic growth, around 8,800 investment vehicles have been set up by local governments to take up massive infrastructure projects during the past decade (Su and Zhao 2006). Due to institutional constraints on local government borrowing behavior,

236  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China these vehicles, namely urban development investment corporations (UDICs), have sprung up in a relatively short period. Using land as collateral, local governments attempt to obtain substantial bank loans for infrastructure projects. If a big drop in the value of the land occurs, a series of financial crises could be triggered. Thus, land finance may be associated with the potential risk of a property bubble bursting.

THE UNSUSTAINABLE NATURE AND VOLATILITY OF LAND FINANCE Given the fluctuation of the property market, the question remains as to whether or not cities can depend on land conveyance fees as an important funding source of infrastructure development (Wang et al. 2011). The current practice of land finance is unsustainable because land conveyance fees are basically a major extra source of revenue for local governments. The fast pace of land conversion from agricultural to non-agricultural use has also harmed villagers’ interests (Chau and Zhang 2011; Deng et al. 2006; Lichtenberg and Ding 2008; 朱莉芬/黄季 2007). Although the central government has emphasized sufficient compensation for land-lost villagers, many of them are poorly compensated and their livelihoods are at stake in the future if social safety nets could not support them. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Land and Resources, the cultivated land area dropped from 130 million hectares in 1996 to 123.4 million hectares in 2003 (Lin and Ho 2003). However, some data based on remote sensing and detailed surveys suggested a much worse scenario (Lichtenberg and Ding 2008). Moreover, the land price fluctuates severely. Land-leasing revenue will drop when the demand for public investment in infrastructure projects declines. Based on the data from China Land and Resource Almanac (1999‒2009) and China Data Online (1999‒2009), we calculated the ratio of total land conveyance fees to the total budgetary revenue of sub-provincial governments, in order to measure the degree to which Chinese local governments rely on land finance. The results reveal that this ratio was only 11.7 percent nationwide in 1999, but hit a historic high of 73.7 percent in 2003, and fluctuated largely within the range of 45 percent to 70 percent in the following years. In this respect, land finance is volatile and unstable. In addition, a big potential risk to local finance is that the proceeds from land sales may be put to use for financing operating expenditures, which is likely to induce the dependence of local operating budgets on those proceeds. International practice nonetheless suggests that land revenue should be used to fund capital expenditure by the government. It may also aggravate the expansion of government employment as local governments have more money to pay public sector wages. The proceeds from land sales contribute substantially to generate extra-budgetary revenues (Lu and Sun 2013), which results in many dysfunctional behaviors at the local level. This could increase the volatility of public finance in China. Rampant Corruption and Social Unrest The real estate sector and the land market have witnessed rampant corrupt activities. The decentralized management of land assets grants local governments the power to monopolize the planning, development, and leasing of land. Government officials can make money by abusing this power. “Possessing the power to decide whether or not, how, to whom, and at

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  237 what price, to lease the land, they can easily abuse that power by requesting bribes from interested individuals or institutions” (Gong 1997, 280; Vyas and Wu 2020; Wu et al. 2020). Even though the introduction of the market-based transaction approach may reduce corruption, the land market is still subject to corrupt activities due to the strong government control over the land market (Cai et al. 2009). In 2004, the China Daily wrote: China’s Ministry of Lands and Resources announced new measures to crackdown on corruption and inefficiency in the land sector. The new rules Forbid Officials to Receive Personal Benefits from Parties under Their Administration. It is estimated that in 2003, the country faced 168,000 violations of its Land Law. (Cited in Cai et al. 2009, 2)

In June 2008, according to the National Audit Office, governments in 11 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, misused land conveyance fees substantially. Illegal land conveyance cases are rampant in China’s major cities (贾康/刘微 2012). Land corruption and land acquisition without sufficient compensation have been one of the major triggers of social unrest. The land-lost villagers’ sense of vulnerability mainly comes from the low level of compensation they receive and the high prices at which local governments lease the requisitioned land to commercial and industrial users. In addition to the low monetary compensation, relinquishing land has fundamental implications for rural people as they rely on land for food and even welfare support. Due to the insufficient provision of basic public goods in rural areas, losing land means that villagers have few assets to cushion themselves against any shocks in their lives (Yep and Fong 2009). By 2005, due to the government requisition of rural land, around 40 to 50 million villagers in China had lost their land. According to an estimate (温铁军 2012), the number of land-lost villagers has been increasing by two to three million per year. Such a colossal army of land-lost villagers may well be a time bomb for creating social unrest. A note is needed that some local governments have offered better compensations to land-lost residents. For example, in Zhejiang Province, local governments rolled out monthly pension-like payments and yearly dividends to land-lost villagers (Cai et al. 2020).

CONCLUSION China’s land reforms have some implications for the rest of the world. The sale-lease of the use rights of publicly owned land to the private sector is an approach adopted by local governments in China to finance public projects. Like other reforms in China since the late 1970s, land reforms started from scratch and gradually moved toward the separation of land use rights from ownership. The separation of land use rights from ownership, as the defining feature of China’s land reform, can be viewed as a combination of economic capitalism and ideological socialism (Zhang 1997). This move has contributed to a substantial change in the urban landscape, with some potential risks still unfolding. From the late 1980s to the present, the Chinese government has gradually promulgated laws and regulations to institutionalize the market-oriented principles involved in the land use rights system. These laws and regulations have replaced the negotiation approach with market-based approaches (i.e., tenders, auctions, and open listings) for land conveyance activities and consolidated land conveyance fees into the budgets of local governments. Land revenue has also become more transparent to the general public, and land reserve centers have been set up

238  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China to provide for sustainable land use. All of these measures place China on the right track for developing a healthy and viable land administration system, which is one crucial component of the government’s goal for the establishment of a market economy. Land finance has made a substantial contribution to infrastructure financing and has become one of the main drivers of China’s urbanization and economic growth in the reform era. It remains controversial to allow local governments to retain 100 percent of the land conveyance fees. On the one hand, the arrangement may aggravate the risk of a housing market bubble as local governments have an incentive to boost the market. Nevertheless, on the other hand, land finance helps a local government enhance its fiscal capacity and promote its local economy. However, a variety of problems and risks caused by, or associated with, land finance deserves attention. The risk of a property bubble, land-related corruption, and possible social unrest may be a big hurdle for the Chinese economy in the future. The heavy reliance on land finance by local governments drives up the demand for limited land resources, which causes concerns about the sustainability of this development approach. Future reforms need to address these challenges when local governments rely on land assets as an essential source of local government financing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors have benefited from helpful comments from the editors Professors Xiaowei Zang and Hon Chan and the referees. The authors also thank Jing Li, Xu Wei, and Yifan Hu for their excellent research assistance. The authors are grateful to Springer for granting permission. 

ENGLISH REFERENCES Brandt, Loren and Thomas G. Rawski (2008) China’s Great Economic Transformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cai, Hongbin, J. Vernon Henderson and Zhang Qinghua (2009) China’s land market auctions: Evidence of corruption (No. w15067). Cambridge, MA, USA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Cai, Meina, Pengfei Liu, and Hui Wang (2020) “Political trust, risk preferences, and policy support: A study of land-dispossessed villagers in China.” World Development. https://​doi​.org/​10​.1016/​j​ .worlddev​.2019​.104687. Cartier, Carolyn (2001) “‘Zone fever’, the arable land debate, and real estate speculation: China’s evolving land use regime and its geographical contradictions.” Journal of Contemporary China 10(28), 445‒469. Chan, Nelson (1999) “Land-use rights in mainland China: Problems and recommendations for improvement.” Journal of Real Estate Literature 7(1), 53‒63. Chau, Nancy H. and Weiwen Zhang (2011) “Harnessing the forces of urban expansion: The public economics of farmland development allowances.” Land Economics 87(3), 488‒507. Deng, F. Frederic and Youqin Huang (2004) “Uneven land reform and urban sprawl in China: The case of Beijing.” Progress in Planning 61(3), 211‒236. Deng, Xiangzheng, Jikun Huang, Scott Rozelle, and Emi Uchida (2006) “Cultivated land conversion and potential agricultural productivity in China.” Land Use Policy 23(4), 372‒384. Ding, Chengri (2007) “Policy and praxis of land acquisition in China.” Land Use Policy 24(1), 1‒13. Dowall, David E. (1993) “Establishing urban land markets in the People’s Republic of China.” Journal of the American Planning Association 59(2), 182‒192. Gong, Ting (1997) “Forms and characteristics of China’s corruption in the 1990s: Change with continuity.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30(3), 277‒288.

Land use reforms and land finance in Chinese local governments  239 Ho, Samuel P.S. and George C.S. Lin (2003) “Emerging land markets in rural and urban China: Policies and practices.” The China Quarterly 175(3), 681‒707. Lichtenberg, Erik and Chengri Ding (2008) “Assessing farmland protection policy in China.” Land Use Policy 25(1), 59‒68. Lin, George C.S. (2007) “Reproducing spaces of Chinese urbanization: New city-based and land-centered urban transformation.” Urban Studies 44(9), 1827‒1855. Lin, George C.S. and Samuel P.S. Ho (2003) “China’s land resources and land-use change: Insights from the 1996 land survey.” Land Use Policy 20(2), 87‒107. Lin, George C.S. and Samuel P.S. Ho (2005) “The state, land system, and land development processes in contemporary China.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95(2), 411‒436. Lu, Yinqiu and Tao Sun (2013) Local government financing platforms in China: A fortune or misfortune? Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund Working Paper. Peterson, George E. (2006) Land leasing and land sale as an infrastructure-financing option (Report No. 4043). Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper. Peterson, George E. (2009) Unlocking land values to finance urban infrastructure. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://​openknowledge​.worldbank​.org/​handle/​10986/​6552 (accessed July 2, 2020). Peterson, George E. and Patricia Clarke Annez (eds.) (2007) Financing Cities: Fiscal Responsibility and Urban Infrastructure in Brazil, China, India, Poland and South Africa. New Delhi, India: Sage Publications. Peterson, George E. and Olga Kaganova (2010) Integrating land financing into subnational fiscal management. Policy Research Working Paper 5409. Washington, DC: World Bank. Sagalyn, Lynne B. (1992) Public Development: Using Land as a Capital Resource. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Su, Ming and Quanhou Zhao (2006) The Fiscal Framework and Urban Infrastructure Finance in China. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, Vol. 4051. Tang, Yunbin (1989) “Urban land use in China: Policy issues and options.” Land Use Policy 6(1), 53‒63. Tao, Ran, Fubing Su, Mingxing Liu, and Guangzhong Cao (2010) “Land leasing and local public finance in China’s regional development: Evidence from prefecture-level cities.” Urban Studies 47(10), 2217‒2236. Vyas, Lina and Alfred M. Wu (2020) “Anti-corruption policy: China’s Tiger Hunt and India’s demonetization.” International Journal of Public Administration, https://​doi​.org/​10​.1080/​01900692​.2020​ .1739071. Wang, De, Li Zhang, Zhao Zhang, and Simon Xiaobin Zhao (2011) “Urban infrastructure financing in reform-era China.” Urban Studies 48(14), 2975‒2998. Wong, Christine P.W. (1991) “Central–local relations in an era of fiscal decline: The paradox of fiscal decentralization in post-Mao China.” The China Quarterly 128, 691‒715. World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, PRC. (2014) Urban China: Toward efficient, inclusive, and sustainable urbanization. Washington, DC: World Bank. Wu, Alfred M. (2012) “Economic miracle and upward accountability: A preliminary evaluation of Chinese style of fiscal decentralization.” Asian Review of Public Administration 23, 104‒120. Wu, Alfred M. (2019) “The logic of basic education provision and public goods preferences in Chinese fiscal federalism.” Plos One, 14(12), 1‒15. Wu, Alfred M., Yifei Yan and Lina Vyas (2020) “Public sector innovation, e-government, and anticorruption in China and India: Insights from civil servants.” Australian Journal of Public Administration. Xie, Qingshu, Ali Parsa, and Barry Redding (2002) “The emergence of the urban land market in China: Evolution, structure, constraints and perspectives.” Urban Studies 39(8), 1375‒1398. Ye, Fangzhi and Wen Wang (2013) “Determinants of land finance in China: A study based on provincial-level panel data.” Australian Journal of Public Administration 72(3), 293‒303. Ye, Lin and Alfred M. Wu (2014) “Urbanization, land development, and land financing: Evidence from Chinese cities.” Journal of Urban Affairs 36(s1), 354‒368. Yeh, Anthony G.O. and Fulong Wu (1995) “Internal structure of Chinese cities in the midst of economic reform.” Urban Geography 16(6), 521‒554. Yeh, Anthony G.O. and Fulong Wu (1996) “The new land development process and urban development in Chinese cities.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 20(2), 330‒353.

240  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Yeh, Anthony Gar-on and Fulong Wu (1999) “The transformation of the urban planning system in China from a centrally-planned to transitional economy.” Progress in Planning 51(3), 167‒252. Yep, Ray and Carolin Fong (2009) “Land conflicts, rural finance and capacity of the Chinese state.” Public Administration and Development 29(1), 69‒78. Zhang, Sumei and Kenneth Pearlman (2004) “China’s land use reforms: A review of journal literature.” Journal of Planning Literature 19(1), 16‒61. Zhang, Xing Quan (1997) “Urban land reform in China.” Land Use Policy 14(3), 187‒199. Zhao, Zhirong Jerrt and Chengxin Cao (2011) “Funding China’s urban infrastructure: Revenue structure and financing approaches.” Public Finance and Management 11(3), 284‒305. Zheng, Bingdao, Yanfeng Gu, and Hanbin Zhu (2019) “Land tenure arrangements and rural-to-urban migration: Evidence from implementation of China’s rural land contracting law.” Journal of Chinese Governance, 1‒23. Zhu, Jieming (2005) “A transitional institution for the emerging land market in urban China.” Urban Studies 42(8), 1369‒1390.

CHINESE REFERENCES 高波/毛丰付 (2003) “房价与地价关系的实证检验：1999‒2002.” 《产业经济研究》第3期, 19‒25. 郭威 (2006) “国家加强土地出让金收支管理 地方财政现危机.” 网址 http://​finance​.people​.com​.cn/​ GB/​4823563​.html (accessed August 1, 2013). 贾康/刘微 (2012) “‘土地财政’: 分析及出路.” 《财政研究》第1期, 2‒9. 江峰 (2006) “土地出让金的征收使用与管理.” 《中国土地》第5期, 17‒18. 况伟大 (2005) “房价与地价关系研究：模型及中国数据检验.” 《财贸经济》第11期, 56‒63. 柳臻 (2008) “我国土地出让金制度的历史变迁研究.” (未发表硕士论文) 中共中央党校, 北京. 平新乔 (2006) “我国土地财政规模估算.” 《北京大学中国经济研究中心简报》56. 温铁军 (2012) “中国失地农民将超1亿.” 网址 http://​opinion​.hexun​.com​.tw/​2012​-12​-05/​148701100​ .html (accessed August 1, 2013). 雨之 (2005) “国有土地使用权招拍挂出让实证分析.” 《中国房地产金融》第5期, 33‒35. 张清勇 (2008) “纵向财政竞争、讨价还价与中央-地方的土地收入分成: 对20世纪80年代以来土地 收入的考察.” 《制度经济学研究》第4期, 107‒127. 周友新 (2007) “也谈工业用地招拍挂.” 《国土资源》第3期, 30‒31. 朱莉芬/黄季 (2007) “城镇化对耕地影响的研究.” 《经济研究》第2期, 137‒145.

13. Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies: asserting a flavor of Chinese characteristics Yangbin Chen

Writing on Chinese ethnic minority policy is both a seemingly easy and intractable task. It appears easy because there is abundant literature available both in Chinese and English for authors to appropriate. The vast scope of the topic always contains many contentious issues worthy of academic debate, intriguing researchers across a wide range of fields, such as political science and public policy, ethnology, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and so on. On the other hand, there is the challenge of offering original insights to these popular topics. Much of the research can be understood in terms of indirectly seeking to address Zang’s simple and fundamental question: “Who are ethnic minorities and how well do they do in China?” (Zang 2016, 1). This chapter aims to offer an analysis on a derived two-part research question in relation to policy: what are China’s ethnic minority policies (hereafter “EMP”), and what underlying factors have led to changes in China’s EMP? We add here a note on terminology: the Chinese term 民族 has gone through several changes in its English translation in official and academic narratives, such as “nationality,” “ethnic group,” and even “minzu” from the Chinese pinyin (the official romanization system for Standard Chinese). For the convenience of discussion, this chapter adopts “ethnic group” but it is also interchangeable with the other synonymous terms. This chapter critically cross-examines two sets of literature (Chinese and English) on China’s EMP. The author identifies two fundamental impetuses – socialist political ideology with Chinese characteristics and Confucian cultural traditions – that lay the cornerstones for the architecture of modern China’s EMP since 1949. Along with the booming economic success since the Open Door and Reform Policy from 1978, China has been gaining confidence in promoting its own discourse on EMP in the global setting, which has constantly defied the dominant discourses from the then USSR and the West (represented by the US). From the Chinese perspective, the EMP constitutes an essential component of ego-boosted state capacity (朱军 2015, 2), which manifests Chinese Party-state’s confidence in its socialist political path, theory, system and culture (“Four Matters of Confidence”) (中国外文局 2018). Considine defines “public policy” as “an action which employs governmental authority to commit resources in support of a preferred value” (1994, 3). He suggests the process of policy making includes: the clarification of public values, committing money and services, and granting rights and entitlements (Considine 1994, 3). He also categorizes policies into two types: macro policies (providing the framework within which specific policies are developed and implemented), and specific policies (defined by actionable and specific objectives, offering an appropriate selection of major instruments to meet specific objectives). Considering Considine’s definition and classification, China’s EMP is defined as the series of actions on ethnic minorities, from which the government of the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter “CCP” or “Party-state”) has committed resources in support of its preferred values. The author of this chapter briefly notes Leibold’s assessment of the effectiveness of China’s 241

242  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China EMP: “Despite episodic conflict, it could be argued that the Communist Party of China has, especially since the 1976 death of Mao Zedong, done a relatively competent job of containing ethnic tensions among these groups [ethnic minorities]” (Leibold 2013, 2). Instead of contributing to the question of effectiveness, this chapter focuses on an investigation into the historical changes behind China’s EMP, which is divided into two categories: (1) macro policy: Chinese laws regarding Regional National Autonomy (“RNA”); and (2) specific policies: preferential policies in education, employment, family planning, taxation and financial arrangements, as well as policies on languages, religions, and maintaining social security. Moreover, there also is the ambivalent policy of the process of ethnic classification, which is coined as “the policy foundation.” As the target population of the EMP, it is a cliché to note that the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”) has officially classified 55 ethnic minorities within a three-decade long period from 1950 until 1979. Today, they constitute a total population of 113 million (8.49 percent of the total population), in contrast with the Han majority population 1.225 billion (91.51 percent) (中央人民政府 2012). Unlike the other macro and specific EMP, one is unable to locate any policy documents from any government organizations that explain the criteria of ethnic classification, nor are there any avenues for disputing these classifications. Nevertheless, the ethnic classification is the basis of the entire EMP: hence, this chapter defines it as an undocumented “policy foundation.” The literature is drawn from both Chinese and English publications. Apart from some of the monographs, most of the quality Chinese research literature usually is published in key academic journals, such as 民族研究, 西北民族研究, 民族教育研究, as well as journals (focusing on philosophy, humanities, and the social sciences) based in key Minzu universities (e.g., Central Minzu University, North-Western Minzu University, South-Western Minzu University, Yunnan Minzu University, etc.). Moreover, Chinese state governments have been promoting the EMP to the rest of the world by way of publishing a series of White Papers since the 1990s. Two milestone documents are the White Paper on National Minorities Policy and Its Practice in China (Information Office of the State Council of the PRC 1999), and the PRC State Council White Paper, China’s Ethnic Policy and Common Prosperity and Development of All Ethnic Groups (The State Council 2009). English literature is accessible via three streams. First, there are edited handbooks. The latest and most comprehensive volumes include Ethnic Minorities in Modern China: Critical Concepts in Asian Studies (Mackerras 2011) and the Handbook on Ethnic Minorities in China (Zang 2016). A second source is various monographs on China’s ethnic minorities by Western publishers since the 1990s. Third, there are various academic journals, such as Asian Ethnicities, Asian Studies Review, Race and Ethnicities, The Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, The China Quarterly, and so on, where ethnicity has been emerging as a hot topic in the last three decades.

BEYOND THE USSR MODEL: CHINA LEARNED AND UNLEARNED IT It is undeniable that the CCP has eagerly copied the entire set of revolutionary strategies from its “big brother”: The Communist Party of the USSR. The EMP was part of the learning package. There is consensus among academics that the CCP emulated the Soviet Party (e.g., 黄光学/施联朱 2005; Mullaney 2010). The CCP learnt/adopted the definition of “ethnicity” from Stalinist teachings (common language, common territory, common economic production

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies  243 and lifestyle, plus common psychological traits) (黄光学/施联朱 2005, 87), asserting that “ethnicity” is a politically significant term, it persists in the course of people’s struggle for reaching a Communist society. The CCP also recognized the fundamental relationship of ethnic equality between the majority group and minority groups. Considering this relationship, special assistances shall be rendered from the majority group to the minority groups. On the administrative level, the guiding rule was also agreed that minority-dominated areas should be governed with autonomy. Since 1949, China’s EMP has been undergoing constant changes. The year of 2019 marks the seventy-year anniversary of the PRC, a period that has also witnessed a tumultuous history for the EMP. Beginning with the complete emulation of the USSR model, to the internal political turmoil during the Great Leap Forward (1958‒1960) and the Cultural Revolution (1966‒1976), to the Open Door and Reform Policy (from 1978), the evolution of the EMP has been largely shaped by ever-changing socialist political ideology, fundamentally defined as “Chinese characteristics.” While the phrase “Chinese characteristics” may have loomed in the background from the early revolutionary years, it was officially defined during Deng’s reign (1982), and in terms of the EMP, the phrase refers to Chinese socioeconomic conditions and political background (金炳镐/肖锐 2012, 17). It captures an integrated process of learning and further innovating the USSR model. The Soviets had a relatively well-developed modern economic sector in industry and agriculture. It was also armed with a relatively well-educated labor force. In 1949, China had to build up its economic system almost from scratch, considering almost 80 percent of its population at the time was illiterate. The starting point for socioeconomic development in the minority-dominated areas was even worse, as they mostly resided in the borderlands and rugged mountainous areas. Added to this, the CCP’s policy makers were acutely aware of the century-long humiliation by foreign powers, namely the capitalist Western powers, Japanese Empire and the USSR, in the form of military invasions and other acts of domination. Hence, defending national unity and sovereign integrity became the CCP’s paramount goals when constructing the EMP. Hence, the feasibility of managing a massive ethnic minority population and political stability appear to be key constituents of the overarching rationale guiding the complicated process of China’s EMP system.

THE POLICY FOUNDATION: ETHNIC CLASSIFICATION The idea of socialism with Chinese characteristics laid the foundation for the Chinese EMP: a streamlined ethnic group identification procedure. In 1989, the last USSR national census showed that the entire population of 286 million consisted of 128 officially classified ethnicity/nationality groups (Tishkov 1989, 191). Back then, “the first complete census in the Soviet Union (1926) included 188 ethnic categories classified around numerous linguistic groups” (Kotljarchuk and Sundström 2017, 21). China has a much larger population base. The process of ethnic classification was dynamic and ran from 1949 through to 1979 (中央人民 政府 2005). In the beginning, the self-claimed ethnic groups reached over 400 in number; in Yunnan alone, there were claimed to be 260 ethnic groups (中央人民政府 2005). Obviously, such a confusing situation would be chaotic for state governance and regional administration. The final decision came to 56 state-defined ethnic groups, today ranging from the majority Han (with over one billion people) to the smallest minority group, the Tatar (3,556 people). In 1954, the Party-state legalized the naming (characters and pinyin pronunciation) of each

244  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China ethnic group. In 1979, the Jinuo group of Yunnan was classified, making up the last of the 56 ethnic groups (中央人民政府 2013). Though the classification project was carried out by professional ethnologists like Lin Yaohua and Fei Xiaotong, the guiding manual was political, “in recognition of the reality of Chinese nationalities, [the project] flexibly adopts the four characteristics of the concept of nationality under the modern society” (黄光学/施联朱 2005, 87) (referring to Stalinists’ definition). 吴启讷 suggests: There is also an important aspect that has been overlooked, is that the political needs of the CCCP are different from those of the Soviet Union. After the CCP came to power, the political environment of ethnic issues was very different from the Bolshevik Revolution. Hence, in the process of learning from the USSR style “ethnic classification” model, the Party-state recognized the differences between China and Russia in historical traditions, political thinking and status quo. Therefore, the CCP’s design and implementation of the ethnic classification was different from the USSR model. (吴启 讷 2018, 12)

THE MACRO POLICY: LAWS OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA ON REGIONAL NATIONAL AUTONOMY The design of the ethnic autonomous administration also manifested a Chinese characteristic. The Regional National Autonomy policy is the centerpiece of China’s EMP. The USSR model is a clear multi-level federation system, with the Soviet Union on the top level, down to the Soviet Union of Republics, Autonomous Republics and Autonomous States, as well as Frontier Areas. Early in the 1930s, fighting against the Republic of China’s national government, the CCP’s China Soviet Republic government was founded in Jiangxi Province. Mao already proposed to build a federal republic for all ethnic groups in the future China, following the USSR ideology of national self-determination and ethno-federalism. Li Weihan, the CCP’s theorist of the RNA, persuaded Mao to abandon the notion of “The Chinese Federation” when deciding the structure of the PRC. Zhou Enlai, the Party-state’s first premier, had well explained the rationale behind this idea shift: The key question is whether the goal of ethnic policy aims for autonomy or exceeds the scope of autonomy. We propose ethnic autonomy, but nowadays the imperialists want to separate our Tibet, Taiwan and even Xinjiang (from us). Under this circumstance, we hope all ethnic groups will not follow the imperialists’ instigation. For this point of view, the name of our country will be “The People’s Republic of China”, without a term of “Federation”. (余玮 2005)

In retrospect, Ma (also as 马戎) blamed a politicized model of the federation of nationalities for the collapse of the USSR in 1991: “an administrative hierarchy with all groups having their own territory. These groups thus became ‘territorialised’; and their group consciousness was strengthened based on ‘territory’ and their ‘republics’ which have their own constitution, congress, state council and the government” (Ma 2006, 91). However, years after the founding of the PRC, the CCP’s policies toward ethnic minorities have completely abandoned the federation system, instead adopting a system of regional autonomous administration for minority-concentrated areas. Sautman held a different view: “An examination of the Soviet case that does not assume a priori that TA [territory autonomy] and other minority rights contributed to the Soviet collapse reveals that there is no strong link between Soviet ethnic policy and regime collapse through the intermediation of separatism” (Sautman 2010, 85). Gong

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies  245 Yuzhi, a historian specializing in CCP history, hailed China’s adoption of autonomous region policy as “a breakthrough and progress in politics and theories” (余玮 2005). The design of RNA policy has come into maturity by a series of legal documents: “Common Program of The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference” (1949), “The PRC’s Constitutional Law” (1954), and “The Law of the PRC on Ethnic Regional Autonomy” (1984). All three documents lay out three levels of administration: Autonomous Region, Autonomous Prefecture, and Autonomous County. Today, there are also 1,173 Autonomous Townships, but they do not belong to the official category and do not have legislative power. The rationale for setting these autonomous administrative units is: “Regional national autonomy means that the minority nationalities, under unified State leadership, practise regional autonomy in areas where they live in concentrated communities” (民族区域自治法 1984). The most important political significance of autonomous administration is that minority cadres shall become the top leaders. This appears to be somewhat true, as most of the governors are of ethnic minority background. However, due to the PRC’s unique power structure, the top leadership group – the CCP Secretary General, which has authority superseding the relevant civil governments – are mostly Han cadres. This has become a kind of “silent rule” that is not officially prescribed. Beyond this EMP foundation, a series of preferential policies for the ethnic minorities in economic development, financial arrangements, employment, higher education admission and family control have been followed. Under the RNA policy, the stakeholders of founding an autonomous administrative unit involve the administrative organization (upper level), the concerned local administrative organization (same level), as well as ethnic minority representatives. All the articles in the RNA Laws (1984) suggest a subjective interpretation of credentials or criteria in setting up an autonomous unit. It also centralizes the role of the upper-level state authority. Theoretically, the vague criteria act as a subtle deterrent for possible separatism from some ethnic minority groups. However, Lai (2016, 148‒149) proposes that China’s ethnic autonomy policy has gone through political setbacks. The policy especially suffered during 1957 to 1976, when Mao’s radical line on ideologies dominated the nation. These setbacks were in line with Mao-led political campaigns such as the anti-rightist one, culminating in the Cultural Revolution. Only in 1978 did the CCP revive limited administrative autonomy for ethnic minorities. As a cornerstone of the EMP, five provincial-level ethnic minority autonomous regions have been set up in China between 1947 to 1965: the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (1947); the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (1958); the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (1955): the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (1958); and the Tibet Autonomous Region (1965). The latest statistics show the numbers of minority autonomous administrative units: 5 Regions (provincial level), 30 Prefectures, 120 counties, plus 985 townships (民政 部 2017). According to Lai (2016, 160), the number of townships was 1173. It seems the township-level autonomous areas decreased while the other three levels have remained the same. In mainland China’s 31 provincial-level governments, only four (Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, and Shanghai) have nil minority administrative units. Checking the constitutionally recognized three-level governments, 11 have nil minority administrative units (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Anhui, Fujian, Jiangxi, Shandong, Henan, and Shaanxi).

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THE SPECIFIC ETHNIC MINORITY POLICIES Besides the above-discussed political context and foundation for China’s EMP, the literature suggests that Chinese cultural tradition is another determinant in the making of the EMP, though they may appear to be more implicit, given that this factor is not explicitly evident in the Laws of RNA. The cultural tradition thesis is useful in explaining the rationale behind specific EMPs, such as those preferential policies in employment, education, financial arrangements, family planning, and so on. These specific policies were already initiated in Mao’s era. For example, the Party-state established ten ethnic minority universities from 1949 to 1958 (another four were added to the list in Deng’s era: Dalian Minzu University, 1997; North Minzu University, 1984; Hubei Minzu University, 1989; Sichuan University for Nationalities, 1985). University preferential admission for ethnic minority students became less significant, as the national university entrance examination was discontinued during the 1966‒1976 Cultural Revolution era. In general, those specific EMPs showed smaller impacts on the public due to a less developed scale, coupled with the heightened theme of class struggle in Mao’s era. There are several pieces of literature noteworthy of mentioning in explaining the culture thesis embedded in the Chinese EMP. First is Stevan Harrell’s work (1996, 4) which put forward the term “civilizing project” in defining the cultural encounters of ethnic minorities’ response to the Han majority, which was characterized in the following way: …is a kind of interaction between peoples, in which one group, the civilizing center, interacts with other groups (the peripheral peoples) in terms of a particular kind of inequality. In this intersection, the inequality between the civilizing center and the peripheral peoples has its ideological basis in the center’s claim to a superior degree of civilization, along with a commitment to raise the peripheral peoples’ civilization to the level of the center, or at least closer to that level. (Harrell 1996, 4)

In the Chinese case, this Han-centered civilizing project is led by Confucian culture and the Chinese language. Both Harrell (1996) and He (2003, 240) pointed out the power inequality between Han Confucian high culture and the denigrated minority low culture. He sharply asserted that “Confucian support for paternal authority ignores the serious problems of the power question. Confucian rejection of nonassimilation constitutes a theoretical obstacle to the implementation of genuine autonomy, and may exacerbate the minority problem” (He 2003, 240). This claim is contrary to the Party-state’s official narrative of the goal of EMP as being minzu ronghe (ethnic integration), not for minzu tonghua (ethnic assimilation). He forcefully contends that “the essence of Chinese civilization has been a process of assimilation, making a success of the Chinese diffusionist model. It is no exaggeration to say that without assimilation, there would have been no such thing as a Chinese cultural community today” (He 2003, 227). 马戎 also clearly called for a novice approach in addressing the ethnic issue. A proponent of a cultural approach, 马戎 (2004, 124‒125) found the core of the Chinese perception of ethnic group lies in its culture. It is commonly understood that, Confucianism sees that the differences in cultural values and norms of behaviors, rather than physical and linguistic difference (yixiazhibian) (马戎 2004, 124), differentiate the civilized majority and the barbarian minorities. He refuted the politicized tradition of ethnic issues in European modern history and the USSR model. On the contrary, he advocated that a cultural approach, manifesting itself in the form of multiculturalism, has been a successful panacea in achieving a common American identity among diverse immigrant groups of global origins.

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies  247 In this theoretical review on the cultural thesis of the EMP, one can observe two significant points. First, behind the dichotomy of the cultural relation between the Han center against minority peripheral lies an imbalanced power dynamic. Second, this cultural relation may also be repressive when coming to fundamental values clashes (e.g., in religion). According to the timeline of Chinese EMPs, the policy foundation of ethnic classification and the macro policy of regional autonomy have been well established since Mao’s era, while those specific policies only gained popularity in Deng’s era. The latter express more ramifications for the concerned minority groups today. Glimpses of influences from Confucian culture values (discussed below) can be traced among all the specific policies, as they ultimately were designed by the dominant Han majority policy makers. Preferential Policies The preferential policies on ethnic minorities have gained more public and media attention since the turn of the 21st century due to the popularity of online social media. They are a comprehensive set of policies toward ethnic minorities, ranging from education, family planning, financial arrangements, and taxation system, as well as minority employment in the civic-service sector, and so on. For example, from 1985 onwards and 2000 onwards, the PRC’s national government has been providing specialized funding to set up dislocated boarding schools for Tibetans and ethnic minority students from Xinjiang in central and eastern China. Inland Tibetan Schools (Zhu 2007) enroll Tibetan students from Tibet from primary school graduates. Inland Xinjiang Senior High Schools (Chen 2008) enroll minority students (dominantly Uyghurs) from junior high school graduates. Another example is the preferential national university admission for minority high school graduates. China has set up a prudential scheme to lower the academic requirements for minority students, not only those from minority residential areas but also for minority students residing in the Han-dominated eastern and central areas. A final example is the now-abandoned one-child policy: The Party-state allowed minority population to be exempt from this strict national strategy. Aslam and Yu (2016, 36‒53) interpret the Confucian cultural impetus behind these preferential policies, which were derived from the core value “ren” (benevolence or compassion) of the Confucian value system: “Confucianism is a duty-based theory that stresses paternalism (senior brotherly love, the duty to protect younger minority ‘brothers’)” (Aslam and Yu 2016, 43). Through this cultural-based preferential policy, both sides have deep-rooted expectations: The Confucian idea of compassion or ren implies a paternalist government whose duty is to win the hearts of minorities, emperors have offered benefits to minorities, or adopted in modern terminology, affirmative action and acceptable for minority groups. These affirmative actions, or policies are customary and minority people have natural feeling to expect them so that they become entitlements enjoyed by minority groups. (Aslam and Yu 2016, 43)

Unfortunately, public opinions expressed on the Internet suggest that such preferential policies nowadays create negative consequences among all stakeholders: the disgruntled majority group, the ungrateful minorities, and the awkwardly positioned policy makers.

248  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Policy in Language Education Another culturally related policy is in language education: how to manage the balance of teaching Chinese (the national language) and ethnic minority languages (for those groups with well-developed language systems such as Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongols, Yi, Dai, etc.). After Mao’s era, there was a brief “honeymoon period” of supporting the revival of minority home-tongue language teaching through the early 1980s during Yu Yaobang’s rule (1982‒1987), in locations such as the Uyghur-concentrated area of Southern Xinjiang (ironically at the price of less Chinese language education). However, these pushes quickly encountered two counterforces: the rapid marketizing of a national economy, and an insurgence of ethnic violent incidents in Tibet, Xinjiang, and inland areas since the 2000s. Both phenomena had sweeping negative impacts on these policies, leading to a diminishing of minority language teaching at the grassroots level. The former was an intangible push, often stemming from minority parents’ voluntary choices for their children’s future employability in the national job market (Ma 2007, 12). The latter resulted in an offset of minority language teaching by emphasizing Chinese language teaching, which was a specific policy from the dominant group, to dilute the ethnic minority cultural consciousness and to boost Chinese national identity. He (2014, 49‒56) acutely suggests an adamant tradition of Chinese language imperialism embedded in the history of Confucianism from the Qin and Han Dynasties down to the PRC era. Historically, the spreading of the Chinese language has inextricably been linked with the spread of Confucian culture, and it was deemed a key strategy for civilizing the ethnic minorities that resided in the mountainous and frontier areas. Policy in Religions No other specific policy is more complicated than the EMP in terms of religion, as many ethnic minorities (like Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, Hui, Dai, etc.) are born into religions such as Buddhism and Islam. This situation is an intractable contradiction with the Party-state’s Marxist–Leninist based political ideology, which establishes atheism as a ground rule. It is in this area of specific policy that China has long been caught in the global spotlight, usually resulting with scrutinization and backlash. This policy toward religions often intermingles with China’s two thorniest minority issues: the Tibetan problem and the Xinjiang problem. In the 11th Article of the RNA policy (1984), it clearly spells out: No State organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion, nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The State shall protect normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the State. Religious bodies and religious affairs shall not be subject to any foreign domination.

Nonetheless, apart from the radical assimilation policy shift in Mao’s era, the Party-state’s atheism renders extremely difficult the task of practicing the above-stated policy of religious freedom. For example, the official rule for the minority cadres in the government sector, particularly those within the party line, prevents them from practicing religion. This rule again puts some minority cadres in awkward positions, as religion often plays an indispensable role in their ethnic identity, especially in the case of Muslim Uyghurs as Buddhist Tibetans.

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies  249 Another set of tensions lie within the state schooling system, which is by nature non-religious. Some devout minority parents may send their children to receive a certain level of religious education; for example: Dai boys attend temple schools; Uyghur, Hui and Dongxiang boys go to study the Koran in mosques; and Tibetan teenagers learn Buddhist scripts in temples. Confucian tradition is also ambiguous and, in some cases, even at odds with religious beliefs. To begin with, the question of whether Confucianism is a religious belief has long been contested, but certainly such unique values do not resemble any typical religion in the world. As Zhang suggested (2011, 22), academic debates are more inclined to see Confucianism, like Daoism, as a foundation of “religious thought” in Chinese traditional culture. Another obvious example of distancing Confucianism from typical religions is shown in an often-popularly cited Confucian quote: “respect ghosts and spirits but keep them at a distance.” Zhang remarks: “Ghosts and spirits are the personification of objects of faith and are intimately connected with an account of tianming. Confucius neither denied nor admitted the existence of ghosts and spirits” (Zhang 2011, 31). This is in a sharp contrast with the worship of divine offspring or prophets in monotheistic religions, such as Jesus in Christianity and Allah in Islam. Historically, in the last Chinese dynasty (Qing), the ruling Manchu minority – who were originally relegated as barbarians in the northeast – gained the people’s recognition simply due to their adoption of Confucian values. Qing emperors such as Kang Xi and Qian Long were suspicious toward Christian missionaries such as Ricci Matteo, often only allowing them very minimal access when it came to spreading Christianity in Chinese territory. This historic example proves the attitudes of Confucianists toward foreign religions. This part of history also shaped the cultural distance between Chinese culture and mainstream religions: relatively at ease with Tibetan Buddhism (the Qing court built a strong alliance with Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhist spiritual leaders), but considerably intractable with Islam, which encompassed the Hui and Uyghurs of western China. In China, the widest cultural expanse exists between Confucianism and Islam. Today, this complex expanse has been stretched even further by China’s “unique” policy in addressing the officially defined “three evil forces” – violent terrorism, ethnic separatism, and religious extremism – looming in the Tibetan region and Xinjiang over the past two decades. Learning from the apparent failures of soft policy (“Soft Governance in Xinjiang” during the time of Zhang Chunxian), the current CCP Xinjiang leader Chen Quanguo’s signature approach of “vocational training centers” (providing Chinese language, laws and technical skills training) for a large group of minority people (primarily Uyghur) echoes as a latest example of a “civilizing project” from the Han majority to ethnic minorities through educational institutions. Without doubt, this policy is fiercely disapproved by the West. Zenz reckons this type of educational institution “is arguably the country’s most intense campaign of coercive social re-engineering since the Cultural Revolution” (Zenz 2019, 124). He recognizes that Communist regimes like China have practiced a long tradition of believing in political “re-education” as a core instrument for achieving lasting social control through “thought reform.” In addition, in the case of the Tibetan issue, there also was a spate of Tibetan self-immolation incidents in the early 2010s. Xinjiang and Tibet both became the focal areas for the international academics to scrutinize the implementation of China’s EMP in religions (e.g., Hillman and Tuttle 2020; Horowitz and Yu 2015; Odgaard and Nielsen 2014). More broadly, the PRC has been investing a colossal amount of public funds into projects aimed at achieving security and stability in these two regions, and it has claimed that there have been no terrorist incidents in the past several years; while this

250  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China is a positive indication, it hardly signals any genuine, permanent success in the Party-state’s religious policy on minorities.

DEBATING THE USSR MODEL: CHANGES AND CHALLENGES IN REFORM ERAS Ever since the inception of China’s EMP, it has been undergoing constant challenges, including political setbacks inside and outside of China. Gauging through the lens of politics, the Chinese EMP has received two rounds of blows, which respectively occurred during two eras: first during Mao’s radical rule from 1957 to 1976, and second through Hu Jingtao and Wen Jiabao’s era, from 2002 to 2012. Both eras are common in terms of questioning the established EMP and marring the legitimacy of its embedded USSR political ideologies on ethnicity and nationality. Yet they also significantly differ in terms of their scale and socioeconomic background. The first undermining of the EMP was primarily imputed to Mao’s radical ideology on the prevailing class struggle in the first three decades since the founding of the CCP Party-state. Under an overarching dictatorship and the grand rule of “Never Forget Class Struggle,” minority groups preferential and equality policies were undermined by an array of vicious attacks on minority rights. These occurred specifically on various levels: at the policy level, some preferential policies were scaled back, at the macro policy level, demands on ethnic autonomy were condemned and some autonomous administrative prefectures and counties abolished; and also at the level of everyday life in terms of, for example, a denial of minority culture in diet and costumes in everyday life (Lai 2016, 148). As 黄铸 points out, during the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution commencing in 1966: The [ethnic] policy shifted to ethnic assimilation. At that time, minority women were not allowed to wear [ethnic style] skirts and bear long hair. The policy of minority autonomy region existed in name only. Some minority autonomous areas were simply merged into ordinary administrative areas, and even their names disappeared. There was on-site meeting In Guangxi, which called for anti-ethnic minority characteristics. Minority cadres were discriminated against and even cracked down. A theory was put forward that “the essence of the ethnic minority issues is the class problem” (known as “The basic principles of Marxism”). In fact, only the terms of classes and class struggles could be talked about, and the term of ethnic group could not be mentioned. (黄铸 2012, 6)

The weakening of the EMP system certainly was not a stand-alone initiative, for it also linked to Mao’s grand strategy and ambition of global influence. He was revered not only as the paramount Chinese proletariat revolutionary leader, but also as a beacon to usher in global campaigns of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism among Third World countries. Within the group of socialist nations, the USSR model was also criticized by Mao for being revisionary and derailing itself from the correct course of the socialist movement. This dispute also offers a starting point for Mao’s departure from USSR ideologies and policies, such as EMP. Mao also was an ultimate nationalist in representing China’s national interest. He was highly alert toward the endangerment of China’s sovereignty in terms of facing a potential military invasion from the USSR. After Mao’s death in 1976 and since Deng’s era from 1978, China’s EMP has enjoyed a moderate revival, especially during the 1980s. CCP leader Hu Yaobang sought to resume

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies  251 minority preferential policies, notably, softer treatment on minorities in the judiciary system, such as “less arrests, less death penalty and judicial leniency” (also known as “two less and one leniency”) (Li, Longmire and Lu 2018, 257). He also re-stabilized the Regional Nationality Autonomy policy (e.g., he recalled Han cadres from Tibet and Xinjiang, and he resumed minority language education). By then, Hu’s version of EMP was a positive step toward protecting the ethnic minorities’ interest and rights (e.g., 韩孝荣 2015, 244‒250). However, the impact of such policy shift causes controversy nowadays. However, a spate of ethnic riots that took place mainly in Tibet and Xinjiang during the 1990s and culminating in the late 2000s. Some policy observers claimed that Hu’s EMP shall be partially accountable for the occurrence of the riots (e.g., 雨夹雪 2013; 冼岩 2014). The deteriorated interethnic relations have re-sparked a series of debates on China’s EMP. Some vocal and pro-liberal academics and even policy makers in the circle of ethnic minority works reflected on the EMP to date. They defined the current EMP as the first generation of the EMP (e.g., 马戎 2004; Ma 2006, 2007; 胡鞍钢/胡联合 2011; 朱维群 2012, 2014). However, this new round of attacks was not institutionalized, remaining purely in closed spheres such as academic publications, public media and online social media. They never have been successful in rewriting the policy discourse. The Party-state’s official narrative in Mao’s era featured a re-invented radical Marxist political discourse as a resistance to the USSR’s version of Marxism–Leninism. Under Deng’s era, the latest academic critique on the first generation EMP shared a common ground with the Western liberalism. Explicitly or implicitly, the US model of The Melting Pot is often regarded as an alternative of race and ethnic relations. This also originates from China’s nearly four-decade-long participation in the market economic system, though branded under the banner of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” There were three primary publications from three prominent academics who pioneered this line of debate. In 2004, 马戎 (2004, 1) called for a new perspective on understanding ethnic relations by way of the de-politicization of ethnicity. In the sociological paper, Ma theoretically unrooted the bedrock of China’s EMP: ethnic minorities’ identities have been politicized in the course of ethnic classification and RNA policy. This identity shall be gradually discarded and replaced with a Chinese nationality. Next, 滕星/马效义 (2005, 17) discussed China’s ethnic minority educational preferential policy and its implication on educational equality. Upon debating the educational equality between individual citizens and ethnic groups, 滕星/马效义 articulated the view that: On the other hand, we shall recognize that this [educational] preferential policy is a temporary policy in the transition period implemented by the state in the early stages of socialism, in order to balance the development between the mainstream ethnic group and minority groups. This policy will not continue to be implemented, once the pre-conditions of the policy fade away, or the policy goals are reached. (滕星/马效义 2005, 17)

The critique culminated in 2011, when 胡鞍钢/胡联合 (2011, 1) first explicitly called for “a second-generation ethnic policy.” In appealing for “gradually lightening Chinese citizens’ ethnic consciousness and the notion of 56 ethnic groups, and, gradually strengthening Chinese national consciousness and identity” (胡鞍钢/胡联合 2011, 1), the duo propose stronger ethnic integration in all walks of politics, economy, culture, and society. When investigating the educational background of the above scholars, all were born in the 1950s. Another coincidence is that all have substantial higher education and professional working experience at prestigious US universities after the Cultural Revolution. Ma received a PhD degree in sociology from Brown University in 1987. Teng was a Fulbright scholar and

252  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China post-doctoral research fellow at the Anthropology Department of UCLA from 1994 to 1995. He is a follower of renowned cultural anthropologist John Ogbu in the area of American race and ethnic studies. Lastly, Hu Angang, an economist, cultivated an extensive American academic CV: post-doctoral fellow at Yale (1991‒1992), and a visiting fellow at MIT (1997) and Harvard (2001). Not necessarily coordinated, these scholars proposed an American-inspired “melting pot” model as a panacea for addressing China’s escalated ethnic tensions, epitomized by the violence related to the Tibetan and Uyghur cases. Obviously, this line of thought has been bombarded by hardline academics. Criticism on the second-generation ethnic policy has mainly come from 郝时远 (2012a, 2012b, 2012c), 黄铸 (2012), 王希恩 (2009), and 金炳镐/ 肖锐 (2012). Backed by literature from “classical theorists” (郝时远 2012c, 45) (referring to Marxism and Leninism), this group of conservative scholars all argue that the current EMP (explicitly the RNA policy) can be improved but not deemed to be discarded, and the so-called international experiences from the US, Brazil and India all do not fit the Chinese situation.

THE IMPLICATIONS This chapter calibrated the Chinese EMP as “socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics and Confucian cultural traditions.” At the 12th National Congress of the CCP in 1982, Deng officially expressed the concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (余翔/陈 金龙 2013). The history of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a history of the CCP’s evolution in its political thoughts and ideologies during the reform and open-door era. The phrase can also be backdated to Mao’s era, and even the pre-PRC era, when the CCP relentlessly fought for its own pathway to a national socialist government, in defying an orthodox Stalinist and post-Stalinist socialist model from the USSR. This concept also legitimizes the CCP’s rationale in blending a variety of ideas: Marxism–Leninism, Confucian values, and the Western-originated free market economy. This guiding rule of blending different ideas certainly also works for the evolution of China’s EMP since 1949. In essence, the underlined Chinese discourse of EMP follows a historical materialism based on Marxism’s view on the evolution of nation and ethnic group; thus, it rationalizes the “macro policy” of the RNA and the “specific policies” of preferential treatment for minorities as a route to ensure ethnic equality. Moreover, it is also rooted in the Confucianism-based Chinese cultural civilizing project for ethnic minorities in peripheral areas, exemplified by China’s “specific minority policy” on language education and religions. While the EMP aims for an ideal goal of peaceful cultural assimilation, it sometimes also can be repressive. From Hu Jingtao to Xi Jinping’s era, discourse regarding Chinese EMP coincided with the grand narrative of “building a harmonious society,” “achieving the Chinese Dream” and “Confidence in the Chinese Road.” It came along with China’s push for soft power on the global stage in recent decade. Though Xi reiterated that China has no intention to export its model of state governance to other countries, in a globalized world today, China’s EMP has always been on the receiving end of backlash by Western-led public media and political opinions. The Chinese monolingualism-rooted minority language education policy, the de-extremization policy of ethnic religious extremism, and the mass-scale re-education project are all at odds with the concept of “a globalizing human rights discourse” (Schein 1996, 138) as well as prevailing universal minority rights (Kymlicka 2001, 21‒23) and identity politics (Castells 2010).

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies  253

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author acknowledges the valuable feedback from all the participants in the international conference on Public Policy and Public Administration in China at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (Suzhou Campus) on 29th–30th October 2019, with special thanks to Professor Xiaowei Zang, Professor Zhiyue Bo and Professor Ruiping Fan. 

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CHINESE REFERENCES 韩孝荣 (2015) 《中国民族关系散论》‍, 244‒250. 台湾：八方文化企业. 郝时远 (2012a) “美国是中国解决民族问题的榜样吗? – 评‘第二代民族政策’的‘国际经验教训’说.” 《世界民族》第2期, 1‒15. 郝时远 (2012b) “巴西能为中国民族事务提供什么‘经验’ – 再评‘第二代民族政策’的‘国际经验教 训’说.”《西北民族大学学报》第4期, 1‒11. 郝时远 (2012c) “评‘第二代民族政策’说的理论与实践误区.”《新疆社会科学》第2期, 44‒62. 胡鞍钢/胡联合 (2011) “第二代民族政策：促进民族交融一体和繁荣一体.”《新疆师范大学学报》 第24期, 1‒13. 黃光学/施联朱 (主編) (2005) 《中國的民族识别》‍, 北京：民族出版社. 黄铸 (2012) “何为第二代民族政策?” 《中央民族大学学报》第3期, 5‒7. 金炳镐/肖锐 (2012) “坚持中国特色社会主义民族理论政策—评析第二代民族政策.”《西北民族大 学学报》第4期, 12‒19. 马戎 (2004) “理解民族关系的新思路：少数族群问题的去政治化.”《北京大学学报》第6期, 122‒ 133. 民政部 (2017) “中华人民共和国行政区划统计表.” December 31. Retrieved March 18, 2020, http://​ xzqh​.mca​.gov​.cn/​statistics/​2017​.html. 民族区域自治法 (1984). May 31, 2010. Retrieved February 25, 2020, http://​www​.lawinfochina​.com/​ display.aspx?id=6211&lib=law. 施联朱 (2005) “具有中国特色的民族识别.”黃光学/施联朱 (主編) 《中國的民族识别》，87.北 京：民族出版社. 滕 星/马效义 (2005) “中国高 等教 育 的少数 民族 优 惠政策 与教育平等.”《民 族 研 究 》第5期, 1‒18. 冼岩 (2014) “昆明暴恐案的源头之一是胡耀邦.”中国瞭望，万维读者网, March 5. Available at: http://​news​.creaders​.net/​china/​2014/​03/​05/​1352403. 王希恩 (2009) “也谈在我国民族问题上的‘反思’和 ‘实事求是’ – 与马戎教授的几点商榷.”《西南 民族大学学报》第1期, 1‒17. 吴启讷 (2018) “人群分类与国族整合:中华人民共和国民族识别政策的历史线索和政治面向.” 北 京大学社会学与人类学系, 15. August 30. Retrieved February 25, 2020, http://​www​.shehui​.pku​.edu​ .cn/​upload/​editor/​file/​20180714/​20180714122925​_3799​.pdf. 雨夹雪 (2013) “竟然鼓吹胡耀邦的民族政策？”红色中国网, July 8. Retrieved March 23, 2020, http://​ www​.hswh​.org​.cn/​wzzx/​llyd/​ls/​2013​-07​-08/​21683​.html. 余玮 (2005) “龚育之的红色家国情怀.”《大地》第23/24期. Retrieved March 23, 2020, http://​www​ .people​.com​.cn/​GB/​paper81/​16687/​1468831​.html. 余 翔/陈金龙 (2013) “中国特色社会主义：概念演变与内涵升华.” January 16. Retrieved March 21, 2020. http://​www​.epaper​.gmw​.cn/​gmrb/​html/​2013​-01/​16/​nw​.D110000gmrb​_20130116​_1​-11​.htm.

Revisiting China’s ethnic minorities policies  255 中国外文局 (2018) “四个自信’(改革开放)。”中国关键词: 权威解读当代中国,中国网.October 30. Retrieved February 25, 2020, http://​keywords​.china​.org​.cn/​2018​-10/​30/​content​_69097952​.htm. 中央人民政府 (2005) “中国民族：二、56个民族的认定.” Retrieved February 25, 2020, http://​www​ .gov​.cn/​test/​2005​-07/​26/​content​_17366​_2​.htm. 中央人民政府 (2012) “2010年第六次全国人口普查主要数据公报.” April 20. Retrieved March 22, 2020, http://​www​.gov​.cn/​test/​2012​-04/​20/​content​_2118413​.htm. 中央人民政府 (2013) “中国民族.” Retrieved March 22, 2020, http://​www​.gov​.cn/​test/​2005​-07/​26/​ content​_17366​_2​.htm. 朱维群 (2012) “对当前民族领域问题的几点思考.” February 13. Retrieved March 22, 2020, http://​ www​.studytimess​.com​.cn/​2012/​02/​13/​01/​01​_51​.htm. 朱维群 (2014) “处理暴恐事件要从民族宗教问题中脱敏.” April 2. Retrieved March 23, 2020, http://​ news​.ifeng​.com/​exclusive/​official/​detail​_2014​_04/​02/​35384995​_0. shtml. 朱军 (2015) “中国经济社会转型中的民族问题与民族事务治理—以国家治理能力为分析视角.” 《‍民族研究》第1期, 1‒12.

14. The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China Lucy Zhao, Xiaowei Zang, and Shijia Yang

Research on foreign language education policy in non-Western societies has advanced considerably in recent years (Gao and Jin 2015; Kirkpatrick 2016; Kirkpatrick and Liddicoat 2019; Spolsky 2012; Zhou and Sun 2019). Nevertheless, Alptekin and Tatar (2011, 328) claimed that practical concerns over language learning and teaching assumed priority over theoretical issues in research on foreign language education (also Johnson and Stephens 2018, 811). Mirhosseini and Khodakarami (2016, 283) argued that foreign language education is “known by its professional and practical features such as teaching methodology and proficiency tests which tend to overshadow the cultural politics of language education and broader policy-level issues.” May (2015, 45) asserted that the relationship between language policy and political theory was not well researched, and Hult (2018, 35) showed a dearth of studies on language policy in leading foreign language-oriented journals and on foreign languages in language policy-oriented journals in the world. Clearly, more efforts are needed to explore the catalysts of foreign language education policy in different parts of the world. In this chapter, we study the political dynamics of foreign language education policy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). By political dynamics we refer to elite perceptions and related government decisions and policies. We focus on the political dynamics because they have led to changes in foreign language education in China since 1949 (Mao and Min 2019; Qi and Qi 2013). In addition, societal forces are a key player in the education systems in different parts of the world, yet they are not a key factor and rarely involved in policy making in the PRC. Thus, we focus on possible political catalysts of government decisions on foreign language education in China in this chapter. Finally, while there is a large literature on the development of foreign language education policies in China (Adamson and Morris 1997; Han, De Costa, and Cui 2019; Hu 2005; 胡文仲 2009; Hu and Alsagoff 2010; Li 2007; Li 2018; 鲁子问 2012; Mao and Min 2019; Pan 2011; Qi and Qi 2013; Ross 1993; Shi 2013; 张蔚磊 2015; Zhou and Sun 2019), knowledge on the political catalysts of the development in China is surprisingly limited (Mao and Min 2019). To partly narrow this knowledge gap, we examine the relationship between the Chinese dream and changes in foreign language education policy in the PRC in this chapter. Below, we first review four existing theoretical perspectives in the literature on foreign language education and explain why they cannot adequately account for the development of Chinese foreign language education policies. Next, we draw attention to the elite discourse on the century of humiliation and the Chinese dream in the study of foreign language education policy. We then discuss the major changes in foreign language education in China and show the role of the political dynamics in the evolution of the Chinese foreign language education policy since 1949.

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The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China  257

THE ENGLISH LITERATURE ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICY Over the years, foreign language policy has developed into a major area of research on education, curriculum reform, and educational policy making (Hult 2018, 35). There is a large literature on the pivotal role of foreign language education (especially English teaching and learning) in the curriculums in Colombia and Mexico (Carvajal and Sánchez 2016; Roux 2015), Iran (Mirhosseini, Kiany, and Navidinia 2011), Turkey (Alptekin and Tatar 2011; Bartu 2002; Saricoban 2012), and in countries/or regions in East Asia including Hong Kong (Poon 2004) and Japan (Glasgow and Paller 2016; Kubota 2011), South Asia including India (Ramanathan 2016) and Nepal (Phyak 2016), and Southeast Asia including Malaysia (Hanewald 2016) and Singapore (Leong 2016) (also Gao and Jin 2015; Kirkpatrick and Liddicoat 2019). We observe four broad theoretical strands in this large literature: the first is the economics of language; the second is the language ecology; the third is grassroots politics, and the fourth is a world system perspective. Below, we review the four strands before we assess whether each of them can effectively account for the development of foreign language education policies in the PRC since 1949. The Economics of Language The call for research on language policy from an economic point of view dates back to Jernudd (1971) and Thorburn (1971). In the 1980s, researchers started to study the role of economic variables as explanatory factors of linguistic variables. They have examined economics as a tool for assessing language policies, particularly in terms of costs and benefits of different policy options, which have covered the following areas including language (both L1 and L2) and labour income (Chiswick and Miller 1985, 1995, 2000, 2002; Christofides and Swidinsky 1998; Dávila and Mora 2000; Dustmann and van Soest 2001; Grin 1997a, 1997b; Grin and Sfreddo 1998; Grenier 1984; Vaillancourt 1996) and language and economic activities (Cremer and Willes 1991; Helliwell 1999; Ó Cinnéide and Keane 1988; Price 1994; Sproull 1996; Taddei and Antomarchi 1997). Increasing research in this area since then has focused on the costs and benefits of different policy options (Grin and Vaillancourt 1999; Pool 1996) or on discussing the criteria of basic decision making in the context of language policy (Grin 2003). Grin (2003, 30‒31) discussed the relationship between language activity and the supply and demand of language, which in her view could contribute to the evaluation of public policies regarding language education, because it offered analytical tools for the identification and measurement of advantages and drawbacks of policy alternatives. According to Grin, it is important to study language policy because it aims to modify the linguistic environment to increase aggregate welfare (Grin 2003). The state intervention in the form of language policy is justified economically when market failures such as insufficient information, high transaction costs, the existence of “market structure imperfections,” and the presence of externalities occur (Church and King 1993; Dalmazzone 1999; Grin 2003; Pool 1996). The government can intervene through incentives or mandatory regulation. In addition, linguistic environment is a type of “public good,” as it displays the features of “non-rival consumption” and “impossibility of exclusion.” Thus, market forces alone cannot guarantee the optimal linguistic environment as in the case

258  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China of the preservation of our natural environment (Grin 2003). Social optimal diversity could be arrived at when a “fundamental rule” of policy choice applies (Stokey and Zeckhauser 1978). Grin (2008, 83) stressed that the economic approach to language led to a joint emphasis on efficiency (“are scarce resources used wisely?”) and fairness (“does the resulting distribution of material and symbolic resources meet socially accepted standards of fairness?”). “In practice, much of the economics of language education was devoted to the estimation of the private rates of return, for individuals, of investing in second or foreign language skills. These returns are reflected in earnings differentials. When data on language learning expenditure are available, social rates of return can also be computed. They estimated the value, for society as a whole, of investing in foreign or second language teaching” (Grin 2016, 1). The economics of language education has influenced research on foreign language education policy, partly because of ongoing globalization and the need for economic development in non-Western countries (Kubota 2011; Li 2018; Phyak 2016; Shi 2013; Zhu 2003). It is mentioned that a good circulation of resources in the world is unimaginable without the help of language in the age of globalization. A foreign language, especially English (Kubota 2011; Mirhosseini and Khodakarami 2016; Phillipson 1992; Qi and Qi 2013; Saricoban 2012; Shi 2013), is seen as an important part of “soft power” (Li 2018) that can promote economic development in developing countries (Qi and Qi 2013). Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996, 429) argued that “a diffusion of English paradigm in language education was characterized by triumphant capitalism, its science and technology, and a monolingual view of modernization and internationalization.” Roux (2015) claimed that “English language skills are vital if a country is to participate actively in the global economy and individuals are to have access to knowledge for social and economic development. Others claim that behind the spread of English is a growing transnational business with headquarters in Britain and the USA.” “Both views seem to be truthful and the fact is that English is the most widely-taught foreign language world-wide” (see also Amara 2003). The contributors in Gazzola and Wickström (2016) highlighted the influences of language diversity on economic outcomes, the distributive effects of policy regarding official languages, the individual welfare consequences of bilingualism, and the like. Empirically, Carvajal and Sánchez (2016, 186) claimed that Colombia strived to spread English education in an effort to augment economic benefits. Nguyen and Nguyen (2019) found that government policies labeled English as an international language and prioritized it in foreign language education in Vietnam. Kubota (2011) showed that linguistic instrumentalism underscored the importance of English skills for work and for achieving individual economic success, and how it affected foreign language education policies in Japan (also see Saricoban 2012 on Turkey). Pan (2015, 1) used “The Cult of English” in her study of foreign language education in China. Qi and Qi (2013) argued that foreign language education, especially when it results in English competency, played a vital role in promoting business and international trade, as well as enhancing China’s international status in a globalized world. An English-competent person in China has social and educational capital, and access to economic capital through improved employment opportunities, higher salary, increased promotion chances and the possibility of further education.

The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China  259 The Language Ecology Haugen (1972, 57) defined “language ecology” as “the study of interactions between any given language and its environment,” in which environment means “the society that uses a language as one of its codes.” There was the interdependence of language and other ecological factors (also Haugen 2001). A sound language ecology is a dynamic balanced system in which different languages coexist and interact with social environments, which means that both linguistic diversity and multiculturalism are encouraged (Chen 2016; Eliasson 2015; Gadet and Pagel 2018; Ludwig, Mühlhäusler, and Pagel 2018; Mühlhäusler 2018; for a critique of the language ecology, see Kravchenko 2016). Language ecology “involves building on linguistic diversity worldwide, promoting multilingualism and foreign language learning, and granting linguistic human rights to speakers of all languages” (Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1996, 429). The language ecology has played a role in educational research and promoted the study of multilingualism. Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson (2010) discussed corporate globalization and linguistic neo-imperialism and called for cultural diversity and linguistic human rights in market-oriented globalization. Gazzola (2014) argued that an increase in linguistic diversity of the language regimes of patent organizations could both improve the efficiency of the patent system and lead to a more balanced distribution of costs among countries. Han, De Costa, and Cui (2019) found that ecological approaches were useful for research on second language acquisition and can help advance language policy and planning research agendas in China. Grassroots Politics on Foreign Language Education The third strand examines grassroots politics and foreign language education. Amara (2003) understood identity formation as a primary concern in foreign language education and raised an issue of how the battle between Arabization and Muslim fundamentalism on the one hand and Westernization and desecularization on the other would play out in the development of foreign language education policies in Palestine. The contributors in Gazzola and Wickström (2016) similarly examined the relationship between language and the politics of national identity in Canada, India, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia and the regions of Central America, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa. Unsurprisingly, research guided by this strand shows that the battle on language policy among stakeholders is partly played out over their views on language rights, group rights, and individual rights (May 2015, 45). Roux (2015) found that consultants, academics, teachers, administrators, material designers, program developers, textbooks writers, and the like actively participated in English education in Colombia and Mexico (also Peláez and Usma 2017). Johnson and Johnson (2015, 221) drew attention to language policy arbiters who “wield a disproportionate amount of power relative to other individuals” in policy making on “additive bilingual education” in the US. A World System Approach Pan (2011, 2015) analyzes Chinese policies on English as a foreign language from a world system perspective (Wallerstein 1974, 1989, 2004a, 2004b). Wallerstein proposes that the interconnected world system is composed of competing states that are unequal in power ranging from core, semi-periphery to periphery in a hierarchy. The states compete with each

260  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China other and strive to move to a more central position. The power of all states are driven or constrained by both actors above the state level and those below the state level (Wallerstein 1983, 2004b). The state “switches” “between the (transnational) system and (national) locality” (Blommaert 2005, 219). Following this line of argument, language policies are assumed to manifest how the state responds to the world system as well as how it gains consent, maintains cultural governance and exerts hegemony internally. Through analyzing the translated texts of English Curriculum Requirements from primary to tertiary education levels in China, Pan investigated the ascribed status of English, the objectives and standards of English learning and teaching, and also possible social issues the current policies may lead to. It was found that there was no ideological resistance to the promotion of English, which was perceived as beneficial to both personal and national development. Pan warned that the ready acceptance of English could lead to potential social problems.

THE CHINESE LITERATURE ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICY There is rich literature in Chinese on foreign language education policy by scholars in the PRC. Some studies have reviewed and reflected on Chinese foreign language education policies (金志茹/王军/王磊 2010; 胡文仲 2001; 邓文英 2004; 孟臻 2012; 张蔚磊 2015; 杨 志勇 2015; 仲伟合/王巍巍/黄恩谋 2016) or put forward suggestions to implement foreign language education policies in regions such as Gansu (赵鹤/徐贺兵 2016), Xinjiang (蔡志 全/赵红霞 2015; 李成 2016), Henan (尹悦 2016; 曹阳 2017) and Yunnan (余江英 2017). Others have discussed foreign language education policies in other countries including the United States (戴曼纯 2012; 张蔚磊 2014; 邹一戈/冯增俊 2014; 张瑞嵘 2016; 吴格非 2017), Australia (罗爱梅 2010; 秦涛 2011), France (戴冬梅 2010; 罗孝琼 2017), the EU (傅 荣/王克非 2008; 王美玲 2013), the UK (谢倩 2015) and some other Asian countries (张贞爱 2011; 邹长虹 2014; 易红波 2017). There are also comparative studies, for example, between China and the US (曹迪 2015; 曹湘洪/吴曦 2016; 刘洋 2017; 徐虹 2017; 吴进善 2015; 朱云 翠 2014), between China and Australia (金志茹 2007; 王辉 2010), between China and France (张行才 2014), between China and Germany (张建伟 2016), and between China and South Korea (程宏 2014). There were also a few studies introducing the theoretical frameworks mentioned above to the PRC. Wen (文卫霞 2013) suggested that too much emphasis had been placed on English language education at the cost of other languages from the perspective of language ecology. Shi and Shen (石茜英/沈骑 2014) introduced language economics and pointed out that it would be useful in the decision making and evaluation of foreign language education policies without going into detail or the support of an empirical study.

A CONTEXTUAL APPROACH TOWARDS CHINESE FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICY While acknowledging the above English and Chinese literature, we agree with Lu (鲁子问 2012, 56) that foreign language education policy “is an integral part of the language policy and refers to the public policies of the state and local governments in the field of foreign

The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China  261 languages.” Zhang (张沉香 2007) argued that Chinese foreign language education policy is deeply influenced by the economic, political and international environment (also 曹迪 2012; 沈骑/夏天 2014; 王克非 2011; 孟臻 2014; 张治国 2017). Thus, we argue that foreign language education policy is essentially a tool for a government to achieve its strategical goals. Thus, foreign language education policy is set and is to be evaluated in the context of broad social policies (Mirhosseini, Kiany, and Navidinia 2011, 51). Li (2007; also Ho 2018; Li 2018) discussed the motives for changes in education policies in the context of socio-political circumstances in the PRC. May (2015, 45) stressed the wider historical and socio-political contexts within which language education policy was situated (also Mirhosseini and Khodakarami 2016, 283; Nguyen and Nguyen 2019, 185). This contextual approach draws our attention to the role of elite politics in foreign language education policy in China and enables us to go beyond existing research guided by the economics of language, the language ecology, grassroots politics, or the world system. Clearly, the four strands have not elaborated the role of domestic elite politics in policy making on foreign language education sufficiently. We deem it imperative to stress the role in China since societal forces do not play a main role in policy-making processes. Political elites make decisions including national plans and rules that are the main source of public policies including foreign language education policy in China. Their decisions are their reactions to the socioeconomic and political development both in and outside the PRC. While there are many elite decisions and reactions that have affected foreign language education in China, in this chapter, we study the relationship between the elite discourse on the Chinese dream and foreign language education in the PRC. The elite discourse on the Chinese dream has been an outcome of the major political, economic, and social changes in China since 1840 and forms a historical context for us to explore the political dynamics of major changes in foreign language education in the PRC.

THE ELITE DISCOURSE ON THE CHINESE DREAM The broad backdrop of the Chinese dream was the century of humiliation, also known as the hundred years of national humiliation, which refers to the period of 1840‒1945 when China was politically and militarily dominated by Western powers and Japan (Cohen 2008; Lei 2017; Pillsbury 2016; Wang 2014). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has politically extended the century of humiliation from 1840‒1945 to 1840‒1949. The century of humiliation has been central to the construction of China’s modern national identity (Lei 2017) and the Chinese dream. Cohen (2008, 36) reported that Chinese elites in the late Qing and republican periods “referred endlessly to the humiliations (guochi) their country experienced at the hands of foreign imperialism beginning with the Opium War.” Kaufman (2010) claimed that Qing and republican era elites engaged in debates on the nature of international competition and the reasons why nations succeed or fail in the international arena to save China from being colonized. Cohen (2008) and Thomas (2019) reported that the republican regime of 1912‒1949 proclaimed the annual observation of over two-dozen National Humiliation Days in August 1928 as an attempt to foster pro-regime patriotism. Callahan (2006, 179) argued that the goal of these ritual events was to construct a China “worthy of being saved.” These political rituals and rhetoric have persisted into the post-1949 era. Callahan (2004, 202) noted that the official interpretations of the century of humiliation generally told the tale

262  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China of China going from being at the center of the world to being the Sick Man of Asia after the Opium War in 1840, only to rise again with the founding of the PRC in 1949 (also Danner 2018; Lei 2017). Wang (2014) found that the CCP used these narratives to support its claim that it had the ability and leadership to restore the glory of Chinese civilization and rebuild China into a strong nation; and used this claim to establish its legitimacy, consolidate national identity, and justify the political system in China. Thomas (2019) discussed how the CCP used patriotic education campaigns, provided historical accounts of the past, and captalized on successes to “bolster confidence in the Party’s leadership” among the Chinese people. The elite discourse on the century of humiliation has created a deterministic narrative that portrays the present as ideal and inevitable and has been a key cornerstone of political legitimacy for the PRC (Hizi 2019; Thomas 2019; Wang 2014; Zhang 2013). The CCP also used national humiliation and victimization as a pivotal theme in bringing about collective memories (Qian and Liu 2019) and nation-building (Ho 2018; Lei 2017). Finally, Kaufman (2010) argued that Chinese elites today drew on the century of humiliation as a starting point for their views on how China should interact with other nations. Qian and Liu (2019) reported that the collective memory of victimization is shaped and disseminated under the CCP to promote China’s national aspirations and legitimize China’s claims in the contemporary world. The aspirations and claims, derived from national humiliation and victimization, are part of the Chinese dream. Brown (2018) saw China’s dream of modernization as a combination of the American dream of material success and Europe’s pursuit of quality of life. In contrast, we argue that the Chinese dream is an official goal of the PRC which aims at de-humiliation. According to President Xi Jinping, the Chinese dream was to “restore the respect and status in the world that China deserves” (央视快评 2019). The government version of the Chinese dream is based on the CCP’s “two centenary goals,” that is, a “moderately prosperous society” by the CCP centennial in 2021 and to “Make China Great Again” by the 100th birthday of the PRC in 2049 (Thomas 2019). What do “Make China Great Again” or “the respect and status in the world that China deserves” mean? Pillsbury (2016) discussed China’s ambition to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power by 2049. We agree that a key connotation in the elite discourse on the Chinese dream is national rejuvenation, that is, China becomes a strong and prosperous nation and a dominant player in international affairs. Then, what have the elites done to rejuvenate the Chinese nation? It seems that a major instrument for Chinese elites to achieve rapid modernization has been to learn from advanced countries. The two opium wars with the West that started the century of humiliation exposed China’s military and technological backwardness, which triggered a Self-Strengthening Movement to revive China by maintaining Confucian values while embracing Western technologies in the mid-19th century. Some elites supported this movement by encouraging the learning of trade and technology from the West and the study of Western languages, and so on (Debary and Lutrano 2000; Elman 2004; Qu 2016). The Sino–Japanese War of 1894‒1895 was another major milestone in the century of humiliation in China, which motivated Chinese intellectuals to learn modern science, technology and political systems from the West and Japan. For example, after the Sino‒Japanese War, Cai Yuanpei, a compiler of the Royal Hanlin Academy with a jinshi (doctorate) degree, began to translate European books in order to understand the reasons behind Western and Japanese successes. Wang (1966/2012) showed that since the late Qing period, many young Chinese men and women studied in Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States with government scholarships or sponsorships from their

The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China  263 families and became part of the elites and drivers of military, technological, scientific, financial, political, and ideological developments. Foreign language education played a key role in promoting overseas studies and modernization in China before 1949. In the next section, we show that PRC leaders have made similar efforts to promote foreign language education to modernize the Chinese economy since 1949. These efforts are their reactions to major socioeconomic and political changes in the PRC. The evolution of Chinese foreign language education in the PRC supports our contextual approach towards foreign language education policies in China.

THE EVOLUTION OF CHINESE FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION POLICIES SINCE 1949 In this section, for presentation and analytical purposes, we divide the development of Chinese foreign language education policies since 1949 into four stages: (1) Russian-centered foreign language education policy (1949‒1955); (2) adjustments of foreign language education policy (1956‒1965); (3) interruption of foreign language education (1966‒1977); and (4) English-centered foreign language education policy (1978‒2019). Russian-Centered Foreign Language Education Policy (1949‒1955) When the PRC was founded on October 1, 1949, its economy was on the verge of collapse by the ravages of the Sino–Japanese War of 1937‒1945 and China’s Civil War of 1945‒1949. The newly established nation faced an arduous task of economic recovery and reconstruction. The PRC’s involvement in the Korean War of 1950‒1953 led to the economic blockades by the US and other Western countries. The PRC had no choice but to seek help from the Soviet Union, which had rich experience in building a socialist country. Chinese leaders thus made a decision to learn from the Soviet Union and promoted the “leaning to one-side” foreign policy to form an alliance with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union responded positively and financed 156 major PRC projects. It also sent experts to China who assisted in industrial projects. The highest number of Soviet engineers and experts in China at one time was 2,677 (Theobald 2017). The PRC government saw the need for a large number of Russian-speaking talents to learn from the experience of the Soviet Union and to communicate with Russian experts who came to help with the economic development in China. The PRC designed a foreign language education policy to support its development strategy. The Russian language course was offered in secondary and higher education to cultivate Russian-speaking talents, and Russian departments were set up at a number of universities across China. In 1952, the Ministry of Education (MOE) issued an official notice that foreign language departments in normal (i.e., teacher training) colleges should focus on Russian language teaching and actively replace other foreign language courses with Russian language courses (何东昌 1997, 177). This government notice gave top priority to Russian education and established Russian as the most important foreign language in the PRC, which set off a wave of “Russian-language fever” across the country. The Russian fever changed students’ choices in foreign languages. Many students were reluctant to learn English and chose Russian instead as Russian rendered better job prospects. The MOE suspended English departments in most normal colleges in July

264  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 1953 based on the estimation that there would also be an oversupply of graduates for teaching positions in secondary schools. This further strengthened the status of Russian as the No. 1 foreign language, and the Russian education developed rapidly in the early period of the PRC. Regarding secondary education, the MOE issued a notice on April 28, 1954, titled “The Setup of Foreign Language Subjects in Secondary Education from the Autumn of 1954,” stipulating that: Starting from the autumn of 1954, middle schools will cease to provide foreign language courses. Foreign Language courses will be provided in high schools, with four hours per week in grades 1‒3. Russian should be taught from the first grade. English could be taught if there is a lack of Russian language teachers in some regions. For regions with Russian language teachers where students are willing to learn Russian and the English language teachers could move to other appropriate positions and their welfare be properly taken care of, the other foreign language classes could change to Russian classes. (Translated from 何东昌 1997, 316)

The notice established the status of Russian as the most important foreign language in high schools, which further consolidated the status of Russian in China and formed a Russian-centered foreign language education policy. Adjustments of Foreign Language Education Policy (1956‒1965) The Russian-centered foreign language education policy implemented in the early days of the PRC helped train Russian-speaking talents and played a positive role in helping restore the national economy and build the new socialist country. However, the shortcomings of this policy gradually surfaced, and the number of students learning Russian exceeded the actual needs, resulting in unemployment problems. In addition, as the PRC established and developed diplomatic and economic relations with some third-world countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, it was urgent to train foreign language speakers to support and further develop these newly built relations. However, there was a severe shortage of speakers in any foreign language other than Russian, partly due to the implementation of the Russian-centered foreign language education policy in the early years of the PRC. The PRC government recognized the need to change its foreign language education policy to suit the new national strategy after 1956. This need was strengthened by increasing disputes and difficulties in the Sino–Soviet relations at the time. Thus, the MOE started to make changes to the foreign language education policy after 1956. A notice was issued in July 1956 on foreign language teaching in secondary schools: “Apart from improving the quality of Russian teaching, we must also expand (the provision of) and improve the teaching of English” (Translated from 何东昌 1997, 657). The notice set the proportion of secondary schools teaching Russian and English at about 50 percent each (‍何东 昌 1997, 657). The MOE issued another notice in March 1958, aiming at “offering foreign language courses (mainly Russian and English) in middle schools in large and medium-sized cities where it is possible while strengthening the existing foreign language teaching in high schools” (Translated from 何东昌 1997, 807). In July 1963, it issued another notice on increasing the number of foreign language schools, setting the target at a total of 10 in 2‒3 years. Seven foreign language courses would be provided in these schools, including English, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and Arabic (‍何东昌 1997, 1196).

The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China  265 With regard to foreign language education in higher education, the MOE promulgated in June 1957 specific methods for university students of Russian, Polish, Czech and Eastern European languages to change subjects, stating that some of these students could transfer to other subjects or other universities (何东昌 1997, 770). The MOE in 1965 suggested in a conference report that the PRC started to explore its own path in cultivating foreign language talents to meet the demand of foreign affairs in 1958. After 1959, a number of urgently needed minority language courses were actively set up. The number of foreign language courses has seen great increase. At present, the total number of foreign language departments at universities has reached 78 and the number of foreign languages has also grown from 12 to 42. (Translated from 何东昌 1997, 1372)

The PRC government also set up a dedicated Foreign Language Planning Group under the direct governance of the State Council in 1964. The Group included staff from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Higher Education and other departments of the central government. The status and profile of this specialized group further demonstrated the importance the Chinese government attached to foreign language education. The Seven-Year Plan Outline for Foreign Language Education was also formulated in 1964. This outline suggested that the existing foreign language education could no longer meet the country’s needs. This was due to the disproportionate development of Russian in the early days of the PRC and the lack of recognition of the importance of other foreign languages. The Outline proposed the following plans to develop foreign language education at the new stage: Firstly, specialist and general foreign language education should be given equal importance. Efforts should be made to develop full-time 10-year foreign language schools that introduce foreign language courses at the third grade of the primary stage and to develop foreign language departments at the tertiary level…Equally, attention should be given to increase the teaching standards of foreign language courses in general secondary schools and those of non-specialist English courses at the tertiary level…. (Translated from 何东昌 1997， 1326‒1327)

Secondly, part-time foreign language education should be developed in the form of evening classes, TV programs and so on; Thirdly, English should be the No. 1 foreign language in school-level education, and the proportion of different foreign language courses should be adjusted according to the actual needs. This included: [A] reduction in the number of Russian learners; a substantial increase in the number of English learners; an appropriate increase in the numbers of learners of French, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and German; and an appropriate proportion of people studying other minority foreign languages. Finally, the teaching quality should be given special attention in the process. (Translated from 何东昌 1997, 1327)

Interruption of Foreign Language Education Policy (1966‒1977) The Cultural Revolution started in 1966, and schools and universities were among its first group of victims. The implementation of the Seven-Year Plan Outline for Foreign Language Education was interrupted. The MOE and education bureaus at different levels of the Chinese government stopped functioning properly. All schools and universities were closed down.

266  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Radical students formed or joined “red guards” and violently challenged the authority and power of teachers on campus and officials at all levels of government (Lin 1991; Wu 2014; Yang 2017; Zang 2000). Also, during the “Cultural Revolution,” China’s elites carried out the politics of economic self-independence and diplomatic isolation for political reasons. This led to few demands for international economic cooperation and for foreign language teaching and learning. Foreign language education stopped completely at this stage. It was not until the mid-1970s that some foreign languages such as English were taught at a small number of universities in China. English-Centered Foreign Language Education Policy (1978‒2019) The Cultural Revolution brought the Chinese economy to the brink of collapse and Chinese politics and society into chaos. Fortunately, it ended in 1976. Chinese leaders started to promote the policy of reform and opening up to the world to save the Chinese economy and the legitimacy of the PRC. Taking note of the differences in the levels of economic development between China and the West and the advantages of the market economy in the West over the planned economy in the Soviet Bloc, they recognized the need to learn from the West and the importance of English if the PRC were to recover its economy quickly. Thus, in August 1978, the Ministry of Education held a national symposium on foreign language education to solicit suggestions on strengthening foreign language education in China. The symposium summarized the experience and lessons of foreign language education since the founding of the PRC. Importantly, it pointed out that foreign language education at the time could not meet the needs of the development of the national economy and proposed to vigorously develop foreign language education in a way that was to be led by the needs of China’s modernization. In March 1979, a notice titled “Guide on Strengthening Foreign Language Education” was issued, calling for strengthening foreign language education from primary school to tertiary level. In particular, at the tertiary level, the notice called for the development of various forms of part-time foreign language education in addition to the provision of specialist and non-specialist foreign education. Apart from teaching English to all students at the tertiary level, other language courses including Japanese, German, French, and Russian should also be provided. The notice suggested setting up a number of key foreign language departments to produce highly proficient speakers for foreign affairs and for foreign language teaching and research in China (何东昌 1997, 1668). In 1980, the “English Syllabus for Science and Engineering Majors at the Tertiary Level” was formulated. In 1985 and 1986, “English Syllabus (for Science and Engineering Undergraduates)” and “English Syllabus (for Arts and Science Undergraduates)” were promulgated. These three official syllabuses established the status of English as the most important foreign language in higher education in the form of government documents. In 1998, the MOE issued “Guide on the Reform of Specialist Foreign Language Courses for Undergraduate Education in the 21st Century,” which stipulated that the course setup of specialist foreign languages should meet the needs of social and economic development of China. That is, language specialists should also take up classes of other subjects (蔡伟良 2009, 31‒32). After entering the 21st century, the continuous development of China’s diplomatic relations and international exchanges has imposed higher requirements for foreign languages for university graduates. The MOE issued a newly revised “English Curriculum Requirements at the Tertial Level” in July 2007, which divided the tertiary English teaching into three

The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China  267 levels: average, higher and even higher (中华人民共和国教育部 2007). All the university students who do not specialize in English need to meet the average requirement. Higher and even higher requirements were meant to give universities more autonomy in the training of their graduates in terms of English skills. Individual universities could cultivate higher English skills in their students in line with each university’s own vision and resources. This ensured a basic command of English as a global language among university graduates. More importantly, the universities would produce a new generation of workforce who have higher English proficiency and can be more adept at international collaborations and exchanges in their professional arena (中华人民共和国教育部 2007). The MOE also formulated policies on foreign language education for primary and secondary education in China, with the aim of providing better guidance for foreign language education at these two stages. In January 1978, the MOE issued the “Full-time Ten-Year Primary and Secondary School Curriculum Planning,” which advocated the provision of a foreign language course from the third grade of primary school for eight years until high school. It formulated the “Full-time Ten-Year Primary and Secondary English Teaching Syllabus (Draft)” in 1978 and the “Full-time Ten-Year Primary and Secondary English Teaching Syllabus (Draft for Trial Implementation)” in 1980 (学界新闻 2018). In 1982, the MOE held a national conference on foreign language education in secondary schools. The conference criticized the quality of the foreign language teaching in secondary schools and pointed out that secondary education is a crucial stage for improving the quality of foreign language education in China (孙巧平 2012, 29). Following that, the “Opinions on Strengthening Foreign Language Education in Secondary Schools” was issued in July 1982, and in the same year English was officially recognized as the main foreign language in secondary schools (中华人民共和国教育部 1982). The MOE issued “Opinions on Adjusting the Requirements for Foreign Language Teaching in Middle Schools” in 1985 and the “English Teaching Syllabus for Full-time Secondary Education” in 1986. The status of English was further foregrounded in the 21st century. An important part of the curriculum reform for pre-university education in the new century was to ensure that English classes are provided in primary schools all over the country, as reflected in “Guide to Actively Promote the Introduction of English Classes to Primary Schools” issued by the MOE. Specifically, “starting from the autumn of 2001, English courses should be gradually introduced in primary schools in cities and county towns throughout the country; From the autumn of 2002, English courses should be gradually introduced into primary schools in rural areas. It should generally be introduced at the third grade” (Translated from 中华人民共和国教育 部 2001). The MOE issued the “English Curriculum Standards for General High Schools in Full-time Compulsory Education” in 2001 and the “English Curriculum Standards for General High Schools (Experimental)” in 2003 (学界新闻 2018). As a result, English education has been fully popularized and standardized. The foreign language education policy has become even more important since then due to the following reasons. China launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, which has raised the demands for proficient speakers of the languages of the countries along the Belt and Road. The ongoing trade disputes between the PRC and the US has prompted Chinese firms to look for markets in Africa, South America, and other parts of the world. Speakers of the languages in these region are thus also in demand. In addition, people from different parts of the world have come to do business in China. Thus, while English is still the most important foreign language in China, a wider range of foreign languages are taught at various levels to train foreign

268  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China language experts for economic activities in and outside China as reflected in the quote from the “Standards for High School English Courses (2017)” below. …adjust the types of language classes on offer. German, French and Spanish are going to be taught in addition to English, Japanese and Russian. Secondly, these courses will be set as core compulsory, selective compulsory and optional courses to provide options for students on different paths as well as a common foundation…. (Translated from 中华人民共和国教育部 2018, 3)

Foreign language education is regarded as an important tool to improve national competitiveness and an important part of improving the soft power of the Chinese culture. The PRC’s foreign language education policy has thus been given an important strategic mission.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION We show that the evolution of Chinese foreign language education policy since 1949 has not been a linear process. Mao and Min (2019) and Qi and Qi (2013) observed that China’s foreign language education policy shifted over the years – from the political orientation of the 1950s that favored Russian, to the economic focus of reform and opening up that has led to English dominance in the 21st century (also Li 2007). The changes in foreign language education have in part represented China’s educational pendulum “between traditional knowledge patterns for political control and transformed ones for economic development” (Ross 1993, 36). We aim to partly account for the changes in foreign language education policies in China in this chapter. We review the English and Chinese literature on foreign language education policy. Overall, we argue that the Chinese literature on foreign language education policy in the PRC is mostly descriptive. There are limited theoretical innovations and contributions to methodology for the study of Chinese foreign language education policy. We thus draw attention to four main theoretical accounts in the literature on this important topic. The economics of language is clearly the dominant paradigm and has guided many publications on foreign language education policy in the PRC (e.g., Li 2007; Li 2018; Qi and Qi 2013; Shi 2013; Zhu 2003), whereas there is limited research on China from the perspective of the language ecology (one exception is Han, De Costa, and Cui 2019), grassroots politics, or the world system on this topic. The chronicle of Chinese foreign language education in the post-1949 era mentioned above suggests some relevance of the economics of language for research as to why the PRC has changed its foreign language policies in different historical periods. In the early 1950s, the PRC elites chose to guide its economic development with the Soviet model and employed a large number of Soviet experts, which led to the need for Chinese talents who could speak Russian. The MOE issued a series of policies to cultivate Russian-speaking Chinese talents. And since there was little market demand for English, the MOE canceled most of the English courses offered in normal colleges. Later, when China developed diplomatic relations with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, there emerged a shortage of talents in relevant foreign languages. The government took measures to address this problem after 1959, and there was an increase in the number of students studying French, Spanish, Arabic and other foreign languages by 1964. After 1978, foreign language education, especially English education, has been regarded as an important approach to China’s development and modernization (Adamson and Morris 1997; Li 2018).

The Chinese dream and foreign language education policy in China  269 However, we argue that the Chinese foreign language education policies are largely created and guided by elite political decisions. In the 1950s, government decisions established Russian as the most important foreign language in China. However, the status of the Russian language fell down once the Sino–Soviet relations became cold. The PRC government started to train students who could speak relevant foreign languages in some Asian, African and Latin American countries after it established diplomatic relations with them. The effects of politics on foreign language education during the period of the “Cultural Revolution” were obvious. After 1978, English language teaching was promoted because of China’s needs to learn from the West. These needs were driven by the elites’ judgment of the international situation and their need to save China’s economy and to promote the political legitimacy of the PRC. The language ecology can also partly explain the development of Chinese foreign language education in the PRC. Our discussion in the above section shows that the encouragement of students to learn foreign languages at various stages of the educational system reflected the linguistic diversity advocated in the language ecology. Except for the period of the “Cultural Revolution” when Chinese foreign language education was interrupted, the MOE issued foreign language education policies to develop different foreign languages at different historical periods since 1949. The current government policy to train experts who can speak the languages of the Belt and Road countries and those of the countries in Africa, South America, and other parts of the world can promote a healthier ecology in foreign language education in China. However, our discussion shows that the language ecology has not developed naturally. Instead, it has always been the outcome of elites’ decisions. Moreover, it cannot explain why English was nearly all removed from curriculum during the “Russian fever” in the early 1950s. The grassroots politics strand and the world system perspective are consistent with our interest in understanding the role of political power in the evolution of foreign language education policy in China. However, the world system overemphasizes the power of the center on decision making in semi-periphery or periphery countries. It cannot explain why the PRC promoted Russian in the 1950s, although the US and the UK were at the center of the world system. Regarding the grassroots politics strand, we argue that it cannot offer a good account of the changes in foreign language education policies in China before it addresses the following two issues: (1) it is unclear how much grassroots activists and groups can participate and influence education policies in the context of the PRC and (2) it is unclear how much grassroots politics can influence and change education policies at the national level since it is local and provincial. In short, we argue that the economics of language, the language ecology, the grassroots politics perspective, and the world system approach offer necessary but insufficient insights to account for changes in Chinese foreign language education policies since 1949, partly because they overlook elite politics as a political catalyst of foreign language education policy. We argue that elite views on how foreign language education can better serve China’s economic development have been a key catalyst of policy making in the PRC. We do not agree that the above four strands are totally irrelevant for research on foreign language education policy in China. They may offer a reasonable account for the formulation and changes of foreign language education policy in China if they are used under the framework of elite politics mentioned above. In this chapter, we depart from the existing theoretical perspectives in our effort to understand the relationship between elite politics and foreign language education policy in China. We discuss the elite discourse on the century of humiliation and how the elites have politically

270  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China employed foreign language education as a way to rejuvenate China. We thus emphasize the elite discourse on the century of humiliation as a main driver of the changes in foreign language education since 1949. Our emphasis on political dynamics offers a socio-historical and socio-political context for research on and perhaps the best explanation of the development of foreign language education policy since 1949, thereby narrowing the knowledge gap on the study of foreign language education policy in the PRC.

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276  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 邹长虹 (2014) “新加坡的语言政策及其对我国外语教育政策的启示.” 《社会科学家》第2期, 114‒116. 邹一戈/冯增俊 (2014) “当代美国外语教育政策演进特征及政策走向.” 《当代外语研究》第9期, 53‒58.

PART IV PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND GOVERNANCE IN CHINA

15. Family planning policies and fertility changes in China: a historical review Yu Song

The People’s Republic of China, referred to as the PRC or China throughout this chapter, has the largest population in the world. By the end of 2018, the population of China had reached 1,395,380,000 (国家统计局 2019). To control its rapid population growth, China has had a rigid one-child policy in place since the 1980s. However, it is quite clear that the policy has undergone tremendous changes in order to adapt to changing population scenarios and has not always been rigid. Relaxation of the policy is the consequence of drastic political, economic and social changes in China. Between 1949 and 2019, China witnessed the founding of a new regime, numerous political campaigns and historically unprecedented economic reform. Although the total population has always been on the rise, the total fertility rate (TFR) over the last six decades has radically dropped from over 6 in 1949 to about 1.6 since 2000. Accordingly, the population control policies in the PRC have changed from birth encouragement to tight control and then to limited relaxation. The Chinese government has been using different strategies and measures to implement the population policies in different stages. Whether it is to encourage or discourage birth, the population policies or “family planning policies” (计划生育政策) in China’s official discourse, as a fundamental state policy promulgated in the PRC Constitution, is compulsory and obligatory for the Chinese people. The Chinese government uses its state power to carry out its population policies. Those who violate the population policies are deemed to be law breakers and face severe punishment: parents would be fired from government-affiliated jobs, and children could not get their official household registrations and consequently lose their entitlements to state welfare such as free education and cheap medical care. The mandatory family planning policies provide a unique perspective from which to observe how the population policies have affected the demographic changes in China. This chapter draws on relevant literature and China’s national population statistics from China Yearbooks of Family Planning, China Statistics Yearbooks and the World Bank’s database to address the following questions: How have the family planning policies evolved since 1949? What rationales underpin the changing family planning policies? What demographic changes, particularly fertility changes, have been brought about by the changing family planning policies? What are other factors contributing to fertility changes in China? What are the impacts of family planning policies on Chinese families? To answer these questions, this chapter reviews China’s population policies for the period 1949‒2019. This period of time can be divided into three stages (and nine sub-stages) in terms of its scope and rigidness: the pre-family planning stage, the family planning stage, and the later-family planning stage (孙沐寒 1987; 张克武 1993;《人口研究》编辑部 2000; 杨发祥 2003).

278

Family planning policies and fertility changes in China  279

PRE-FAMILY PLANNING STAGE (1949‒1978) The pre-family planning stage was between 1949 and 1978 and under this stage there are five sub-stages. During this stage, the Communist Party of China built a socialist regime and launched several big political campaigns, which were characterized by class struggles that had fundamental impacts on the daily life of the Chinese people (White 1974; Bian 2002; 陆 学艺 2010). In terms of the population control policy, the Chinese government at this stage encouraged having children during the early years, lost control of the population in the middle phase and then advocated limited family planning in the later years of the stage. The first sub-stage occurred between 1949 and 1953 when the state population policy was to encourage birth by prohibiting abortions, restricting selling of contraceptive pills and devices, and subsidizing families with multiple children. The lack of access to voluntary abortions and contraceptives meant on one hand the temptation of getting more financial subsidies, while on the other hand it left most families no choice but to have more children. In 1949, the TFR was 6.14, the crude birth rate (CBR) 36 per 1,000, the death rate 20 per 1,000, the natural growth rate 16 per 1,000, and the total population was 541,670,000. The population policy worked well to increase China’s population. In 1953, the TFR was 6.05, the CBR 37 per 1,000, death rate 14 per 1,000, and natural growth rate 23 per 1,000, and population increased by 46,290,000 more than that in 1949. China suffered from a huge population loss during the two big wars in the 1940s: the Second Sino–Japanese War (or War of Resistance Against Japan) between 1937 and 1945, and the civil war (or the People’s Liberation War in China’s official discourse) between 1946 and 1950. These two wars caused large casualties. According to some statistics, China lost 20,620,000 in the Second Sino–Japanese War (卞修跃 2005). The PRC needed a big labor force so in September 1949, Mao Zedong, then chairman of the PRC claimed that “It is a great advantage that China has a large population. We can handle it no matter how many times the population will increase. We can handle it through production” (毛泽东 1991). Traditionally, Chinese people relied on children for their elderly care and believed that a large number of children would guarantee a better future. The people’s traditional preference for big families and the state population policy jointly encouraged parents to have more children. It was quite common for one family at that time to have more than 4 to 6 children. The population policy during the first sub-stage increased China’s total population from 541,670,000 in 1949 to 587,960,000 in 1953. The second sub-stage occurred between 1954 and 1961 when China started to abolish the restriction on the selling of contraceptive pills and devices, relax the prohibition on abortions, and publicize birth control by advocating family planning. The Chinese government realized that the increasing population caused severe social and economic problems, such as the shortage of job opportunities and farming land. The Chinese government therefore started to advocate family planning, but there was disagreement over whether birth control should be carried out by sterilization or by abortion. This disagreement effectively suspended the Government’s advocacy program. In 1961, the TFR was 3.29, the CBR 18.02 per 1,000, the death rate 14.24 per 1,000, the natural growth rate 3.78 per 1,000, and the population had decreased by 3,480,000 from the previous year. The decreasing birth rate and population growth had little to do with official population policy. They occurred due to the famines of 1958‒1961, which were caused by both natural disasters and radical political campaigns such as the People’s Commune and the Great Leap

280  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Forward (Cane 1988). In 1960, the TFR was 4.01, and the CBR was 20.86; the death rate reached a record high in the history of the PRC at 25.43 per 1,000, and the natural growth rate hit a record low at −4.57 percent. The population decreased from 672,070,000 in 1959 to 658,590,000 in 1961. The third sub-stage occurred between 1962 and 1965 when the Chinese government launched a policy on birth control by establishing a special organization for family planning at both central and local levels to ensure the implementation of the family planning policy and to provide technical support for birth control. During this stage, the Family Planning Commissions were established at the central and local level of government to carry out the birth control policy. In addition to the establishment of family planning agencies, the government also organized medical practitioners to provide training and technical support on contraception and sterilization, published books on contraception, and organized workshops. The government’s goal was to decrease the net birth rate to 1 percent by the end of the 20th century (《中国计划生育全书》编辑部 1997, 18‒20). However, it took time for the PRC government to achieve this goal. In 1965, the TFR was 6.08, the CBR 37.88 per 1,000, the death rate 9.5 per 1,000, the natural growth rate 28.38 per 1,000, and the population increased by 52,420,000 more than 1962. The fourth sub-stage occurred between 1966 and 1969 when a radical political campaign called the Cultural Revolution took place in China (Chan 1985). As the Cultural Revolution intensified, the special agencies for family planning were paralyzed. The Cultural Revolution caused the most severe setback and the heaviest losses in China in political, social and economic terms since 1949 (中国共产党十一届六中全会 1981). The family planning policy was completely suspended, and the birth rate remained high for four years in succession from 1966 to 1969. In 1966, the TFR was 6.38, the CBR 35.05 per 1,000, the death rate 8.83 per 1,000, and the natural growth rate 26.22 per 1,000; in 1969, the TFR was 5.72, the CBR 34.11 per 1,000, the death rate 8.03 per 1,000, the natural growth rate 26.08 per 1,000, and the population increased by 61,290,000 more than 1966. The fifth sub-stage occurred between 1970 and 1978 when China gradually recovered from the Cultural Revolution and was back on track. The Chinese government started to advocate family planning again and invested in research related to contraceptive pills and devices. The family planning agencies resumed their work. In the late period of this stage, the government advocated late marriage and a small number of children. However, since it was only an advocacy and not a law, those who did not follow it were not punished. The good news for the government was that the TFR dropped from 5.81 in 1970 to 2.72 in 1978, and the CBR dropped from 33.43 per 1,000 to 18.25 per 1,000. The death rate and natural growth rate declined from 7.6 per 1,000 to 6.25 per 1,000, and from 25.83 per 1,000 to 12 per 1,000 respectively. Overall, the total population increased by 132,670,000 during this sub-stage. The Chinese government was not satisfied with the population increase and decided to adopt a more rigid policy to control population growth. During the first two sub-stages of the pre-family planning stage, the total fertility rate had remained high at about 6 and the crude birth rate had been over 30 per 1,000, except for the famine years of the Great Leap Forward (1958‒1960) when the TFR and CBR both dropped radically to 4.3 and 24.78 per 1,000 in 1959, 4.01 and 20.86 per 1,000 in 1960, and 3.29 and 18.02 in 1961. The CBR had been over 30 per 1,000 for eight years between 1949 and 1957, which led to the first baby boom since 1949. By 1957 the population had been increased by 104,860,000 more than it was in 1949.

Family planning policies and fertility changes in China  281 And the third and the fourth sub-stages of the pre-family planning stage witnessed the second baby boom in China. The year 1963 saw a historical high in both the TFR and the CBR, reaching 7.50 and 43.37 per 1,000 respectively, which indicated compensatory birth behavior of people who had recently suffered severe famine and a huge loss of population. Between 1962 and 1975 the second baby boom appeared so that by 1975 the population had increased by 251,240,000 more than it was in 1962. For the first few years of the fifth sub-stage of the pre-family planning stage, both the TFR and the CBR were very high. However, the CBR declined to below 30 per 1,000 since 1972 and the TFR dropped to below 4 since 1975.

FAMILY PLANNING STAGE (1979‒2000) The second stage occurred between 1979 and 2000 when the Chinese government changed its core task from the class struggle to economic development. During this stage, the family planning policy with the one-child policy (OCP) at its core was initiated and implemented strictly. In September 1980, the Chinese government issued “An open letter to all the members of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth League regarding the family planning issue in China,” which officially launched the OCP. In the open letter, the PRC government claimed its goal was to control the Chinese population to 1.2 billion by the end of the 20th century by implementing the OCP (中共中央 1980). To implement the OCP and facilitate family planning, the PRC government enacted articles of family planning in a few laws (Table 15.1). In line with these articles, the PRC adopted very rigid measures such as firing and fining parents who had extra children other than planned. Those who had only one child would be issued an “honor certificate for parents with only child” and received a small monthly reward which ranged from ¥5 to ¥30 depending on the region. Table 15.1 Laws & regulations

Laws including family planning articles in China (1979‒2000) Department & time of issue

Constitution of the PRC Standing Committee of National People’s

Relevant articles Article 25. The state promotes family planning so that

Congress of China (China’s national legislature), population growth may fit the plans for economic and adopted in December 1982 and amended in

social development.

March 2004

Article 49. Both husband and wife have the duty to

Marriage Law of the

Standing Committee of National People’s

Article 2. Family planning shall be practiced.

PRC

Congress of China, adopted in September 1980

Article 5. No marriage may be contracted before the

and amended in April 2001

man has reached 22 years of age and the woman 20

practice family planning.

years of age. Late marriage and late childbirth shall be encouraged. Article 12. Both husband and wife shall have the duty to practice family planning.

Source: Constitution of the PRC and Marriage Law of the PRC.

The one-child policy worked reasonably effectively among the people with non-agricultural household registration. The fact that they were entitled to better social welfare and most of

282  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China them had jobs provided by the state meant that they had more to lose if they violated the OCP. Among the people with agricultural household registration, they barely had any welfare and relied heavily on their children, especially their sons, for labor supply and elderly care. Therefore, the one-child policy encountered severe resistance from the peasants, and so the Chinese government revised its family planning policy in the rural areas. A prevalent practice in rural China was that the families with the first child as a son could only have one child and the families with the first child as a daughter could have a second child within a certain time period of having had the first child. In addition, members of any one of the 55 ethnic minority groups in China were allowed to have more than one child but usually three at most. During the family planning stage between 1979 and 2000, the TFR dropped all the way from 2.75 in 1979 to 1.98 in 1992, which was the first year seeing the figure below 2, and then to 1.6 in 2000. Together with the declining TFR, other demographic indexes were also on the decline, the CBR from 17.82 per 1,000 in 1979 to 14.03 per 1,000 in 2000, natural growth rate from 11.61 per 1,000 in 1979 to 9.14 per 1,000 in 1998 (the first year for one-digit growth), then to 7.58 per 1,000 in 2000; the death rate remained stable from 6.21 per 1,000 in 1979 to 6.45 per 1,000 in 2000. The strict implementation of the OCP for over 20 years caused a demographic crisis including labor shortages, an aging population, and skewed sex ratio at birth (计迎春/郑真真 2018). Since the late 1970s China’s TFR and CBR had been on the decline, from 2.75 and 17.82 per 1,000 in 1979 to 1.60 and 14.03 per 1,000 in 2000. Particularly the TFR dropped to below replacement level for the first time since the 1990s. Although the overall population growth in this stage is on the decline, it is noteworthy that for the first few years of this stage, there was a third baby boom. The total population in 1991 increased by 157,510,000 more than that in 1981.

LATER-FAMILY PLANNING STAGE (2001‒2019) Realizing that continuing to strictly implement the OCP could cause severe demographic challenges, the PRC government started to relax its rigid population policy in 2001 at which time China entered into the later stage of family planning. At the same time, the Chinese government promulgated a Population and Family Planning Law (Table 15.2), which defined family planning as a state fundamental policy. During this stage, the Chinese government relaxed its family planning policy three times. In terms of who are eligible to have a second child, the population policy at this stage can be divided into three sub-stages. Selective Two-Child Policy (Phase 1) The first sub-stage occurred between early 2001 and 2013 when a couple who were both only children were allowed to have a second child. Hereinafter in this chapter, the policy is referred to in Chinese as “双独二胎” and in English as the Selective Two-Child Policy (Phase 1). This relaxation began with some pilot provinces and took 13 years to be adopted by all the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China.

Family planning policies and fertility changes in China  283 Table 15.2

Population and family planning law (2001 edition and 2015 amendment)

Laws & regulations

Department & time of issue

Relevant articles

Population and Family Planning Law Standing Committee of National People’s

Article 2. China being a populous country,

of the PRC (2001 Edition)

family planning is a fundamental state

Congress of China, promulgated in December

2001 and adopted in September 2002, amended policy. in December 2015

The state adopts a comprehensive measure to control the size and raise the general quality of the population. Article 18. The state maintains its current policy for reproduction, encouraging late marriage and childbearing and advocating one child per couple. Where the requirements specified by laws and regulations are met, plans for a second child, if requested, may be made.

Population and Family Planning Law Standing Committee of National People’s

Article 2. China being a populous country,

of the PRC (2015 Amendment)

family planning is a fundamental state

Congress of China, December 2001

policy. Article 18. The state advocates two children per couple.

Source: Population and Family Planning Law (2001 Edition and 2015 Amendment).

Selective Two-Child Policy (Phase 1I) The second sub-stage lasted for only two years between 2014 and 2015 when a couple with one partner as an only child was eligible to have a second child. Hereinafter in this chapter it is referred to in Chinese as “单独二胎” and in English as the Selective Two-Child Policy (Phase 2). On November 15, 2013 the Chinese government released the Resolutions on Deepening the Reforms on Several Major Issues, which further relaxed the OCP by allowing couples with one partner being an only child to be eligible to have a second child, while still maintaining family planning as a fundamental state population policy. The Selective Two-Child Policy (Phase 2) came into practice on January 1, 2014. Both policy makers and scholars were quite optimistic about the number of eligible people who were going to have a second child. They believed this policy relaxation would increase China’s population by 2 million in a year (温薷 2014) and help solve the problems of labor shortages, care for the elderly, and a skewed sex ratio (吕诺 2013). However, there was a large discrepancy between the number of parents eligible for a second child and the number of parents who actually had a second child. By May 31, 2014, the number of eligible couples for a second child in China was 11,000,000, but only 2.5 percent of them applied for a permit to have a second child (胡浩 2014). In 2014 when the Selective Two-Child Policy (Phase 2) had been implemented for the first year, the TFR was 1.66 and the CBR rate was 12.37 per 1,000, both being slightly higher than those in 2013, which were 1.65 and 12.08 per 1,000 respectively. However, in 2015, which was the second year of the new population policy, there was a very close TFR of 1.67 and a decline in CBR of 12.07 per 1,000. The huge gap provided no guarantee of a solution to the labor and elderly care shortages. Some scholars urged further relaxation of the family planning

284  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China policy by allowing all couples to have two children before losing their fertility in middle-age (梁建章/黄文政 2014). Universal Two-Child Policy The third sub-stage has been from 2016 to present with a Universal Two-Child Policy (全面二 胎). The introduction of this new population policy allows every Chinese couple to have two children. The reason for the radical reform of the family planning policy is that the previous relaxation of population policy did not achieve rapid population growth as the government wanted and expected. At the same time, an aging population and a lack of labor have become increasingly severe issues in China. In the Communiqué of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CCP Central Committee issued on October 29, 2015, a Universal Two-Child Policy was announced which terminated the long-standing OCP, while insisting at the same time that family planning would remain a fundamental state policy. The Universal Two-Child Policy took effect on January 1, 2016. The three sets of two-child policies adopted in the later-family planning stage mainly targeted and affected people who wanted and were able to have a second child. Most women affected by the policy are usually aged between middle 30s and late 40s and tended to make a quick response to the policy by having their second child before they lost their fertility. This explains why the CBR increased slightly in the first year of the new policy and then declined again because most births were the second birth by middle-aged couples, not the first birth by young couples. Although the two-child policy encourages more couples to have a second child, an increasing number of couples are not even willing to have one child (Wang and Song 2019). The TFR in 2016 was 1.68 and the CBR 12.95, slightly higher than those in 2015. The TFR in 2018 was 1.68, the same as that of 2016, while the CBR dropped slightly to 10.94. It is too early to say whether the Universal Two-Child Policy can fundamentally change fertility patterns in the PRC. The relaxed family planning policies during the later-family planning stage did not herald the fourth baby boom as expected by optimistic policy makers and scholars. The TFR remained stable while the CBR dropped slightly. Since these policies target people who are fertile and desire to have a second child, only this particular group of people will respond to the policies.

MAIN FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO FERTILITY CHANGES When the TFRs at the different stages of family planning policies are examined, it is clear that although family planning policies have accelerated and exacerbated this change (see Table 15.3), such decline has already become a global trend and is difficult to reverse. In addition to family planning policies, other factors have contributed to fertility changes and have likewise varied over time. Factors affecting fertility can be divided into factors increasing fertility and factors decreasing fertility. Factors increasing fertility might be due to unwanted fertility, replacement fertility for child mortality, and additional fertility for preferred gender (Morgan et al. 2009; Cai 2010), while factors decreasing fertility may include later marriage age and consequently advanced maternal age or even reduced fecundity, increased opportunity cost for women, and rising cost of child rearing (Morgan et al. 2009; Cai 2010).

5.44 4.98 4.54 4.17 3.57 3.25 2.84 2.72

1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978

Re-advocating family planning

5.72

1969

5.81

6.45

1968 1970

5.31

1967

Cultural Revolution

5th sub-stage:

6.26

6.08

1965 1966

6.18

4th sub-stage:

7.50

3.29

1961

1964

4.01

1960

1963

4.30

1959

Establishing the Family Planning Commissions

5.68

1958

6.02

6.41

1957

1962

5.85

1956

3rd sub-stage:

6.26

1955

6.05

1953

Advocating and debate on family planning

6.47

1952 6.28

5.70

1951

1954

5.81

1950

Encouraging birth

2nd sub-stage:

6.14

1949

1st sub-stage:

TFR

Pre-family planning (1949‒1978)

Year

Sub-stage

The TFRs and the CBRs in different stages of population control (1949‒2018)

Stage

Table 15.3

18.25

18.93

19.91

23.01

24.82

27.93

29.77

30.65

33.43

34.11

35.59

33.96

35.05

37.88

39.14

43.37

37.01

18.02

20.86

24.78

29.22

34.03

31.90

32.60

37.97

37.00

37.00

37.80

37.00

36.00

(per 1,000)

CBR

Family planning policies and fertility changes in China  285

Sub-stage

1.68

2018

Universal two-child policy

10.94

12.95

12.07

12.37

12.08

13.38

14.03

18.24

21.06

18.21

17.82

(per 1,000)

CBR

Sources: China Yearbook of Family Planning 1986 (《中国计划生育年鉴》编辑委员会1986, 600), the World Bank (2019), and China Statistics Yearbooks of 1981‒2019 (‍国家统计局 1982‒2019).

1.68

1.67

2015 2016

Selective two-child policy (phase 2)

3rd sub-stage:

1.66

2014

2nd sub-stage:

1.60

2000

1.65

1.98

1992

2013

2.31

1990

Selective two-child policy (phase 1)

(2001‒2019)

2.24

1980

1.60

2.75

TFR

1979

Year

2001

1st sub-stage:

Later-family planning stage

Family planning stage (1979‒2000) One-child policy

Stage

286  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Family planning policies and fertility changes in China  287 The three fertility-increasing factors can explain the high TFRs during the early and middle years of the pre-family planning stage. During these years, Chinese people had very limited access to voluntary abortions, contraceptive pills and devices. Meanwhile, in the years of radical political campaigns, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the death rates were very high. And preference for sons has always been a cultural expectation in China, which has a long patriarchal history. The skewed sex ratio at birth is a case in point. All these factors taken together lead to high TFRs in the pre-family planning stage. The three factors leading to declining TFR have diminished or improved during the family planning stage and the later-family planning stage. Since the Chinese government started to advocate population control in the late 1970s, contraceptive means and voluntary abortions have been widely available to the Chinese people. With improving living standards and better medical conditions, the mortality rate has dropped dramatically so that China is now among the countries with the longest life expectancies in the world. The preference for sons still exists but is not as strong as during the years of the pre-family planning stage. In addition to diminishing and improved factors causing increasing fertility, the factors leading to decreasing fertility have played a very important role in the family planning stage and the later-family planning stage. Since China’s economic reform and marketization, the old Danwei system and the People’s Commune system have collapsed. Individuals turned to either their families or the market for services such as elderly care and child care. Meanwhile, because of marketization, the costs of daily life, housing, medical care and education have sharply risen (Guo 2012). The high participation rate of Chinese women and gender discrimination in the labor market, and lack of support systems also means intensified work–family conflicts among young and middle-aged working women (Ji et al. 2017). All these factors work together with the family planning policies to bring the TFRs down to below replacement level.

THE IMPACTS OF FAMILY PLANNING POLICIES ON CHINESE FAMILIES Apart from demographic changes, including an aging population, declining fertility, skewed sex ratio at birth, and shrinking family size, family planning policies also brought about many other impacts on Chinese families, including changing family structure and changing family values (Song 2014; Feng et al. 2017; Gietel-Basten 2017; Poston 2017). Changing Family Structure Family planning policies have a lagging effect on family structure (Feng et al. 2017). There is an increasing number of conjugal families, mainly due to a large number of “empty nests” where parents are left on their own after their children have left home for work or marriage (Feng et al. 2017), and partly due to the existence of the “Shidu families” (失独家庭) who lost their only children to accidents or diseases (Song 2014). Providing elderly care by children is not only part of Chinese tradition but also a legal obligation in China (Song 2014). The changing family structure imposes great challenges on elderly care in China. For the elderly who have a pension or remittance from their children, they complain about the lack of daily care and emotional support from their children. While for the elderly who have lost their only children, they face social stigma and economic loss

288  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China and suffer both mentally and physically. Although the Chinese government has offered to compensate their loss by providing limited financial subsidies, it will not change the fact that this group of elderlies lack reliable care, which is usually expected from their children (Song 2014). Changing Family Values Another fundamental change as a result of family planning policies is changing family values. Patriliny, patriarchy and filial piety have been dominant family values in Chinese society. China’s family planning policies, particularly the OCP, have limited the number of children and consequently accepted their children’s gender for most Chinese families. Parental authority has been weakened and the parent–child relationship has taken precedence over the husband–wife relationship (郝玉章/风笑天 2002; Feng et al. 2017). For families with daughters as their only children, parents invest in their education and even housing. They also rely on their daughters for elderly care and even expect them to carry on the family’s name. As a result, the traditional family values of patriliny, patriarchy and filial piety have all changed (Feng et al. 2017).

CONCLUSIONS China’s population policies have undergone tremendous changes since 1949, all with the sole purpose of population control. In particular, the family planning policies practiced since the late 1970s have affected every Chinese household. Along with the changing family planning policies, the TFR in China has dropped from 6.14 in 1949 to 1.68 in 2018, with ups and downs in between. Rigid family planning policies since the 1980s, together with other factors, have transformed China from a pro-fertility society to a below-replacement fertility society. The government’s rationales behind family planning policies have changed from concern about population explosion and consequent resource shortages, to concern over below-replacement fertility and consequent labor shortage and population aging. The factors affecting fertility have also changed over time. In the early and middle years of the pre-family planning stage, the factors contributing to fertility increasingly played a dominant role; while in the family planning stage and the later-family planning stage, the decreasing fertility factors are more dominant. Apart from demographic changes, China’s family planning policies have also resulted in changing family structures and family values. After about four decades of implementing family planning policies and the foreseeable relaxation of strict population policy in China, to attain a sustained population growth and an inclusive social development, the Chinese government should adopt more comprehensive family planning policies and address the root causes of fertility decline and family changes.

ENGLISH REFERENCES Bian, Yanjie (2002) “Chinese Social Stratification and Social Mobility.” Annual Review of Sociology 28, 91‒116.

Family planning policies and fertility changes in China  289 Cai, Yong (2010) “China’s Below-replacement Fertility: Government Policy or Socioeconomic Development?” Population and Development Review 36(3), 419‒440. Cane, Penny (1988) Famine in China 1959‒1961: Demographic and Social Implications. London: The Macmillan Press. Chan, Anita (1985) Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Feng, Xiaotian, L. Dudley Poston and Xiaotao Wang (2017) “China’s One-Child Policy and the Changing Family.” In: Xiaowei Zang and Lucy Zhao (eds.) Handbook on the Family and Marriage in China. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 175‒186. Gietel-Basten, Stuart (2017) “Family Planning and Fertility Transition in China.” In: Xiaowei Zang and Lucy Zhao (eds.) Handbook on the Family and Marriage in China. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 187‒203. Guo, Zhigang (2012) “The Low Fertility Rate Is the Major Demographic Risk in China.” China Economic Journal 5(2‒3), 65‒84. Ji, Yingchun, Xiaogang Wu, Shengwei Sun and Guangye He (2017) “Unequal Care, Unequal Work: Toward A More Comprehensive Understanding of Gender Inequality in Post-reform Urban China.” Sex Roles 77(11‒12), 765‒778. Morgan, S. Philip, Zhigang Guo and Sarah R. Hayford (2009) “China’s Below-Replacement Fertility: Recent Trends and Future Prospects.” Population and Development Review 35(3), 605‒629. Poston, L. Dudley (2017) “The Effects of Demographic Change on Marriage and the Family in China.” In: Xiaowei Zang and Lucy Zhao (eds.) Handbook on the Family and Marriage in China. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 20‒41. Song, Yu (2014) “Losing an Only Child: One-Child Policy and Elderly Care in China.” Reproductive Health Matters 22(43), 113‒124. Wang, Shixiong and Yu Song (2019) “Chinese Online Public Opinions on the Two-Child Policy.” Online Information Review 43, 387‒403. White, D. Gordan (1974) “The Politics of Hsia-hsiang Youths.” China Quarterly 59(July–September), 491‒517. World Bank (2019) Fertility rate, total (births per woman) – China: 1960‒2017. http://​cpc​.people​.com​ .cn/​GB/​64184/​64186/​66677/​4493829​.html. Accessed on December 21, 2019.

CHINESE REFERENCES 卞修跃 (2005) “抗日战争时期中国人口损失之初步估计.”《中国社会科学院近代史研究所青年学 术论坛2005年卷》，521‒543. 国家统计局 (2019)《2019中国统计年鉴》. 北京：中国统计出版社. 国家统计局 (1982‒2019)《1981‒2019中国统计年鉴》. 北京：中国统计出版社. 郝玉章/和风笑天 (2002) “亲子关系对独生子女成长的影响.” 《华中科技大学学报 (人文社会科学 版) 》第 6 期，109‒112. 胡浩 (2014) “国家卫计委：逾27万单独夫妇申请生二胎.” 《新华网》7月10日. 计迎春/郑真真 (2018) “社会性别和发展视角下的中国低生育率.” 《中国社会科学》第8期, 143‒161. 梁建章/黄文政 (2014) “极低二孩申请率表明放开生育刻不容缓.” 《财新网》7月4日. 陆学艺 (2010) “中国社会阶层阶级结构变迁60年.” 《北京工业大学学报(社会科学版)》第10卷第 3期，1‒12. 吕诺 (2013) “单独两孩’将改变什么?”《人民网》11月17日. 毛泽东 (1991) “唯心历史观的破产.” 《毛泽东选集》第4卷. 北京：人民出版社, 1511. 《人口研究》编辑部 (2000) “中国人口政策的过去、现在与未来.”《人口研究》第24卷第4期, 23‒34. 孙沐寒 (1987) 《中国计划生育史稿》. 长春：北方妇女儿童出版社. 中共中央 (1980) “关于控制我国人口增长问题致全体共产党员、共青团员的公开信.” September 25. http://​cpc​.people​.com​.cn/​GB/​64184/​64186/​66677/​4493829.html. Accessed on December 21, 2019.

290  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 中国共产党十一届六中全会 (1981) “关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议.” June 27. http://​www​ .gov​.cn/​test/​2008​-06/​23/​content​_1024934​.htm. Accessed on December 21, 2019. 《中国计划生育年鉴》编辑委员会 (1986) 《中国计划生育年鉴1986》. 北京：人民卫生出版 社，600. 《中国计划生育全书》编辑部 (1997) 《党和国家领导人论人口与计划生育(1990年以来)》. 北 京：中国人口出版社, 18‒20. 温薷 (2014) “单独二孩”放开全国今年预新增生育量200万.” 《新京报》 3月3日. 杨发祥 (2003) 《当代中国计划生育史研究》. 浙江大学博士学位论文. 张克武 (1993) “新中国建立后的人口理论与政策概观.”《甘肃社会科学》第5期, 92‒95.

16. Urbanization like China? Implementation mode, policy regime and sustainable transformation pathways Xiaoling Zhang

Since the economic and social reforms started in 1978, the macro-political environment in China has undergone a fundamental change, reconstructing the institutional infrastructure of policy making, implementation and reform in the urbanization process (Lin 1999; Ma 2002). Within the urbanization policy system in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), different government departments have been involved and played an important role in urbanization policy outputs (Chan 2010). Under the overall framework of urbanization are different policies of urban development: industrial policies, household registration policies, and land policies. These policies have direct impacts on economic activities, population migration and absorption, and urban spatial structure, and have been crucial to the successful operations and development of the city. As it is well-known, there exists a hierarchical decision-making structure of the PRC, the National Development and Reform Commission is the designer of the overall urbanization policy. Next, the industrial policies related to urbanization development are devised by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, with the policy objective to transform rural low-productivity migrant workers into high-productivity urban workers. Migration within China is regulated by the household registration policies of the Ministry of Public Security. Furthermore, urbanization is directly manifested as the spatial expansion of cities, reflecting on the transformation of land use from farmland to construction land (Wu, Zhang, and Shen 2011). The magnitude and speed of this transformation is controlled by the Ministry of Land and Resources through policies concerning land use and spatial structure distribution. This chapter discusses these urbanization policies below.

URBANIZATION POLICY OBJECTIVES AND OPTIONS IN CHINA Urbanization refers to the process of rural-to-urban transformation (Lin 2007). From the perspective of production factors, urbanization can be viewed from three aspects: the flow of rural surplus labor to non-agricultural sectors, the transformation from rural residents to urban citizens, and the change in land use from cultivated land to construction land (Ding and Lichtenberg 2011; He and Lin 2015). The multi-factor characteristics of urbanization determine that the structure of the urbanization policy system concerns various government departments responsible for specific issues and targets, and the successful implementation of the overall urbanization strategy relies on the coordinated efforts of the urban system under a robust administrative hierarchy (Ma 2005; Song and Zhang 2002). Large cities or provincial capitals are favored in capital flows and public resources. With the accumulation of the 291

292  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China capital and resources of a particular city, the radiation of its external economic areas will turn them into centers of technical diffusion and poles of economic growth, enhancing the overall competitiveness of the region. Hence, large and medium-sized cities are favored by the PRC government and treated as the engine of urbanization to improve the quality and efficiency of the national economy. However, traditional industries and labor-intensive industries (such as township enterprises) are the main actor of job creation. Developing small and medium-sized cities to provide an environment for labor-intensive industries and job creation has been a government policy objective. Since post-1978 economic and social reforms, a tremendous labor demand and the relatively relaxed household register system have provided the possibility for large rural-to-urban migration (Zhu 2007). The large-scale migration has gradually weakened the structure of urban governance and created many public security problems to inflow cities. The government has thus encouraged a more balanced pattern of rural migration to both large and small cities and medium-sized to avoid excessive urban population agglomeration (and the resulting issues of public order and overload of police forces) in large cities by reducing household registration barriers in small and medium-sized cities (Cheng and Selden 1994). There are other factors of urbanization in addition to rural to urban migration in China. For example, the Ministry of Land and Resources is specifically responsible for the planning and regulation of land resources to coordinate public and private land use. One of its concerns is the contradiction between construction land and agricultural land (Zhou et al. 2017). The rural land requisition and land transfer mechanisms have enabled local governments to gain high land premiums in the land market. The revenue from land transfer has relieved the fiscal pressure caused by the fiscal decentralization and tax-sharing system introduced in the mid-1990s. As a result, urban growth has occurred at the expense of farmland loss. To protect cultivated land and achieve a balanced land use structure, the central government has released strict regulatory strategies for rural land acquisition, land transfer mechanisms, and the intensity of urban land development, which has a significant impact on urban growth (Wu et al. 2017).

URBANIZATION POLICY DEVELOPMENT Table 16.1 shows the development and structural dilemma of the policy system in China. The overall urbanization policy adopted in China in the 1980s was to “strictly control the size of large cities and develop small and medium-sized cities to an appropriate extent,” which was included in the 1990 City Planning Law, partly because the rapid population agglomeration put considerable pressure on urban governance and infrastructure construction in large cities. The central government maintained strict regulatory policies of household registration. In the 1990s, the benefits of economic agglomeration brought by urbanization and the advantages of large cities in development efficiency were gradually recognized by the public and government in China. Scholars started to question the strategy of “strictly control the size of large cities” (冯雨峰 1983; 饶会林,和曲炳全 1990). Thus, many local governments expanded the size of core cities in their regions with the assistance of a relatively loose household registration policy. The 1992 fiscal decentralization and tax-sharing reform has made land become the principal source of local government revenue, further boosting metropolitan sprawl.

Urbanization policy

Strengthening agriculture as the foundation; actively

inclusive, people-oriented urbanization

2016–2020 New-type urbanization: to achieve a more sustainable,

large, medium-sized and small cities and small towns

2010–2015 The coordinated development of urban agglomeration,

small cities and small towns

coordinated development of large, medium-sized and

2006–2010 Urban agglomeration as the main body with the

and small cities and small towns

2001–2005 The coordinated development of large, medium-sized

small and medium-sized cities

satellite cities of large cities, and actively develop

1996–2000 Moderately control the size of large cities, develop

development zones

1991–1995 Develop large cities relying on the construction of

Promoting high-tech industries and modern services

actively develop the service industry

Strengthen basic industry, revitalize pillar industries and

permit system

cities and towns; residence

and relaxed policies in small

Strict regulations in larger cities

cities and towns

and relaxed policies in small

Strict regulations in larger cities

improvement

protection and comprehensive

development, classified

planning of land combined

arable land red line; Strategic

Ensure the 1.8 billion mu total

housing distribution

markets; monetization of

migration policy

establishing local land use

Provides guidance for

compensated transfer

administrative allocation and

Two forms of land transfer:

state

Urban land is owned by the

Land policy

industries; promoting the service industry

Comparatively relaxed

migrant workers

Strict regulations on rural

Household policy

automobile manufacturing and construction as pillar

Take mechanical and electrical, petrochemical industry,

small and medium-sized cities to an appropriate extent develop basic industries and infrastructure

1986–1990 Strictly control the size of large cities and develop

urbanization of small cities

cities to an appropriate extent, and enhance the

Industrial policy

Evolution of the urbanization policy systems

1981–1985 Control the size of large cities, develop medium-size

Period

Table 16.1

Urbanization like China?  293

294  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China The next major development in urbanization policy occurred in the late 1990s, when China’s Agenda 21 introduced sustainable development goals into urbanization guidelines, to moderately control the size of large cities, develop satellite cities of large cities, and actively develop small and medium-sized cities. Policy designers insisted on the coordinated development of large, medium-sized and small cities as well as small towns. A more recent development in urbanization policy is the New Type Urbanization Plan, with a shift from land-oriented urbanization to population-oriented urbanization, in order to achieve policy objectives of inclusiveness, sustainability, and efficiency. This Plan has provided guidelines and principles for urbanization development from 2014 to 2020. As noted, the central government has been cautious about the urban agglomeration and insisted on the coordinated development of large, medium-sized and small cities and small towns, the great importance attached to services industry development since the 1990s has favored large cities. At the same time, local governments since the 1990s have been given autonomy in migration governance. A relatively relaxed household registration system was used to fulfill labor demands and promote urbanization and economic development. Since 2000, the progressive reform of the household registration system has been prompted to guide rural migrants to settle in cities. At the same time, however, the official land policy has strictly controlled urban construction land and protected cultivated land, leading to conflicts with urbanization development, especially in large cities. Among them, a “mis-matched urbanization mode” characterized by labor, land and capital constrained by “institutions” is presented herein.

THEORETICAL CRITIQUE OF SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION IN CHINA Over the past four decades, China’s urbanization process has resulted in a dilemma between the benefits of agglomeration and enormous costs, which presents a formidable challenge for eco-environmental protection, inclusive migration, efficient land use, and housing supply. The transformation of urban agglomeration and sprawl into a balanced and efficient instrument for sustaining economic growth by overcoming these challenges has become a dominant aspect of current urbanization policy making. In recent years, sustainable development has been emphasized in the urbanization process, and many scholars have studied policy making, policy implementation, and the reform of urbanization policy in China. These studies have provided the concept and indicators of sustainable urbanization, a critical assessment of the challenges, and policy issues for sustainable urbanization in China, and suggested policy reforms for achieving urban sustainability. The Concept and Indicators of Sustainable Urbanization The concept of “sustainable development” was first raised in a 1972 UN conference. In 1992, World Agenda 21 was issued at the Rio UN conference, aimed at achieving sustainable human settlement development. This concept was developed from the awareness of problems and challenges facing the world, thereby providing guidance for social development by configuring and improving the current paradigm of the economy, technology, politics, and urban development (Bibri and Krogstie 2017). As Agenda 21 acknowledges, sustainability is a complex

Urbanization like China?  295 concept, including the goals of eco-environment protection, economic development, social benefits, and institutional coordination (Spangenberg, Pfahl, and Deller 2002). Urban sustainability, as a critical component of sustainable development, can be described as an ideal state of urban condition that can persist over time (Rakodi, Nunan, and McCallum 2002; Hiremath et al. 2013). The concept of sustainable development has been widely used in China since 1994. In that year, China’s Agenda 21 was proposed to promote the sustainable development of China in the new century. Furthermore, a series of annual national reports on sustainable development have been published since 1999 to guide the decision making and implementation of policies concerning sustainable development. The great importance attached to sustainable development within the urbanization process was highlighted when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the State Council of China jointly issued the March 2014 National New-type Urbanization Plan (NUP), which provided guidelines, set development goals, and stated related policy planning in China’s urbanization process from 2014 to 2020. This plan marked the transformation from land-oriented urbanization to people-oriented urbanization, with the aim of refining the existing mode of urbanization and achieving sustainable urbanization. Sustainable urbanization can be defined as an urbanization process that is consistent with the principles of sustainability (Roy 2009). It can be seen in terms of sustainable city and sustainable urban development (Tan, Xu, and Zhang 2016). A sustainable city requires a balance between environmental protection, economic growth, and social wellbeing (Choguill 1993; Ng 2002; Whitehead 2003; Wu 2010; Hiremath et al. 2013), and the process of sustainable urban development should achieve this balance – a task that can only be implemented by a policy system that combines strategic decision making and effective implementation (Jepson 2001; Marcotullio 2001; Shen and Zhou 2014; De Jong et al. 2015). Scholars have developed an indicator system to study sustainable urbanization quantitatively. The selection of indicators regards sustainable urbanization as a place-based process, relying on such city characteristics as economic development, population density, industrial structure, and resource endowment (Hiremath et al. 2013). The UN (Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2007) proposed a sustainable urbanization indicator system of four dimensions: economic, environmental, social, and institutional. This was further developed to fulfill the Millennium Development Goals, covering five aspects of shelter, social development and eradication of poverty, environmental management, economic development, and governance (UN-Habitat 2009). The World Bank’s (2008) evaluating framework for sustainable cities is also related to urban services and living standards. Lautso, Spiekermann, and Wegener (2002) and Spiekermann and Wegener (2003) produced a modeling system to evaluate urban sustainability from the perspectives of land use, transport, and environmental factors (PROPOLIS) to identify sustainable strategies for urban spatial planning. Ness (2009) integrated eco-efficiency and social-inclusiveness indicators within the urban infrastructure construction process to establish an evaluating model for sustainable and efficient urban infrastructure planning. China scholars have made efforts to develop indicator systems. The selection of indicators is based on an international benchmark obtained from the best practical experience and by identifying the unique characteristics and problems of China’s urbanization. Zhang, Wu, and Shen (2011) introduced an indicator system tailored to assessing the sustainability of urban land use in terms of population density, per capita cultivated land, total land area, and GDP of per unit land. Xing et al. (2009) developed the Urban Development Sustainability Assessment

296  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Model in terms of environmental protection, economic development, resource utilization, and social inclusiveness. Wang et al. (2013) proposed an evaluating model combining the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Pressure-State-Response (PSR) to identify environmental sustainability in urbanization. Urban China Initiative (2010) designed an Urban Sustainability Index (USI), with 35 indicators, to measure urban sustainability performance in China. Chen, Lu, and Zhao (2010) used four factors of population, economy, society, and land. Yan et al. (2018) described development efficiency as the key criterion in identifying urban sustainability, the level of which is evaluated by a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, in which natural resources and energy are regarded as input, and social, economic, and environmental indicators as output. Evaluation of Sustainable Urbanization in China Sustainable urbanization is also a community-based process, in addition to a place-based process noted above. It promotes reform in many aspects, including economic, institutional, environmental, and social services (Ng, Cook, and Chui 2001; Zhang 2016). The key policy reforms aim to enhance the quality of governance and public participation in implementing urbanization policy. Following shifts in overall urban policy and the publication of the New-type Urbanization Plan, China’s central government has promoted a people-oriented, sustainable, and inclusive urbanization. In line with the sustainable development goals, the PRC ministries related to the urbanization process have modified existing policies to address as many urbanization problems as possible. The policy efforts have included land use regulations, the reform of the household registration system, new district construction, job creation in non-agricultural sectors, the establishment of pilot areas, and the establishment of a joint committee of 15 ministries (Chen et al. 2018). Scholars have assessed the above government urban strategies and their impacts on sustainable urbanization in China. Michael, Noor, and Figueroa (2014) have assessed urban sustainability levels in 185 cities in China from 2005 to 2011, finding that the eastern coastal cities, with a higher level of economic development, performed better in terms of overall urban sustainability. Chen et al. (2018) offered an overview of achievements and challenges in the reform process from the perspectives of people urbanization, land urbanization, and economic urbanization. Achievements can be seen from the improved citizenization of peasant migrants supported by introducing a residence permit system, good experience from pilot areas of new-type urbanization, and an accelerated urbanization in central and western China. Wang et al. (2015) found that despite government efforts, there are outstanding problems challenging urban sustainability. First, it is hard to promote people-oriented urbanization nationwide because of different degrees of control on rural-to-urban migration between large cities and small cities and towns. Second, the new regulation of “less than 100 m2 per capita” for construction land use is insufficient to enable the control of excessive urban expansion. In addition, the wellbeing of landless farmers is still not considered in the government plan. Third, the enormous costs of urban agglomeration in megacities, such as environmental pollution, traffic congestion, and high housing prices, have threatened economic efficiency, and there are no specific measures to address these potential urban problems in large cities. In short, to a certain extent, the implementation of a New-type Urbanization Plan requires more effort to address difficulties in the settlement of migrants, persisting land-oriented urbanization, pressures of industrial transformation and upgrading, the lack of public participation,

Urbanization like China?  297 and the need for more locally orientated urban strategies. Thus, the next section discusses some risks and externalities in the process of sustainable urbanization in China.

RISKS AND EXTERNALITIES IN CHINESE SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION Over the past four decades of reform and opening-up, China has experienced a rapid urbanization process while accumulating contradictions and risks (Friedmann 2006; Cohen 2006). In the PRC, the development of urbanization is confronted with a contradiction of regional imbalance development. Figure 16.1 shows that the urbanization rate of eastern coastal areas is relatively high, while it is less than 50 percent in most of the central and western regions. Figure 16.2 shows the slightly spatial change of population from 2000 to 2015. Moreover, the Chinese population has tended to gather in eastern coastal cities and provincial capitals. Although the central regulations have relaxed the Hukou threshold in small and medium-sized cities, they have not changed the flow and distribution of the total population in China significantly. Instead, major cities in the eastern region have attracted a large population continuingly.

Source: CASEarth: http://​data​.casearth​.cn/​sdo/​detail/​5c19a5670600cf2a3c557b11.

Figure 16.1

Urbanization rate of cities in 2015: a spatial-temporal view

298  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Note: The left and right maps show the population density in 2000 and 2015 respectively. Source: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC); Columbia University, Center for International Earth Science Information Network – CIESIN (2015): GHS population grid, derived from GPW4, multitemporal (1975, 1990, 2000, 2015). European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) [Dataset] PID: http://​data​.europa​.eu/​89h/​jrc​ -ghsl​-ghs​_pop​_gpw4​_globe​_r2015a.

Figure 16.2

Spatial distribution of population density in 2000 and 2015

In addition, from 2000 to 2015, the total population of China increased from 1.26 billion to 1.37 billion. However, the population density exhibited different trends. The higher population densities are on the three urban agglomerations of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta. Provincial capital cities also became the main areas for increased population density, while the population density in other urban areas did not grow significantly. The eastern region in Sichuan, the Chongqing region, some cities in central China, and the central and western regions in Fujian province suffered a decrease in population density. On the other hand, the overall urban construction land expanded rapidly from 2000 to 2010. According to remote sensing monitoring data of China’s land use, urban construction land increased from 33,060 km2 in 2000 to 52,117 km2 in 2015, with 19,057 km2 of newly added land – a growth rate of nearly 60 percent. However, the newly added urban land is mostly driven by the expansion of core cities, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen. There is also the expansion of three and four-tier small and medium-sized cities, but these cities have not attracted a large inflow of people. Some counties, and even three or four-tier cities, are experiencing a severe population outflow, which leads to hollow cities and ghost cities such as Ordos city in Inner Mongolia. Against the continuous expansion of the urban

Urbanization like China?  299 area, the decrease in population density in some cities will inevitably lead to insufficient urban demand, resulting in an uncoordinated form of urbanization development. Hence, it is a question whether the current urbanization model is unsustainable. There is the need to rethink the policy framework in the context of “high-quality urbanization”; consider the role of local governments; coordinate inter-urban and intra-urban economic, social and financial aspects; pay attention to the coordination and interaction between population migration, industrial development, resource development, and environmental protection; and achieve a balanced urban development between large cities and small and medium-sized cities.

POLICY REFORMS SUGGESTED FOR SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION IN CHINA Policy reforms are recommended by some researchers to enhance the performance of sustainable urbanization in China that can be summarized in four aspects: (1) guidelines for urbanization: debates on the ideal city size; (2) population urbanization: reforms of the household registration system; (3) economic urbanization: industrial reconstruction and urban–rural labor market integration; and (4) land urbanization: efficient land use and rational land regulations. Guidelines for Urbanization: Debates on the Ideal City Size First, debates on the guidelines for urbanization in China have focused on the “right-size” of China’s cities. Some studies support the strict control of large cities, while others argue that it is rational to develop large cities first. Those favoring large cities emphasize economic efficiency and state that large cities have better conditions than small cities for driving productivity and economic growth (饶会林,丛屹 1999). Generally, large cities with massive populations are more efficient due to economies of scale, labor division, and low transaction costs (赵颖 2013). 周一星, 曹广忠 (1998) points out that large cities prioritizing the layout of industries and resources can drive the development of nearby small and medium-sized cities and gradually become the engines of regional development. 王小鲁, 夏小林 (1999) state that China has the potential to embrace more megacities, and that the strict control of large cities should be moderated. Chen and Zhou (2016) provide empirical evidence that the size of most medium cities in China is small, resulting in insufficient productivity. With the evolution of economic structure towards services, urban agglomeration provides more incentives for economies of scale and productive efficiency. In contrast, Chen et al. (2018) pay more attention to the costs of urban agglomeration in the process of rapid urbanization and believe that small and medium-sized cities can play a critical role in optimizing the structure of urban scale. It seems that there is no universally accepted optimal city size, big or small; the optimal city size should be diverse, based on local conditions (Gu, Wu, and Cook 2012); urbanization policy may be better as “spatial neutral” without preference for any city size (World Bank 2009); and a “level playing field” among cities of different size is vital for job creation and economic growth (United Nations 2015). The guidelines for China’s urbanization thus shall achieve the coordinated development of cities of different sizes. In practice, the critical tasks involved are to speed up the transformation and upgrade of industries in core cities, extend industrial resources and services to the hinterland, and enhance the driving effect and function

300  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China of large cities. Small and medium-sized cities can provide opportunities for industrial structure transformation and achieve inclusive growth. Population Urbanization: Reforms of the Household Registration System The citizenization of rural migrants is regarded as an effective strategy for reducing urban–rural inequality and enhancing the potential for economic growth, to be consistent with the primary task of sustainable urbanization. Historically, China’s internal migration was strictly regulated by its Household Registration System, which divides the population into “Agricultural” and “Non-agricultural” sectors. The objective of the reforms for achieving inclusive migration is both the employment and settlement of rural migrants in cities. Henderson (2009) supported unrestrictive movements and migration within all provinces, as this approach may accelerate urban agglomeration, lead to a more balanced migration distribution, and relieve population pressure in megacities. In order to promote citizenization, rural migrants who have secured urban employment should be given equal rights to urban residents, and that employment needs to be regulated to holding a job for a reasonable period. This policy approach may accelerate population agglomeration in megacities, thus there is the need for reforms in industrial and fiscal policies. To test this policy approach, small and medium-sized cities could pioneer the liberalization of the resident system, with megacities gradually following (Chen et al. 2018). Economic Urbanization The potential for economic growth in China relies on industrial reconstruction. Industrial policy reform is needed to accommodate urbanization development. The critical change is to boost economic growth through resource allocation driven by cities. The primary task in industrial reconstructing is to remove barriers to the flow of rural labor to non-agricultural sectors, with further efforts focusing on the reallocation of labor to the manufacturing and services sectors (陆铭 2010). Chen and Zhou (2016) suggested that a level playing field of service industries needs to be provided for obtaining more private capital, helping job creation, increasing the share of service output, and supporting the effects of service industries on the manufacturing industry. Land Urbanization: Efficient Land Use and Rational Land Regulations Land policy determines spatial structure and land density in cities. The land policy reforms are introduced in terms of land use efficiency and land regulation. The main concern is for the efficient land use allocation between urban and rural sectors and within cities, requiring more market-oriented policies to provide incentives for individuals and governments to make appropriate land use decisions. The policy reforms affecting land use allocation between the urban and rural sectors generally emphasize improving the farmland requisition-compensation system. In practice, the range of compensation amounts set by national laws should be extended, with the extensive opportunity costs of agricultural land acquisition also taken into account. Many regulatory strategies for land use are suggested for farmland protection and food security (Tan et al. 2016). To sustain grain production in the face of reduced farmland and

Urbanization like China?  301 agricultural labor, it is essential to strengthen the property rights of rural residents (Wang et al. 2015). The rights to transfer and sell rural leaseholds directly increase investments in agriculture and improve agricultural productivity (Ye et al. 2018). Moreover, a transparent decision process is required in the negotiation between governments and all stakeholders in rural areas. For the land transfer process, more market-orientated measures such as open entry auctions can be used to improve land use efficiency (Peng and Thibodeau 2012; Tu, Yu, and Ruan 2014). Another concern is to strengthen land use regulation in cities through institutional zoning laws that restrict the land use rights of individual developers to particular types of use and intensities, avoiding disorder in construction land use and solving the conflicts between private and public land use (Henderson 2009).

SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION POLICY: FUTURE PATHWAYS Existing studies have generated a large body of knowledge of sustainable urbanization. Yet, there are still several research gaps that remain worthy of future research. First, the existing connotation and indicator system of sustainable urbanization is helpful for identifying development goals and evaluating performance. Scholars can tailor it to study China’s sustainable urbanization and develop quantitative modeling methods. Second, most existing problems and possible responsive strategies in the urbanization process have relied on macro-static indicators. There is the need to construct a micro-dynamic indicator system to evaluate Chinese urban sustainability from spatial and temporal perspectives. Third, the discussion over sustainable urbanization policy has been based largely on a top-down policy approach. A more bottom-up policy demand and incentive strategy for public participation can ensure the more complete coverage and implementation of China’s urbanization policy. In the foreseeable future, studies of sustainable urbanization will continue to benefit from the emerging new methods brought by interdisciplinary researchers, which has provided enormous opportunities for an in-depth analysis of sustainable urbanization’s development path. With the implementation of the New-type Urbanization Plan, future research will have to devise a better analysis framework and quantitative methods to gain a complete understanding of China’s sustainable urbanization. In particular: 1. Future studies need to develop a better theoretical framework to conceptualize and guide China’s sustainable urbanization. China’s urban development has its own unique characteristics, which may be contrary to the common assumptions of traditional urban theories and require a China-specific treatment. Based on the deconstruction and analysis of the concept of China’s urbanization, future researchers need to identify the development goals in the new period and provide quantitative modeling for goal setting and general evaluation. 2. Urbanization is a complex system that contains environmental and human factors and their interactions. In addition to the existing macro-indicator system, future studies need to make full use of the methods and techniques of big data to obtain micro-dynamic observations and carry out simulations and assessment of urban development, enriching the research system of sustainable urbanization. 3. Urbanization is a regional development issue, not a simple city issue. Simply studying urbanization development in a city has weak practical implications. Future studies need to

302  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China examine the development of the metropolitan area and urban networks with due consideration of local particularities, resource endowment, and development path in case studies to identify good experiences in sustainable urbanization reforms and develop a differentiated urbanization policy. 4. The urbanization policy system in China operates in a hierarchical structure, resulting in variation in policy objectives and options among different players in the course of urbanization. Realizing the functions of cities in sustaining economic growth requires reforms of urban governance and the decision-making system. Future studies need to pay more attention to the role of government ministries, the relationship between central and local governments, and the coordination mechanism between policy-making sectors, to provide a new theoretical perspective of urbanization policy and open a new research approach.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 71834005 and 71673232]; the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong, China [grant number CityU 11271716]; and the CityU Internal Funds [grant numbers 9680195 and 9610386].

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CHINESE REFERENCES 冯雨峰 (1983) “发展小城镇是我国城市化唯一正确的道路吗?” 《经济地理》 第2期，136‒140. 陆铭 (2010) “重构城市体系-论中国区域和城市可持续发展战略.”《南京大学学报 (哲学.人文科 学.社会科学版)》第5期，15‒26. 饶会林，丛屹 (1999) “再谈城市规模效益问题.”《财经问题研究》第10期，56‒58. 饶会林, 和曲炳全 (1990) “集中型与集约化:中国城市化道路的最佳选择.”《财经问题研究》第4 期，1‒6. 王小鲁, 夏小林 (1999) “优化城市规模 推动经济增长” 《经济研究》第9期，22‒29. 赵颖 (2013) “中小城市规模分布如何影响劳动者工资收入?”《数量经济技术经济研究》第11 期，39‒55 + 72. 周一星, 曹广忠 (1998) “中国城市人口可比增长速度的空间差异(1949‒1995)”《经济地理》第1 期，27‒34.

17. Network structure and collaborative innovation processes: a comparative analysis of two elderly service networks in Shanghai Wai Fung Lam and Wei Li

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is home to more than 200 million people aged over 60, and has the largest population aged over 80 in the world (United Nations 2015). As a result of the drastic decline of family support and a short supply of elderly care institutions, the demand for community-based elderly care (CEC) has been on the rise (国家卫生和计划生育委员会 2015, 98). While the better-off elderly are able and willing to pay for elderly care and services (Liu et al. 2014), a significant proportion of China’s elderly population lives in poverty.1 How to provide adequate support for those who cannot afford private care has posed a policy challenge to the Chinese government. The PRC central government began to develop and experiment CEC programs in the early 2000s, with a view to providing professional services to meet the diverse care needs of the elderly at affordable costs (国务院 2001). Social Organizations (SOs), private enterprises, volunteers and social workers have been encouraged to participate in the provision of CEC services (全国老龄工作委员会 2006; Yan and Guo 2007; Xu and Chow 2011). Major efforts have been made to lower the barriers for community-based service and charity SOs2 to register with the government and to compete for government service contracts (中共中央 2013). Particularly, the PRC central government was committed to the goal that no less than 30 percent of the newly increased social service procurement would be purchased from SOs (‍财政部和民政部 2016). This chapter examines how the network structure of public–private collaboration in the provision of elderly services affects citizen participation in service innovation (Brandsen and Pestoff 2006; Bovaird 2007; Osborne and Brown 2011). Service innovation refers to “new ways in which services are provided to users” (Hartley 2005, 28), with a view to create new services or improve existing services to meet the needs of service users (Osborne and Flynn 1997); bottom-up innovation arguably allows for more effective and efficient service provision that is better able to meet the diverse needs of service users (Alves 2013; Osborne and Strokosch 2013). This chapter refers “collaborative innovation process” to the interactive process of government funders, service providers and service users to create new services or improve existing services. Prior studies of public service provision in China have mainly focused on SOs’ collaboration with governments at the municipal and district levels. In urban China, however, the implementation of many social and economic policies and programs relies heavily on street-office governments (Read 2000). With rapid urbanization in recent years, street-office governments have been playing an increasingly significant role in ensuring service quality and good governance at the local level (Heberer and Göbel 2011). This chapter is organized as follows. We first review the literature pertaining to public service provision and innovation. Based upon the review, a series of propositions are put 305

306  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China forth. To elaborate these propositions and illustrate their validity and empirical relevance, we conduct a comparative analysis of two CEC service networks in Shanghai. Finally, we discuss the lessons from this chapter for designing public service networks and service innovation in the future.

LITERATURE REVIEW In the literature of public management, there is a longstanding debate on whether government can facilitate public service innovation through collaboration with actors in the private and social sectors. Prior studies have found that, through providing resources to service networks, government can monitor network performance, foster trust among organizations in the networks, and ensure public accountability (Keast et al. 2006). In many instances, guided by a policy mandate to promote service innovation, a government can channel resources to help build nonprofits’ capacity to innovate, and to share the risk involved in service innovation (Mulroy and Shay 1997; Osborne and Flynn 1997). Through public–private collaboration, the government can mobilize knowledge and skills from actors in different sectors for better service delivery, and build trust among network actors which is instrumental to public service innovation (Sørensen and Torfing 2015). Network performance can comprise multiple dimensions (e.g., Provan and Milward 2001). This chapter focuses on the collaborative process as an important dimension of network performance, and investigates how it affects other dimensions of network performance such as efficiency, collaborative relations, network resources and service innovation. That government resources can necessarily facilitate innovation in service networks, however, is not a conclusive finding. Some scholars have observed that, in situations where governments are eager to meet statutory and policy targets, government resources tend to limit the flexibility of resource use (Hanf and O’Toole 1992; Kickert et al. 1997), destabilize collaborative relations (Agranoff 2007), and compromise efforts to innovate (Osborne et al. 2008). Existing research has suggested that bottom-up innovation, which pertains to involving citizens in the co-production of public services, often helps overcome problems brought about by limited government funding, mainly through effective identification of social problems as well as the needs of service users, development of trust among citizens, and a reduction of costs to taxpayers (Ostrom and Ostrom 1977; Mulgan 2006; Alves 2013). In bottom-up social innovation, citizens may be involved in implementing, designing and even initiating new services in collaboration with governments (Pestoff et al. 2006; Voorberg et al. 2015). Through the process of innovation, governments are not only able to serve the interests of the politically less powerful at low costs (Kickert et al. 1997; Provan and Milward 2001), but also treat citizens as active and equal partners in public service delivery (Vigoda 2002). The central government of China has strived to innovate public services through public– private collaboration as a means to cope with social and economic challenges and fiscal constraints (Shieh and Schwartz 2009; Lin 2016; Jing and Osborne 2017). Local government officials have been given both the mandate and incentives to engage in public service innovation (So 2014; Wu et al. 2011; Zhu 2014). Under China’s authoritarian political system, however, it is imperative for local governments to ensure a certain degree of social stability as well as accountability of service providers. A consequence is that local governments have been rather selective in choosing collaborative partners, collaborating with only NGOs whose

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  307 leaders the governments can trust and have strong ties with (Teets 2012; Hsu and Hasmath 2014). By collaborating with the governments, nonprofit organizations can acquire the needed resources, legitimacy and reputation which in turn can enable them to mobilize resources from both within and outside the state sector (Johnson and Ni 2015). Government sponsorship, however, is a two-edged sword; despite all the potential benefits, it could also restrain bottom-up participation in social innovation as a result of regulatory hurdles and financial accountability requirements (Jing and Gong 2012). Perhaps more importantly, nonprofit organizations could be driven by policy goals of the governments in the process of service contracting, often at the expense of their own missions and service diversity (Fulda et al. 2012; Howell 2015). For government-funded service networks to be effective, they have to sustain government resource support on one hand, and to maintain the potential for bottom-up service innovation on the other (Thynne and Peters 2015). We conjecture that the governance structure of service networks is a key independent variable affecting the networks’ ability to reconcile the two imperatives. As argued by Provan and Kenis (2007), different forms of network governance structure can affect the way networks manage the tension between the demands of internal and external stakeholders. Given the prominent role that local governments in China have been playing in service networks, two centralized forms of network governance are of particular relevance. A lead organization (LO) network has a more centralized structure and is governed by a leading service agency which at the same time also provides network administration and coordination of network members to attain collective goals. While a LO network tends to be more efficient and flexible in operation and better able to address the needs of external stakeholders, due to the dominance of the leading organization, it is often characterized by a lower level of trust among the organizations in the network, a lower degree of goal consensus, and a lower level of competency in meeting the collective needs of the network members. A network administrative organization (NAO) network which takes on the authority and responsibility of managing and sustaining the network tends to be able to attain higher levels of goal consensus and trust; which enhances its capacity in addressing the needs of external stakeholders and facilitating collaboration among network members (Provan and Kenis 2007). Chen and Graddy (2010) have found that lead organizations that seek to meet the requirements of the external funding agency are often less able to improve direct client outcomes. In fact, networks with one dominating agency in many instances have been perceived by network members to be less effective in administration and service delivery (Lemieux-Charles et al. 2005). We accordingly propose that when a government-funded CEC service network adopts the lead organization structure, service innovation is likely to be restrained, if not distracted, by government policy goals; as a result, citizens’ participation in service innovation is rather limited. By contrast, a government-funded CEC service network that adopts the NAO structure is better equipped to manage the seemingly conflicting demands for achieving government policy goals on one hand, and for facilitating bottom-up citizen participation in service innovation on the other.

308  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

POLICY CONTEXT The government of China has made it a national policy to provide the elderly living at home with quality elderly services through a community-based network of service providers, with institutional elderly care playing only a supplementary role (国务院 2011a, 2011b, 2013). To implement the policy, the central government strives to establish a system of the government procurement of elderly services by 2020 (财政部, 发展改革委, 民政部和全国老龄办 2014). The 13th National Five-Year-Plan of Public Health Development stipulated that health care institutions in the country would make efforts to strengthen community-based health services for the elderly (国务院 2016). Many of these institutions are public service units (事业单位) established and financed by the state (国家事业单位登记管理局 2014). Shanghai’s population has aged rapidly. The forecast is that, in 2020, over 36 percent of the city’s registered population will be aged over 60 (上海市人民政府 2016). To meet the challenges associated with the ageing population, since 2007 the municipal government has set for itself the policy objective of providing CEC services to 97 percent of its elderly population;3 ten types of CEC services4 are provided mainly through three mandated service agencies at the community level: Elderly Home Care Agencies (EHCAs), Elderly Day Care Centers (EDCCs), and Elderly Dining Service Centers (EDSCs). By the end of 2016, there were 289 EHCAs, 488 EDCCs and 633 EDSCs in Shanghai’s 213 communities (上海市民政局，上海 市老龄办和上海市统计局 2017). In 2015, more than 390,000 elderlies were receiving CEC services provided by EHCAs, EDCCs and EDSCs (上海市民政局, 上海市老龄办和上海市 统计局 2016). An EHCA has been established by each street-office government5 to arrange and coordinate elderly care workers (ECW) for providing home care services for the elderly (上海 市民政局, 上海市劳动和社会保障局和上海市财政局 2004); the government has also subsidized low-income elderly for the ECW services (上海市民政局和上海市财政局 2015). Applications for the subsidies are processed by the Home-Based Elderly Care Centers (HECC), which are SOs established by the district CABs and street-office governments. Since 2008, the government of Shanghai has established and subsidized EDSCs and EDCCs (上海市 民政局 2008a, 2008b). Recently, EDCCs are encouraged to employ social workers to provide psychological services for the elderly (上海市民政局 2016). Public health institutions are mandated to provide community-based health care services for the elderly (上海市人民政府 2007, 2012, 2016). SOs and businesses have been encouraged to participate in the community service networks. More importantly, elderly citizens have been encouraged to organize among themselves to initiate and organize entertainment programs, cultural and learning activities, and home-visits (上海市人民政府 2014). The CEC Service Standards were adopted as the professional guideline for service providers (上海市民政局，上海市居家养老服务指导中心 (筹) 和上海市社会福利中心 2010). CEC service agencies are encouraged to employ professionals such as nurses, social workers, and psychological counsellors to deliver services to the elderly (国务院 2013). In 2015, only 13 percent of CEC care workers in Shanghai were able to obtain national professional certificates, and about 86 percent of them received lower secondary school education. The municipal government has set the goal that, by the end of 2020, all CEC care workers in the city are professionally qualified, with an addition of 78,000 elderly care workers joining the service (‍上海市人力资源和社会保障局等 2015).

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  309

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS This chapter compares two networks in Shanghai which are representative of typical CEC service networks in the city. The geographical boundary of two networks are two street-office government jurisdictions which launched their government-sponsored CEC programs about a decade ago. Both jurisdictions have over 30 percent of the permanent residents aged over 60. We sample the network members from those who provide CEC services to the elderly in the two jurisdictions. The comparative analysis of the two networks can help validate the causal mechanisms through which network structure affects performance as suggested by existing theories, and identify possible alternative causal mechanisms (Seawright and Gerring 2008). We triangulate both the quantitative and qualitative information of the two networks to capture the structure and operation of the networks and to gauge their impact on service innovation. Network structure is measured by the number of reported links of member organizations to service providers in the network in the delivery of CEC services. The approach and processes of innovation in the networks are gauged by in-depth interviews with key actors, including managers of service providers, service users, as well as street-office government officials. We also collected documentary information about the services delivered by the two networks to supplement and triangulate the interview data. Three rounds of fieldwork were conducted in July 2014, May–June 2015 and February– March 2017, respectively. In the first round of fieldwork, we conducted eight interviews in the community served by one of the networks – Community A, and six interviews in the community served by the other network – Community B. To identify key informants for interviews, we adopted a snowball method. We first approached and interviewed the street-office government officials responsible for coordinating elderly service provision in their jurisdictions. Through these officials, we identified managers of service providers in the networks for interviews. In the second round of fieldwork, we interviewed a network manager in Community A for the second time and, through her introduction, interviewed managers of five more service providers in the network, either face-to-face or via telephone. The five managers came from different service types and were considered by the network manager to be compassionate and capable collaborators. We revisited Community B and interviewed the street-office government official and the HECC manager there. In the third round of fieldwork, we revisited Community B and interviewed one street-office government official, the managers of six service providers in the network, and four service users. We obtained from the street-office government the third-party program evaluation reports of three service providers in the community. We visited Community A again and interviewed a manager of HECC and three service users. In total, we conducted 45 interviews with major actors, with each interview lasting for about an hour. A semi-structured questionnaire was used in the interviews. In designing the questionnaire, we took into account, and also made reference to, relevant literatures (Provan and Milward 1991, 1995; Milward and Provan 1998; Provan et al. 2004; Provan et al. 2009), government documents, and advice provided by local experts. The interviews with the street-office government officials were mainly focused on the background and performance of network collaboration, and also the processes of CEC service innovation; the interviews with the managers of the service providers emphasized the organizations’ service innovation as well as their perceived benefits and problems involved in collaborating with other service providers, government

310  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China agencies and private donors. The questions for service users pertained to their experiences in using, designing and delivering CEC services.

STRUCTURE AND SERVICE INNOVATION OF TWO COMMUNITY-BASED ELDERLY SERVICE DELIVERY NETWORKS Network A: Lead Organization Structure and Service Innovation Approaches Network A is a highly centralized service network which adopts a lead organization (LO) governance structure. Despite the centralized innovation process, Network A has attracted government resources and successfully coordinated network members to innovate and deliver diverse and low cost services needed by citizens. To measure the degree of integration of Network A, we calculated the density score by dividing the total number of organizational linkages by the number of agencies in that network (Provan and Milward 1995). Among the 13 service providers we interviewed which represent major types of services provided to the elderly by Network A, 54 service collaboration links were identified; the density score was 0.346.6 These service providers have more dyadic service links with JLL – the LO of the network – than among themselves. As the LO of Network A, JLL has the largest number of inter-organizational links in the network (Table 17.1). It is a street-office level HECC responsible for managing the administrative work of Network A, including government funding applications and subcontracting. JLL also delivers services, through EHCAs and EDCCs. For example, it operates a hotline that responds to the needs of the elderly by referring them to appropriate service providers in the network. Network A has close ties with the street-office government through JLL. Despite that the HECC (JLL), EHCA and EDCC are registered as SOs which are independent legal entities, JLL in fact manages all the three entities which are all established and financed by the street-office government. The director of JLL is simultaneously the legal representative of the HECC, EHCA and EDCC. She is also the Party Secretary of a party branch comprising ten party members who are the staff of the HECC, EHCA and EDCC. She has developed good relationships with major actors in government and the public sector, due to her pre-retirement work experiences.7 The LO structure has enabled Network A to develop new service programs based on the direct feedbacks from service users. Its close relation with the government has allowed the Network to have good information about the government’s policy goals; such information has enabled the Network to make use of governmental platforms to scale up their innovation. For instance, the government-initiated social organization JXH was greatly benefited by JLL’s ability to accurately identify family caregivers who need JXH’s nursing care training services. This experiment program was so successful that it has been adopted and scaled up by the government to become a municipal-wide program.8 The JLL manager’s passion for elderly services and street-office government’s support have enabled Network A to innovate and deliver quality and diverse services at a low cost through forging a common goal among network participants. Many network members are public service units, state-owned enterprises, or SOs established by the government (Table 17.1). Some joined Network A as a result of the coordination by the street-office government, others

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  311 Table 17.1

Service agency involvement in the CEC Service Network A

Agencies

Organizational link*

Legal status

Interviewee’s qualification

JLL

63(51)

Private non-enterprise

9 years of elderly service management

JDC

11(10)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

4 years of elderly service management

JCL

14(13)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

6 years of elderly service management

JYY

15(14)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

6 years of elderly service management

JLY

6(5)

Public service unit

8 years of hospital management

JSM

7(6)

Public service unit (one branch)

16 years of medical services

JYH

6(5)

Public service unit (one branch)

7‒8 years of medical services

JDX

2(1)

State-owned enterprise

3 years of telecommunication management

JDX

2(1)

State-owned enterprise

3 years of telecommunication management

JFM

3(2)

Self-employed business

Over 20 years of medical services

JHY

1(1)

Private non-enterprise

5 years of elderly service management

JXH

4(3)

Private non-enterprise

10 years of elderly service management

JFZ

2(1)

Private non-enterprise

7 years of charity service management

JMJ

6(5)

State-owned enterprise

3‒4 years of meal service management

Note: *Figures in parentheses are linkages to the non-governmental service providers only. These links are for the purpose of elderly service delivery in Community A. JDC, JCL, and JYY are three service stations of JLL. JSM and JYH are two service stations of a community health care center. We present their linkages to other organizations because they operate as separate units that directly deliver the services.

joined Network A because of the trust in the JLL manager. Member organizations all share the network goal of providing the elderly with charitable and quality services.9 Every year JLL organizes meetings with network service providers to communicate to them the feedback from the elderly. Also it uses government funding to subsidize some service providers, and to reward those who have been able to attract more service users.10 As of July 2014, JLL had signed service contracts with over 70 service providers (51 of them are active “supporting units”), which together offer more than 55 types of free or low-priced services covering meal services, daily personal care, psychological counseling, health care, legal services, culture and entertainment, and security services. The contracts stipulated that service providers shall observe “the principle of serving public interests” (公益原 则) in service delivery.11 For instance, to accommodate the diverse preferences of the elderly, JLL arranged three service providers to take turns to deliver meals at different stations of the EHCA and the EDCC every day, including weekends and public holidays.12 One elderly lady told us that she only paid ¥150 per month for the services she enjoyed at one EDCC, including the meals, entertainment programs, physical exercises and health care services.13 Being familiar with relevant government policies, JLL has helped the EHCA retain as many as 400 regular care workers, who are under-paid because of government policy, by securing social security benefits for them. JLL has also utilized its access to public hospitals to provide free nursing training to care workers to improve their skills. About 70 percent of EHCA’s care workers have now obtained national professional qualifications, which is higher than the average level of the city.14 In 2014, Network A served 250 government-subsidized low-income elderly and over 1,000 self-financed elderly, and delivered 30,000 meals per month. With a moderate increase of funding for each station (from ¥100,000 to ¥150,000), the service volume of each station increased from 50,000 times of service in 2007 to around 100,000 times in 2014.15 Support provided by the government and a consensus on network goals among the network members (including the lead organization) have sustained long-term collaboration among

312  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China the members, and stabilized service provision despite the centralized network structure. For instance, when one meal provider was undergoing furnishing, another meal provider JMJ was willing to increase its service supply to the network temporarily, with the tacit understanding that other meal providers would do the same when JMJ needed help. More importantly, to deal with the problem of the temporary capacity shortage of JMJ, the manager of JLL referred some elderly care takers from EHCAs to JMJ to undertake some workload so that JMJ would not need to employ additional permanent staff.16 It would have been more difficult to re-assign care workers had the management of EHCA, EDCC and EHCC (JLL) not been integrated. As of February 2017, two meal service providers and two community public health service stations had collaborated with JLL for more than ten years. Four agencies which provided such services as haircuts, estate management, electronic appliance repair, and care worker training had operated in Network A for more than eight years; the two agencies that maintained the JLL hotline center and provided specialized home care services, respectively, had worked in the network for more than five years.17 Network A’s performance is generally in line with government goals which helps it attract resources from the government to develop new services. Since 2013, JLL has been identified by the municipal government as one of the 40 “elderly-friendly communities” where new government-funded CEC services are experimented (解放日报 2013). As of July 2014, JLL has attracted a total amount of ¥1,645,000, most of which are from the government.18 Network A’s innovation faces several challenges, however. First, some of JLL’s government-sponsored collaborators are constrained by government policies in service provision. For example, the elderly rehabilitation hospital, JLY, could only provide a limited number of intravenous injections for the elderly at home for one day; and the injections must be prescribed at JLY. This has limited JLY’s capacity to serve the elderly referred by JLL.19 Second, JLL has only limited administrative capacity and expertise in dealing with such tedious tasks as surveying service needs, bidding for government funding, performance reporting for government-funded service programs, and evaluating service providers’ performance.20 Perhaps more importantly, JLL is facing the problem of succession. The current director of JJL is about 70 years old; her retirement would mean a heavy loss of JLL’s social capital which has been largely personified by the director; JLL is having difficulty finding a successor who has similar experience and social capital.21 Third, Network A’s innovation has been constrained by the street-office government’s micro-management approach in dealing with HECC, EDCC, and EHCA. For instance, the salaries of the staff at the EDCC and EHCA are fixed at the minimum wage level in accordance with government regulations, which is not proportional to their heavy workload; any attempts to raise their salaries would require the approval by the street-government.22 Given the low salaries, the HECC, EDCC and EHCA can only attract retirees to work for them, as young people do not see good prospects in the jobs.23 Fourth, the management of the LO does not always appreciate the service innovation efforts made by the SOs. Managers of JLL perceived that most SOs lack resources and do not know the needs of the elderly. In one case, JLL helped an SO to recruit some elderly participants for a paper-cutting workshop. However, a JLL manager complained that the workshop was not attractive because only 20 elderly turned out while more than 30 volunteers came.24 On another occasion, JLL bid for a government-funded program in collaboration with a privately initiated SO, JFK. JFK would send their own nurses to provide care services such as bathing for the frail elderly at home; JLL would help JFK to reach service users. One JLL manager, however,

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  313 complained that this joint program cost their staff too much time and JLL should have charged JFK a management fee. JFK, on the other hand, was fully aware that this service program was in fact competing with JLL for the limited government subsidies for CEC services.25 Finally, the level of participation of the elderly in Network A has often been confined to co-delivering services to the elderly together with the professionals (Bovaird 2007).26 The elderly service users have not played much role, except for being consulted, in identifying service needs, designing service programs, or delivering services on their own. Network B: An NAO Structure and Service Innovation Approaches In Community B, the CEC service network has a more decentralized structure. Compared with Network A, the inter-organizational links in Network B are not centered around a particular organization, but more evenly distributed (Table 17.2). The density score of Network B is 0.444, which is higher than that of Network A. If we exclude YHY which manages the EHCA care workers, the density score of Network B rises to 0.528. Network B displays an NAO structure, and differs from Network A in three major aspects. First, except for YWT, all the service providers in Network B are branch offices of SOs which also provide services outside community B. Except for YWT and YQJ, all the other SOs in the network are privately initiated. Second, all SOs in Network B have contracted directly with the street-office government for funding, rather than through a lead organization. Unlike in Network A where JLL is the single most reputable SO, a majority of SOs in Network B have Table 17.2

Service agency involvement in the CEC Service Network B

Agencies

Organizational link*

Legal status

Interviewee’s qualification

YYZ

16(3)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

10 years of community service

YZX1

14(13)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

YHBS1

14(13)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

YHBS2

11(10)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

YXT

16(15)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

YHY

18(16)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

YJM

25(24)

Service team (being incubated)

YYG

23(22)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

YQJ

33(32)

Private non-enterprise (one branch)

YWT

40(39)

Private non-enterprise

management 1 year of community service management 1 year of community service management 1 year of community service management 3 years of community service management 1.5 years of community service management 1 year of community service management 2 years of community service management 3 years of community service management 1 year of community service management

Note: *Figures in parentheses are linkages to non-governmental service provider agencies only. These links are for the purpose of service delivery in Community B.

314  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China developed a reputation among their peers.27 Third, the street-office government has contracted out major network administrative duties to a privately initiated SO: YZX2. In 2014, YZX2 was awarded a service contract of over ¥200,000 by the street-office government to manage a community SO service center.28 The organization has since become the NAO for Network B. YZX2’s network administrative tasks include incubating new service teams or new SOs for service provision, evaluating the performance of government service programs contracted to the SOs in the network, and facilitating collaboration among the SOs through information dissemination, engagement activities, and joint service programs. YZX2 has helped new service teams to get access to resident committees (居委会) and neighborhood centers.29 During the period of 2009‒2015, more than ten SOs were incubated at the center.30 An interesting example is that a group of legal professionals were awarded a service contract of more than ¥50,000 by the street-office government to provide free legal counseling services for the elderly.31 YZX2 has also introduced different types of services, and resolved the conflicts among SOs as a result of competition.32 As of July 2014, all nine SOs in Network B had forged collaborative relationships with one another, enabling them to share volunteers, information and resources.33 The flexibility of the NAO network has not only encouraged competition among SOs but also facilitated citizen participation in service innovation. The management of the three neighborhood centers in Network B has been contracted by the street-office government to three SOs, namely YXT, YYZ and YZX1. Although their collaboration with the street-office government has been relatively stable, the service contracts normally last for one or two years and can be renewed only through open competitive bidding. A result of such an arrangement is that the SOs are given a strong incentive to maintain good performance.34 In addition, members of the SO staffs are motivated to perform well so that they can get promotions.35 With a small number of full-time staff and the challenging government service targets, the SOs in Network B have competed with one another to solicit volunteers, of whom most are retired elderly, to co-design and co-deliver services.36 For instance, YXT is an SO specialized in community preventive health care. In one occasion, YXT’s volunteers proposed that the older elderly and the elderly who have lost their only child could use chatting services. YXT assisted the volunteers to formulate a service plan which has since provided chatting services to more than 200 elderlies every week.37 During our fieldwork, an elderly volunteer reported that YXT had invited a health expert to give a lecture on smoking-control. The follow-up monthly workshops and advocacy activities were then organized by the volunteers themselves.38 Some service programs such as visual inspection were first proposed by the residents too; YXT then turned the ideas into action by introducing volunteers from the relevant sectors to offer free and professional visual inspection for the elderly.39 Other SOs used similar approaches to elderly service innovation.40 In a service program funded by the street-office government, YJM invited health care experts to train the leaders of the self-organized health care clubs in the community. YJM then assisted these leaders to deliver health education programs to other community residents, including the elderly served by EDCCs. A staff member of an EDCC told us that the programs were very popular among their clients.41 In appreciation of the positive impacts of citizen participation, the street-office government increased its financial support for bottom-up service innovation.42 With an NAO structure, no single service provider in Network B can control the access to service users. Compared with Network A, Network B is more receptive to external resources. The street-office government welcomed external resources to help achieve its performance

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  315 targets.43 For instance, YJM received a program funding of ¥40,000 from the street-office government in 2012, and was allocated free office space at the SO service center. In 2015, its revenue grew to reach ¥200,000, of which one-third came from business donation.44 From 2015 to 2017, YZX2 solicited a total of ¥600,000 from private banks; the street-office matched an additional amount of ¥600,000 for the fund.45 In 2016, YXT was contracted to manage a community foundation in Community B. Of its ¥5.05 million, only ¥400,000 was allocated by the street-office and district governments; the rest was all raised by YXT from a private foundation and local businesses.46 The EHCA, EDCC and EDSC in Network B face similar government financial constraints as their counterparts in Network A. To leverage private resources to sustain service delivery and innovation, they have contracted the delivery of many of their programs to SOs. For example, the meal-on-wheel services of the EDSC have been outsourced to an SO, YYG. Although government subsidies can barely cover the cost of YYG’s services, YYG has been able to make ends meet through providing dinner services that generate additional incomes.47 With the declining number of subsidized elderlies in Community B, the contracting fee for YHY to manage the EHCA declined from ¥120,000 in 2013 to ¥100,000 in 2014. This amount could hardly cover the costs.48 YHY made up the shortfalls by getting subsidies from the business-group YHC.49 Compared with Network A, SOs in Network B have enjoyed higher degrees of autonomy in management and service development. As a SO manager nicely described: The street-office government views us as its partners rather than subordinates. When they need our help to carry out additional administrative tasks not specified in the contract, they will ask whether we are willing to do it rather than instruct us to do it. From our perspective, we are also willing to help out because we aim to form a long-term collaborative relation with the government.50

In the process of service innovation, the SOs have helped align the government’s service priorities with citizens’ needs. For instance, YYZ and YXT have formulated their program proposals on the basis of the results of the community service need surveys, the service priorities of the street-office government, as well as their own missions and service capacity.51 Service innovation is a collaborative process between governments, SOs and citizens. As the process of designing new services is conducted jointly by professionals and service users, it fosters citizen participation (Bovaird 2007). For instance, YZX2 has encouraged citizen groups and SOs in Community B to apply for the fund it manages. YZX2 would invite external experts to participate in the selection of proposed programs. The street-office government would then invite external professional organizations to evaluate the performance of the funded programs.52 For the allocation of funding of the community foundation YCF managed by YXT, the street-office government would only suggest service priorities. It is citizens who proposed service programs, applied for the foundation’s fund, and implemented the programs. In 2016, nine of the ten service programs proposed by the citizens were funded.53 In summary, with an NAO structure, Network B has been better able to align the service priorities of the government with the diverse needs of the elderly citizens. It has the capacity to cope with the government financial and policy constraints through mobilizing external and private resources, and to solicit citizen participation in service innovation. In 2013‒2014, the elderly service funding of the eight SOs in Network B was estimated at ¥1,751,000, excluding direct payments to care workers by the government54; the network has been able to deliver high

316  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China volumes of services in home care, health care, culture and entertainment, legal counseling, and so on.55 Major challenges for service innovation faced by a NAO include unstable funding support, a lack of program continuity, and the frequent personnel changes of the SOs. Compared with Network A, successful innovative programs in Network B are less likely to be continued, replicated or scaled up. For example, a service program which provided free house-cleaning services on a one-off basis was not well-received because the elderly preferred regular and continuous services.56 In one case, citizens suggested that the service program which helped install resting chairs at buildings with no lifts be continued and be extended to other buildings.57 The personnel change of YZX discontinued YZX’s regular meetings with YXT, and hence adversely affected the collaboration between the two organizations.58 YZX and the street-office government have learned about the problems, and have tried to sustain successful citizen innovation programs through extra funding support for these programs.59

DISCUSSION This chapter examines how a network can leverage government resources to create space for bottom-up innovation, while at the same time protect itself from being driven or overshadowed by the government’s missions and priorities. It shows that the service innovation of Network A with a lead organization structure faces more constraints due to substantial government regulation and requirements; its more centralized operation has limited not only the network’s administrative capacity, but also hindered participation by privately initiated SOs and citizens in service design and delivery. Nevertheless, Network A has attracted government resources, to innovate an array of diverse, quality, and low cost services to meet the needs of the elderly (Table 17.3). This chapter shows that Network B with an NAO structure has enabled its SOs to align the service priorities of the government on one hand, and the diverse needs of the elderly on the other. It has attracted abundant external and private resources for service innovation, and is more ready to embrace bottom-up initiatives proposed by citizens. Compared with Network A, Network B’s capacity to engage in service innovation has been substantially strengthened by the bottom-up participation of privately initiated SOs and citizens. The NAO network, Table 17.3

Summary of findings Network A

Network B

Network Structure

Lead Organization Structure

Network Administrative Organization

Collaborative processes

Limited bottom-up participation of

Strengthened bottom-up participation of privately

privately initiated SOs and service users

initiated SOs and service users

Collaborative relations

Unstable

Stable

Resources

Abundant government resources

Mobilize private resources to supplement limited

Efficiency*

Yes

Yes

Service Innovation

Constrained by the government’s

Better able to align the government priorities with

requirements

users’ service needs

government resources

Note: * See the discussion about government resources of two networks in Li and Lam (2017).

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  317 however, faces the challenge of unstable funding and frequent personnel changes, which are detrimental to service innovation and delivery (Table 17.3). This chapter shows that the mechanisms through which government funding for non-governmental service delivery is allocated do not necessarily compromise service innovation in an authoritarian regime. With an appropriate network structure in place, governments can collaborate with privately initiated SOs to improve public service performance. The SOs in Network B are often willing to accommodate the governments’ policy goals, and to learn to get along with bureaucratic constraints. Service innovation and collaboration in Network B are built upon a process of mutual adaptation which reconciles the government’s concerns about accountability and the need for leveraging private resources in public service delivery on one hand, and the SOs’ aspirations for independence and citizen participation in program development on the other (Brinkerhoff 2002; Salamon and Toepler 2015). The performance of Network B is consistent with what has been suggested in the literature – a decentralized and collaborative network is effective in service innovation (Provan and Milward 1995; Poole 2008). Contrary to Provan and Kenis (2007) and some studies, this chapter shows that, even though a LO network tends to have a more centralized innovation process, it can still maintain a high level of consensus among members of the network, and attain a level of competency and innovativeness for effective service delivery. What makes it possible is the government’s support and trust in Network A, which is largely a result of the LO leader’s reputation as a shrewd policy entrepreneur with close affiliations with the street-office government. Such a hierarchical yet responsive state–society relation is not only a legacy of China’s corporatist-style state control over society (Foster 2002; Unger and Chan 2008) but also a feature of the local state pressured to seek citizens’ support by providing public goods (Dickson et al. 2016). To generalize our findings to the rest of China, we offer a number of suggestions. First, the Shanghai government is relatively resourceful and its officials support collaboration with the private sector for service innovation (Jing and Osborne 2017). To apply the framework to other regions in China, researchers need to consider variation of local government innovation capacities and resource availability. Second, many SOs in China do not release their internal information, such as revenue, expenditure and third-party performance evaluation, to the public, despite the fact that a substantial part of their revenue comes from government service contracts. As a result, we can only rely on information provided by the managers of the SOs, as well as some performance evaluation reports which we obtained from the government. Third, to get access to network SOs and service users, we had to seek the government’s endorsement and authorization. We are well aware that the authorization process, advertently or not, might incur a certain degree of screening by government officials which might well compromise the quality of the data. In spite of that, we have focused our analysis on the differences between the two networks, which we believe can provide not only useful lessons for designing public service networks for elderly services, but also insights about service innovation in an authoritarian context.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter is presented in a conference hosted by Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University in Suzhou, China during October 28–30, 2019, organized by Professor Xiaowei Zang and

318  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Professor Hon S. Chan. We appreciate their excellent editing of the chapter. We thank Dr Hanyu Xiao and other conference participants’ comments to improve the chapter. Special thanks to Ms Yishu Xie and her colleagues for their great administrative assistance for the conference. We are grateful to the publisher for the copyright license for this reprint.

NOTES 1. According to Global Age Watch Index (2015), 23.9 percent of the population aged over 60 have income less than half the country’s median income in 2015. http://​www​.helpage​.org/​global​ -agewatch/​population​-ageing​-data/​country​-ageing​-data/​?country​=​China. 2. These organizations include nonprofit charity organizations and community-based social service organizations (中华人民共和国主席习近平 2016; 中共中央和国务院 2016). 3. Ninety percent of the elderly are taken care of by their families and 7 percent are served by the community caregivers, only 3 percent of the elderly go to the elderly care institutions (上海市人民 政府 2007, 2016). 4. The ten types of services include: (1) personal daily care, (2) meals, (3) bathing, (4) cleaning, (5) washing, (6) traveling, (7) managing chores such as shopping and bill payments, (8) health rehabilitation, (9) conversation, and (10) medical care (上海市民政局,上海市居家养老服务指导中心（ 筹）和上海市社会福利中心 2010). 5. The street-office (街道办事处) is the dispatched agency of the district or city government, which is the lowest level of government in mainland China. 6. The calculation is based on a list of network organizations and their reported service collaboration links to others. See Table 17.1 and 17.2. 7. To verify the information from the interviews, we checked the registration information of the HECC (JLL), EDCC and EHCA from the government websites. The JLL manager was an economist retiring from a state-owned enterprise. See also note 11. Interview JLL director, July 16, 2014 and May 13, 2015. 8. Interview JXH, May 19, 2015. 9. For instance, the collaboration of the community public health service stations (such as JSM and JYH) with EHCAs was facilitated by the District Government Health Department and Office of Working Commission on Ageing. The immigrant manager of a barber shop JFM provided low priced hair-cutting services to the elderly in Network A to “give back to the community” in return for the assistance he received from the street-office government during an earlier stage of his career (Interview JFM manager, May 16, 2015). The charity service unit associated with a high-end supermarket delivered free food to the elderly in Network A largely because its manager trusted the JLL manager due to their pre-retirement friendship and working relations in the district public sector prior to 2008 (Interview JFZ, May 15, 2015). 10. Interview JLL director, July 16, 2014. 11. Interview JLL director, July 16, 2014. The service and contacts of JLL’s “supporting units” are found in a brochure displayed at the JLL. 12. This information is confirmed by JLL managers, staff at EHCA stations and the elderly service user. Interviews, JLL director, July 16, 2014; managers of JYY and JCL, July 22, 2014; manager of JDC, July 23, 2014; Miss Gu, February 17, 2017. 13. Interview Miss Gu, February 17, 2017. 14. Interview JLL director, July 16, 2014; Interview JXH, May 19, 2015; Interview JLL manager, February 17, 2017. In comparison, only half of 70 EHCA care workers in Network B obtained national professional qualifications. Interview YJJ director, February 17, 2017. 15. Calculations are based upon the sum of administrative cost (staff salaries, electricity charges of station, etc.) related to the provision of varieties of services by each service station mentioned previously. Interview JLL director, July 16, 2014. 16. Interview JMJ manager, June 9, 2015. 17. Interviews in Community A in July 2014, May and June, 2015 and February 2017.

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  319 18. A total of ¥1,300,000 is directly transferred by the government, ¥99,000 is funded by the street-office government through competitive bidding, and ¥216,000 is allocated by Shanghai Senior Citizens Foundation, which is a GOSO. JLL’s collaborator YXH bid ¥30,000 from the government to offer free professional training for family caregivers in Network A. According to the JLL manager, the winner for “competitive bidding” was actually designated in advance by the government. Other bidders were just accompanying the bidding process. This phenomenon is prevalent among privately initiated SOs. In February 2017, we found that YXT was also looking for “accompanying bidders” to prepare for the bidding for a government service program. For a systematic explanation for the phenomena, see Jing and Chen (2013); Interviews YXT manager, March 2, 2017; JLL director, July 16, 2014. 19. Interview vice president of JLY, July 18, 2014. 20. Interview JLL director, July 16, 2014. 21. To illustrate the challenges of the job, a JLL manager told us that a Party leader from Jing’an district government would visit JLL on the same day of our interview with a very short notice. The JLL director prepared reporting materials for the visit the night before until 9 pm. Interview JLL manager, February 17, 2017. 22. Interview JLL director, May 13, 2015. 23. Interview JYY manager, July 22, 2014. 24. Interview JLL director, July 16, 2014. 25. Interviews JLL director, July 16, 2014, JFK manager, June 20, 2015, JLL manager, February 17, 2017. 26. For example, retired volunteers including doctors, provided health check services at the service stations of EHCA. Their participation shared the workload of the community public health service center. Interviews JCL manager and JYH manager, July 22, 2014, Shanghai, China. 27. Eight SOs have been mentioned by our respondents as the best elderly service agencies in Community B. YZX was mentioned three times, YXT four times, YYZ twice, YHY four times, YLF once, YWT once, YJM once and YHBS five times. 28. It is municipal government policy to establish a SO service center at each community to provide consultation and capacity building services to SOs, and evaluate their performance as well as facilitate their participation in community service delivery and governance. See 上海市民政局上海市 社会团体管理局 (2015, 2017). 29. Interview YZX2 manager, June 12, 2015; Interview YLC manager, March 14, 2017; Interview YJM manager, May 25, 2015. 30. Interview YZX2 manager, June 12, 2015. We also refer to the third-party evaluation report for YZX2’s performance in 2014 obtained from the street-office government on March 3, 2017. 31. The group registered as a SO in 2015, with the help of the center. Interview staff of YLC, March 14, 2017; Interview manager of YZX2, June 12, 2015. 32. Interview YYZ manager, July 15, 2014; Interview YZX2 manager, June 12, 2015; Interview a street-office government official, May 27, 2015. 33. Interviews in Community B, July 2014 and June 2015. 34. Until March 2017, YXT had contracted with the street-office government to deliver community services for nearly six years, while YYZ and YZX1 have done so for nearly seven years. Interview street-office government official, July 15, 2014; interview YXT manager, March 2, 2017; interview YZX2 manager, February 17, 2017. YXT, YYZ and YZX1 renewed their contracts after they obtained “90,” “90” and “84” scores (out of 100) respectively in 2014. Sometimes SOs’ contracts are not renewed due to competition. For example, one elderly day care center was originally managed by a branch of YZX during 2010‒2012 and was later contracted to YHBS1. Interview street-office government officials, July 15, 2014. See also the consultation report obtained from a local scholar, July 7, 2014 and the third-party evaluation reports obtained from the street-office government, March 4, 2017. 35. Well-performing staff of SOs in the community service centers are usually promoted to oversee several service centers across communities. Their salaries will also be doubled. Interview staff of YXT working in one neighborhood center. March 2, 2017. 36. In 2014, YXT had two full-time staff, YYZ had three full-time staff, YZX1 had four full-time staff and YZX2 had two full-time staff to manage four neighborhood/service centers. Interviews in Community B, July, 2014.

320  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59.

Interview YXT manager, July 22, 2014. Interview an elderly volunteer, March 2, 2017. Interview YXT manager, July 22, 2014. Interview YYZ manager, July 15, 2014; Interview YZX1 manager, July 23, 2014. Interview YJM manager, May 25, 2015. Interview YHBS1 staff, July 23, 2014. According to the internal work reports by the street-office government in Community B, in 2014, it allocated ¥3 million to purchase SOs service programs. In 2016, the street-office government recognized that SOs can encourage citizens to participate in community self-governance and the amount allocated to purchase SOs’ service programs increased to ¥3.8 million. Interviews of street-office government officials on July 15, 2014, May 27, 2015 and March 4, 2017. Interview YZX1 manager, February 17, 2017. Interview YJM manager, May 25, 2015. The street-office government matches the same amount of money for the fund donated by private banks. In 2015 and 2016, the donation from a bank was ¥150,000 respectively. In 2017, donation will come from two banks and increase to ¥300,000. The street-office government will match ¥300,000 accordingly. Interview YZX2 manager, June 12, 2015; Interview YZX2 manager, February 17, 2017; Interview YXT, July 22, 2014, Shanghai, China. Interview YXT manager, March 2, 2017. Interview YYG manager, May 26, 2015. Interview YHY2 manager, June 1, 2015; Interview YJJ director, May 27, 2015. YHC is registered as a business entity while YHY is registered as a nonprofit social organization. YHC and YHY are affiliated with the same business-group. This group can be understood as a social enterprise which pursues both social mission and financial sustainability. For a definition of social enterprises, see Dart (2004). Interview YHY1, July 16, 2014; Interview YHY2, June 1, 2015. Interview YXT, July 22, 2014. Interview YYZ manager, July 15, 2014; Interview YXT manager, March 2, 2017. Interview YYZ2 manager, March 3, 2017. YCF manager provided applicants with technical training about how to write funding proposals Interview YCF manager, March 29, 2017. Interviews with managers of eight SOs in Network B, from July 2014 to June 2015. Network A on average provides 58,914 times users per month on ten types of elderly services, with higher service volumes concentrating on meals (31,413) and home delivery (11,325). Network B on average provides 44,198 times users per month, with higher service volumes concentrating on meals (11,990), sports, culture and entertainment (over 9,000) and health care (around 8,000) and cleaning (over 8,000). Personal communication with managers in Network A and Network B, July 2014 and May–June 2015. Interview a resident committee’s deputy Party Secretary. She suggested a list of potential service users for the YXT. Interview YRC March 2, 2017. The self-evaluation report of a citizens’ service program funded by the community foundation, obtained from the manager of the community foundation YCF. March 29, 2017. Interview YXT manager, July 22, 2014. Interview YZY1 manager, February 17, 2017.

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Network structure and collaborative innovation processes  323 Thynne, Ian, and B. Guy Peters (2015) “Addressing the Present and the Future in Government and Governance.” Public Administration and Development 35(2), 73‒85. Unger, Jonathan, and Anita Chan (2008) “Associations in a Bind: The Emergence of Political Corporatism.” In: Jonathan Unger (ed.), Association and the Chinese State: Contested Spaces. Armonk: Taylor & Francis, 48‒68. United Nations (2015) World Population Ageing. https://​www​.un​.org/​en/​development/​desa/​population/​ publications/​pdf/​ageing/​WPA2015​_Report​.pdf. Accessed on June 28, 2020. Vigoda, Eran (2002) “From Responsiveness to Collaboration: Governance, Citizens and the Next Generation of Public Administration.” Public Administration Review 62(5), 527‒540. Voorberg, William, V.J. Bekkers, and Lars Tummers (2015) “A Systematic Review of Co-Creation and Co-Production.” Public Management Review 17(9), 1333‒1357. Wu, Jiannan, Liang Ma, and Yuqian Yang (2011) “Innovation in the Chinese Public Sector.” Public Administration 91(2), 347‒365. Xu, Qingwen, and Julian Chow (2011) “Exploring the Community-Based Service Delivery Model.” International Social Work 54(3), 374‒387. Yan, Miu Chung, and Jian Guo (2007) “Social Engineering of Community Building.” Community Development Journal 42(2), 222‒236. Zhu, Xufeng (2014) “Mandate versus Championship: Vertical Government Intervention and Diffusion of Innovation in Public Services.” Public Management Review 16(1), 117‒139.

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18. Land administration policy and illegal land use Hongping Lian, Hui Li, and Kilkon Ko

In China, urban land is owned “by the people” and land use decisions are made by the state. Thus, the Chinese government has far greater control over land use decisions than do governments of other countries. Under the Chinese Constitution, private ownership of land is prohibited (Li 1999). Instead, local governments hold the right to award and renew private land use rights (LURs). They enjoy considerable discretion over land expropriation and conversion, land use approval and licensing, land allocation and transactions, and management of land-related revenue and expenditure. Despite the high degree of state control over land transactions, the demand for land in China has increased exponentially, as the housing and commercial land markets have expanded alongside economic development and changes in housing policy (Wu et al. 2012). In 1998, the State Council issued the “23 Decree,” which prohibited work units from developing new residential housing units. This implied that state-owned enterprises or government agencies could not provide housing for their employees. As a result, the private housing market expanded. With the rapid development of land markets since the 1990s, local governments, acting as the principal agents of the state to lease LURs, are the primary beneficiary of land conversion and land sales (Li 2016). Revenues from land conversion and land sales, as the simple most important source of off-budget revenues for local governments in China, hit a historic high of 73.7 percent of local government total budgetary revenues in 2003, and fluctuated within the range of 45‒70 percent in the following years (Wang et al. 2018). However, most urban LUR decisions in the 1990s were made via administrative allocation (行政划拨) or negotiation (‍协 议), and these non-transparent and non-competitive LUR transactions with weak oversight from the central government have opened the door to prevalent illegal land use. Reportedly, as many as 37 percent of total land allocation plots from 1998 to 2014 were illegal land use cases. Beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese central government strongly urged local governments to adopt the market-led transaction (MLT) approach in place of arbitrary administrative allocation or negotiation. The MLT approach requires land sales to be conducted publicly, either by auction (拍卖), tender (招标) or quotation (挂牌), as opposed to allocating land through arbitrary administrative allocation or negotiation. Intuitively, MLTs (tenders, auctions and quotations) are supposed to elicit competition among the potential buyers, delimit the discretionary power of the local state and enhance the transparency of LUR decisions, thereby reducing opportunities for rent-seeking and illegal land use. However, despite high expectations, illegal land use persists. A survey conducted by the Ministry of Land and Resources in 15 cities from October 2003 to September 2005 showed that 52.8 percent of land acquisitions for construction projects were illegal and most illegal land uses involved local governments’ violation of or incompliance with central laws and regulations.1 In 2017, 75,241 cases of illegal land use were discovered nationwide, over a thousand more than the previous year (中华人民共和 国自然资源部 2017). This experience somewhat challenges the conventional wisdom that market competition contributes to a reduction in illegal land use. However, despite skepticism 325

326  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China surrounding the effectiveness of MLTs, little systematic research has been conducted on the actual impacts of MLTs on illegal land use. With such concern in mind, this chapter analyzes the trend and effectiveness of MLTs in reducing illegal land use as the Chinese central government intended. Though encouraged by the central government, how MLTs are implemented is determined locally, including whether MLT is appropriate for the LUR transfer of a specific piece of land and which specific MLT approach to use. Practically, the MLT adoption would render consideration of any divergence on the local government’s side. Our analysis shows an inverse U-shaped trend of MLT adoption, where the year 2008 was a turning point. Before 2008, the MLT adoption rate continuously increased, reaching 43.4 percent in 2008; after that, the trend was reversed and the MLT adoption rate dropped to 27.0 percent in 2012. Given the huge discretionary power and varying adoption rates of the MLT approach among local governments, we empirically test whether the variation of illegal land use among local governments is explained by the MLT adoption rate. Our empirical model uses the number of illegal land use cases and illegal land use areas disclosed by the Ministry of Land and Resources as measures of illegal land use, and employs a multi-level regression analysis with a two-level structure (time and province). Our results demonstrate that even after controlling for yearly and provincial variations a 1 percentage point increase in the MLT adoption rate results in a 0.765 percent decrease in illegal land use cases and a 1.45 percent decrease in illegal land use area. The adoption of MLTs in the 2000s can be seen at least to have prevented an increase in illegal land use during a period of very rapid economic and urban development. It is worth noting that the study period of this chapter is from 2004 to 2012 so as to offer a vantage point for discussing a longer-term development track of MLTs. The LUR market in China has evolved in ways that suggest different trends and impacts of MLTs from the few studies undertaken before. Thus, our findings render the most up-to-date knowledge. This chapter is organized as follows: the next section provides an overview of the development of land administration policy and illegal land use in China, followed by the theoretical framework and hypothesis development, then data and model, and the presentation of empirical results. The last section summarizes the findings and concludes the chapter.

DEVELOPMENT OF LAND ADMINISTRATION POLICY IN CHINA2 Developed countries may take citizens’ land property rights for granted. For instance, in the United States, while government exerts some influence over publicly owned land, the market generally guides land transactions. Chinese land administration policy, however, has significantly changed over recent decades. In the following sections, we review how the land administration policy in China has transitioned from administrative allocation to market allocation. Separation of Land Use Rights from Ownership (1980‒2000) Before the adoption of the opening-up policy in 1979, the Chinese government denied individual land property rights, allowing only state or collective ownership in accordance with socialist doctrine. However, after the adoption of the opening-up policy, as demand for land for infrastructure, housing programs and industrial development grew, the pre-reform system

Land administration policy and illegal land use  327 (featuring free use, unlimited use, and no-flow use) became unsustainable. Few foreign investors wanted to provide capital without property rights guarantees. As a result, in the 1980s, special economic development zones (SEDZs) were established to allow LURs for foreign investors. On August 26, 1980, Guangdong Special Economic Zone regulations allowed for the paid use of state-owned land. In 1982, Shenzhen began to charge usage fees with different standards for different levels of urban land. Guangzhou started to charge urban land use fees in 1984. On December 1, 1987, drawing on the land leasehold system in Hong Kong, Shenzhen launched its “first auction of land,” which opened a new era of allocating land resources through market-based means and even prompted the amendment of the Constitution – thus it is hailed as the “first revolution” of the land use system in China. Then, the Chinese government launched a pilot land reform for separating ownership and LURs. It was regulated in the Article 2 of the Land Administration Law that “the use right of state-owned land and collectively owned land can be transferred according to law…The state carries out paid use system of state-owned land.” From an economic viewpoint, the land reform was a success. In 1986, the Chinese government passed the Land Administration Law and began to acknowledge LURs. However, the law was criticized as unconstitutional, thus, the government amended the Constitution in 1988 (Ding 2003). After that, the State Council issued Provisional Regulations on Urban State-Owned Land Use Tax in 1988, and Provisional Regulations on Sale and Transfer of Urban State-Owned LURs in 1990, which made explicit stipulations concerning the sale, transfer, lease, and mortgage of LURs. The allowance of LURs resulted in two types of power decentralization. First, with deregulation of the land market, the state shared its monopolistic power over land with private land users in the market. As the Constitution (Chapter 1, Article 2) acknowledged that “Land use rights may be transferred by law,” people could transfer and trade LURs in the land market. Although the Chinese government still wielded monopolistic power in awarding and renewing LURs, it could not directly intervene in trades and transfers of LURs. Secondly, local governments had more decision-making power over LURs transfers. Before the land reform, the Central Economic Planning Committee approved the land allocations of the central and local governments. However, as the planning economy was gradually abandoned, the central government conferred authority over LURs decisions to local governments. After deregulation of the land market and decentralization of land administration authority, the central government’s objectives for land reform were partially achieved. In Ding’s (2003) assessment of land reforms in China, the LURs system helped to improve land use efficiency after the reform. Declined and unused lands in vacant urban areas were returned for redevelopment. In addition, the sale of LURs contributed to substantial local capital accumulation, allowing local government to build more infrastructure and deliver more public services. The Further Adoption of Market-Led Transactions (2000s) Before 2002, most LURs were transferred by administrative allocation, free of charge or by negotiation. Weak transparency and absence of competition (combined with considerable discretion on the part of local officials) had worsened illegal land uses in the 1990s, and many criticisms detailing corruption began to appear. For instance, Gong (1997) identified real estate transactions as a major site of corruption. She argues that government officials possess the power to decide whether, how, to whom, and at what price to lease the land, so that they could easily abuse power by requesting bribes from interested individuals or institutions.

328  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Deng et al. (2010) also note that land-related corruption became prevalent from the early to mid-1990s through reassignment of property rights, because officials had the power to decide who controlled property, who had the right to land-related income flows, and who had the right to assign ownership. Local real estate companies maintained strong inside connections (关系) with local officials and could buy LURs at highly discounted prices. The allocated LURs could then be traded many times by speculators and finally sold to the final buyers who transfer the prices to consumers. Such illegal land use is one of the reasons real property in urban areas is highly expensive (Yee 2005). Responding to this criticism, the Chinese government has attempted to replace administrative allocation and negotiation with the MLT approach to ensure competitive, open, and transparent land transactions. Article 13 of the Urban Real Estate Administration Law of People’s Republic of China of 1995 requires the MLT approach to be used for commercial land and Article 13 also recommends auctions and tenders as preferable types of MLTs. Three types of MLTs are practiced in China: auctions, quotations, and tenders. In auctions (拍卖), an opening bid starts with the reserve price and the highest bidder can win the right, in a process comparable to English auctions. The main feature of this type of MLT is fully open competition. Being large-scale, open and widely supervised, it can effectively prevent collusion between officials and bidders (Cai et al. 2013, 493). In tenders (招标), bidders submit sealed bids to the land bureau, which decides the winner according to a complicated score function, in which the submitted bid usually accounts for only 20‒30 percent in weight. The remaining 70‒80 percent of the weight goes to the credibility of the bidder and how much social responsibility the bidder is willing to take. Thus, the outcome of tenders is determined by a comprehensive evaluation of the competitors. This is the least-used type of MLTs. The third type of MLTs, quotations (挂牌), consist of two stages of bidding, thus also called two-stage auctions. The first stage starts with the local land bureau’s announcement of a bidding notice (with detailed information regarding use restrictions, reserve price, and location), and then participants deposit cash to take part in the bidding. The first stage of quotation is a term of at least 10 working days. During this term, competitive buyers submit their bids and the bids are publicly posted. At the end of the first stage, if there is no buyer willing to continue in price competition against the highest price so far offered, quotation ends and the highest bidder wins the transaction. If there is any competitive buyer who wants to continue the price competition, the second stage of quotation starts. In the second stage of quotation, as in English auctions, the winner is determined by onsite price competition when no competitors remain to challenge the highest bidder. The quotation mechanism integrates the strengths of both auction and tender and fully reflects the commoditized nature of LURs. It is the most dominant form of MLTs in China. In fact, according to China Land and Resources Almanac, out of 55,000 MLTs in 2008, 80 percent adopted quotation. Auction accounted for around 18 percent of MLTs. Local governments did not initially actively use these MLT methods introduced by the central government in 1995. The MLT reform developed through a long journey in China, ignited by arduous and stricter regulations from the central government. The Ministry of Land and Resources issued Regulations on the Assignment of State-owned Land Use Right by Bids Invitation, Auction or Listing in 2002, urging local governments to adopt MLT methods for leasing land used for business purposes (commerce, tourism, recreational facilities, or luxury housing) and in cases involving two or more interested parties. At this point, industrial land was exempted. Later, in March of 2004, the Ministry of Land and Resources and the Ministry

Land administration policy and illegal land use  329 of Supervision introduced regulations specifying that all land used for business purposes must be sold by public bidding (with the further stipulation that, as of August 31, 2004, negotiation would no longer be permitted for any historical reason). In the meantime, the central government mandated that developers should pay scheduled land-transferring fees. The promulgation of this regulation formally stopped sale by negotiation and signaled marketization of land transactions. This land revolution is known as the “831 deadline.” In 2006, the State Council issued a document, Circular of the State Council on Intensifying the Land Control, abolishing the exemption for industrial land. As a result, all land used for industrial purposes was required to be distributed via market-led transaction methods and industrial enterprises were no longer entitled to subsidized cheap land. The Property Law, passed in 2007, established a unified Table 18.1

Laws and administrative regulations on land use

1986

Land Administration Law

Separated land ownership and land use rights (LURs) and acknowledged

1988

Constitutional Amendment

Legalized the transfer of LURs in the land market

1990

Provisional Regulations on Sale and

Made explicit stipulations concerning the sale, transfer, lease, and mortgage of

Transfer of Urban State-Owned LURs

urban state-owned LURs

transfer of LURs and a paid use system of state-owned land

1995

Urban Real Estate Administration Law Required the adoption of MLTs for commercial land

2002

Regulations on the Assignment of

Urged local governments to adopt MLTs for leasing land used for business

State-owned Land Use Right by

purposes (commerce, tourism, recreational facilities, or luxury housing) and in

Tender, Auction and Quotation

cases involving two or more interested parties; industrial land was exempted

Mar,

Circular on continuing to carry out law As of August 31, 2004, negotiation would no longer be permitted for any

2004

enforcement and supervision of the

historical reason, which was known as the “831 deadline” and signaled

bidding, auction and listing of the LUR marketization of land transactions of operational land Aug,

Land Administration Law

Clarified the obligations of organizations/individuals involved to abide by land

2004

(Amendment)

administration laws and regulations, including protection of cultivated land, paid use of state-owned land, and distribution of land interests in accordance with the law, and clarified the legal liabilities for violation of this law, etc.

Oct,

Decision of the State Council on

The most comprehensive, clear and high-standard document on land

2004

Deepening the Reform of Strict Land

administration issued by the State Council; in response to the problem of

Administration

illegal land use, it stipulated the strictest land administration system, including deepening reforms, improving the legal system, taking overall planning into account, and treating both the symptoms and the root causes

Aug,

Standards for Investigating and

Clearly defined six types of illegal land use, including illegal transfer of land,

2005

Handling Land Violations

illegal land occupation, destruction of cultivated land, illegal land approval, and

2006

Circular of the State Council on

Abolished the exception for industrial land; all land used for industrial purposes

Intensifying Land Control

was required to be distributed via MLT methods and industrial enterprises could

others

not enjoy subsidized cheap land any longer Mar,

Property Law

2007

Established a unified property registration system, which protects citizens’ legal property rights in land transactions; MLT system of tender, auction and quotation is further standardized

Nov,

Provisions on the Assignment of

Further clarified requirements and detailed procedures for tender, auction and

2007

State-owned Construction Land Use

quotation of state-owned construction land use rights

Right through Tender, Auction and Quotation (Amendment)

Source: Authors’ self-compilation.

330  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China property registration system, which protects citizens’ legal property rights in land transactions. It strictly limits the grant of LURs for construction purposes by negotiation; in addition, the grant of construction LURs via auction, tender and quotation must be confirmed in written contracts. Thus, market-led transaction of land through auction, tender and quotation is further standardized. Table 18.1 summarizes the relevant laws and regulations stipulating the adoption of MLTs. In sum, Chinese land transaction procedures have gradually moved from “free-of-charge” administrative allocation and negotiation to market allocation.

THE TREND AND VARIATION OF MLT ADOPTION IN CHINA The Chinese central government has strongly urged provincial governments to adopt MLTs. The Ministry of Finance claims that the MLT approach, in providing an open, transparent and fair environment for land transactions, reduces the incidence of secret land deals between government officials and developers. The Ministry of Finance has been working jointly with the Ministry of Land and Resources to promote the MLT method. For instance, the Ministry of Finance has launched special programs to supervise local land transactions and to detect cheating and fraud by local governments. In addition to the Ministry of Finance, multiple government bodies also assist land administration organs to implement the new land policy. In addition to central government’s policy efforts, China’s rapidly growing market economy also suggests that provincial governments are more likely to welcome the marketization of

Source: Adopted from Lian et al. (2019).

Figure 18.1

Adoption of market-led transactions (MLTs) by year (unit: %)

Land administration policy and illegal land use  331 land transactions. However, counter to this expectation, Figure 18.1 shows an overall low and inverse U-shaped trend of MLT adoption rate in urban land transactions, that is, the ratio of the number of land allocations using MLTs (including tenders, auctions and quotations) to the total number of land allocations (including administrative allocations, negotiations, tenders, auctions, and quotations) (陶坤玉/张敏/李力行 2010). First, local governments did not initially actively use these market-led transaction methods introduced by the central government in 1995, with the adoption rate only about 27 percent in the early 2000s. In fact, the central government strongly recommends the MLT approach as compulsory for LURs decision making but faces strong resistance from local governments, who often challenge, manipulate and/or overlook the advisory. For instance, although Beijing municipality stipulates that the MLT approach be used for assigning LURs on commercial land, it allows conveyance by negotiation in four areas: small towns, green belts, urban renewal schemes and high-tech and major projects of urban significance (Xu et al. 2009). The resistance of local governments is possible with the implicit understanding or support of local Party and executive leaders. As local officials’ promotion and political careers depend on local economic growth, they readily approve illegal land use transactions in order to host more industries and generate more revenues for the short term. Furthermore, due to the predilection for guiding authority and for relationships that are based on familiarity and personal trust, some local officials find it difficult to fully embrace market principles to carry out fair and just land transactions. Besides the low adoption rate of MLTs, the variation in MLT adoption among provinces is also significantly large. The wide one standard deviation intervals in Figure 18.1 suggest that provinces have a high variation in MLT adoption. However, the Chinese central government managed to improve the market-led transaction adoption rate by making it as compulsory for all land used for business purposes. Before the global financial crisis in 2008, the MLT adoption rate continuously increased, reaching 43.4 percent in 2008; after that, the trend was reversed and the MLT adoption rate dropped back to 27.0 percent in 2012. One possible explanation for the inverse U-shaped trend of MLT adoption is that local governments have employed different implementation strategies after the turning point of 2008. This may shed light on different scenarios on the part of local governments. First of all, over the period of 2002‒2007, the Ministry of Land and Resources promulgated a series of strict regulations to further rectify the land market and to strengthen the dominant role of market forces on land conveyance activities (Zhou 2007). In the meantime, lack of tax autonomy and disadvantaged fiscal position in the tax-sharing system compelled local governments to become entrepreneurial to pursue high land conveyance fees, which perfectly fit into the central government’s call for MLT adoption, since MLT adoption means high and immediate revenue from LUR transactions. Therefore, local governments scrambled for MLT adoption when it was initially proposed in 2002, and especially after 2004, which can be referred to as “revenue-driven motivation” that promoted increased adoption of MLTs during the period of 2002‒2007. However, when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, real estate prices slumped and LUR transactions went into freefall even after local governments increased land supply. At the end of 2008, China announced an economic stimulus program to invest 4 trillion yuan in infrastructure and social welfare by the end of 2010. This investment plan has promoted a huge land supply increase for infrastructure construction and social welfare projects such as public housing programs via free administrative allocation, which can partially explain the lower MLT adoption ratio after 2008 despite growing land transaction areas via MLTs. According to China Land and Resources Almanac, the total land supply

332  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China amounted to 319,000 hectares in 2009, a 44.2 percent increase from 2008, while the land area using MLTs increased only 40.5 percent. Another possible explanation is that after the 2008 financial crisis, investment-driven local governments aggressively increased the application of the negotiation approach as an attempt to attract industrial investment for the sake of promoting economic development and employment growth. The prices and areas of land involved in negotiation are not subject to the mechanism of supply and demand, but are largely maneuvered by local governments. Local officials tend to tamper with the process by passing off other types of land use as an industrial use, and lease land at unreasonably low prices (Li and Lu 2012; Ni and Shen 2018; 雨之 2005). Despite less direct land conveyance fees from non-MLTs, it is interesting to point out that the total land conveyance fees received by local governments from both MLTs of commercial use of land and non-MLTs of industrial use of land have not suffered a loss because an investment-driven economic rebound has caused subsequent higher prices for MLTs of commercial use of land. This observed strategic implementation of the MLT reform by local governments echoes the discussion of “the double identity of Chinese local governments” (Gong 2006, 85): local governments on one hand must act as state political agents to preserve the market, and on the other hand behave as local economic principals to pursue their own interests. This double identity “places both broad discretionary power and immediate economic benefits within easy reach of local officials” (Gong 2006, 85), providing significant opportunities and incentives for their engagement in illegal land allocations for the sake of inter-jurisdictional economic competition and rent-seeking (丁锐/张秀智 2013). In other words, this double identity of local governments makes “rent-seeking motivation” a third implementation scenario: rent-seeking local officials would be motivated to use the negotiation mechanism since it is less competitive, less transparent, and accordingly gives them more discretionary power to favor a certain buyer.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT3 In conventional wisdom, marketization can reduce opportunities for rent-seeking and hence incentives for illegal land use by increasing transparency and competition. Broadman and Recanatini (2001) developed an analytical framework for examining the role played by market institutions in rent-seeking and illicit behavior in transition economies. Specifically, they examined different dimensions of market institutions, including price and production liberalization, policies to engender competition among enterprises, regulatory reforms of infrastructure monopolies, corporate governance reforms, and openness to foreign trade and direct investment. Nearly all of the indicators were found to be important for reducing illegality and corruption. While this work, along with later works by others, helps shed light on the importance of land marketization reform in explaining the incidence of illegal land use, the complex political economy dynamics of the MLT adoption in China make it essential to investigate the influence mechanisms of MLTs and the possible policy effects in the Chinese context. Conventional relationships between marketization and rent-seeking and illicit behavior in the research literature suggest that MLTs possess logically obvious potentials in preventing illegal land uses and eventually institutionalizing good governance for land administration. Table 18.2 compares the MLT system of auction, tender, and quotation to administrative

Land administration policy and illegal land use  333 Table 18.2 Description

Comparing administrative allocation, negotiation, tender, auction and quotation Modes of land allocation Administrative allocation

Quasi-administrative/

free of charge (huabo)

Quasi-market allocation (xieyi) quotation)

State monopoly

High

Medium

Land transferring

Banned

Allowed

Qualified land users

State, Party, military,

Allowed Some non-profit organizations; Real estate developers; individuals;

non-profit organizations

private enterprises in high-tech all types of private enterprises

and SOEs

and capital-intensive industries (including high-tech and (before 2006); original land

Decision makers

Pricing mechanism

Market allocation (tender, auction, Low

capital-intensive enterprises after

2006) users (e.g., SOEs), etc. Local government leaders Local government leaders, land Land administration organs and multiple land buyers

and land administration

administration officials, and

officials

single land buyers

No price

A benchmark price is decided

A benchmark price is decided by

(free of charge)

by land evaluation agency;

land evaluation agency; starting

a bottom price is decided by

prices are decided by land

land administration organs,

administration organs; bidders

upon which a negotiated

offering highest price win

price is reached between land administration organs and the land buyer Transparency

Non-transparent

Non-transparent

Transparent

Source: Adopted from Ko et al. (2017).

allocation and negotiation. First of all, MLT reduces the state monopoly on land allocation. MLT allows any individuals and organizations to participate in competitive bidding provided no other law or regulation prescribes otherwise. In theory, therefore, local government exerts less discretion in selecting buyers. Moreover, as the final price is a result of bidding among competing buyers, favor-seekers are not able to obtain pricing information from government officials. Most importantly, if the local government engages in corruption and favors a certain buyer, other buyers can formally or informally challenge the government. The MLT system of auction, tender and quotation has received largely positive evaluation from Chinese academia. It is expected to circumvent the interference of human factors and make the price of land more reasonable. The approach also cuts down on intermediates, therefore reducing considerably the possibility of reselling land at a profit and of the formation of land market bubbles. This in turn prevents corruption and stimulates healthy development of the real estate market. For example, 李倩 (2005) argues that a system of auctions, tenders and quotations is what constitutes a real land market. Indeed, market competition serves to reflect and determine the real land price, and also effectively contain the possibility of corruption among government officials. 岳晓武 (2005) also suggests that the implementation of auction, tender and quotation has facilitated the market to take the place of political power in the allocation of land resources, thus ensuring the transparency, safety and stability of land and real estate markets. 雷爱先 (2003) claims that the MLT methods of auction, tender and quotation improve information transparency with public posting of due market value of state-owned land property to reflect principles of supply and demand.

334  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Considering the merits of the MLT method and the government’s vigorous efforts, one would anticipate illegal land use to decline sharply in the 2000s. However, public grievances persist, and many were associated with illegal land use as a pervasive problem. While the actual number of land-related “mass incidents” is not officially published, the Chinese Academy of Social Science estimated that 35 percent of mass incidents in 2005 were related to land (Freeman 2010). Also, most of the protest news reported in the mass media were on illegal land allocations. For instance, He Minxu, former deputy governor of Anhui province, was expelled from the Party in 2006 after he reduced taxes and fees for leasing construction land in exchange for bribes. The vice-mayor, Liu Zhihua, was sentenced to death in 2008 for taking bribes in construction relating to the Olympic Games. Luo Yaping, former director of the Land and Resources Bureau in Fushun city, Liaoning province, received a capital punishment sentence for taking bribes from property developers in 2010. People believe these major land scandals result from corruption. Therefore, despite the proposed desirability of the MLT approach, the severity of corruption perceived by the public raises questions about the effectiveness of MLT in reducing illegal land uses. Some studies highlight that China’s land reform system includes both non-market-led transaction approaches, such as administrative allocation (行政划拨) and negotiation (协 议), and market-led transaction approaches, such as auctions, tenders and quotations, and the distinction between MLT and non-MLT approaches is vague, which makes it easy for local officials to game the system. Local officials might choose a favorable transaction approach in accordance with their own preferences and manipulate the transaction process in favor of the partner developer/inside bidder (who has a special relationship and benefits from dealing with the officials), which allows them to make huge illegal profits on LUR transactions. The vagueness may arise from the 1988 constitutional amendment, which separated land ownership from land use rights, and introduced a new market track into China’s land system. As Lin and Ho (2005, 432) stated: The dual-track nature of China’s land system has been derived from the state’s intention to open up the land market as a means to increase land use efficiency and to attract foreign investment without jeopardizing the socialist principle of public and collective ownership. This peculiar dual-track system of land management, designed to solve land use problems, has turned out to be one of the root causes of black markets, corruption, and social discontent…State entities at various local levels and collective organizations were among the main violators of the law set by the central state since they were responsible for a large proportion of the land area illegally occupied, converted, or transferred through the black market.

Studies show that the three different types of MLTs – tenders, auctions and quotations – demonstrate different effects on land sale prices (and accordingly local revenues), which might influence local governments’ choices of MLT types. Studies have found that auctions usually result in higher prices because they provide more information to market participants than do sealed-bid tenders (Chow and Ooi 2014; Yang et al. 2015) and other non-auction methods (Qu and Liu 2012). Data from 2,302 completed auctions from 15 Chinese cities that held both auctions and quotations from 2003 to 2007 reveal that quotations “lead to less competitive bidding and thus substantially smaller revenue than English auctions in China’s land market” but give more wiggle room for illegal and corrupt deals (Cai et al. 2013, 515). Local governments can set special requirements to eliminate competitors, and award the contract to the partner developer/inside bidder. This could explain why quotations became increasingly prevalent (公婷/吴

Land administration policy and illegal land use  335 木栾 2012; Lu 2017). Illegal and rent-seeking behavior can occur during different transaction stages. Counteracting or even eliminating competition may take place during the pre-bidding stage; adjusting bids and opening the possibilities of manipulating the evaluation of contract proposals may take place in the second stage; lowering contract costs, alleviating monitoring or expected penalties, or increasing revenues through nonexistent or unsubstantiated claims or through securing lucrative contract amendments may take place after the bidding. Therefore, some argue that the MLT reform on its own is not enough. MLTs cannot eliminate the problem of illegal land use at its root and thus supporting systems are also required. Boehm and Olaya (2006) discussed the ways transparency can enhance competition to prevent corruption and collusion in public auctions. In the absence of transparency, a (land) market can hardly function to mitigate illegal land use and nepotism. Strict market trade regulations are also needed. As mentioned above, one barrier to the market mechanism functioning well in China’s urban land market is that the dual-track land system has led to a significant discrepancy between the low costs of administratively allocated land use and the much higher prices for commercial land use allocated via MLTs. This has impeded the development of China’s urban land market (Xie et al. 2002) and also encouraged illegal sales of state LURs for personal gain and fraudulent authorization of transfer of LURs (Koroso et al. 2013). Although there have been major changes in the institutional environment since the late 1980s, the LURs market in China still remains susceptible to power abuse and misuse, and may thus impede the implementation and effectiveness of MLTs in reducing illegal land use. Despite conflicting views on the effectiveness of MLTs, very few empirical studies have been conducted to examine whether MLTs in fact contribute to reducing illegal land use in China. Based on provincial-level panel data from 2003 to 2007, Tao et al. (陶坤玉/张敏/李力 行 2010) investigated the impact of different types of land allocation on the frequency of illegal land use cases and the total size of land involved. It was found that the higher the marketization level of land allocation, the lower the level of illegal land use, especially in Eastern China. Chen et al. (2015) compared the situation before and after the adoption of MLTs. Before the MLT adoption, local governments had discretionary power to allocate land for construction projects, so land users sought to maintain a good “relationship” with local governments (in addition to paying a land conveyance fee). After the MLT adoption, along with the improvement of land allocation methods, land users were able to reveal their real preferences for land through open and fair market competition. Using provincial-level panel data of mainland China from 1999 to 2008, the study tested the impacts of land market development on illegal land use and found that the expansion of land conveyance scale led to an increase in illegal land use area, but the enhanced marketization of land conveyance in the primary land market (government controlled) helped suppress illegal land use to some degree. Chen and Wang (陈 志刚/王青 2013) investigated the relationship among market reforms, economic growth and illegal land use behaviors using 1999‒2010 panel data and found that while the size of illegally used land area dramatically increased as the economy grew, enhancing the land marketization level effectively reduced the number of illegal land use cases. Ko et al. (2017) demonstrated that the adoption of market mechanisms reduced both the number of illegal land use cases and illegal land use area during 1999‒2008. The above studies have provided limited empirical evidence on the effectiveness of MLTs in reducing illegal land use. However, the periods covered in those studies were up to 2010 and since then local governments’ MLT adoption has experienced an inverse U-shaped trend despite the central government’s stepped-up efforts. Also, as shown above, media cover-

336  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China age and political discourse continue highlighting the seriousness of illegal land use, citing major illegal land use cases that involve large amounts of money and high-ranking officials. Weighing on these allegations of illegal land use, more empirical evidence based on more recent data is needed to update our knowledge and understanding of MLT adoption and its effectiveness. Specifically, this chapter empirically tests whether the variation in illegal land use among local governments is explained by the MLT adoption rate.

DATA AND MODEL4 This chapter tests the hypothesis by analyzing panel data consisting of 31 Chinese provinces during the period of 2004‒2012. Out of 31 provinces and autonomous regions, we exclude Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia due to the lack of reliability and stability of the data in these regions. In addition, although as of 2015, the China Land and Resources Almanac provides the number of illegal land use cases and the area of illegally used land reported in those cases up to 2013, data are not available for all provinces. We attempted the multiple imputation technique to fill in the missing data. However, the results were not satisfactory given that some imputed illegal land use cases and areas are negative. Hence, we analyze data for 28 provincial governments over the time period 2004–2012. Measuring illegal land use and other variables used for the statistical model is a challenging task. We provide further discussions on the variables used for the statistical analysis in the following sections. Dependent Variables Illegal land use occurs when a piece of land is used by the owner or user for a different use or under different conditions than specified or provided for in the land use scheme. China’s Land Administration Law defines five types of illegal land use transactions: (1) illegal purchase, sale and transfer of LURs; (2) damage of cultivated land; (3) encroachment on land without approval; (4) unlawful approval of land occupancy; (5) granting of land at a lower price, and other illegal behaviors related to land use. These illegal land uses are often intertwined with bribery, abuse of power, and fraud. This chapter uses the number of illegal land use cases (Landcase) and illegal land use areas (Landarea) disclosed by the Ministry of Land and Resources to measure the frequency and the seriousness of illegal land use, respectively. The trend of illegal land use cases and areas and its one standard deviation interval from the mean are shown in Figure 18.2. As the figure shows, illegal land use cases (Landcase) and illegal land use area (Landarea) have decreased over the years, while the yearly variation is very significant. Both the number and the size of illegal land use have exhibited a rapid drop since 2007. At the same time, given the large width of one standard deviation interval from the mean, it is evident that the size of illegal land use significantly differs across provinces. Table 18.3 shows the coefficient of variation, defined as the ratio of standard deviation to the mean, and the range. Both Landcase and Landarea’s coefficients of variation (CV) are close to or above 1, which indicates a very large variation among provinces in each year. The range is also very wide, showing large differences between the smallest and the largest illegal land use cases and areas. Although the amount of variation of Landarea has decreased over the years, the variation of Landcase is still significantly large. This finding supports our

Land administration policy and illegal land use  337

Source: Adopted from Lian et al. (2019).

Figure 18.2

The trend of illegal land use cases and areas

Table 18.3

The variation of illegal land use within a year

Year

Coefficient of Variation Landcase

Landarea

Range (Max–Min) Rangecase

Rangearea

2004

0.796

1.744

10399

21265

2005

0.914

1.133

15807

8859

2006

0.894

1.185

14170

13706

2007

0.929

0.786

15393

8924

2008

1.099

1.009

14701

6783

2009

0.999

1.088

9913

5548

2010

0.942

0.635

9091

3821

2011

0.921

0.549

9883

3033

2012

1.026

0.581

10366

2068

Source: Adopted from Lian et al. (2019).

338  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China hypothesis that the adoption level of MLTs helps explain the varying levels of illegal land use among provinces. Explanatory Variable The degree of MLT adoption in urban land transactions (MLTAdopt) is measured by the ratio of the number of land allocations using MLTs (including tenders, auctions and quotations) to the total number of land allocations (including administrative allocations, negotiations, tenders, auctions, and quotations) (陶坤玉/张敏/李力行 2010). Notably, the MLT adoption rate varies significantly among local governments. Although Jiangxi and Yunnan adopted MLTs as a primary mode of land transaction between 2004 and 2012 (with MLTs accounting for 50.1 percent and 43.9 percent of land transactions on average, respectively), Beijing, Tianjin, and Sichuan relied less on MLTs (an average of 10.4 percent, 16.6 percent and 16.7 percent of land transactions, respectively). Such a large variation in the MLT adoption rate suggests that local governments maintain a significant level of discretion in choosing land transaction types. The coastal provinces experiencing rapid economic growth did not actively adopt MLTs, despite their more mature market economies. Therefore, if low adoption of MLTs is the primary reason for illegal land use, we should find empirical evidence that provinces with higher adoption rates of MLTs have lower levels of illegal land use. Control Variables A set of control variables is included as explained below, including land-related revenues, GDP per capita, government size, real estate investment, relative wage in the public sector, citizens’ education and urbanization. The selection of the control variables is based on a literature review and data availability. Chinese local governments depend heavily on central government subsidies to fill their fiscal deficits. After the privatization of state-owned enterprises and successive centralized tax reforms, local governments faced severe fiscal pressure in securing sources of revenue. As a result, their dependence on land-related revenues has deepened over the last decade. Local governments were incentivized to engage in predatory grabbing and selling of land resources, opening the door to rent-seeking behaviors and illegal land use (Ding 2003). There are different ways of measuring local government’s fiscal dependence on land-related revenues. According to 刘红梅/张志斌/王克强 (2008), land-related revenues consist of four major categories (Figure 18.3). A narrow definition of land-related revenues focuses on the land leasing fees, which are the most important component of land-related revenues. Normally local governments use a certain amount of land leasing fees to cover the cost of demolishing, compensation and relocation of residents, and so on. Therefore, government revenues collected from land conveyance should be the net income with the exclusion of costs. The exact amount of net income of land conveyance was not documented before 2003, but based on the data from 2003 to 2008, the payment of costs was rather small compared to the net income. Taking Beijing as an example, the size of net income accounts for an average of 77.6 percent of total land leasing fees annually, while the remaining 22.4 percent can be explained by costs. Hence, we use the land-leasing fees to measure the land-related revenue.

Land administration policy and illegal land use  339

Sources: Adopted from Ko et al. (2017) and Lian et al. (2019).

Figure 18.3

Land-related revenues

This approach defines fiscal dependence on land-related revenues as the percentage of land leasing fees in total government revenues (杜雪君/黄忠华/吴次芳 2009; Liang 2009). The second approach to measure fiscal dependence on land-related revenues is to sum up both land leasing fees and land-related taxes (property tax, urban land use tax, land value increment tax, agriculture tax (abolished in 2006), tax on the use of arable land, and stamp duty). Given that the second approach reflects actual fiscal dependence on land better, we define local government’s fiscal dependence on land-related revenues (LandDep) as follows:

We need to control for the level of economic development. As empirically suggested, economically underdeveloped regions are less equipped with relevant institutions to prevent and control illegal land use. We use regional GDP per capita (GRDP) to measure the level of economic development. We also control for government size, as pro-market critiques suggest that a larger government leads to more rent-seeking behaviors (Tanzi 1998; Rose-Ackerman 2008; Wu 2013). As opportunities for rent-seeking behaviors are not only related to budget size but also to the number of public servants, we use two measures: the relative size of government employment to private employment (Govemploy), and the ratio of total government expenditures (budgetary + off-budgetary expenditures) to local GDP (Govspend). Low public servant wages may be associated with illegal land use. For simplicity, we follow other studies and use the ratio of average government employees’ wage to average private employees’ wage (Dong and Torgler 2010; Wu 2008).

340  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China We also include real estate investment (REI) in our model, expecting that as real estate investment increases, the possibility of illegal land use arises as well, given the fact that real estate investment is an important source for local revenues. In addition, we control for the number of years of citizen education (Edu). Education contributes to an appropriate civic culture, which deters illegality itself. Furthermore, well-educated citizens are more likely to supervise and scrutinize illegal activities. Finally, the degree of urbanization (UrbanRatio) and the province’s land size (LNAREA) are also controlled. The definitions of the variables and their basic descriptive statistics are shown in Table 18.4. Model Specification We construct a multi-level model with a two-level structure (time and province). We also reflect the inverse U-shape of the MLT adoption rate by introducing the structural change of the relationship in Year 2008 using a dummy variable with a value of 1 if Year>2008. The two-level multiple regression models are constructed as follows:

Note: Π is the regression coefficient vectors of other covariates; Z covariates other than YEAR, MLTAdopt, and DUMMY; DUMMY is the dummy variable having value if Year>2008; Rij is the error covariance matrix following AR (1); UOj is the variance covariance matrix of random effects.

To assess the adequacy of multi-level modeling, we calculate infraclass correlation, which is a measure of between-province variation. The infraclass correlation of illegal land use cases (Landcase) is 0.823. This implies that around 82.3 percent of Landcase variation is explained by between-province variation and 17.7 percent by within-province variation. In contrast, the infraclass correlation of the illegal land use area (Landarea) is 0.449, which is still significantly large; around 44.9 percent of variation is explained by between-province variation, and 55.1 percent by within-province variation. The explain-ability of the model – measured by the correlation between the predicted dependent and observed variable – is 0.69 and 0.63 for Landcase and Landarea, which implies that the model fit is good.

RESULTS5 Table 18.5 shows the result of the Landcase model. The estimated fixed effect regression coefficient (−0.00765) suggests a negative relationship between MLTAdopt and illegal land use cases. As the dependent variable is Log(Landcase), the coefficient of MLTAdopt reads that a 1 percentage point increase of MLTAdopt results in a 0.765 percent decrease of illegal land use cases after counting the insignificant interaction effects with the DUMMY variable. When reading the coefficient of Urbanratio, a 1 percentage point increase of Urbanratio results

percent)

The number of MLTs / total land

allocations

MLTAdopt

Local governments expenditure / regional

Ratio of urban population at year-end by

UrbanRatio

China Statistical Yearbook (unit: percent)

Note: * to adjust the scale problem, we take the log-scale to population, Landcase, Landarea, and GRDP. Source: Adopted from Lian et al. (2019).

region

Average years in school of local residents

Edu

1.19

0.1

0.21

0.35

10

0.49

30.06

7.06

7.56

Mean

48.51

China Statistical Yearbook (unit: years in school) 8.16

Average public employee’s wage / average China Statistical Yearbook

private employee’s wage

Government employees / private employees China Statistical Yearbook

Wage

China Statistical Yearbook

China Statistical Yearbook

China Statistical Yearbook (unit: Yuan)

Govemploy

GDP

Real estate investment / regional GDP

Govspend

capita

China Financial Yearbook

China Statistical Yearbook

Gross Regional Domestic Product per

China Land and Resources Almanac

fiscal revenues

hectares)

China Land and Resources Almanac (unit:

Land-related revenues / total local gov’t

REI

GRDP

LandDep

China Land and Resources Almanac (unit:

Illegal land use areas

Landarea

Statistical Yearbook (unit: case)

China Land and Resources Almanac; China

Illegal land use cases

Sources of data

Definition

Landcase

Variable definition, data sources, and descriptive statistics

Variables*

Table 18.4

15.68

0.96

0.21

0.06

0.08

0.19

0.64

0.27

13.92

1.03

1.15

Std Dev

46.56

8.04

1.17

0.09

0.2

0.33

9.93

0.45

28.33

6.93

7.42

50.46

8.28

1.22

0.1

0.22

0.37

10.08

0.52

31.79

7.19

7.7

Lower 95% CL Upper 95% CL

Land administration policy and illegal land use  341

342  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 18.5

Estimation of fixed effects of the log (Landcase) model

Effect

Estimate

Std. Err

t Value

Pr > |t|

Lower

Upper

Intercept

−46.2328

74.3890

−0.62

0.5395

−198.87

106.40

Year

0.02809

0.03734

0.75

0.4527

−0.04551

0.1017

MLTAdopt

−0.00765

0.003435

−2.23

0.0270

−0.01442

−0.00088

DUMMY

−0.6621

0.3096

−2.14

0.0336

−1.2723

−0.05178

(=1 if year>2008) MLTAdopt*DUMMY

0.006768

0.006101

1.11

0.2685

−0.00526

0.01879

LNAREA

0.06357

0.08447

0.75

0.4525

−0.1029

0.2301

UrbanRatio

−0.01394

0.006312

−2.21

0.0283

−0.02638

−0.00150

LandDep

−0.03813

0.1482

−0.26

0.7972

−0.3303

0.2540

Rei

−0.06336

0.5680

−0.11

0.9113

−1.1829

1.0562

Govspend

−3.2385

1.0862

−2.98

0.0032

−5.3796

−1.0975

Govemploy

−0.4100

1.0502

−0.39

0.6966

−2.4802

1.6601

Edu

−0.1637

0.08993

−1.82

0.0700

−0.3410

0.01352

Note: N=252, Pseudo-R square: 0.48, Null Model Likelihood Ratio Test: (Chi​-Square:​104, p-value |t|

Lower

Upper

Intercept

−60.2737

104.26

−0.58

0.568

−274.19

153.64

Year

0.03209

0.05236

0.61

0.5406

−0.07112

0.1353

MLTAdopt

−0.01446

0.005793

−2.5

0.0133

−0.02588

−0.00304

LNAREA

0.3602

0.1203

2.99

0.0031

0.123

0.5974

MLTAdopt*DUMMY

0.009034

0.01006

0.9

0.3703

−0.0108

0.02887

DUMMY

−0.3178

0.4993

−0.64

0.5251

−1.302

0.6663

UrbanRatio

−0.02382

0.008281

−2.88

0.0044

−0.04014

−0.00749

LandDep

−0.01871

0.2507

−0.07

0.9406

−0.5128

0.4754

Rei

1.0019

0.8766

1.14

0.2543

−0.726

2.7297

Govspend

−1.5313

1.3849

−1.11

0.2701

−4.2612

1.1986

Govemploy

−0.1879

1.5953

−0.12

0.9063

−3.3325

2.9566

Edu

0.1666

0.1231

1.35

0.1775

−0.07611

0.4093

Note: N=252, Pseud-R square: 0.39, Null Model Likelihood Ratio Test: (Chi​-Square:​75​.65, p-value 5 years)

67

14.0

24

7.9

Time Series

9

1.9

4

1.3

Not clearly stated

241

50.4

151

49.7

Total

478

100.0

304

100.0

percent of the papers on Hong Kong and 51.0 percent of the papers on Macau have review of secondary sources as their only method of study. The difference between these two findings again could be the result of adjustment in selection criteria. The shifts in numbers across time may also indicate a continuous advancement of public administration research. For example, 158 out of 189 descriptive studies (84 percent) on Macau were published in and before 2015. Many of these studies merely discuss and review government projects and policies. This number has gradually dropped after 2015 alongside the rise in exploratory studies, which is a sign of increasing empirical and analytical rigor. The results also indicate that studies of public administration in Macau are less methodologically rigorous than those on Hong Kong. Although most of the papers on Macau include some empirical data, they are mostly in the form of single-case qualitative studies with limited theoretical analyses. The disparity in methodological rigor is also reflected in the time span of the studies (see Table 26.4). About 50 percent of the studies on both Hong Kong and Macau have clearly stipulated the time span of the research. For Hong Kong, 10 percent (n=48) of the studies use cross-sectional data, 37.6 percent (n=180) of the studies use longitudinal data, and 1.9 percent (n=9) use time series data. In Macau, 28.3 percent (n=86) of the studies use cross-sectional data, 20.7 percent (n=63) use longitudinal data, and 1.3 percent (n=4) use time series data. While these numbers may seem close, the scale and depth of data analysis in the papers on Macau is far less than in those on Hong Kong. A lot of the Macau papers only analyze or illustrate one or two cases with data from surveys or reports. Moreover, about twice as many studies on Hong Kong (14 percent, n=67) utilize longitudinal data of more than five years, whereas for studies on Macau, only 7.9 percent (n=24) use data with the same time span.

FUNDING PATTERN For both Hong Kong and Macau, most of the public administration research was not funded. As shown in Table 26.5, 82.4 percent (n=394) of the research conducted on Hong Kong and 93.8 percent (n=285) of the research on Macau was not funded by any third-party institution. This means that only 17.6 percent (n=84) of the research on Hong Kong and 6.2 percent (n=19) of the research on Macau was funded. At first glance these figures may suggest that the field has not been receiving sufficient attention to generate high-quality research output. However, when one compares the absolute numbers of studies being funded during 2010–2019 (84 for Hong Kong and 19 for Macau) with 39 studies funded for Hong Kong and 9 studies funded for Macau during 1999–2009, it would be more sensible to conclude that the drop in percentage of studies funded was due to the rapid expansion of the entire pool of research rather than

460  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 26.5

Funding pattern

Funding source

Hong Kong No. percent

Macau No.

percent

Government

47

9.8

12

3.9

Private Institutions

1

0.2

0

0.0

University

30

6.3

4

1.3

Other non-profit organizations

6

1.3

3

1.0

Nil

394

82.4

285

93.8

Total

478

100.0

304

100.0

a reduction in funding. Source wise, most funding comes from government (9.8 percent, n=47 for Hong Kong and 3.9 percent, n=12 for Macau), followed by university research grants and then other non-profits such as NGOs and private foundations. This sequential pattern is identical for both Hong Kong and Macau. Of the government-funded grants in Hong Kong, the Research Grants Council (RGC) under the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong government funded 24 (51.1 percent) of the 47 studies that received funding from government institutions. The remaining 23 studies were funded by a variety of international institutions such as the European Commission, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Research Foundation of Korea. Among these, mainland China funded three studies. This shows that public administration research on Hong Kong has raised interest far beyond its geographical boundary. For Macau, it is interesting to note that all 12 government-funded studies received their funds from entities on mainland China such as the National Social Science Foundation and the Ministry of Education.

PROFILE OF AUTHORS The profiles of the authors provide information on their chief research interests and give a sense of their roles in the field of public administration research. A large number of the studies are collaborative work, but only the profiles of the first author are recorded and analyzed, under the sensible assumption that the research projects are led by the first authors and that their profiles reflect the demographic features of the projects. As summarized in Table 26.6, the majority of the research was done by local scholars and those from mainland China – 48.5 percent (n=232) for studies on Hong Kong, with 27.8 percent (n=133) being local scholars and 20.7 percent (n=99) being from mainland China, and 90.2 percent (n=274) for studies on Macau, with 58.6 percent (n=178) being local scholars and 31.6 percent (n=96) being from mainland China. Hong Kong has attracted a much more international community of researchers working in the field of public administration than Macau, with 16.7 percent of the studies on Hong Kong coming from the rest of Asia (n=80), 11.1 percent from North America (n=53), and another 10.3 percent from Australia (n=49). For Macau, only 7.3 percent (n=22) of the research is from countries beyond Asia, including three papers from North America and 19 papers from European countries. The concentration of geographical profiles in the case of Macau implies a lack of international exchanges, which may affect the diversity and theoretical depth of the research conducted. This is in accord with the authors’ academic profiles in Table 26.7, which shows that 23.1 percent (n=70) of the studies on Macau had doctoral or master students as primary authors,

A review of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau, 2010‒2019  461 Table 26.6

Country bases of authors

Region

Hong Kong No. of authors

percent

Hong Kong

133

PRC

99

North America (US

Region

Macau No. of authors

percent

27.8

Hong Kong

4

1.3

20.7

PRC

96

31.6

3

1.0

North America (US and

53

11.1

Europe

40

8.4

Europe

19

6.3

Australia

49

10.3

Australia

0

0.0

Rest of Asia

80

16.7

Macau

178

58.6

Others

24

5.0

Taiwan

4

1.3

Total

478

100.0

 

304

100.0

and Canada)

Table 26.7

Canada)

Profile of authors

Author profile Academic faculty

Professor

Macau No.

percent

219

45.8

82

27.0

Associate professor

69

14.4

33

10.9

55

11.5

21

6.9

Lecturer/research fellow/postdoc fellow

Total

percent

Assistant professor Practitioner Student

Hong Kong No.

53

11.1

11

3.6

64

13.4

81

26.6

Ph.D

10

2.1

57

18.8

M.A.

7

1.5

13

4.3

B.A.

1

0.2

6

2.0

 

478

100.0

304

100.0

while this percentage is only 3.6 percent (n=17) for Hong Kong. Together research students (bachelor, master, and PhD) contribute one-quarter (25.1 percent, n=76) of the research conducted on Macau, while this figure is only 3.8 percent for Hong Kong. Additionally, for studies on Macau, 44.8 percent (n=136) were conducted by academics with professorships (assistant, associate, or full professors) and 26.6 percent (n=81) were conducted by practitioners, while the corresponding percentages for Hong Kong are 71.7 percent (n=343) and 13.4 percent (n=64). This indicates that public administration research on Hong Kong attracts academic attention at a higher level both locally and internationally, while the same field of research on Macau relies considerably more on local practitioners. Furthermore, the faculty–practitioner ratio in Hong Kong has increased compared to a decade ago. During 1999–2009, only 3.4 percent of the studies on Hong Kong were conducted by practitioners. In 2009‒2019, this figure increased to 13.4 percent, showing a higher degree of participation of practitioners in public administration research. By comparison, in the case of Macau, practitioners contributed 26.1 percent of the total studies in 2009–2010, very close to their current contribution rate of 26.6 percent. It is encouraging to see more practitioners are contributing to public administration research in both city-states, given that the field has an applied nature and needs insights from practitioners. That being said, these figures also suggest that a research-practice gap still exists between academics and practitioners in both city-states over the time. There are a few additional observations regarding department affiliations, summarized in Table 26.8. First, note that 21.4 percent (n=65) of the researchers working on Macau are from

462  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Table 26.8

Department affiliations

Department/School

Hong Kong No.

percent

Macau No.

percent

Accounting and Finance

8

1.7

1

0.3

Public Administration/Public Policy/Government

141

29.5

94

30.9

Political Science

74

15.5

26

8.6

Social Science

68

14.2

25

8.2

Planning/Development

8

1.7

0

0.0

Business/Management

26

5.4

7

2.3

Economics

10

2.1

8

2.6

Education

15

3.1

7

2.3

Geography

14

2.9

0

0.0

Law

8

1.7

65

21.4

Journalism/Communication

19

4.0

1

0.3

History, Culture and Religion

18

3.8

6

2.0

Psychology

1

0.2

0

0.0

Science & Technology/Engineering

9

1.9

1

0.3

Tourism

1

0.2

2

0.7

Research Institute

23

4.8

34

11.2

Government agency/Advisory

6

1.3

2

0.7

Bodies/Statutory bodies

8

1.7

0

0.0

Non-governmental organizations

5

1.0

0

0.0

Design/Agriculture/Art

5

1.0

6

2.0

Industrial attachment

7

1.5

0

0.0

Others

4

0.8

19

6.3

Total

478

100.0

304

100.0

law school, which is consistent with the high popularity of the legal affairs topic in Macau. In comparison, this ratio is merely 1.7 percent (n=8) in Hong Kong. In terms of academic affiliation, the department with the greatest number of authors, whether they are writing on Hong Kong or Macau, is public administration (29.5 percent, n=141 for Hong Kong and 30.9 percent, n=94 for Macau), followed by political science (15.5 percent, n=74 for Hong Kong and 8.6 percent, n=26 for Macau) and social science (14.2 percent, n=68 for Hong Kong and 8.2 percent, n=25 for Macau). These three disciplines, which are the most relevant to public administration research, remain the most common institutional affiliations for those writing on either Hong Kong or Macau. A noticeable difference between writers on the two SARs is that among those writing on Macau, scholars affiliated with research institutes account for 11.2 percent (n=34) of the total, while among those writing on Hong Kong, they account for just 4.8 percent (n=23). Apparently, research institutes, such as those under local universities and universities from Guangdong Province, play a more important role in indigenous research in Macau than they do in Hong Kong.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION This chapter reveals developments in public administration research on Hong Kong and Macau during 2010–2019. There are three major findings. First, studies on Hong Kong and Macau continue to diverge in terms of major topics of interest, methodological features,

A review of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau, 2010‒2019  463 diversity of authors’ profiles, and sources of funding. The quality of research on Hong Kong is noticeably higher than that on Macau in terms of theoretical density, methodological rigor, research diversity, and international exposure. Theory-building and testing are superior in articles on Hong Kong, and articles on Hong Kong cover a broader range of topics, with particular emphases on governance, development, and public management reform. The academic community in Hong Kong has also attracted greater international participation and resources. Studies on Macau, by contrast, are significantly less quantitative and more descriptive, with larger contributions from social institutions and practitioners. They cover a narrower range of topics for a shorter time span and with less international funding. The majority of the research on Hong Kong is conducted by academic faculty members rather than practitioners, independent researchers, or postgraduate students, which may account for the style and standard of the research. The fact that almost all the papers on Macau are collected from journals with Chinese as the major language may also be a main factor in the divergence in quality, as the Chinese academic journals may adopt different standards of excellence from those used in SSCI-indexed journals. Second, another factor contributing to the differences in research levels could be the diverging political and administrative challenges and concerns the two city-states currently face under the postcolonial constitutional framework. Although both Hong Kong and Macau are subject to the “one country, two systems” political framework, the two SARs follow completely different legal regimes. Scholars argue that the localization of the legal system in Macau after return has been far less complicated than that in Hong Kong (Sadowski 2016). Political events such as the Umbrella Movement and protests over the Chief Executive elections in Hong Kong have raised concern among residents of Hong Kong regarding the political divide with China and the democratic future of the SARs under Beijing’s influence. This is reflected in the overwhelming interest on topics related to democratization, nationalism, and social movement in Hong Kong. These topics are much less popular in Macau. Last but not least, if one compares research during the 2000–2009 decade with that of 2010–2019, the rapid growth in number and scale of studies on both Hong Kong and Macau, along with the increased scope of topics covered and complexity of research methods, shows that the field has attracted increasing academic attention. Political structure and dynamics, policy formation, and public management remain the most popular topics for both SARs, indicating that the two regions are still actively seeking directions for institutional building and public sector reform in the new decade. The emergence of studies in nationalism and social movement indicates rising concern over the political future of both regions, especially with respect to their relationship with mainland China. Studies on Macau are still noticeably weaker in terms of empirical strength, research design, logical structure, and theorical arguments, with many papers still focused on discussing practical issues and policy projects rather than building theories and constructing generalizable frameworks. Although some development in the field has been observed, especially in terms of purpose of research and empirical content, studies on Macau are still weak in terms of knowledge base and research rigor but have a more obvious applied orientation. Moreover, although Macau has provided a useful point of comparison in public administration studies, it has not yet received sufficient attention from the international academic community. Looking ahead, this study suggests that for both SARs, public administration research would benefit from more exploratory and explanatory studies that could connect them with the broader literature in political science, public administration, and management science.

464  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Moreover, the field needs more empirical research to produce a more solid body of knowledge about public administration both as a profession and as a research field in these regions. Furthermore, comparisons between the evolution of state–local relations in Hong Kong and Macau, especially after Hong Kong’s protests against the anti-extradition bill in 2019, would be another interesting area for future inquiry.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was funded by the Ministry of Education of Singapore under Academic Research Fund Tier 2 (Grant number: MOE2015-T2-2-074). The authors would like to express their gratitude to the editors, reviewers, and participants in the Suzhou conference, who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the research.

ENGLISH REFERENCES Carey, John (2017) “Electoral Formula and Fragmentation in Hong Kong.” Journal of East Asian Studies 17(2), 215‒231. Chen, Dingding and Katrin Kinzelbach (2015) “Democracy Promotion and China: Blocker or Bystander?” Democratization 22(3), 400‒418. Cheung, Peter T.Y. (2011) “Civic Engagement in the Policy Process in Hong Kong: Change and Continuity.” Public Administration and Development 31(2), 113‒121. Davis, Michael C. (2015) “Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement: Beijing’s Broken Promises.” Journal of Democracy 26(2), 101‒110. Fong, Brian C.H. (2014) “Executive-Legislative Disconnection in Post-Colonial Hong Kong: The Dysfunction of the HKSAR’s Executive-Dominant System, 1997‒2012.” China Perspectives 2014(1), 5‒12. Fong, Brian C.H. (2017) “One Country, Two Nationalisms: Center–Periphery Relations between Mainland China and Hong Kong, 1997‒2016.” Modern China 43(5), 523‒556. Gao, Jie (2014) “Public Administration Research in Hong Kong and Macau: A Review of Journal Articles Published from 1999 to 2009.” The American Review of Public Administration 44(2), 168‒186. Ghai, Yash (2000) “The Basic Law of the Special Administrative Region of Macau: Some Reflections.” International & Comparative Law Quarterly 49(1), 183‒198. Jang, Jinhyeok (2016) “Competing Political Visions in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 21(1), 89‒102. Kaeding, Malte Philipp (2017) “The Rise of ‘localism’ in Hong Kong.” Journal of Democracy 28(1), 157‒171. Kwong, Ying-ho (2018) “Political Repression in a Sub-national Hybrid Regime: The PRC’s Governing Strategies in Hong Kong.” Contemporary Politics 24(4), 361‒378. Li, Yongyan and John Flowerdew (2009) “International Engagement versus Local Commitment: Hong Kong Academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences Writing for Publication.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 8(4), 279‒293. Lo, Pui Yin and Albert Chen (2018) “The Judicial Perspective of Separation of Powers in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.” Journal of International and Comparative Law 5, 337. Ma, Ngok (2011) “Hong Kong’s Democrats Divide.” Journal of Democracy 22(1), 54‒67. Ortmann, Stephan (2015) “The Umbrella Movement and Hong Kong’s Protracted Democratization Process.” Asian Affairs 46(1), 32‒50. Painter, Martin and Wai-Hang Yee (2011) “Task Matters: A Structural-Instrumental Analysis of the Autonomy of Hong Kong Government Bodies.” The American Review of Public Administration 41(4), 395‒410.

A review of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau, 2010‒2019  465 Sadowski, Mirosław Michał (2016) “Crossroads of the World, Crossroads of the Law: Hong Kong and Macau Legal Systems Approaching 20 Years Post-Transition.” Comparative Law Review 7(1). Retrieved June 17, 2020, from http://​www​.comparativelawreview​.unipg​.it/​index​.php/​comparative/​ article/​view/​90. Scott, Ian (2017) “‘One Country, Two Systems’: The End of a Legitimating Ideology?” Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration 39(2), 83‒99. Sing, Ming (2010) “Explaining Mass Support for Democracy in Hong Kong.” Democratization 17(1), 175‒205. So, Alvin Y. (2011) “‘One Country, Two Systems’ and Hong Kong–China National Integration: A Crisis-Transformation Perspective.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 41(1), 99‒116. Walker, Richard M., Gene Brewer and Yujin Choi (2014) “Public Administration Research in East and Southeast Asia: A Review of the English Language Evidence, 1999‒2009.” The American Review of Public Administration 44(2), 131‒150. Wang, Te-Yu (2019) “Generations, Political Attitudes and Voting Behavior in Taiwan and Hong Kong.” Electoral Studies 58, 80‒83. Wong, Mathew Y.H. (2018) “Selectorate Theory in Hybrid Regimes: Comparing Hong Kong and Singapore.” Government and Opposition 53(4), 707‒734. Wong, Wilson and Hanyu Xiao (2018) “Twenty Years of Hong Kong and Macao under Chinese Rule: Being Absorbed under ‘One Country, Two Systems’.” Public Money & Management 38(6), 411‒418. Yuen, Samson (2015) “Hong Kong After the Umbrella Movement. An Uncertain Future for ‘One Country, Two Systems’.” China Perspectives 2015(1), 49‒53. Zhang, Baohui (2010) “Beijing’s 2007 Political Reform Plan and Prospects for Hong Kong’s Democratization.” Democratization 17(3), 442‒464.

CHINESE REFERENCES Santos, Hugo Luz dos (2017) “法人的刑事责任: 澳门《刑法典》总则关于此內容的修改草案.”《澳 门公共行政》第30卷第3期, 75‒93. 冷铁勋 (2017) “中央全面管治权与特区高度自治权的关系辩析.”《澳门公共行政》第30卷第2 期, 5‒13. 林瑞光 (2015) “探讨澳门市政机构的演变及未來发展.”《澳门公共行政》第28卷第 2期, 391‒403. 娄胜华 (2010) “特区政府精细化管理探讨.”《澳门公共行政》第23卷第2期, 539‒547. 鄞益奋 (2010) “提升澳门特区政府的政策执行能力.”《澳门公共行政》 第23卷第2 期, 549‒558. 鄞益奋 (2017) “多点支撑、多重覆盖的澳门社会援助体系.”《澳门公共行政》第30卷,第2期, 49‒61. 赵国强 (2017) “‘两制’语境下的‘一国’解读.”《澳门公共行政》第30卷,第1期, 5‒16. 庄真真/庄永燊 (2015) “设立非政权性市政机构的若干问题探析.”《澳门公共行政》 第28卷第2期, 375‒389.

27. Crisis of relevance? Public administration theory and practice connections in Taiwan Milan Tung-Wen Sun, Wen-Hsueh Chen, and Windy Thi-Ngoc-Minh Phan

Public administration scholars have to be conscious about whether there are a sufficient number of adequate theories, definitions of concepts, and empirically verified exemplary practices available for practitioners to solve emerging social and government problems. Through their efforts, a body of public administration knowledge has been developed and accumulated that is available to assist practitioners in problem-solving. However, Pollitt (2010) suggests that public administration as a scholarly field is affected by “a multiple personality” disorder, which is partly because it originated from different disciplines, and partly because it is attempting to get to different destinations. Another potential difficulty of this multiple personality disorder is the “relationship between theory and practice, between knowledge and action, has been especially troublesome to those in the field of public administration” (Denhardt and Baker 2007, 134). Public administration is presumed to be practice-oriented, and the legitimacy of public administration as a field of study will be questioned if concerns over the effectiveness of transferring theory to practice are raised. This study attempts to evaluate the development of the public administration discipline in Taiwan by focusing on the relationship between theory and practice. Any attempt to define the boundaries of the discipline of public administration in a nation inevitably directs attention to the sensitive issues of “a crisis of legitimacy” (Denhardt 1993), “a crisis of research quality” (McCurdy and Cleary 1984), and “a crisis of confidence” (Caiden 1991). For the case in Taiwan, Sun and Gargan (1997) argue that there existed a “crisis of identity” which concerns the proper role of administrators (generalists vs. specialists) in Taiwan’s public administration education. It was oriented toward a liberal arts education which had failed, according to some, to provide well-trained and qualified students for the public services. As influenced by the process of democratization and globalization, the complexities and the uncertainties of public problems in Taiwan have been increasing since the 1990s. The potential divisions and tensions between the academic and practicing members of public administration have intensified (Sun and Gargan 1999; 朱景鵬/林嘉 2011), for the rapidly changing environment has created a condition in which complex social problems demand quick and proper solutions from their respective government agencies. To be helpful, the professional public administration community in Taiwan has to rigidly appraise the relevance of its knowledge during the actual problem-solving process. To assess the level of connectivity between academic and practicing public administration communities in Taiwan, this chapter focuses on the topics of their respective research by utilizing a word cloud technique to examine and compare the core issues occupying these two communities. On the basis of research findings, the future development of public administration in Taiwan can then be discussed. The structure of this chapter is divided into five parts. After the introduction, a literature review is conducted to present a basic description regarding 466

Crisis of relevance?  467 the development of public administration, theory and practice connections, and public administration as a discipline in Taiwan. The third part is the research design and results in which the data collection, analysis methods, and research findings are described. The fourth part presents the discussions, followed by a brief conclusion.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AS A DISCIPLINE Woodrow Wilson, in his famous work “The Study of Administration” (1887), alluded to the identity of public administration. This notion, according to Riccucci (2010), has caught the attention of public administration scholars since the inception of this discipline. Essentially, the issue of identity is considered as fundamental to whether public administration can be seen as an independent and professional field of study. Regarding the future of the public administration field, from the Minnowbrook perspective, the administration itself is becoming more dispersed among national and local levels, in a trend coupled with the increasingly frequent use of private and third-party agencies in service and management provision (Goldsmith 2014; O’Leary et al. 2010). These institutional failures, which have manifested in several forms, serve as one of several fundamental challenges that bring pressure to re-shaping the future of public administration (Farazmand 2012). The more demands put forth by the government in recent decades, the more challenges arise for responding academicians and practitioners (Raadschelders and Lee 2011). Taking everything into account, addressing government failures can be said to have become a widespread, if not mainstream, practice among public administration researchers. According to Raadschelders and Lee (2011), to ascertain the future directions effectively, making an appraisal of recent developments within the discipline is a beneficial approach. The public administration discipline can be examined through three lenses: tracing the evolution of public administration, examining the contents of publications, and conducting empirical and periodical examination of public administration research output (Farazmand et al. 2019). Among these three lenses, the third one has become a particularly popular trend among public administration scholars. Topics such as productivity (Rodgers and Rodgers 2000; Schroeder et al. 2004; Kellough and Pitts 2005), journal development (Newland 2000; Terry 2005), research methodology (Brower et al. 2000; Gill and Meier 2000; Wright et al. 2004), and research subjects in the field of public administration are being thoroughly examined. Indeed, this decade is witnessing an explosion of many articles in which content analysis has been employed as a useful tool to examine the diversity of a wide range of issues in the public administration field – empirically, periodically, and globally (Carrizales and Gaynor 2013; Farazmand et al. 2019; Gao 2014; Kovač and Jukić 2016; Moon et al. 2014; Perry et al. 2010; Sabharwal et al. 2016; Sun and Lin 2014; Van der Wal et al. 2013; Walker 2014; Walker et al. 2014; Wu et al. 2013). In a confessional nutshell, public administration academicians have paid more attention to diversity research, for it is a critical issue in which efforts have been made to assess the state-of-the-field conditions as well as to capture the discipline’s development over time. No matter what the future of the public administration discipline may be, the linkage between public administration theory and practice will always play a significant role in the history and development of the discipline. At the core of the linkage is the function of the

468  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China government and its relationships with society (Farazmand et al. 2019; Raadschelders and Lee 2011; Schweik et al. 2011). In other words, public administration researchers are working to explore and explain phenomena related to the practices of government. From this perspective, “government failure” has been a popular term in the field of public administration, both in theory-building and practical problem-solving, since the 1980s. This phenomenon directs our attention again to the issue of theory–practice connection, otherwise known as knowledge utilization.

THE THEORY–PRACTICE CONNECTION Riccucci (2010) and Raadschelders (2011) argue that the real questions of public administration identity are: how should we study public administration? And how should we build theories for this field? The construction of theory has been perceived as the most important thing in studying public administration. However, the professional public administration community has to rigidly assess the relevance of its knowledge during the actual problem-solving process. The degree of knowledge utilization ultimately defines the legitimacy of the discipline. According to Caplan (1977), there are at least three theoretical perspectives to explain how knowledge is utilized: knowledge-specific theories, policy maker-constraint theories, and two-communities theories. Two-communities theories, which suggest the existence of a gap between social scientists and policy makers due to differences in values, languages, reward systems, and social and professional affiliations, can best explain the degree of knowledge utilization in the field. The underlying questions of this perspective are: why are knowledge and theories developed by the scholars not utilized, under-utilized, or over-utilized by the practitioners? The relationship between theory and practice ought to be reciprocal. Practice can be enhanced by using and experimenting with new and valid theories, as the linear flow of knowledge has always assumed, but theory-building can also benefit from experience and evidence generated from knowledge utilization in concrete operational contexts (Creswell and Creswell 2018; Stam 2010). The practitioner and scholar subsystems are interdependent. Of course, to ask for “tight coupling” between scholars and practitioners is unrealistic. Weiss (1979) suggests that there may be various ways that public administration theory and practice are connected. The point is that knowledge utilization has not yet achieved a satisfactory level. There are many barriers to knowledge transfer, such as value differences, prejudices, alternative evaluation criteria, technical vocabularies, and structural boundaries. As explained previously, these barriers are related to differences in assumptions, values, and attitudes between scholars and practitioners. Nevertheless, even though there are distinctions and differences of emphases between the subsystems of the scholar and practitioner communities in all these aspects, the two are not wholly different. When asked about knowledge utilization, scholars and practitioners both know why the process does not work. It is reasonable to believe that general consensus can be reached between scholars and practitioners. The professional public administration scholars and practitioners should interact more frequently and effectively with each other on the issue of theory–practice connection. The argument is that members of the public administration community should place higher priority on dealing with actual problem-solving than remaining in

Crisis of relevance?  469 the traditional roles of knowledge accumulation and transfer (Kondrat 1992; Schweik et al. 2011; Van de Ven 2007).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AS A DISCIPLINE IN TAIWAN Public administration as a field of study in Han Chinese societies can be traced back to 1935, when Professor Ching-Chen Cheng (張金鑑) published the first traditional Chinese textbook on the subject, Public Administration Theory and Practice. Before 1990, there were only six universities in which public administration was a department or program separated from the Political Sciences Department. The expansion of public administration in higher education in the 1990s had attracted many US-trained Taiwanese public administration students to return and teach in Taiwan, and a public administration community was gradually established. The trend of expansion continued after 2000, with the momentum giving rise to the launch of the Taiwan Association of Schools of Public Administration and Affairs (TASPAA) in 2005. TASPAA is an organization of institutional membership, comprising departments and programs in Taiwan that are related to public affairs, public policy, public administration, and political science. Currently, TASPAA has 36 institutional members working together to promote academic exchange and collaboration and enhance the quality of teaching, research, and service in the field of public administration. Assessing research on public administration has also been a longstanding tradition in Taiwan. This endeavor commenced in the early 1990s, when Sun (1992) provided the first comprehensive assessment of public administration knowledge of Taiwan, followed by two related articles that were later published in Taiwan (孫同文 1998a, 1998b). Later, Yu et al. (2006) assessed 626 public administration articles from five academic journals for a ten-year period from 1996 to 2005. 詹中原 (2004) examined 1,137 master theses collected from three public administration departments in Taiwan; 莊文忠/吳穎年 (2012) investigated master theses from all public administration or public affairs departments in Taiwan between 1997 and 2008; and Sun and Lin (2014) updated Sun’s original study by analyzing public administration journal articles published between 1990 to 2010. Different from the empirical studies mentioned above, 陳金貴 (1991) proposed ten topics for the development of public administration research in Taiwan, including public management, human resources management, improvement in public service, the dilemma of public disputes, intergovernmental relations, and arguments about privatization, non-profit organizations, public volunteer programs, citizen participation, and management of public works. He expected that universities, as well as members of the public and private sectors, should collaborate with each other, so that higher quality and more relevant public administration research can be conducted. 江明修 (2002) also divided public administration research into ten themes. He applied this schema to analyze research projects sponsored by the National Science Council (NSC) between 1984 and 1996 as a way to demonstrate the connections between theory and practice in Taiwan. The research findings indicated that 40 percent of these projects were related to the field of public policy, but he cautiously reminded public administration students in Taiwan that, to be relevant, public administration research should be rooted in the specific context of Taiwan, and to take government priorities into consideration. For the same purpose, 孫同文

470  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China (1998b) compared the research topics of academic journal articles and that of NSC-sponsored projects and found that 57 percent of them were related to public policy. Sun and Lin (2014) reached the same conclusion after comparing the topics of academic journal articles and that of the practitioner-oriented journal papers. Overall, the level of theory–practice connection in the field of public administration in Taiwan is not high.

RESEARCH DESIGN Data Collection This chapter re-examines the connections between the academic and practicing communities, through which the status of the public administration discipline in Taiwan can be understood. The technique of using “word clouds” will be used to analyze the similarities and differences of the core issues that are emphasized by these two communities respectively, and to sort out the emerging issues and future directions of the field. In short, publications are still the most direct materials for understanding the development of the two communities, so it is important to focus on journals or research reports as the analysis subject (Perry and Kraemer 1986; Houston and Delevan 1990; Bingham and Bowen 1994; Terry 2005; Raadschelders and Lee 2011). This chapter takes journal articles and government-sponsored research reports or opinion polls published in the past five years (2014‒2018) as the unit of analysis. In the academic community, articles are collected from two prestigious public administration journals in Taiwan: Journal of Public Administration and The Journal of Administration and Policy. In the five-year period, the Journal of Public Administration published a total of 35 articles, while the Journal of Administration and Policy released 34 articles. For the practicing side, we collected three kinds of data to represent the potential concerns of this community. The first is a total of 71 research reports published by the National Development Council (NDC) in the same period of time (http://​www​.ndc​.gov​.tw). These reports are released by NDC and are uploaded on the website; they represent the core issues with high priority status for the government in Taiwan. The second set of data consists of two government-sponsored journals, Journal of Civil Service (published by the Ministry of Civil Service and the Examination Yuan) and Public Governance Quarterly (sponsored by NDC and the Executive Yuan). These two journals are designed for the practitioners. To a certain extent, they promote government policies, and many of the authors are government officials. In the past five years, 94 articles were published in the Journal of Civil Service, while 201 articles were published in the Public Governance Quarterly. In addition to these two data sets, this chapter is also interested in the issues faced by local governments in Taiwan. There is no academic or practitioner journal for local government and governance, and the local governments do not sponsor research projects. We instead collected a total of 346 public opinion polls funded by local government agencies (http://​web​.pcc​.gov​.tw/​) and use them to identify the issues important to local governments. Each journal article in Taiwan is required to prepare a cover page in English which contains the title, author name, affiliation, abstract, and keywords. However, most of the government-sponsored research projects or opinion polls do not provide an English-language cover page. Therefore, each of the three chapter authors translated the title of a paper inde-

Crisis of relevance?  471 pendently, then we reached a consensus on the main words for the title after discussions. For example, one NDC report in 2018 was titled “Japan’s Legal System Research on Promoting Industrial Competitiveness.” We used the terms “Japan,” “industry,” and “competitiveness” as the keywords of this report. Analytical Method In recent years, some researchers in Taiwan have begun to use word clouds as the proxy of content analysis. For example, 劉宜君 (2016) explores Social Enterprise’s use of social media and its characteristics on the Facebook page of Social Enterprise Insights in Taiwan. She found out that agricultural, health, and environmental issues were on the priority list of social enterprises. Zhu et al. (2017) used “big tigers” to examine China’s five major commercial news websites and found that the keyword was related to the names of corrupt officials. Kim et al. (2019) used a word cloud to analyze the abstract of public administration journals in China and found that these journals focus on “government,” “social,” “reform,” “local,” “political,” “economic,” “performance,” and “management,” which suggest that the current public administrative research focuses on the local governments, institutional governance, performance management, economic development, and administrative reforms of China. This chapter utilized Wordclouds, a free online word cloud generator that can automatically generate a word or tag cloud, as the analytical tool. It then analyzes keywords used by papers or reports produced in or for academic and practicing public administration communities in Taiwan, and to compare the relevance of shared vocabularies through Compare Suite PRO to understand the overlap between these two communities.

WORD CLOUD ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION Academic Community This section presents the word cloud analysis and the descriptive statistics of the keywords in two communities to understand the development of public administration research in Taiwan. Figure 27.1 shows the result of word cloud analysis for the academic communities (n = 738). Hereafter, the number in the parentheses is the frequency of the keyword(s). One important reminder is that English words were the unit of analysis in this word cloud study. For example, “public administration” will be treated as “public” and “administration.” Thus, there are 738 words mentioned in the 69 academic journal articles. The top ten words with the highest frequency distribution are public (22), policy (22), governance (18), social (16), performance (15), service (12), management (11), community (11), corruption (9), information (9), system (9), disaster (9), and collaborative (9). The emergence of the words such as “public,” “policy,” “governance,” “social,” “performance,” “service,” “management,” and any potential combinations of these and other words, should not be a surprise for public administration students. These keywords represent the four important themes in the study of public administration for the past few decades: public policy, social policy, and their related issues; governance; new public management and its emphasis on performance; and public service or public service motivation.

472  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Source: Author analysis, using www​.wordclouds​.com.

Figure 27.1

Word cloud of academic journal articles

Second, the emphasis on “governance,” “community,” and “collaborative” indicates that some scholars have moved away from the traditional bureaucratic framework, and turn to the concept of governance and collaborative governance for research, with attention to the role of communities in the public–private relationship. Third, “information management,” “corruption control,” and “aging society” are three important policy issues for discussion in the current academic community. Fourth, words such as “carbon,” “nuclear,” “disaster,” and “risk” may indicate that the environmental issues are high on the academic community’s research priority list. Finally, words such as “model,” “theory,” and “system” may not be top priority for the academic community in Taiwan. The Practicing Community Figure 27.2 is the word cloud analysis of the NDC research reports (n = 497). The top ten words with the highest frequency distribution are industry (17), innovation (12), development (12), national (12), economy (8), planning (8), policy (8), forward-looking (7), assessment (6), management (6), digital (6), talent (6), entrepreneurship (6), service (6), and public (6). Given that the predecessor of NDC was the Council for Economic Planning and Development, research projects sponsored by NDC mainly focus on national economic policies; related words include “national,” “industry,” “economy,” “development,” “trade,” “labor,” “business,” “market,” and “GDP.” In Taiwan, national economic policies imply “planning,” “strategy,” and “forward-looking” so that “innovation” and “talent” can be cultivated; a “digital” or “smart” (AI) economy can be an important component of economic policy in Taiwan. Although “management,” “public,” “policy,” “service,” and “assessment” are also visible in the word cloud analysis, they are not as salient as in the academic community. Figure 27.3 is the result of the word cloud analysis of government-funded journal articles (n = 2,587). The top ten most often used words are government (126), public (75), management (57), performance (53), social (46), service (43), policy (41), data (31), development (30), and open (28). On the surface, the result is not that much different from that of the academic community, since words such as “public,” “management,” “performance,” “social,” “policy,”

Crisis of relevance?  473

Source: Author analysis, using www​.wordclouds​.com.

Figure 27.2

Word cloud of NDC sponsored projects

Source: Author analysis, using www​.wordclouds​.com.

Figure 27.3

Word cloud of practitioner-oriented journal articles

and “service” are similarly prominent in both types of journal articles. However, terms such as “government,” “management,” “performance,” and “administration” are more important in practitioner-oriented journals than in academic journals. Practitioner-oriented journals focus on “government” per se, and are more concerned with day-to-day government operations (“management” and “administration”) and specific government policies than academic journals. The practitioner-oriented journals also emphasize words such as “open,” “data,” “digital,” and “information.” These key words are different from those in the word cloud analysis of the NDC in which the developments at “local,” “city,” and “community” levels are more significant than the overall national development. Figure 27.4 is the word cloud analysis of local government opinion polls (n = 1,608). The top ten words with the highest frequency distribution are satisfaction (148), service (82), demand (64), living (60), cable (59), condition (58), governing (57), television (55), quality

474  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China

Source: Author analysis, using www​.wordclouds​.com.

Figure 27.4

Word cloud of local government opinion polls

(53), and integrity (40). As frontline service providers, local governments are primarily concerned with the “quality” of their services (“television,” “cable,” and “traffic” policies), which is highlighted by the keywords such as “satisfaction” shared among local residents and their opinions about the “integrity” of local government agencies. Other keywords are living “conditions,” “demands,” and “needs” of stakeholders (“elder,” “child,” “youth,” “viewer,” and “juvenile”) of various kinds of services. One substantial issue for local governments is the proposed reform of cable TV services. Battles between cable TV and Movie-on-Demand (MOD) in 2018 generated heated debates at the local level, which reflected in our word cloud analysis.

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO COMMUNITIES Compare Suite PRO is used to analyze the similarities and differences between these four sets of data; it calculates the percentage of key words that have appeared in both data sets to the total number of words of the two. Table 27.1 shows that key words of the academic journals are 6 percent similar to that of the NDC reports, and 5 percent to that of the local government opinion polls. It can be argued that there are two clusters of issues in public administration research in Taiwan. One is reflected in the journal articles (although their similarity is only 10 percent); another one is presented in the government-sponsored research projects or opinion polls. There is the division of labor between the academic and practicing communities. In addition, if we compare the key words of the three data sets generated from the practicing community, topics discussed in the practitioner-oriented journals are 9 percent similar to that of the other two types of data respectively, and there is only 7 percent similarity between the practitioner-oriented journals and local government opinion polls. That is to say, there are different emphases even within the practicing community.

Crisis of relevance?  475 Table 27.1

Proportion of common words in two communities

Academic journals

Practitioner-oriented Local government

Academic journals

NDC reports

journals

opinion polls

--

6％

10%

5%

--

9%

9%

--

7%

NDC reports Practitioner-oriented journals Local government opinion polls

--

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION There are several tentative observations about the development of the public administration discipline in Taiwan. First, in the past 30 years, the public administration community in Taiwan has taken shape, but the community has still faced the problem of integrating theory with practice. Evidence suggests that there are only a few common languages, or even a lack of communications, between the academic community and the practicing community in Taiwan. These two communities focus on different issues and emphasize different governing structures (governance vs. government) for their problem-solving approach. Moreover, although the objective of the practicing community is perceived to utilize theory in decision making, there is little evidence that words such as “theory” or “model” have been mentioned by the practicing community. Second, there is a clear division of labor within the practicing community in Taiwan. The respective attention of the central government, local governments, and two central government agencies are different. The central government (NDC) stresses the importance of forward-looking policy planning and research in Taiwan; local governments prefer policy evaluation research that focus on the conditions, demands, and satisfaction of local stakeholders about local services; and the topics of government-funded journals are quite diverse, since the agencies that sponsor the journals target different audience groups. Third, the aforementioned two observations suggest that public administration theory and practice connections in Taiwan can be perceived as one continuous spectrum, ranging from the academic community to practitioner-oriented journals, and to the national and local governments. One way to understand the spectrum is that the spectrum is from governance to government, and then to administration – these are the loci of decision making for the three respective sections of the public administration discipline in Taiwan. Finally, in terms of theory and practice connections, it can be argued that the public administration discipline in Taiwan is facing a crisis of relevance. As argued by Nesbit et al. (2011), if public administration is an applied discipline, the professionalism and value of theoretical development must be combined with practice. However, in Taiwan, the issues most important to the two communities are different, and the practicing community shows less and less interest in theories and concepts. In a sense, the two communities become less and less relevant to each other. Over time, the crisis of relevance may evolve into a “crisis of confidence,” in which members of the practicing community lose confidence in the helpfulness of the knowledge or exemplary practices produced in the academic community to their daily problem-solving. In the long run, the professional status of public administration may be questioned, and it may lead to a “crisis of legitimacy,” in which the discipline of public administration is at stake. To strengthen the link between theory and practice is the ultimate goal for social sciences, including the field of public administration. However, the link should not be one-way com-

476  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China munications from the theory community to practitioners. To save the discipline from the crisis of relevance, there is the need for more channels and platforms for bilateral communications between the two. The theory community should not be worried about getting their hands dirty by doing real problem-solving, and the practicing side should be willing to share their experiences with scholars through which theorization becomes possible. Pollitt (2010, 293) predicts that a coherent field of public administration will be unlikely. One of his arguments is that “the academic community usually changes only slowly – universities are among those organizations that are almost impossible to ‘transform’ overnight.” How can the public administration discipline in Taiwan resolve its crisis of relevance? It may be difficult to answer the question, but one alternative is to address the issue from the outside, because eventually the development of the public administration discipline has to be embedded in the real political and social context of Taiwan. In recent years, the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the two most influential agencies of higher education in Taiwan, are promoting several projects related to the concept of University Social Responsibility (USR) on a competitive basis. MOE launched its USR project in 2017 and the Cultivation for Higher Education project in 2018. MOST has promoted the Humanity Innovation and Social Practice project since 2012. This may create a window of opportunity for strengthening theory and practice connections in the field of public administration. The objectives of these projects are to encourage each university to actively participate in community affairs by taking the emerging issues of surrounding communities into consideration. It is expected that the university can start to reconsider its internal institutional design, discipline scopes, research agenda, teaching methods, and the boundaries of student learning accordingly (教育部 2014; 科技部 2015). Although the projects are for the university as a whole, many social science scholars, including public administration scholars, are encouraged to actively participate in the planning and implementation of these projects. This reform in higher education in Taiwan has led public administration scholars to emphasize action-oriented research and community issues, and public administration teaching has gradually shifted from lecture to learn-by-doing and social participation. Furthermore, public administration scholars are encouraged to facilitate cross-discipline and cross-boundary integration. MOST has initiated another project for promoting collaboration between universities and local governments to strengthen cross-boundary governance and humanistic innovation in 2016. This area should be the prime turf for public administration scholars. These higher education reform projects in Taiwan have challenged public administration scholars, transcending them into engaged scholars. Kezar et al. (2018) advocate the notion of “public scholarship” in higher education, emphasizing the importance of building connections and networks with multiple stakeholders through action-oriented research. This approach can help redirect efforts to solve policy problems of today. Knowledge developed by public administration research should be able to provide guidelines for actual problem-solving. Concrete efforts have to be taken by both public administration scholars and practitioners in Taiwan so that the relevance between theory and practice can be improved in the near future.

Crisis of relevance?  477

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Index

Aarhus Convention 213 Academic institutions 67, 75, 161, 446–7 access information 170, 202–3, 212 activity regulation 194 actors 122, 127, 131, 137, 172, 200, 226–8, 260, 292, 306, 351–2 Adams, Guy 444 administered cities 23, 26, 28 administrative allocation 226–7, 293, 325–8, 330–31, 333–4, 338 administrative authorities 172, 190, 224 administrative charges 102, 105–6, 109 administrative justice 424, 426–7, 432–3 Administrative Order for Implementing the Wage System and the Change to the Monetary Pay System for Working Personnel of State Organizations 42 administrative rank 16, 412–13 administrative regulations 178, 181, 186–7, 192, 214, 329 administrative theory 442 adoption countries 212–13 advisors 352, 447–8 Age 59 phenomenon 114 agency loss 83–4, 92 agricultural land 228–9, 232, 292 Alptekin, Cem 256 altruism 363, 366, 372 Amara, Muhammad 259 anti-corruption 53 agencies 85, 88–9, 91 bureau 90–91 campaign 38, 82 crusade 81–2 effectiveness 82, 93–4 endeavors 92, 94 policies 84, 86 regime 11, 82, 83–4 regulations 83 watchdogs 81, 93 Arapis, Theodore 152 Aslam, Fawad 247 assets 87, 222, 237 auctions 225, 229, 231–2, 237, 325, 328–34, 338, 344 audit system 31 Australia 2, 5, 214, 260, 460–61 authoritarian capitalism 16, 392–404 authoritarian innovation research 216

authoritarian policing 400–402 daily police work, soft tactics 401 popular protest, soft tactics 401–2 soft impression management 401 authoritarian politics 16, 392–3, 402 authoritarian transparency 12, 206–17 authoritarianism 393–8 autonomous administrative units 245 auxiliary police 396, 398–9 avoidance, relatives 32 Ayres, Ian 144 Baldwin, Robert 140 Bardhan, Pranab 105 bargaining powers 101, 108–9, 115 variations 108–9 baton of party-state 60–61 Beck, Ulrich 145 behavior-modification 136, 140, 144–5, 148 Behn, Robert 6 Beijing Municipal Party 24 Bekkers, Victor 415 Bernstein, Marver H. 138 bianzhi system 55 big-data analytics 132 big data application 154, 164 big data policing 403 birth control 279–80 Boateng, Francis 384 Boehm, Frédéric 335 Braithwaite, John 144 break rules 409, 412–13 Breitung, Werner 409, 426 Brewer, Gene 5, 7, 8, 454 broader institutional context 110–15 Broadman, Harry G. 332 Brown, Kerry 262 Brown, Michael 382 Brunsson, Nils 174 budget law 155 Budget of China 161 budgetary constraint 114 budgeted fiscal allocations 105 Buffat, Aurélien 420 bureaucratic entrepreneurship 104–5 bureaucratic incentives 101–3 Burns, John 59–60 business processes 127, 130–31 business purposes 328–9, 331

480

Index  481 cadaveric donors 364, 366–7 cadres 32, 41–4, 51, 61, 64–6, 68–9, 71–2, 83, 104, 107, 110, 245, 429–30 evaluation 60–61, 66, 76 management 10, 72, 82, 85, 91–3, 347–50, 357 responsibility system 411 Cai, Hongbin 100, 109 Cai, Zuo 65 Callahan, William 261 Calland, Richard 213 campaign-style corruption control 81, 93 campaign-style policing 392, 394, 397 campaigns 53, 81, 176, 394 Can Chen 152 Caplan, N. 468 capture theory 138 Carrow, Eve 383 Carvajal, Camilo Andrés Bonilla 258 case studies, corruption 86–91 government vehicle management, reforming 87–8 integrity pension fund 89–90 new institutional design modeling 90–91 personal assets disclosure 86–7 special credit cards, official spending 89 causality 17, 440–41, 443, 445, 449 censoring system 177 censorship 129 systems 178 Central County 107, 108, 110 central leadership 10, 82, 84, 87, 92, 94 century of humiliation 256, 261–2, 269–70 Chan, Hon S. 51 characteristic incentives 15, 363, 367, 369 Chen, Bin 307 Chen Qiufa 33 Cheng, Joseph 7 Chengguan adjudications 429–32 Chengguan law enforcement 385–6, 425–6, 428–9 Chengguan officers 16–17, 381, 383, 386–7, 401, 408–15, 417, 419–20, 424–33 Chengguan violence 385–6, 425–6 Chengguan workers 386, 412, 414–15 Chengri Ding 327 Cheung, Peter T.Y. 455 child/children 63, 85, 87, 110, 248–9, 278–84, 287–8, 314, 367, 474 China Central Television 161 China Daily 237 China Data Online 236 China Entry–Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureaus (CIQs) 143 China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) 129 China Land and Resource Almanac 236

China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) 60 China Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) 128 China Statistical Yearbook 34, 230, 341, 353 Chinese bureaucracy 96–118 Chinese civil service 9–10 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 22, 29, 32, 41, 44, 46, 50, 55, 60, 81, 83, 170, 241–5, 252, 261–2, 295, 408, 411, 426–7 Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) 36 Chinese dream 13, 256–70 elite discourse on 261–3 Chinese government 12–13, 15, 81, 142–3, 147, 154, 169, 174–80, 189, 198–203, 223–4, 265, 278–83, 287–8, 325–8, 343–4 concerns 189–91 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) 25, 352–4 Ching-Chen Cheng 469 Ching Kwan Lee 402 Choi, Yujin 5, 7, 8 Chongqing 214 Chow, King W. 6–9 Chu, May 145, 146 cities 25, 27, 85–6, 142, 224–5, 236–7, 291–4, 296–302, 308–9, 364, 371–2, 385–7, 394–5, 414–18, 420, 428, 452 citizen activism 15, 347–57 citizenization 300 citizens 14–15, 66–9, 71–2, 76, 112–13, 122–5, 127–32, 151–5, 159–65, 206–7, 211–12, 216–17, 248, 306–8, 315–17, 351, 384–5, 393–5, 397–8, 402–3 participation 14, 76, 116, 123, 305, 307, 314–15, 317, 440, 469 satisfaction 70–71, 127 satisfaction surveys 67, 71, 73, 76 trust 130–31 City Planning Law 292 city-states 17, 452, 456, 461, 463 civil adjudications 424–5, 428, 432–3 Civil Aviation Fund 160 civil enforcement 408, 424, 426, 430 civil servants 45–6, 48, 50–56, 88, 123, 128–9, 132, 381 civil service 7, 9–10, 41–53, 55–6, 381, 470 examination system 2–3 reform 46, 48 system 41, 55 Civil Service Law (CSL) 41, 48, 53–4 civil service pay 41–56 1953‒1956 pay reform 42–4 1985 pay reform 44–6 1993 pay reform 46–8 2006 pay reform 48–50

482  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China changes of 53–4 prospects and major challenges 54–6 reforms, achievements and problems 50–53 reforms, historical review 41–6 civilianization 392, 399–400, 403 Cleary, Robert 439, 440, 445 Cohen, Paul 261 collaborative innovation processes 305–20 combat corruption 11, 82, 92 commodification 392, 398–9, 403 commodities 16, 44, 363, 365–6, 398 common market 98–9, 112–13 communities 18, 63, 67, 308–9, 311–15, 437, 466, 470–72, 474–5 community-based elderly care (CEC) 305 service delivery networks 310–16 community service management 313 compensation 41–2, 226–7, 229–30, 236–7, 338, 364–6, 400 competition 138, 161, 172, 212, 314, 327, 332, 335 complaint letters 15, 347, 353, 355–6 Computed-Assisted Telephone Investigation (CATI) technology 67 Concentrated Costs 12, 156–7, 163 confucian benevolence 427–8 Confucianism 246–8, 367, 427 congress standing committees 25 construction land 291–2 content surveillance 195 contextual approach 260–61, 263 control variables 338, 348, 354–5, 415 Cooray, Arusha 215 corruption 10–13, 52–3, 81–94, 114, 151–3, 162–3, 215, 229–30, 236–8, 327–8, 332–5, 343–4, 393–4, 396–7, 456–7, 471–2 case studies 86–91 control 10, 41, 52, 81, 84, 472 controlling 81–94 curbing 12, 162–3 defined 81 preventing 81, 84–6, 209 costs 138–9, 141, 144, 146, 156, 158–9, 177, 257, 259–60, 284, 305–6, 315, 338, 366, 399–400 counties 31–2, 51, 55–6, 61–3, 68, 71, 96–8, 102–10, 114, 245, 250 county leaders 27–9 county-level cities 22, 401 Covid-19 coronavirus 197, 203, 403 crime control 393–5, 399 crimes 86, 178, 394–7, 399, 401–2, 426–8 crisis of confidence 466, 475 crisis of identity 466 crisis of relevance 18, 466–76 crude birth rate (CBR) 279, 281, 284, 285

279–86 Crusky, Oscar 383 Cultural Revolution 223, 243, 245–6, 249–51, 265–6, 269, 280, 285, 287, 425 culture of secrecy 157 Curiosity Daily 196 current affairs 193–6, 198, 202 cyber sovereignty 177–9 Cyberspace Administration of China 186, 188–95, 197, 201 Danping Chen 350 data analyses 15, 347–8, 353–4, 357, 414, 420, 429, 431–2, 459 database 178, 181, 198, 447, 453 data collection 470–71 data manipulation 75 data sets 386–7, 470, 474 death rate 279–80, 282, 287 De Costa, Peter I. 259 de Renzio, Paolo 152 decentralized fiscal system 110–11, 115 Decision of the State Council on the Pay Reform 42 Deibert, Ron 175 democratization 111, 212, 455–6, 463, 466 Deng Xiaoping 29, 32, 61 departmental budgets 155, 158–60 dependent variables 336, 340, 353–5, 414–15, 417, 429, 432 Desheng Xue 409, 425–6 design science 132 developing countries 13, 52, 132, 146, 207, 222–3, 258, 448 development zones 228, 293 digital age 169–204 social media in 169–204 digital communication 177, 180–81, 195, 200–202, 204 digital governance 122–32 digital government 122, 127, 131 Dingchuan Qiu 399 directive issuance 194 dirty work 382, 400 disaster management 456–7 discloser 156, 157–60 discretionary power 48, 325–6, 332, 335, 344, 397 dispersed benefits 12, 154, 157, 160, 163 dissertation bibliographic information 446 dissertation quality analysis 439–40 causality 440 importance 440 innovativeness 440 research question 439 theory relevance 440 validity 439–40

Index  483 dissertations 8, 17, 438, 441–3, 445, 448–9 issues and problems 446–8 research 437–50 dissertations, empirical evaluation 441–4 causality 443 importance 444 innovativeness 444 research question 441–2 theory relevance 443 validity 442–3 distributable income per capita 63 doctoral education 9, 437 domestic social media companies 178 donation 15, 362–4, 366–70 Downs, Anthony 115 Eckersley, Peter 153 economic bloom 99 economic growth 62, 65, 69–71, 74, 96–115, 235, 238, 292, 295, 299–300, 347–50, 411 economic liberalization 224 economic performance 33, 65, 106, 110 economic reform 13, 33, 228, 233, 287, 439 economic tasks 106 economic urbanization 300 economics of language 13, 257, 260–61, 268–9 educational credentials 29–30 effectiveness 59–77 e-government development index (EGDI) 124 e-information 123–4, 126 elderly care 279, 282, 287–8, 305 Elderly Day Care Centers (EDCCs) 308, 310–12, 314–15 Elderly Dining Service Centers (EDSCs) 308, 315 Elderly Home Care Agencies (EHCAs) 308, 310–12, 315 elderly service management 311 elderly service networks 14, 305–20 policy context 308 research design and methods 309–10 elderly services 305, 308, 310, 317 electronic government (e-government) 11, 122–32, 440, 444, 454, 456–7 adoption 11, 126, 129–30 applications 123, 125–7, 129 assessment 128–9 consequences of 130–31 contextual factors affecting 124–6 development 11, 123–9, 131–2 e-information, e-service, and e-participation 123–4 evolution of 122–3, 126–7 features 129–30, 132 future studies of 131–2 implementation 11

modalities 126 operations 131–2 projects 127, 131 research 126–8, 131 state of the art of 128 studies 11, 122, 132 theoretical debates on 126–7 understanding of 129–30 elites 69, 262–3, 269 discourse 13, 256, 261–2, 269–70 empirical studies 213–14, 260, 335, 458, 469 enforcement 11, 139–40, 144–8, 400 of regulation 145, 426, 455 English-Centered Foreign Language Education Policy (1978‒2019) 266–8 entrepreneurship 7, 91 bureaucratic entrepreneurship 104–5 environmental bills 347, 353–4 environmental degradation 348–9, 353–4 environmental establishment 351–2, 357 environmental information 213 environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) 348–9, 357 environmental policies 350, 357, 454, 456 environmental protection 15, 18, 62–3, 72–3, 102, 106, 111, 295–6, 299, 347, 349–51, 354–5, 357 environmental regulation 138, 350 e-participation 123–4, 126 e-participation index (EPART) 124 e-service 123–4, 126 ethnic classification 242–4, 247, 251 ethnic groups 241–4, 246, 250–52, 396 ethnicity 242–3, 250–51 ethnic minorities 241–2, 244–9, 251–2, 427, 429, 431, 433 ethnic minorities policies (EMP) 13, 241–52 defined 241 implications 252 Etzioni, Amitai 152, 161 evaluation systems 10, 59–60, 62, 65, 68–9, 73, 76 excessive borrowing 105–6 exploratory studies 457 external stakeholders 123, 130–31, 307 extra-budgetary revenues 11, 102, 105, 109, 113–14, 230–31, 233, 236 families 71, 203, 263, 278–9, 282, 287–8, 363–6, 370–71, 397–8, 428 familist model 368–9 family planning 63–4, 242, 246–7, 278–86, 411 family planning policies 14, 278–88 impacts on Chinese families 287–8 changing family structure 287–8 changing family values 288

484  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China family planning stage 281–2 family values 367–9 Feintuck, Mike 176 Feng 110 Ferguson, Eamonn 369 Ferry, Laurence 153 fertility changes 14, 278–88 factors contributing to 284–8 fieldwork 10, 309, 314, 381, 385, 387, 400, 409, 412, 424, 427 fighting corruption 81–4 Figueroa, Maria J. 296 filial piety 288, 367–8 financial capacity 56 Firewall 175 fiscal accountability 12, 153, 157, 162–3 fiscal budgetary deficits 229 fiscal dependence 338–9, 343 fiscal disclosure 157–60, 163 fiscal factors 153 fiscal federalism 115 fiscal information 151–64 disclosure 158–61, 163 fiscal misconduct 158, 162–3 fiscal pressure 100, 104 fiscal self-sufficiency 108 fiscal (budgetary) system 96 fiscal transparency 12, 151–65 concentrated costs, disclosers 157–60 defined 151 development of 12, 151–65 dispersed benefits, users 160–62 factors affecting 156–62 impact of 162–3 literature review on 151–4 policies 156, 159–60, 163 progress of 12, 151, 154 reforms 151–2, 156–7 flexibility 65 Flock, Ryanne 409, 426 “FOI 2.0” model 213 food 41, 62–3, 141, 143, 146–7, 237, 365 food safety regulation 141, 146 Food Safety Regulatory Regime 141–5 foreign language courses 263–5 foreign language education 13, 256–9, 261, 263, 265–70 foreign language education policies 13, 256–70 adjustments of 264–5 Chinese literature on 260 contextual approach 260–61 economics of language 257–8 English-Centered Foreign Language Education Policy (1978‒2019) 266–8 English literature on 257–60

grassroots politics on 259 interruption of 265–6 language ecology 259 Russian-Centered Foreign Language Education Policy (1949‒1955) 263–4 Seven-Year Plan Outline for 265 world system approach 259–60 foreign languages 13, 256, 258–9, 263–9 formal rules 172–4 Fountain, Jane E. 127 Freedom of Information Act 2000 153 Freedom of Information (FOI) laws 206–7, 212–16, 411–12 existing studies on 211–16 impacts, accountability 215–16 incompatibility rationale 216 innovation, diffusion 212–13 responsiveness, implementation 213–14 frontline work 408–21 control variables 415–16 dependent variable 414–15 independent variables 415 frontline workers 378–82, 384, 387, 408, 411–14, 416, 419–21 Fujian 23, 26, 28, 36, 72, 245, 396 fundamental state policy 278, 283–4 funding pattern 459–60 Fung, Archon 156 Fyfe, James 383, 384 Gansu Province 69 Gao, Jie 452–4, 458 Gargan, John J. 466 Garrow, Eve 410 Gazzola, Michele 258–9 GDP growth 106, 145, 349 gender 75, 386, 410, 414–17, 419–20, 428–9, 432, 444 Gengzhi Huang 409, 425, 426 gestation period 138 Gilley, Bruce 351 Global Age Watch Index 318 global environmentalism 348 global regulation 136, 146 good appraisal 415–16 Goodman, David S.G. 38 governance 6–7, 14–15, 17–18, 215–17, 295–6, 392, 400, 454–6, 463, 470–72, 475 for economic growth 96–118 reform 115–16 governance-by-performance reforms 74 governing system 111, 115–16 government affairs 85, 187, 207, 211

Index  485 agencies 66, 70, 122–3, 125–7, 131–2, 151, 155–6, 160, 164, 211, 380–81 bodies 139, 143, 226 capacity 15, 347–57 capacity-building 10–13 debts 153, 155 decisions 256, 269, 349 effectiveness 74 efficiency 10, 41 employees 52–3, 81 employment 236, 339 expenditure 70–71, 352, 396 funding 311–12, 317 information 152, 154, 158, 207, 211–13, 217 information disclosure 123, 206, 211, 217 integrity 10, 81 operations 447, 473 performance 10, 41, 59, 64, 131 performance evaluation 66, 68, 70, 73 performance management systems 71 performance measurement 60, 66 policies 13, 15, 17, 181, 192, 258, 311–12, 348, 350–51, 470, 473 policy goals 14, 307 pollution control policy 347 regulations 192, 312, 316 resources 306, 316 service contracts 305, 317 transparency 123, 129, 154 vehicle management, reforming 87–8 websites 123, 125–6 government-funded service networks 307 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) 64 government’s attitudes toward fiscal transparency 152 Graddy, Elizabeth A. 307 Great Firewall 178 Great Leap Forward 243, 250 Grimmelikhuijsen, Stephan 153 Grin, François 257, 258 gross regional product 33–4 group communication 197, 202 Grusky, Oscar 410 Guangdong Province 3, 10, 22–6, 28, 32, 37, 68–71, 82–3, 85–90, 211, 223, 386–7, 396, 462 Guangxi 27, 72, 250 Guangzhen Wu 384, 385 Guangzhou 71, 214 Guangzhou Municipal Government 85, 88–9 Guizhou 23, 31–2 Gunningham, Neil 144 Guobin Yang 176 Haiyan Xiao 7–9

Han, Yawen 259 Hanser, Amy 380, 385, 409, 425 Hanyu Xiao 455 Hao Xu 383, 386 Harrell, Stevan 246 Harris, Peter 3 Haugen, Einar 259 He, Baogang 246 He, Siying 402 He Xian 51 Headline Today 195, 196 Hebei 24, 36, 75 Henan Province 98 Henderson, Vernon 300 hierarchical inequality 52, 56 higher education 29, 108, 251, 263, 265–6, 446, 469, 476 higher-level authorities 50, 62, 97, 99, 104, 108–9, 113 higher-level governments 96, 98–9, 105, 107–9, 112, 222 Hildebrandt, Timothy 349 Hill, Michael 410 Hironaka, Ann 350, 354 Ho, Samuel P.S. 334 home-based elderly care centers (HECC) 308–10, 312 home provinces 32 Hong Kong 2, 4–5, 7, 15, 17, 23, 26, 28, 90–91, 223–5, 362–72, 452–64 Hongtao Yi 350 Hongyi Lai 245 honorary motivational measures 363–4 Hood, Christopher 140, 144, 152 Horsley, Jamie 214 household registration policies 291–2 household registration system 294, 296, 299–300 Hsueh, Roselyn 147 Hu Angang 252 Hu Chunhua 36 Hu Jintao 36 Hupe, Peter 410, 419, 420 Hu–Wen administration 62 illegal land use 14–15, 325–9, 331–44 illegal land use areas 15, 326, 335–6, 340–43 immediate family members 367–70, 372 implementation mode 291–302 incentive distortions 96–118 incentives 85–6, 89, 99, 101, 104–5, 113, 299–300, 306, 332, 363, 370 Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) 90–91 independent variables 307, 353–4, 415 in-depth interviews 97, 215, 309, 386–7

486  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China indicators 60, 62–4, 67, 71–2, 294–6, 332, 353, 411 industrial improvement projects 114 industrial land 328–9 industry rules 181–6, 188, 192, 194, 200 inequality 246, 382 informal rules 157–8, 172–4 information access 170, 198, 202, 204 information and communication technology (ICTs) 122, 125, 127, 129–31 information asymmetry 84, 142, 162, 344 information channels 12, 169–70 information control 177–8, 180–81, 198, 200–202, 211 information delivery 170, 179, 187–9 information disclosure 155 information distribution 171, 177–80, 187, 189–90, 193–4, 197, 199, 201 information exchange 122, 171, 173, 204 information filtering system 202–3 information-gathering 142–6 behavior-modification 144–5 Food Safety Regulatory Regime 142–4 problems relating to enforcement 145–6 information governance 216 information laws 12–13, 206–7, 211–13, 215 freedom of 12–13, 206–7, 211–13, 215 information management 472 information overload 84, 142 information science 128 information senders 195 information service providers 173, 189, 191, 194, 196–7 information services 175, 180–83, 186–90, 192, 200 Inner Mongolia 34 Inner Mongolian Autonomous Regional Government 23–4 innovation 70, 72, 127, 130, 206, 211–12, 305–6, 309–10, 312, 315–16, 472 structure and service 310–16 innovativeness 17, 317, 440–41, 444–5, 449 institutional analysis 16, 408–10, 419 institutional change 127, 130, 171–4, 200–201, 223 institutional change theory 171–2 Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework 131 institutional reforms 116 integrity 67 integrity management 11, 53, 81–94 integrity pension fund 89–90 integrity performance 81, 85 interest group theory 138 intergovernmental fiscal revenue-sharing contracts 99 intergovernmental fiscal system 98 intergovernmental transfers 106, 114

inter-jurisdictional competition 98 international models 362–72 International Monetary Fund 152 international nongovernmental organization 151 international scholars 60, 128 international standards 8, 19, 142, 146–8 internationalization 5–6, 17, 148, 258, 439, 446, 448 of regulation 136, 146–7 Internet 122–3, 125, 130, 170–79, 181–2, 185–7, 189–90, 192, 196–8, 200, 203 digital communication 195–8 Internet Information Service Management 198–9 policy and regulation implementation 194–5 rules and regulations, changes 191–4 and social media 169, 173, 177, 180–82, 189–92, 194–204 users 170–71, 176–7, 179–80 Internet and information services 169, 173, 175, 180–83, 186–204 Internet information service providers 190, 200–202 Internet news 187 Internet News Information Service Providers 188–9, 193 Internet News Information Services 175, 186, 188, 192–6, 201 Internet service providers 189–91, 196, 201 internet use policy research digital communication, expected order 177–9 issues and control 176–7 regulating and media content 174–5 investments 62–3, 99, 101, 103–4, 114, 222, 228, 230, 234, 349, 352 J Town 106, 107, 117 Jernudd, Bjorn 257 Jewell, Christopher 410 JFK 312–13 Jian Chen 350 Jiang, Anli 382, 385, 386, 400, 401 Jiangnan Zhu 471 Jianhua Wang 145 Jianhua Xu 382, 385, 386, 397, 399–401 Jianhua Yin 350 Jiannan Wu 76 Jie Chen 299–300 Jing Wu 352 Jingwei He 4 JLL 310–13 JMJ 312 Johnson, David 259 Johnson, Eric 259 Jun Liu 409 Junfeng Zhang 347

Index  487 justice system 427–8 Kahn, Matthew E. 352 Kang Youwei 3 Kaufman, Alison Adcock 262 Kenis, Patrick 307, 317 Kezar, Adrianna 476 Kiewiet, D. Roderick 83 Kim, Min-Hyu 3–5, 378, 471 Ko, Kilkon 335 Kostka, Genia 65 Kuangming Daily 161 Kubota, Ryuko 258 Kwang-Hoon Lee 467 Laidler, Karen Joe 385 Lan-Cui Liu 350 land 13, 222–6, 228–33, 236–7, 291–4, 296, 298, 325–36, 339, 343–4, 400 administration bureau 231 conveyance 226, 228–9, 232, 335, 338 finance 222–38, 343 funds 231–3 policy 222 price 228, 235, 333 reform system 334 reforms 222, 237, 327 requisition 230 reserve centers 231, 237 resources 72, 231, 292, 333, 338 sales 222, 236, 325 system evolution 223–4 transactions 13, 225, 228, 325, 329–31, 338 transfer mechanisms 292 urbanization 300–301 Land Administration Law 228, 230 land administration organs 330, 333 land administration policy 325–45 data and model 336–40 control variables 338–40 dependent variables 336–8 explanatory variable 338 model specification 340 development of 326–30 land use rights separation 326–7 market-led transactions 327–30 theoretical framework and hypothesis 332–6 land allocations 223, 325, 327, 331, 333, 335, 338, 344 land conversion 232, 236, 325 land conveyance cases 228–31 land conveyance fees 225, 227–33, 236, 238, 335 allocation 229–30 budgetary control of 232–3 land evaluation agency 333

land finance 222–38 contributions and risks of 233–5 evolution of 223–4 unsustainable nature and volatility of 236–7 land fund 232–3 land leasing fees 338–9 land-lost villagers 226, 229–30, 232, 236–7 land management system 223 land market 223, 226, 228, 230–33, 236–7, 292, 325, 327, 329, 331, 334 developments 228–9, 335, 343 structure of 226 land ownership requisition fee 227 land-related revenues 325, 338–9, 341 land use 300–301 reforms 222–38 land use rights (LURs) 325 conveyance of 223–8 system 13, 233–5 transfer, sub-lease and mortgage 228 land use rights system (LURS) 223 first stage of 224–6 market-oriented land conveyance 231–2 nationwide implementation of 225–6 pilot reform of 224–5 second stage of 226–8 in Shenzhen and Shanghai 224–5 third stage of 231–2 land users 223, 225, 227, 333, 335, 343 Landcase 336, 340–42 LandDep 339, 341–2 language 13, 203, 242, 256–61, 267–9, 468 ecology 13, 257, 259–61, 268–9 education 248, 252, 256, 258 policy 256–7, 259–60 Lanzhou Center 70 large cities 291–4, 296, 299–300 later-family planning stage 282–4 selective two-child policy (phase 1) 282 selective two-child policy (phase 2) 283–4 universal two-child policy 284 Lautso, Kari 295 lead organization (LO) network 307 lead organization structure 310–13 leadership see local leaders Lee, Maggy 385 legal abidance 408 legal documents 181, 201 qualitative analysis of 188–9 quantitative analysis of 186–8 legal leniency 17, 424–8, 432–3 legislature 152, 163, 281 legitimation 393–5 Leibold, James 241 leniency 424–33

488  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China in administrative justice 426–8 less-developed regions 98, 108–9 Levi-Faur, David 137 Li, Minglin 261 Li Wei 24 Li Weihan 244 Li Xi 32 Liang Qichao 3 liberal model 363, 365, 369 Likert scale 414–16 Lin, George C.S. 334 Lin, Jessica Yu-Wen 469 Lipsky, Michael 378, 379, 414 Liu Wei 24 Liu Zhihua 334 living unrelated donors (LUDs) 364–5 Liyin Shen 295 Lo, Carlos Wing-Hung 380, 383 local anti-corruption initiatives 91–3 local civil servants 48, 54–6 local evaluation models 59–60, 72 local government leaders 333, 352, 383 local government opinion polls 473–5 local integrity management 84–6 local leaders county leaders 27–9 defining 22 future studies, selection 39 meritocracy 33–5 personal connections, selecting 35–8 prefectural leaders 25–7 provincial leaders 22–5 research methods 38 selecting, rules and norms 29–33 avoidance 32 educational credentials 29–30 political loyalty 29 retirement 32–3 transfers 31–2 work experiences 30–31 selection 22–39 theoretical debates 33–5 theoretical gaps and practical implications 38 local leadership 38–9 local models, mushrooming 71–4 logic of collective action 138 Losang Jamcan 23 Lou, Jiwei 116 Lu, Lucia 7–8 Luo Yaping 334 Ma, Jun 51, 152 Macau 2, 4, 7, 17, 452–64 macro policy 241–2, 244–5, 247, 252 Madame Bu Xiaolin 23

Madame Shen Yiqin 23 mainstream media 169–70, 176, 195 Makin, David A. 384 Mao, Luming 268 Mao Zedong 29, 32 Maoze Zhang 249 marketization 136, 287, 330, 332 market-led transaction (MLT) approach 14–15, 325–35, 338, 341–4 adoption 15, 326, 329–31, 335–6, 338, 340, 343 effectiveness of 326, 334–5, 343–4 methods 328–30, 334 trend and variation of 330–32 market-preserving federalism 11, 98–101, 110–12, 114, 115 market-preserving fiscal federalism 116 market regulation 67, 70 mass media 334, 426 May, Peter 415 May, Stephen 256, 261 Mayang County 164 Maynard-Moody, Steven 380–84 McConville, Mike 408 McCubbins, Mathew 83 McCurdy, Howard 439, 440, 445 media 12, 70–71, 86, 125, 157, 159–61, 163, 169–85, 187–204, 247, 251–2, 334–5, 351–2, 386, 397, 400–401, 409, 425–6 attention 86, 161, 225, 247, 351, 409 content 174, 176–7, 179, 190, 198, 201 coverage 335, 409 function 201 landscape 12, 169, 171–2 outlets 187, 193 platforms 180, 191 policies 12, 169, 180 and public opinion 181, 184 reports 83, 379, 386, 400, 426 technology 12, 169, 174, 177, 180, 198 media landscape 170 changing 12, 169–70, 176–7, 179–82, 188, 192, 199 Chinese context, theory application 172–4 institutional change theory 171–2 research questions 179–81 technology advances 170–85 medium-sized cities 264, 292–4, 297–300 megacities 296, 299–300 Mei, Ciqi 66 Meier, Kenneth J. 101 meritocracy 22–39 Michael, Florianna L. 296 microblogs 171, 176, 178, 187, 190–93, 195–9, 202 micromanagement 7

Index  489 Mingus, Matthew 7 Mingxig Chen 296, 299 Mingyue Wen 6–9 Mingzheng Zheng 350 Minister of Finance (MOF) 158 Ministry of Education (MOE) 263–9, 476 Ministry of Health (MOH) 157–8, 160 Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) 51, 53 Ministry of Land and Resources 229, 236, 291–2, 325–6, 328, 330–31, 336 minority groups 243, 247, 250–51 Mixed Models analyses 354 MLTAdopt 338, 340, 342 Mo County 98, 102–4, 106, 109, 114 mobile media 171, 173, 176, 192 monetary incentives 364–6 Montinola, Gabriella 110–11, 113, 115 Morton, Tabitha 101 Mosaic, web browser 188 motivational measures 362–72 multimedia 125–6 multivariate regression analyses 420 municipalities 61, 64–5, 67–8, 70–71, 142, 211, 224, 228, 282 Musheno, Michael 383, 386 Nam, Taewoo 215 Nanjing 68, 69 NAO structure 313–16 National Audit Office 105 National Development Council (NDC) 470–73, 475 National Party Congress 35 nationalism 178, 393, 456, 463 Naughton, Barry 101 Nesbit, Rebecca 475 Ness, David 295 network 14, 178, 181, 183, 186, 188, 190, 192, 306–7, 309–17, 476 network administrative organization (NAO) network 307 networking skills 110 network manager 309 network performance 306 network security 173, 186, 201 network structure 305–20 Neuman, Laura 213 new institutional design modeling 90–91 new media landscape 173–4, 176–7 new media platforms 193, 195 New Public Management (NPM) reform 131 news licenses 193–6 news portals 170, 192, 196 news services 193, 196, 202, 305, 312 newspapers 12, 70, 160–61, 169–70, 187

New-type Urbanization Plan 296 Nielsen, Vibeke Lehmann 419 Ningxia 161 nongovernmental organization (NGOs) 143, 151, 154, 157, 160–61, 306, 349, 460, 462 Noor, Zainura Zainon 296 North, Douglass C. 172 novel coronavirus, 2019 125 O’Brien, Kevin J. 384, 397, 402 O’Carroll, Ronan 369 Olaya, Juanita 335 Olsen, Johan P. 174 Olson, Mancur 138 one-child policy (OCP) 278, 281–3, 286, 288, 398 one-level-down management 50, 100 one-party rule 16, 387, 410–13, 415, 420 one-strike veto rule 106 Ong, Lynette H. 117, 400 online communication 171, 173, 175, 178–80, 187, 194 online media channels 171, 176 online news media 176, 179 online political events 176 online services 175, 181 online social networks 171 Open Budget Index 152 Open Door and Reform Policy 243 open government information (OGI) 12, 206–17 global context of 207 legislation 12, 206–7, 216–17 litigations 217 regulations 12–13, 206–7, 211–12, 214, 216–17 regulations, evolution 207–11 regulations, future studies 216–17 openness in government affairs (OGA) 207, 211 Opinion on Further Promoting the Opening of Administrative Affairs 154 opt-out system 369–71 ordinal variable 415, 429–30 organ donation 15, 362–72 organ donation coordinators (ODCs) 369–72 organizational culture 384–5 organizations 14, 60–61, 67–70, 72–3, 76, 174, 177, 194–5, 202, 306–7, 309–11, 313–14, 316, 392–3, 395 ownership 237, 326–8 Pan, Lin 258, 259 parallel system 54–6 party-state system 60 PA teaching, history 2–4 pay according to work 54 Pearson, Margaret 66

490  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Peltzman, Sam 138 People’s Daily 203 people’s voices 66–7 performance budgeting reform 164 performance contracts 61–4, 106, 110 performance evaluation systems 60, 76, 106 performance indicators 60, 67, 70–72, 102, 411 performance management 5, 60, 71–2, 153, 440, 454, 456, 471 reforms 59 performance measurement 10, 18, 59–60, 67, 74, 76–7 reforms 10, 59–60, 67, 75–6 systems 73–4 personal assets disclosure 86–7 personal connections 22–39 personnel systems 96, 98, 100–101, 113–15 Phillipson, Robert 258, 259 Pillsbury, Michael 262 Piotrowski, Suzanne 214 point scale 106 police 112, 197, 380, 384, 392–403, 408, 424, 426–7 police–citizen ratio 398 police corruption 397 police force 102, 107, 113, 292, 392, 398–400 police outsourcing 400 police patrol 94 police violence 16, 396–7, 424 police work 16, 392–3, 395–6 policies 9–10, 51–3, 137–8, 170–71, 174–6, 180–81, 186–8, 241–2, 245–51, 256, 267–9, 284, 291, 349–52, 379, 382, 394, 425–7, 453, 470–72 evaluation research 18, 475 foundation, ethnic classification 243–4 reforms 299–300 regime 291–302 policing 16, 385, 392, 396–403, 424, 426 capitalism and marketization of 398–400 civilianization 399–400 commodification 398–9 marketization of 398–9 outsourcing 400 problematic 396–7 studies 16, 392–403 political consultative conferences 22–9, 68 political dynamics 13, 256, 261, 270 political expediency 17, 426–7 political loyalty 29 political mobility 33, 38, 45 political science 3–4, 60, 241, 437–8, 442, 444, 447, 453, 462–3, 469 political system 172, 262, 306, 382, 392, 454–7 Pollitt, Christopher 466, 476

pollution 347, 349–50, 352, 354, 357 abatement 351 control 15, 64, 347, 349–54, 357 population 97–8, 243, 278–81, 283, 296–7, 300, 341, 348, 369, 402 density 295, 298–9 policies 278–9, 282, 284 urbanization 300 Portillo, Shannon 380–84, 415 position pay scale 48 position-rank-based pay scale 47 post-Umbrella Movement effect 456 Potter, Pitman B. 147 poverty-relieving compensations 364–6 poverty-relieving fund 366 practitioner-oriented journals 473–5 Pratt, John 383, 386 pre-family planning stage 279–81 prefectural leaders 25–7, 31 preferential policies 104, 114, 242, 245–7, 250–51 priority right 367–9 private enterprises 70, 233, 305, 333 private interest theories 137–8, 147 private resources 315–17 profiles of authors 460–62 property bubble burst risk 235–6 Proposal of Adjusting the Base Pay Scale of Employees in State Organs 53 Provan, Keith 307, 317 provincial capitals 27, 291, 297, 413–14 provincial governments 24, 44–5, 70, 87, 100, 124, 129, 330, 336 provincial leaders 22–5, 31–6, 38, 64–5, 69–70 provincial surpluses 34–5 Provisional Regulations on State Civil Servants 46 Provisional Regulations on the Pay Standard of New Employees of Departments Directly Subordinate to the Party Central 41 public administration discipline 466–7, 470, 475–6 public administration research 5–6, 452–63, 469, 471, 474, 476 public administration studies 452, 454, 457, 459, 463 public interest theory 137 public opinion 199, 201 public–private partnerships (PPPs) 18, 222, 472 public-sector performance 59–77 public sector reforms 6, 455, 457, 463 public sentiment 184, 187, 199 public-service delivery 67 public services 104, 122–4, 130, 151, 164, 306, 327, 380, 466, 469, 471 punishment, severe and swift 424–6

Index  491 Qiang Xiao 176 Qian Wang 350 Qian Zhou 299, 300 Qiao-mei Liang 350 Qin dynasty 2 Qing Wang 335 Qingdao Municipality 67 Qinghua Clique 36 qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) 130 quotation 329, 333 Raadschelders, Jos C.N. 467, 468 rank pay scale 49 rational land regulations 300–301 real estate investment 338, 340 real estate markets 225, 333 Recanatini, Francesca 332 rectification period 228 reeducation camps 396 Reform Plan of Civil Service Pay System 48, 50 reforms 10, 41–6, 48, 50–56, 59–61, 64, 74, 76, 110, 164, 223–4, 237–8, 296–7, 299–300, 384 reviewing, achievements and challenges 74–6 Regional National Autonomy 244–5 regulated parties 138, 140, 144, 146, 148 regulation 136–48, 172 defined 136 internationalization of 146–7 issuance 199–200 private interest theory 138 public interest theory 137 Regulation on Open Government Information (ROGI) 151, 153–5, 158, 160, 163 Regulations on the Paralleling of Positions and Rank Sequences of Civil Servants 54 regulators 136–7, 139–41, 143–6, 148 regulatory regimes 11, 136, 138, 140, 143, 145, 147–8 regulatory regimes 140–42 standard-setting 140–42 regulatory state 136–7, 147 Reitano, Vincent 152 relevance crisis 466–76 religions 242, 247–9, 252, 462 rent-seeking motivation 332 research, PA 4–5, 17–18 Chinese literature 6 English literature 5–6 mainstream PA research questions 7–9 Sinicized big questions 6–7 resource allocation 13, 15, 191, 300, 347, 351–2, 357, 392 responsibility specification 194 responsive regulation 144 retirement 32–3

revenue-driven motivation 331 Riccucci, Norma M. 383, 467, 468 Rio Declaration 213 risk society 137 Robbin, Alice 175 Roberts, Alasdair 153 Rohozinski, Rafal 175 Rongbing Huang 350 Rothstein, Henry 140 Roux, Ruth 258 Rubin, Marilyn 3 rule abidance 408–17, 419–20 hypotheses 411–13 rule deviation 410, 412–13, 415, 420 rural land 223, 226–7, 235, 237 requisition of 226 Russian-Centered Foreign Language Education Policy (1949‒1955) 263–4 Ruttan, Vernon W. 172 Ruying Qi 258, 268 safety insurance 189 Sánchez, Isabel Tejada 258 Sandfort, Jodi 384 Sautman, Barry 244 Schlæger, Jesper 130 Schofer, Evan 350, 354 Scoggins, Suzanne E. 384, 397, 401 Scott, Patrick 383 secret finance 163 Secret Law 159 securitization 16, 392, 395–6, 402 selective law enforcement 397 selective two-child policy 282–3, 286 self-regulation 11, 139, 148 self-regulators 139 seniority allowance 44–5 service agency involvement 311, 313 service contracts 314 service industries 293, 300 service innovation 14, 305–7, 309–17 service networks 306–7 service priorities 315–16 service programs 313–16 service providers 189, 193–4, 197, 200–201, 305–6, 308–11, 313 service users 305–6, 309–12, 314–17 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 125, 197 severity 424–33 in administrative justice 426–8 Shaanxi Province 63–4 Shanghai 22–4, 26–8, 31–2, 36–7, 160–61, 211, 214, 224–5, 235, 237, 245, 305–6, 308–9, 385 Shanghai Gang 36

492  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Shen Yiqin 31, 32 Shenzhen government 85, 224–5 Shepherd, Lee 369 Shidu families 287 short-sightedness 107–8 Shui-Yan Tang 380, 383 Shulian Deng 152 The Sino–Foreign Joint Ventures Enterprises Law 224 Sino–Japanese War 262, 263 Sino–Soviet relations 269 Siqi Zheng 352 Skolnick, Jerome 383–4 Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove 258, 259 small cities 292–4, 296, 299, 413 Smith, Douglas 383 social development 7, 62–3, 65, 73, 281, 294–5 social inequality 403 social media 12, 125, 127, 129, 132, 169–204, 247, 251, 386, 401, 403 activities 200 communication 177, 188, 202 content 190, 201 development 12, 169 in digital age 169–204 distribution 191 platforms 160, 176–7, 179, 188, 197, 401 use 127, 173, 180, 182, 194–5, 200 social mobilization 187, 189–92, 195, 197, 199, 201–3 social movement 187, 190, 201, 454, 456, 463 social networks 171 social organization 310 Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) 5, 453 social unrest 236–7 social workers 16, 305, 308, 378, 380 socialism 190, 243 soft budgetary constraints 111 Southern Metropolis Daily 160 Spanish model 369–72 special credit cards, official spending 89 specific ethnic minority policies 246–50 language education, policy 248 policy in religions 248–50 preferential policies 247 Spiekermann, Klaus 295 State Council of China 173, 175, 181, 186–92, 194, 197, 199–201, 295 state hierarchy 81–94, 100 state of field 2–19 state organ employees 42–3, 51 rank-based pay scale of 43 state-owned land 224, 227, 229, 231, 235, 327, 329 state secrets 154–5, 160–61 Steijn, Bram 415

Stigler, George 138 Straussman, Jeffrey 4 street-level bureaucracy (SLB) 16–17, 378–88, 413, 419–21 data and methods in 385–7 development of research on 379–80 issues in research 381–5 organizational culture and 384–5 status and power, inequality 382 street-level discretion 382–3 stress and difficulties 383–4 theory 378–9, 409 street-level bureaucrats 16, 378–80, 383–4, 410, 413, 433 street-level discretion 16, 379–80, 382–5, 387, 414–15 street-level law enforcement 424–33 leniency and severity 424–33 street-level rule abidance, institutional analysis 409–11 street-level workers 16, 378, 382–4, 415 street-office government 14, 305, 308–10, 313–17 street vendor groups 429–30 street vendors 380, 382, 385–6, 400, 409, 425–33 strict regulations 232, 293, 331 strong-arm policing, Chengguan 409 structural pay system 44, 50 “The Study of Administration” 467 subsidies 46, 48, 50–53, 56, 88, 165, 308, 315 sub-stages 14, 278, 280–82, 285–6 Sui dynasty 2 Sun, Milan Tung-Wen 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 466, 469 supply system 41–3, 50 surveillance 190, 199, 201–2, 403 surveillance cameras 396, 402–3 sustainability 156, 222, 238, 294–5 sustainable development 62, 154, 294–5 sustainable transformation pathways 291–302 sustainable urbanization 14, 294–7, 299–301 concept and indicators of 294–6 evaluation of 296–7 guidelines for 299–300 policy, future pathways 301–2 policy reforms 299–301 risks and externalities in 297–9 Swider, Sarah 385, 409, 426 Taiwan 2, 4–5, 7, 17–18, 23, 26, 28, 461, 466–76 Taiwan Association of Schools of Public Administration and Affairs (TASPAA) 469 Tan, Hongze 347, 350 Tang dynasty 2 target responsibility system (TRS) 59, 60–61, 72, 74 improving 67 key features 62–6

Index  493 types of 61–2 Tatar, Sibel 256 Tavares, Samia 215 tax assignment system 99, 111–12, 115 tax revenues 99, 108–9, 145 tax-sharing contract 108 teaching 17–18 technology enactment framework 127 telecommunications legislation 177 television 12, 169–70, 187, 473–4 “ten-thousand citizens evaluation” system 68–9 theory–practice connection 468–9 third-party evaluations 66–7, 75 third-party organizations 59–60, 67, 69–71, 74 Thomas, Neil 261, 262 Thorburn, Thomas 257 Tianjin 34 Tibet 23 Tiebout, Charles M. 113 Ting Gong 52, 327 “tit-for-tat” game 144 Tong, Caroline Haiyan 4 top-down anti-corruption crusade 84 total fertility rate (TFR) 278, 280, 285, 287 trade barriers 111 traditional media 12, 169–71, 173, 176–7, 180, 187, 192, 195, 197 age of 180, 187 transparency levels, variations 109–10 transparency reform 153, 216 Treisman, Daniel 100, 109 trust 7, 139, 144, 153, 163, 165, 306–7, 311, 317, 364, 370, 440 Tummers, Lars 415 UN E-Government Survey 124 unhappy officers 397–8 unilateralism 178 universities 2–4, 263, 265–7, 437–9, 442, 447, 449, 453, 462, 469, 476 upward accountability 411 urban agglomeration 293–4, 296, 298–300 urbanization 14, 113, 222, 233, 291–302, 338, 340, 343, 348 policy development 292–4 policy objectives and options 291–2 urban land 223–4, 226–7, 235, 293, 298, 325, 327 urban land markets 226–7, 335 urban sustainability 294–6, 301 U.S.–China trade friction 178, 196 user public account 193 USSR model 242–4, 246, 250 changes and challenges, reform eras 250–52 Vadlamannati, Krishna Chaitanya 215

value-based integrity system 81 Van Zyl, Albert 152 variables 429–30 vendors 385–7 veto power 62, 64, 66 virtual private networks (VPN) 203 Visher, Christy 383 Volunteer Observers 154, 157–8, 160–61 W County 105, 107, 109, 110 Walker, Richard M. 5, 7–8, 454 Wang, Lefu 3 Wang Min 33 Wang, Qiushi and Niu, Meili 131 wastewater discharge 347, 351, 353–6 wastewater treatment 15, 347–57 and citizen activism 351–2 and government capacity 352 water pollution 15, 347, 350–51, 355, 357 control 348, 350, 357 Web 2.0 170, 173 WeChat 126, 132, 171, 179, 184, 187–8, 192–3, 195–7, 199, 202–3, 401, 403 Wegener, Michael 295 Wehner, Joachim 152 Wei Liu 3–4, 9 Wei Wu 3 Wei Zhang 5 Weibing Xiao 213, 214 Weibo 187, 197, 198 Weifang Tang 75 Weijie Wang 383, 386 Weingast, Barry R. 98–101, 110–11, 113–15 Weiss, Carol H. 468 Welch, Eric 152 Wen, Bo 383 Wen Jiabao 71 Wenjie Yu 247 Wenxuan Yu 3, 153 Wenzhao Li 3, 4, 9 White, Jay 439, 444, 449 Wickström, Bengt-Arne 258, 259 Wilson, Graham 138 Wilson, Woodrow 467 Winter, Søren C. 415 Wong, Wilson 455 word cloud analysis academic community 471–2 local government opinion polls 474 practicing community 472–4 work experiences 30–31 World Bank 74, 295 world society 348–9 World Trade Organization (WTO) 147, 211, 213 World Wide Web 170–71, 173, 188

494  Handbook of public policy and public administration in China Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) 74 Worthy, Ben 153 Wu, Alfred M. 52 Xi Jinping 29, 36, 53, 55, 81 Xia Shuzhang 3 Xiaogang Deng 328 Xiaojun Yan 401 Xiaoli Lu 383, 386 Xiaoling Zhang 295 Xiaowei Zang 380, 382, 383, 386 Xiaoying Qi 258, 268 Xiaoyu Li 175 Xin-Rui Wang 296 Xu Dazhe 32 Xue, Lan 3 Xue Manzi 198 Xun Wu 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 Yan Yan 409 Yanbing Han 152 Yang, Guobin 130 Yang, Lihua 3, 7 Yangang Xing 295 Yanhua Deng 402 Yanling He 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 Yaqiong Cui 259

Yijia Jing 8 Ying-ho Kwong 455 Yingyi Qian 110, 111, 113, 115 Yongfei Zhao 4 Yonghong Zhang 402 Yongnian Zheng 130 Yu, Chilik 469 Yuan Liu 350 Yue Min 268 Yujin Choi 454 Yuqian Yang 76 Yuzhe Wu 295 zero Beijing petitions 106 Zhao Ziyang 38 Zhejiang Province 27–8, 31–2, 36–7, 69, 73, 97, 131, 237, 371 Zheng Wang 262 Zhigang Chen 335 Zhihang Xu 6, 8, 9 Zhong County 38 Zhongshan 71 Zhou Enlai 244 Zhou, Kai 401 Zhou, Zhiren 59, 60 Zhu Jing 7 Zhuhai 68