Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs: Planning, Governance and Challenge (Springer Geography) 9811516596, 9789811516597

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Springer Geography

Mingrui Shen

Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs Planning, Governance and Challenge

Springer Geography Advisory Editors Mitja Brilly, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia Richard A. Davis, Department of Geology, School of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA Nancy Hoalst-Pullen, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA Michael Leitner, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA Mark W. Patterson, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA Márton Veress, Department of Physical Geography, University of West Hungary, Szombathely, Hungary

The Springer Geography series seeks to publish a broad portfolio of scientific books, aiming at researchers, students, and everyone interested in geographical research. The series includes peer-reviewed monographs, edited volumes, textbooks, and conference proceedings. It covers the major topics in geography and geographical sciences including, but not limited to; Economic Geography, Landscape and Urban Planning, Urban Geography, Physical Geography and Environmental Geography. Springer Geography—now indexed in Scopus

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10180

Mingrui Shen

Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs Planning, Governance and Challenge

123

Mingrui Shen School of Architecture and Urban Planning Nanjing University Nanjing, China

This book is funded by National Science Foundation of China (51808280) and Ph.D. studentship of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (1155037866). ISSN 2194-315X ISSN 2194-3168 (electronic) Springer Geography ISBN 978-981-15-1659-7 ISBN 978-981-15-1660-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3 Jointly published with Science Press The print edition is not for sale in China. Customers from China please order the print book from: Science Press. © Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publishers, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

In the middle of hot Summer 2019, I received the manuscript from Mingrui by e-mail. The book is originated from his Ph.D. study in The Chinese University of Hong Kong under my supervision. He told me his plan some time ago and the book project reached the stage of publication obviously. This is a significant academic achievement. Congratulations, Mingrui! To many young researchers and faculty members, there is much experience to learn from Mingrui. Firstly, Mingrui is enthusiastic in his research topic of rural revitalization. With rapid urbanization and development in China, great changes are also taking place in rural China. Some rural areas and villages face the challenge of decline, while rural revitalization and building beautiful countryside have become a state policy. Mingrui came to The Chinese University of Hong Kong to study Ph.D. program in fall 2013 and he was expected to work on urbanization in China. Then he indicated his interest to study rural China and his first presentation in the Department was titled “Rural Transformation in Contemporary Sunan: Mechanism, Differentiation and Renaissance”. I supported this new research topic as rural change is closely related to urbanization in China. Looking back, we made the right decision as valuable research results have been produced including three journal papers and this book. Secondly, Mingrui has conducted his research seriously. He spent lots of the time in the research sites to conduct intensive fieldwork including interviews and participative observation from 2013 to 2015. He got ground knowledge of the rural areas which is vital for the scientific analysis of rural revitalization. With increased academic knowledge and good understanding of rural China, Mingrui’s research made smooth progress as shown by refined research topic “State-led Rural Revitalization through Programs” and case studies. By the time of graduation in summer 2016, Mingrui told me that he needs more time to conduct research. This has been achieved during his work in Nanjing University, completing three journal papers and this manuscript. Thus, this book is a result of his Ph.D. research in The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his research in Nanjing University. As a young faculty member, Mingrui has made great efforts to balance his research, university teaching and administrative duty, and family life. I wish universities and v

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Foreword

research foundations can provide more support to young faculty members so that they can engage in teaching and research efficiently and productively. The future of the higher education and universities counts on young researchers and faculty members. This book is based on original research on state-led rural revitalization through programs in China which is an important academic research area with major policy implications. This book attempts to unravel the rural governance changes driven by the state-led programs, evaluate the program implementation, and refine the interpretation of governance theory with empirical materials from three cases from Jiangning district of Nanjing, China. The main finding of the book is that the capacity of rural governance has been enhanced significantly through state-led programs in China. An important policy implication is that the state ought to act as a facilitator in rural revitalization, yet by no means an almighty provider for all public interests. The book will be of great interest to academics, students, and policy-makers who like to understand the latest development in rural China and its implications to urbanization and development. Jianfa Shen Department of Geography and Resource Management Research Centre for Urban and Regional Development The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong

Acknowledgements

This book is derived from my Ph.D. research in The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and following studies in Nanjing University. Since the doctoral period, my research interests focus on China’s rural development and urbanization from a perspective of urban–rural relationship. This book is my first monograph and I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt acknowledgements to those who gave me lots of supports in my academic career. First and foremost, I owe the deepest gratitude to my doctoral supervisor, Prof. Jianfa Shen. Professor Shen is a great teacher for me. He is always glad to see my little achievement, but also keeps a tolerant mind with my mistake and stubbornness. Being the department chairman at the time, Prof. Shen is busy in administrative affairs. To be frank, we do not have such frequent meetings in the Ph.D. research. But each time I need help to re-position my research, I can always get prompt and insightful instructions from him. The supervision is not limited to the formal emails or face-to-face discussions, but also embodies in some unintentional occasions such as conferences, seminars, casual dinners, and even short greetings in the department corridor. “Enthusiastic attitude, efficient working and rigorous scholarship,” are the three keywords senior students mentioned a lot to me. It is hard for me to come up with a more accurate citation, what I could do is to treasure and practice the virtues in my life. The second acknowledgement should be sent to the University and Department. “To combine tradition with modernity, and to bring together China and the West,” the university mission is what really I appreciate as the soul of CUHK. It is just this unique philosophy of schooling that did attract me when I choose my doctoral institute, do inspire me when I conduct research in the bilingual university, and will direct me in the future academic career. The Department of Geography and Resource Management (GRM) is a great academic hub for me. Special thanks go to the faculty members in human geography concentration of the department, including Prof. Mee Kam Ng, Prof. Jiang Xu, and Prof. Ying He for their constructive comments and suggestions in the development of the research. My appreciation also goes to other faculty members in GRM, especially Prof. Yongqin

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Acknowledgements

Chen, Prof. Bo Huang, Prof. Yuan Xu, and Dr. Yefang Huang. They often share their great knowledge, experience, and wisdom with us students, either in teaching, research, or daily life. GRM is also a cozy family for me. The home-like atmosphere here made my life in Hong Kong enjoyable. I should send the appreciation to my GRM friends, including Ms. Lijie Lin, Ms. Jue Wang, Ms. Ting Jin, Ms. Xiaoman Liu, Ms. Mengmeng Zhang, Mr. Dong Hua, Mr. Jian Pan, Mr. Yuanzheng Cui, Mr. Jixuan Cai, Mr. Yulun Zhou, Mr. Ying Xu, and many others. Your sunny attitudes about research and life often enlighten my low times. The third cohort of appreciations goes to other people who helped me in every stage of this research. The professors include Prof. John Logan, Prof. Yuan Ren, Prof. Xiaolin Zhang, Prof. Hualou Long, Prof. Jingxiang Zhang, Prof. Xiaolong Luo, Prof. Zhendong Luo, and Prof. Tao Yu. Special gratitude goes to Prof. Jingxiang Zhang from Nanjing University, who helped me identify my research significance both in Western and Chinese contexts in the proposal stage, as well as arranged many interviews during the fieldwork. I also want to thank my scholarly buddies including Dr. Ye Liu, Dr. Xiaofan Luan, Dr. Lei Wang, and Dr. Hao Chen. From a peer but senior perspective, they often provided me with valuable comments. Some of the materials have been published in Urban Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, Land Use Policy, I would like to thank the publishers for granting permission to reproduce the journal articles in this book. Finally, I am grateful to my families for their love, support, and understanding. I dedicate this book my wife, Chen and our baby, Heyi. The birth of Heyi in 2018 brings us a completely new life, joyful, and colorful.

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Research Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Rural Governance and State-Led Programs as Research Focuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Research Objectives and Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Research Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Outline of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Review of Governance Theory and Rural Programs . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Understanding Rural Governance from A Comparative Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 China’s Zhili in Dispute: Therapy, Ruling, or Governance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Rural Governance in the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.3 International Experience About Program-Driven Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.4 Legacy of Rural Governance in China . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Rise of Rural Programs in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Rural Issues Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Fiscal Background in the Formation of Rural Programs 2.2.3 Booming State-Led Programs in the Countryside . . . . . 2.2.4 Programs and Foundations in History . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.5 Program System Embedding Bureaucracy and Market . 2.3 Rural Governance Changes Driven by State-Led Programs in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Intergovernmental Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Performance of State-Dominated Programs . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Effects on Local Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs in Jiangning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Local Response to Policy Directives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Intergovernmental and Social Mobilization . . . . 4.2.2 Reconstructing the State Apparatus . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Rural Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 State Rescaling Through Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Rhetorical Legitimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Path-Dependent Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Legitimizing Land Expropriation . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Conceptual Framework and Methodology . . . . . 3.1 Conceptual Framework and Research Process 3.2 Research Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Jiangning District . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Tangjiajia Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Xinhui Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Data Sources and Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Commodification of Tangjiajia and Sustainable Governance in Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Rural Commodification, Rural Commons, and the State Role . 5.2.1 Rural Commodification and Entrepreneurialism . . . . . . 5.2.2 Interventional State and Rural Public Goods Provision . 5.3 State-Led Partnership Attracting the Community and Market . 5.3.1 Tangjiajia—Grassroots Hot Spring in Every Family . . . 5.3.2 Community Entrepreneurship and Market Response . . . 5.3.3 Home Consensus of the Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Sustainable Provision of Public Goods in Question . . . . . . . . . 5.4.1 Paradox and Provisionality in Rural Governance . . . . . 5.4.2 Introducing Private Management—PPP Model in the Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.3 Sustainability in Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 Grassroots Participation in Xinhui and Challenges of Farming Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Cooperatives, Family Farms, and Rural Governance . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Cooperatives and Their Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Land Tenure Reform and Family Farms . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.3 An Ideal Governance Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Xinbo Family Farm and Xingen Cooperative . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Xinbo Family Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Xingen Cooperative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Grassroots Participation Driven by State-Led Programs . . . . . 6.4.1 The State-Led Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 Farmers’ Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Less-Than-Ideal Governance in the Two-Tier Model . . . . . . 6.5.1 Social Service by Cooperatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5.2 The Allocation of Profit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Main Research Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Conceptualizing Rural Governance Driven by State-Led Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Policy Implications for Rural Governance . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Limitations and Future Research Agendas . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Appendix A: List of Interviewees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Appendix B: Semi-structured Interview Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Abbreviations

CPC CURD FSC NSCC PPP PRD VER YRD

Communist Party of China Coordinating Urban–Rural Development Farmers’ Specialized Cooperative New Socialist Countryside Construction Public–Private Partnership Pearl River Delta Village Environment Renovation Yangtze River Delta

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3

Fig. 4.4

The central budget for “three rural issues”, 2003–2013. Source Ministry of Finance of China, consecutive years from 2003 to 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relationship between strategy, program, and project. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A conceptual framework for analyzing rural governance changes driven by programs in China. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The research process of main issues in the book. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Location of Nanjing in China. Source Compiled by author . . Urban–rural income ratio among the cities of South Jiangsu. Source Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Statistics, 2013 . . . . . . . Location of three case sites in Nanjing. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tangjiajia and its immediate surroundings. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Location of the Xinbo family farm in Xinhui village. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Process and rationales of local response. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integrating temporary agencies into permanent agencies. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Land use layout of west Jiangning as a village system plan, named Demonstration Area of Beautiful Countryside Plan. Source Shenzhen LAY-OUT Planning Consultants Ltd., 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A timeline for analyzing programs of multi-level governments. Source Compiled from official documents by author . . . . . . .

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Fig. 4.5 Fig. 5.1

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Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4

List of Figures

The simulacra making of Shitang Home. Source Nanjing Broadcasting System, 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The increasing tertiary-sector income of rural Jiangning and its percentage in all sectors of rural economy. Source Jiangning District Bureau of Statistics, 2012–2018. Note The tertiary-sector income of rural Jiangning is an aggregated account comprising sectors of catering, service and retailing in rural economy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Logo of Tangjiajia, symbolizing a new tourist attraction focused on grassroots hot springs. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . Site layout plan of Tangjiajia. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . Ad hoc “program office” for an eco-tourism building in Tangjiajia. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Project designated to bury the cluttered wires and cables underground. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Status quo of a courtyard and a proposed scenario in the plan. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A foot bathing pool in a restaurant, subsidized by the government. Source Photographed by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spatial distribution of the business in Tangjiajia. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map. . . . . . . Offering a family life atmosphere in a hot spring inn. Source Photographed by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A hot spring inn under construction. Source Photographed by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The elderly in the village square, taking a hot spring foot bath for free. Source Photographed by author . . . . . . . . . Service commitments of the party members in community, including social work, family conflicts resolving, tour guide. Source Photographed by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The rights bundle in the tripartite tenure system for farmland in China. Source Compiled from official documents by author . . A theoretical governance structure under the two-tier farming organization. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Crop layout in the Xinbo family farm. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rice paddy in Xinbo family farm. Source Photographed by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Drying yard and storehouses of Xingen cooperative. Source Photographed by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Seasonal employees who were busy with seedling transplanting. Source Photographed by Chen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 A comparison of three pyramid models of rural governance structure. Source Compiled by author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table Table Table Table Table Table

5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Themes of annual No. 1 documents of CPC in the new millennium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Representative rural programs at the central and/or provincial levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The funding sources from multi-level governments in the VER program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Representative rural programs at the local level . . . . . . . . . . . Project library in the Demonstration Area of Beautiful Countryside Plan of west Jiangning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of governmental investments in Tangjiajia . . . . . . . . . . . Statistics of the business in Tangjiajia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A typology of cooperatives in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Statistics of family farms registered officially in Jiangning . . . Incomplete balance sheet of Xinbo family farm in 2014 . . . . Statistics of cooperatives registered officially in Jiangning . . .

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Introduction

The economic might of China’s urban centers has decimated the country’s agrarian communities in recent decades…… Yet not all Chinese are enthused by the country’s seemingly unchecked path toward urbanization…… [There is also] a growing social movement in which urban residents return to fading villages…… [The practitioners] believed that “going back to the land”, or taking control of China’s rapid urbanization, is the next chapter of China’s development. ……. I [the interviewee] think the government, on the one hand, is supportive of this concept of promoting traditional culture, which can be manipulated into building a ‘Chinese Dream’, or identity. On the other hand, the government is very afraid of losing control and stability. The commune project wants more autonomy in how to organize their community, their living space, their lifestyle, which the government doesn’t really want to relax. Sam Sturgis. Inside China’s “Back to the Land” Movement, CityLab, The Atlantic. 18 Dec 2014.

Abstract The recent national strategy of “rural revitalization” clearly demonstrates such central directives on rural issues. The state is regaining its leading role in rural governance by introducing package of state-led programs. To reach the research objectives, four questions are formulated in the study. (1) How does the process of intergovernmental politics evolve on rural program issues? (2) What is the mechanism behind the interplays between the state, private sector, and farmers in rural programs? (3) To what extent is the program-driven governance model a sustainable one? (4) Are there any new theoretical implications for rural revitalization, deriving from the state-led paradigm in China? Keywords Rural program · Rural planning · Rural governance · Rural revitalization · Sustainability

© Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3_1

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1.1 Research Background China is an ancient agrarian country with a huge rural base in terms of both population and territory. The “earth-bounded” society, a concept developed by the celebrated anthropologist Fei et al. (1945), clarifies the extreme significance of rural studies for understanding contemporary China. In parallel with the rampant urbanization, rural China is also experiencing tremendous transformation. The phenomena manifest in aspects of rural–urban migration, rural economy reconstruction, as well as rural governance changes. In the literature on rural China, many scholars pointed out the new governance crisis, especially in government administration of the post-agriculture-tax era. At the township level, the abolishment of agriculture tax resulted in a decline in local revenue which significantly reduced the autonomy of the township government in local service provision (Kennedy 2007; Yep 2004). The town-level governments were squeezed from above—by the policy imperatives of county government, as well as from below—by village resistance against policy compliance. Scholars claimed that a “hollowing-out” process of the state was occurring in the countryside (Li 2007; Smith 2010), and the original tight engagement between cadres and villagers in the tax period was even alienated (Chen 2014). Worse still, farmer participation in the public affairs has also declined to the bottom and the rural society is fragmented. An atomized, dispersed, and disorganized rural society is emerging. This is of great concern to the central government as the stability of the countryside is on its top agenda. The recent national strategy of “rural revitalization” clearly demonstrates such central directives on rural issues. At the Opening Session of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC and hereafter) 19th National Congress on October 18, 2017, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered a report in which he called for implementing a rural revitalization strategy nationwide. Xi highlighted in the conference and reiterated in many other occasions that the rural revitalization strategy is the leading agenda for government work on “three rural issues” (sannong wenti, i.e., issues of agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents). They are fundamental issues related to national interests and so should be top priorities of the Party’s work. He pointed out that China should give priority and improve the mechanism and policy system for urban–rural integrated development, and accelerate rural modernization. Rural revitalization is a long-term process, of which a modern agricultural industrial system, production, and operating system, as well as a sound rural governance system will be established. As an international organization commented, rural revitalization requires a transformative approach that considers all aspects of making rural areas a good place to live and work for present and future generations (International Food Policy Research Institute 2019). Han Changfu, China’s minister of agriculture, depicted the policy vision at a press conference; China will see promising and lucrative agricultural industry, beautiful countryside and well-off farmers. More specifically, farming will become an attractive and demanding profession,

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while rural areas will become beautiful and prosperous, as the country steps up its efforts to revitalize its vast rural regions.1 The state is regaining its leading role in rural governance by introducing package of state-led programs. Those programs have emerged against the background of “modernization of state governance” (Yu 2015) and the fiscal reform between central and local authorities in China (see more in Chap. 2). They have deeply permeated into the socioeconomic operations of rural China (Qu 2012). Some scholars keenly termed the new paradigm as “governing through programs” (Zhou 2012: 34–36). Despite some seminal works, few empirical studies have examined how the state-led programs shape the countryside, and to what extent the new pattern for governing the countryside can contribute to the rural governance theory.

1.2 Rural Governance and State-Led Programs as Research Focuses As Rhodes (1996) and Stoker (1997) clarified as the defining shift from government to governance, “governance” is a wider concept than the former, entailing a redistribution of power both internal and external to the state. The key concerns of governance research rest in the process of networking or partnership of the actors (Marks et al. 1996; Stoker 1998). Facing the political and economic challenges, governance often finds its foci on the relationships and interactions among public, private, and voluntary sectors, while the boundaries between the three become blurred. Rural areas, along with those who live and work in them, have also been deeply affected by the neoliberal tendency. Rural governance in the context is correspondingly defined as new styles of governing the countryside through a range of synergies between the state and other sectors (Goodwin 1998). The state is no longer assumed to have a monopoly in the activities, whereas direct participation of citizens and stakeholders in the countryside is emphasized (Woods 2005). Considering the distinct backdrop and causation of the rural changes in China, I adopt here a neutral but comprehensive definition of rural governance as the meta-concept. Rural governance in this book refers to the relations and interactions within or between the state apparatus, farmers, and entrepreneurs in the countryside, especially those exist in the evolutionary governing structures triggered by rural programs. Other than that, governance theory is also employed as a perspective, or more precisely, an analytical approach to anatomize the booming program phenomena. Rural programs (xiangmu) in the study denote those state-sponsored schemes or initiatives concentrated on rural issues, with an intention to improve the socioeconomic conditions of localities. Specific programs cover nearly all aspects relevant to rural development, such as the party building at grassroots, family planning, and pollution mitigation. I investigate those of geographic concerns. As an explorative 1 See

China steps up rural revitalization, China Daily, March 7, 2018, retrieved from http://www. chinadaily.com.cn/a/201803/07/WS5a9f7c4ca3106e7dcc14028e.html.

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clue, rural program threads the whole research, in particular of the empirical parts. To articulate more clearly, the research foci thus fixes on the rural governance changes driven by programs (RGCDP and hereafter). Another differentiation that needs to be identified is the research preference between different disciplines. Sociologists, political scientists, and some humanists pay more attention to superstructure part of rural governance, such as village election, farmer resistance, and regional culture (O’Brien and Li 2006; Tan and Xin 2007; Xu 1996). Through the lens of rural programs, the evidence in this study mainly derives from the economic base of rural China, that is, the means and relations of production that shape the rural governance changes. Besides, more spatial factor and current livelihood of farmers will be drawn into analysis.

1.3 Research Objectives and Questions It helps to refine research objectives and questions by elucidating key concepts and research background in the above two sections. The rural governance driven by state-led programs, as research focus, can be divided into three dimensions, namely, intergovernmental relation, state–private–farmer partnership, and grassroots participation. A set of interdependent networks is portrayed in rural governance, and each dimension is indispensable to knit the whole picture of the web. In the empirical study, it is hard to grasp one dimension while excluding other two. In short, fourfold objectives are outlined as follows. (a) To establish a conceptual framework for understanding the transformation of rural governance changes driven by rural programs; (b) To reveal the dynamics behind the rise of the state-led programs in countryside; (c) To identify various interest groups in the process and how they are networked with each other; (d) To evaluate the performance of the programs and discuss the sustainability of the program-driven model of governance. To reach the research objectives, four questions are formulated in the study. Correspondingly, appropriate hypothesis or case studies are proposed to address the questions. (a) How does the process of intergovernmental politics evolve on rural program issues? It is hypothesized that the hollowing-out crisis of the rural governance necessitates the enhancement of state role in governing the countryside, and the unique intergovernmental mechanism buttresses the smooth operation of the programs, in particular, of fiscal reform and political mobilization.

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(b) What is the mechanism behind the interplays between the state, private sector, and farmers in rural programs? Two case studies, concentrating on villages of eco-tourism and farming separately, are conducted to examine the underlying mechanism. (c) To what extent is the program-driven governance model a sustainable one? The question is inquired by assessing the program implementation in the two cases, with respect to the public goods provision in the eco-tourism village and farmers’ self-governance in farming activities. (d) Are there any new theoretical implications for rural revitalization, deriving from the state-led paradigm in China? A comparative perspective is needed to address the question. To conceptualize the program paradigm and extract new theoretical implications, I try to keep sensitive of the empirical materials through two streams—classic governance theory generalized from western experience and the historic legacy still retained in rural China.

1.4 Research Significance The significance of the research can be addressed in both domains of academia and practice. Most governance studies in geography elaborate on the urban and regional arena (Luo 2005; Shen 2007; Wang 2014), leaving the rural areas as something of a lacuna. This study will definitely enrich our knowledge about the dynamic transition of the countryside. Second, due to the underdevelopment of civil society in cities, governance studies in China often convey weak public participation in practice and consequently cannot illustrate a whole picture of classic western theories (Gu 2001) (e.g., urban regime theory, growth machine theory). In most empirical studies, the coalition between state and emerging market is the core relation in governance triangle. However, circumstance differs in the rural field, where it is scarcely possible to get things done without farmers’ participation (Zhang 2014). Therefore, the grassroots participation and cooperation triggered by programs in the book will extend the observation range for governance studies. In practice, the implementation of the rural programs in localities also exposed many problems and got wide attention of mass media (Xun and Bao 2007; Zuo 2014). As public policies consuming a large amount of public funds, how to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the programs become an agenda for the policy-makers. This study gives an assessment of relevant programs, as well as diagnoses underlying challenges for sustainable rural development. The findings will be useful for policymakers to decide what should be done to preferably revitalize the countryside, and the policy implications will also inspire them to handle the issues from an alternative angle, not just the top-down one.

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1.5 Outline of the Book The book is structured in seven chapters. After this introduction, Chap. 2 lays the theoretical and analytical foundation for the research. It first reviews the understanding of rural governance from a comparative perspective. The nuances of governance concept between China and the West are distinguished, and the legacy of rural governance in China is also identified. The following section then elaborates on the motivation and fiscal background for the governments to initiate the programs and gives a brief introduction to the core components of the system. Lastly, it turns to a detailed review of the literature relevant to the rural governance changes under state-led programs, which is the research focus of the book. Chapter 3 aims to construct the conceptual framework and methodology that buttress the whole study. Based on the decomposition of rural governance as the key concept, I establish a conceptual framework for analyzing the changing rural governance driven by programs in China. Meanwhile, it details the research area and methods that employed in the study. Chapter 4 turns to analyze state interventions in the rural programs. Seeing through the multi-level government programs touched upon Jiangning, it argues that the program evolution is by no means a top-down process. Local governments have some autonomy by echoing and responding to the initiatives of the central/provincial governments actively. The programs have enabled the state to regain its leading role in the countryside and to restore the rural public administration to some extent. This chapter also serves as an empirical background for the next two cases, offering a comprehensive picture about the program campaign in Jiangning. Chapter 5 uses the case of Tangjiajia, an eco-tourism village in east Jiangning, to articulate the role of the state-led programs toward commodification. This chapter concentrates on the evolving state–private–farmer partnership at different stages in the village, and the sustainability concerning the public goods provision after program boom is discussed adequately. Chapter 6 is the case about the farming programs in Xinhui village of west Jiangning. On the basis of an ideal two-layer farming organization presupposed by programs, this chapter devotes to uncover the grassroots participation and cooperation in reality. Furthermore, it evaluates the effectiveness of the self-governance in grassroots farming, on the condition that the farmers are empowered to devise their own solutions. The study concludes with Chap. 7. This chapter summarizes the main findings of this research and discusses their policy implications for the rural governance and revitalization in contemporary China. In addition, it gives an account of the limitations and future research suggestions on the study.

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References Chen A (2014) How has the abolition of agricultural taxes transformed village governance in China? Evidence from agricultural regions. China Q 219:715–735 Fei HT, Chang TI, Cooper PL, Redfield MP (1945) Earthbound China: A study of rural economy in Yunnan. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Goodwin M (1998) The governance of rural areas: Some emerging research issues and agendas. J Rural Stud 14(1):5–12 Gu C (2001) The urban governance in the developing countries and its implication to China. Urban Plann Rev 25(9):13–20 (in Chinese) Kennedy J (2007) From the tax-for-fee reform to the abolition of agricultural taxes: the impact on township governments in north-west China. China Q 189:43–59 Li LC (2007) Working for the peasants? Strategic interactions and unintended consequences in the Chinese rural tax reform. China J 57:89–106 Luo X (2005) Inter-city cooperation and governance in the Yangtze River Delta Region. Doctor of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Marks G, Scharpf FW, Schmitter PC, Streeck W (1996) Governance in the European Union. Sage, London O’brien KJ, Li L (2006) Rightful Resistance in Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Qu J (2012) The project system: a new form of state governance. Soc Sci China 33(4):28–47 Rhodes RA (1996) The new governance: governing without government. Political Stud 44(4):652– 667 Shen J (2007) Scale, state and the city: urban transformation in post-reform China. Habitat Int 31(3):303–316 Smith G (2010) The hollow state: rural governance in China. China Q 203:601–618 Stoker G (1997) Public-private partnerships and urban governance. In: Pierre J (ed) Partners in urban governance: European and American experience. MacMillan, London, pp 1–21 Stoker G (1998) Governance as theory: five propositions. Int Soc Sci J 50(155):17–28 Tan Q, Xin Q (2007) Village election and governance: do villagers care? J Contemp China 16(53):581–599 The International Food Policy Research Institute. (2019) 2019 Global Food Policy Report, Retrieved July 12, 2018 from https://www.ifpri.org/publication/2019-global-food-policy-report-synopsis Wang L (2014). Spatial planning and governance of five-year planning in China: case studies of the eleventh five-year planning in Jiangsu Province. Doctor of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Woods M (2005) Rural geography: processes, responses and experiences in rural restructuring. Sage, London Xu Y (1996) Villager autonomy in rural China: Institution and Operation. Doctor of Philosophy, Central China Normal University, Wuhan (in Chinese) Xun L, Bao Z (2007) Environmental policies based on government mobilization and their local implementation: a sociological analysis of ecological migration at s banner in Inner Mongolia. Soc Sci China 5:114–128 (in Chinese) Yep R (2004) Can “tax-for-fee” reform reduce rural tension in China? The process, progress and limitations. China Q 177:42–70 Yu K (2015) Essays on the modernization of state governance. Social Sciences Academic Press, Beijing (in Chinese) Zhang H (2014) New trends in the production relation of the agriculture in China. Retrieved May 19, 2016 from Communist Party of China Website: http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/0114/ c40531-24108732.html (in Chinese)

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Zhou F (2012) The problems of fiscal earmarked funds: On “governing the state through programs”. Chinese J Sociol 32(1):1–37 (in Chinese) Zuo M (2014) Rural funds fertile ground for graft. Retrieved October 25, 2014 from South China Morning Post website: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1624041/how-rural-spendingprogrammes-became-growth-area-graft

Chapter 2

Review of Governance Theory and Rural Programs

Abstract Governance in China is a pervasive but disputable concept. From the stances of technocrat, authority, and academic, the concept denotes a complex set of structures and processes. For a better understanding of the rural governance of contemporary China, it urges us to combine the western experience and China’s legacy together. Inspired by the literature review, it is argued that three dimensions should be taken into consideration in the following research: intergovernmental relation, state–private–farmer partnership, and grassroots participation. Keywords Fiscal reform in china · Program system · Historical legacy

2.1 Understanding Rural Governance from A Comparative Perspective As an academic jargon, the theory of governance deeply rooted in the neoliberal soils under Thatcherism (MacLeod and Goodwin 1999). It depicted the situation then of the West that called for an enrollment of non-governmental agents to “create conditions for ordered rule and collective action” (Stoker 1998, p. 17). The concept was shipped to the Global South thereafter, whereas gradually evolved as a standard to evaluate the socioeconomic development in target countries. The most typical example is the three criteria of “good governance” underlined by the notable World Bank report on “Governance and Development” (World Bank 1992). The emphasis on good governance suggested a need-to-be-improved actuality in Global South countries (Harpham and Boateng 1997). The standard encompasses limited state, market economy and a self-regulated civil society (Hirst 2000). Within the system, political transparency and accountability, as well as the rule of law are of great concern in operation (Weiss 2000).

© Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3_2

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2.1.1 China’s Zhili in Dispute: Therapy, Ruling, or Governance? “Governance” is translated as “zhili” in Chinese. Literally, the translation suits the original idea of governance perfectly—“zhi” means a status in order and “li” refers to interior rationales or principles. However, due to the state/empire-dominated political culture, the connotation differs when zhili encounters China. Governance is employed by the practitioners and academics to denote a complex set of structures and processes. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the new or alternative interpretations in China make this already loosely defined term to a more ambiguous extent. A brief differentiation of connotations behind this pervasive rhetoric offers us an interesting angle to observe the governance conditions in China. (a) Zhili as therapy The most technical understanding of governance in China is “zhili as therapy.” This perception holds a pathological view of the target entities. The countryside then is regarded as somewhere in a mess, awaiting to be settled in order. To cure the “diseases” in the countryside, a series of treatments are initiated to improve the conditions there, for example, pollution prevention, river dredging, environment renovation, and even wind-drift sand control (Yu 2016; Zhou and Yu 2014). This kind of understanding pays much attention to the concrete or practical problems, while has nothing to do with the politics amidst stakeholders. (b) Zhili as ruling “Zhili as ruling” is the most pervasive understanding in China, although this interpretation is unspoken and only reflects one dimension of orthodox governance theory. In the official rhetoric, governance now is often manipulated as a synonym of state governing, and it enjoys popular recognition through powerful propaganda. As far as I know, the idea of “zhili as ruling” in academia can be traced back to the debate on the state capacity building during the early 1990s (Wang 1991, 1995). At that time, a risk of over-decentralization for the central government was emerging after a dozen years of reform and opening-up. The central revenue was inadequate which weakened the governability of China (Wang 1991, 1995). The debate had great influence on the policy-making then and directly promoted the central–local fiscal reform in China. The latter resulted in a significant increase of the central extractive proportion on the local finances (see more in Sect. 2.2). What I want to argue here is that, even though the term “governance” was not clearly adopted at that time, the building of the state capacity had already been employed synonymously with zhili—the rationales to keep things in order. The recognition about this western theory was imprinted on the minds of the Chinese and was even deemed as “Chinese characteristic” in propaganda (Yu 2015, p. 5). Afterward, Francis Fukuyama further did some synthesis work. In the renowned best seller “The Origins of Political Order”, he highlighted the state-building as one of the three fundamental pillars for a stable state (Fukuyama 2004, 2011). Fukuyama’s theory is very popular in China.

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Under the new leadership, governance is becoming a buzzword. The bulletin of the 3rd Plenary Session of CPC’s 18th National Congress articulated that the ultimate objective of China’s further reform is to “perfect and develop a socialist system with Chinese characteristics and push forward the modernization of state governance system and governance capacity.”1 Even though the scholars who are close to the authority admitted that “it is universal law to evolve from rule to governance” (Yu 2015, p. 1), and “government should release more space to empower the social organizations” (Yu 2015, p. 22), the actual condition in China does not manifest the full connotation of the western context. The isomorphism of the party-state system endogenously determines that the “the retreat of the government” is just rhetoric, since the party is committed to making the interest groups of governance under control, as many as possible. Recent evidence is that CPC proposed an initiative to enhance the ruling on the social organizations, such as the youth league, women’s federation, and even overseas-educated scholars’ association.2 In a recent worldwide distributed collection of Xi Jinping’s speeches and ideas about “ruling state and dealing with politics” (zhiguo lizheng), the title of the book is officially translated as “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China” (Xi 2014). I think the term “governmentality”, developed by French philosopher Michel Foucault, can appropriately summarize the above twofold understanding of governance in China. Governmentality can be understood as the “art of government” through which citizens are placed into the policies. More specifically, it refers to a bundle of organized practices (such as mentalities or techniques), through which subjects are governed (Foucault et al. 1991). As we discussed above in great detail, the term echoes at least two key points about the governance conditions in China. First, governance means authority; second, governance contains a set of techniques. (c) Zhili as governance It is at the turn of new millennium that the concept of the governance originating from the West was introduced into urban and regional studies in China. In this process, Hong Kong scholars played an intermediary role in situating the Chinese cases through theoretical review of the West. The concept was translated as “guanzhi” in the beginning, while the recent tendency is to be standardized as “zhili”, being in consistent with the political discourse and other social science disciplines (Hu et al. 2013). The necessity of the introduction of governance is associated with the background of the emerging market power and an “expected” civil society around the 2000s. By virtue of housing reform of urban China in 1998, the importance of private sector in urban development had been rising and property rights were being gradually clarified in China. People had the sense as a stakeholder in a city for the first time, rather than an intangible membership within a collective danwei as before. Scholars 1 See the document “Decisions on Several Major Issues in Deepening Reform Comprehensively”, 18th Central Committee of CPC, 2013. 2 See the document “Suggestions on Strengthening and Improving Party’s Works on Social Organization Issues”, 18th Central Committee of CPC 2015.

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were acutely aware that the role of city government was being changed while the solutions to many problems of urban planning, management, and development urged a governance perspective in China (Gu et al. 2003; Shen et al. 2004). During the early fifteen years of the new millennium, a burgeoning literature on China’s urban and regional governance has emerged. At the urban scale, the coalition of local government and the market is articulated as the most salient characteristic in the economy-first society. Western theories, such as growth machine (Zhang 2014a, b), entrepreneurial city (Wu 2003), and urban regime (He and Wu 2005; Zhu 1999), have been borrowed to analyze the complex restructuring in the market economy. At the regional scale, regionalization, regional planning, and intercity cooperation are three major research areas (Luo et al. 2014b). Scholars wrote extensively from the aspects of administrative annexation and reform (Chung 2007; Zhang and Wu 2006), inter-city competition (Shen 2004b), interjurisdictional bargaining on regional infrastructure route (Xu and Yeh 2013), and so on and so forth. Recently, the perspective of rescaling resurges in regional governance studies, with cases of regional planning (Li and Wu 2012), and new administrative reform such as province-leading-county policy (Luo et al. 2014a). In summary, in contrast with the North American and European literature on governance, the most prominent contribution of China’s cases may rest with the furious reconstructing and competition within/between the paralleled and hierarchical levels of governments. The state plays an influential role in explaining the changing governance in transitional China, while the institutionalized mode of civil participation in urban and regional governance is very rare. Even in the mature civil society of Hong Kong, a reclamation case revealed that participation in the plan remained tokenistic, producing minimal fundamental institutional changes (Ng, 2008). Some scholars attributed this situation to the traditional culture in China (Gu 2001; Zhang 2000), not merely to the strict regulation from the authority. To fully understand the complex urban and regional governance in transitional China, it is appealed to incorporate more non-state actors into the analysis (Luo et al. 2014b). The critical question posed by Chan and Hu (2004) in an early work remains, “key issue is not whether there is governance process in China but the difference between Chinese governance and the governance in other countries.” The rural governance study in China may confront similar queries.

2.1.2 Rural Governance in the West The rural places are running alongside the economic, social, and political changes of the urbanized cores, but they have different capacities and face different obstacles. Since late 1990s, a growing number of rural studies also illustrated valuable application potential of governance theory in the West (Little 2001; Marsden and Murdoch 1998; Ward and McNicholas 1998). Confronting the new research agenda of rural governance, Marsden (1998) identified a typology with four spheres of rural development, namely, mass food market, quality food market, agriculturally

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related change, and non-agricultural development. It was critically pointed out that different types of rural places were caught up in different webs of local/non-local supply chains. In new rural governance studies, researchers need to differentiate those network configurations and be sensitive to the sophisticated topography of power (Marsden 1998). Generally speaking, the distribution of power of the western countryside has moved from a paternalist era dominated by rural elites of the early twentieth century to a statist era of the mid-twentieth century, then to a new era of governance at the turn of the twenty-first century (Woods 2005, p. 127). In the relevant literature regarding the new era of rural governance, partnership and participation are two primary concentrations where scholars intensively elaborated on. Based on the practical experience in North American, the two components were also listed as the key principles of rural governance by the practitioners (Stark 2005). As the state authority became redefined, there was much more room for experimentations between the state and different interest groups within civil society (Rhodes 1997; Warner 2001). Partnership thus was supposed to involve a broader range of institutions and individuals in the decision-making and allocative process, and much literature had engaged in the partnership working process (Cloke et al. 2000; Edwards et al. 2001; Jones and Little 2000). However, it was often the case that the rhetoric of partnership was strong in rural policies, while the grounded practices had been less successful. Evidenced by the program of “Rural Challenge” in rural England, Jones and Little (2000) argued that the intention to draw other sectors of the community into the decision-making process while reducing the local government role had proved difficult. The private sector did not have enough incentive and also lacked skills in rural places. The public sector was still loaded with high expectation to take a continued major role in shaping local responses to policy. It was even anticipated that the withdrawal of the state would more likely meet with a vacuum rather than wider participation from other interest groups (Little 2001). Community participation or engagement aimed to enable citizens to more actively participate in structures of governance, by which greater socioeconomic inclusion could be realized (Commins 2004). In the words of Blair (1994), participation gave “individuals opportunities but also required them to accept obligation.” A series of aspirations were designed to be achieved, such as improving the legitimacy and quality of public agencies’ decision-making, building community consensus. and capacity (Barnes et al. 2003). As an expectation emerged from state policy, participation was interpreted and mobilized differently by various community interests (Edwards 1998), the outcomes of rural governance thus varied, and the success was not necessarily guaranteed. Some case studies revealed that the effectiveness of the exercises was limited, while asymmetric power relations prevailed at the community level (Cooke and Kothari 2001, p. 1–15; Muir 2004; Somerville 2005). According to the research based on the US and the UK, Swindal and McAreavey (2012) argued that the power devolution through participation just provided an encouraging circumstance, and a greater reflexivity from policy-makers was needed to put the rhetoric grounded in the complex reality. In a discussion of the operation of “EU LEADER”

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program, Ray (1998) underlined the importance of local development trajectories for implementing community-based initiatives.

2.1.3 International Experience About Program-Driven Governance State-led rural programs do not exclusively exist in China. They are widely dispersed in the countries with socialism history, as well as those less developed countries aided by some international organizations. Regarding the evaluation of programs, American political scientist and anthropologist James Scott (1998) conducted a prominent study to explain “how certain state schemes to improve the human condition had failed” in his monograph entitled “Seeing Like A State”. The state schemes covered in his book were not limited to those in the countryside, yet still had inspiration when we try to understand RGCDP in China. In the book, Scott employed solid cases, including the design of scientific forestry in Europe, collective farms in Soviet Union, compulsory villagization in Tanzania, urban planning in Brasilia and Chandigarh, to figure out four elements that resulted in the “tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering” (Scott 1998, p. 4–5). First, the transformative state legitimacy and simplification provided the capacity for large-scale programs; second, high-modernist ideology provided the desire; third, an authoritarian state was a pre-condition to bring these high-modernist designs into being; lastly, an incapacitated civil society lacked the capacity to resist these plans (Scott 1998, p. 4–5). Scott called for practitioners to weigh judiciously the benefits of certain state interventions against their costs. He highlighted the practical knowledge named “metis”, of which he borrowed from Greek to denote the mutuality that can come only from practical experience, rather than the imperative, hierarchical coordination in the programs (Scott 1998, p. 309). In some sense, Scott’s arguments miraculously mirrored the symptoms of the programs in China and straightly touched the experience of Chinese readers (Qu and Wang 2008). He adopted a stance to see the state in nature as an opposite of the common society, yet overly simplified the statecraft, as what the state had done that he criticized. The characteristics of “homogenization, uniformity, grids and heroic simplification” in the program-driven governance had been greatly overstated. His theory ignored many detailed interactions between the state and non-state actors and cannot give a convincing account of why some state programs are widely welcomed by the populaces in rural China. International organizations, such as OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and World Bank, also elaborated many efforts to initiate some aid programs and promoted good governance in less developed countries. From the donor perspective, their evaluation reports released much constructive information for the study.

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In the OECD-sponsored programs, effectiveness and sustainability were the most concerned indicators of performance (OECD 1997, p. 7). Some practical approaches regarding the participatory development and organizational culture can be extracted here. In participation promotion, it was learned that program objectives needed to be clearly defined and properly balanced. Donor advocacy of “homegrown” initiatives was likely to be more successful than donor-driven efforts. A process approach, which emphasized flexibility through an evolving agenda, was more effective than a blueprint. Organizational culture was highlighted in the evaluation. It was argued that traditional institution-building approaches, such as long-term training, were less important than changing organizational structures and cultures. Demand-driven strategies should be paid more attention so as to build the cultures that were conducive to accountability and transparency in governance. In respect to implementing the aid activities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs and hereafter) played an indispensable role (OECD 1997, p. 24–27). From the stance of World Bank, Lam (2016) conducted a self-evaluation of three river projects in China, in which he structured a three-layer framework of building blocks toward good governance. The top layer in the framework was the vision anchor that required political commitment; the middle layer was buttressed by instruments in programs, containing approach in assessment and technology; the cornerstones were those drivers to facilitate governance structure, that is, participation, project management, and ownership. Lam also emphasized the importance of governance in the programs, because the unbalanced power structure in China (e.g., the coalition of government and enterprise vs. immature society), can harbor distrusts (Lam 2016). The effectiveness in implementing rural programs has aroused the global attention of scholars (Ahlers and Schubert 2015; Callahan 2006; Stark 2005). It is asserted that the performance of rural program lies with a corresponding shift toward more effective governance in the countryside, rather than a powerful funding, a novel development strategy, nor an exceptional individual (Stark 2005). Callahan (2006) associated the effective governance with three elements, namely, government performance, accountability, and citizen participation. Sitting in a rural North American context, Stark (2005) decoded the effective governance from three components of collaboration, sustained citizen engagement, and leveraging regional resources. From the perspective of political system analysis, Easton (1967) contended that the effectiveness in policy implementation was measured by the capacity of a political system to generate system stability by adapting to demands from its environment and, consequently, producing outputs that entail specific and diffusing support for the system.

2.1.4 Legacy of Rural Governance in China The rural society in China had been remarkably stable in the imperial period. In contrast to the western pattern where all members within an organization were equivalent, the social relations in rural China possessed a self-centered quality (Fei 1945, 1946;

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Fei et al. 1992, p. 60–70). People were related with each other through close but “differentiated associations” ranging from the inner circle of the family to outer circle of extended family, further to the ring of clan relatives or other villagers. The pattern was analogous to the ripple formed from a stone thrown into a lake. This kind of dense social networks knitted Chinese farmers into a self-governance web. On the basis of this social structure analysis of grassroots society, Fei (1945) further proposed a dual-track governance theory of rural China. It was articulated that there were two parallel but interactive tracks operated upon the rural society. One track was top-down imperial power, which had no direct interference in local affairs. The other track was bottom-up autonomous lineages comprised by peasantry class and gentry class. The peasants farmed the gentry’s land and the rents ensured the leisure of the gentry (Fei 1946) . The function of the gentry was local administration. It resembled an intermediary organ between the state and grassroots society. By means of the imperial examination system, the empire also opened up mobility channels for the peasantry class to educate their sons into the gentry, and thus sustained a dynamic stability. It was a tightly integrated mechanism: in a bid to pass the multi-level exams, the candidates should read a lot on Confucianism, and the ethics conveyed from the classics would definitely consolidate the empire ruling when they returned home and became gentry. Successive scholar Qin Hui (2003, p. 31) gave a brief description of the traditional structure in rural China, that is, “the state power permeated as far as county level, while underneath the county dominated by a batch of lineages; the self-governance of the lineage relied on ethics, while those ethics created the class of gentry.” Since the late Qing Dynasty, the so-called parallel balance was broken up by the downward percolation of the state/empire power (Hu 2015). In the literature on the countryside of modern China, the interaction between the state and society has gradually become a core issue. Many studies have focused on the roles of elites and informal organizations in rural governance, such as rural gentries (Fei 1946) , lineage or religious organizations, or village cadres. Based on a colonial survey of the rural North China before 1949, Duara (1988) elaborated the concept of “culture nexus of power” to portray the way of commanding over the countryside steered by the state. In the new situation distinct from Fei’s interpretation of classic rural society, Duara still highlighted the brokerage role of the rural gentry, the informal network among folks, as well as the symbols and norms embedded in the network. In an empirical study of the grain procurement by the state in communist China, Oi (1985, 1989) proposed the clientelist model, rather than the conventional totalitarian one. She argued that the clientelism was just the elite–mass linkage through which the state-party exercised control at the local level. A similar relationship was also observed in industry firms. Walder (1988) termed it as “neo-traditionalism”, indicating its inheritance from the traditional society of China. In the studies of post-reform rural China, the theory of “local state corporatism” explained the rapid growth of rural industry very well. Many scholars unraveled the dual roles of the village cadres: the director in public administration, as well as the chief executive officer in village enterprises (Lin 1995; Oi 1992; Unger and Chan 1995). Some scholars investigated the rural governance changes in the period after the abolishment of the agriculture

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tax, from the perspective of village cadre’s performance (Kung, et al. 2009; Sun, et al. 2013). However, with the decline of lineage society, as well as the weakened fiscal capacity at the village and township levels, there is a disconnection between the state and rural society in the post-tax epoch and the above interpretations of rural governance are not adequate. The previous independent fiscal capacity at the village and township levels was weakened significantly in the wake of fiscal reform. The “local state” in Oi’s model may shift upward, and the bonding relationship of the “corporatism” at grassroots needs to be redefined (Oi 1992; Oi 1999). Nexuses at the localities are being broken away, and the state is going to find a new way to govern the countryside, rather than previous models of clientelism or corporatism. Therefore, in this study, it requires a good explanation of current dynamics happening in rural China. Based on the literature review, the continuation of self-governance legacy will be inquired, and the classic state–society dichotomy will be re-examined.

2.2 The Rise of Rural Programs in China 2.2.1 Rural Issues Matter The rural issues have always been on the top agenda of central leaders. For consecutive 16 years from 2004 to 2019, the themes of the annual No.1 document of CPC pertain to the “three rural issues” (Table 2.1). It is not hard to understand the central government’s concern on the countryside. The ultimate directive of the rural policies is to maintain the grain self-sufficiency for the nation (Cloke and Goodwin 1992; Shen 2004a), as well as sustain the stability of rural society. Since the planned economy era, the dual system dividing urban and rural sectors (e.g., hukou system, land tenure system, medical insurance system) has been a long-standing obstacle that hinders rural development. The countryside has been sacrificed to support the development of industries and cities. After decades of rampant growth of cities, the urban–rural imbalance has deteriorated greatly in China (Long et al. 2011). The central government gradually recognized the challenge. In 2003, the epoch-making program entitled “Coordinating Urban–Rural Development” (chengxiang tongchou fazhan, CURD) was launched by the 16th Central Committee of CPC. The policy was based on the judgment of “two trends” of contemporary China (Han 2005), that is, industry should nurture agriculture, and cities should support rural areas (yigong cunong, yicheng daixiang). From protracted “taking” to intensive “giving”, the subsidizing program kicked off a new era of state paternalism in the countryside. Some scholars adopted a capital accumulation perspective to interpret the phenomena of “rural issues matter.” For a long time, foreign trade export had been the only way to absorb the over-production of China as “world factory”. After 2008 world

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Table 2.1 Themes of annual No. 1 documents of CPC in the new millennium Launching Year

Theme

2004

Boosting farmers’ income

2005

Strengthening rural work and improving the overall production capacity of agriculture

2006

Constructing a new socialist countryside

2007

Developing modern agriculture and steadily promoting the construction of a new socialist countryside

2008

Fortifying the foundation of agriculture

2009

Promoting stable development of agriculture and sustained income growth of farmers

2010

Strengthening the efforts of coordinative urban–rural development and further consolidating the basis of agricultural and rural development

2011

Accelerating water conservancy reform and development

2012

Accelerating the scientific and technological innovation to strengthen supply of agricultural products

2013

Developing modern agriculture to strengthen the vitality of rural areas

2014

Underscoring the importance of rural reform, developing modern agriculture, and maintaining agriculture as the foundation of economy

2015

Reforms and innovation in agriculture to speed up the modernization

2016

Accelerating agriculture modernization and realizing well-off target

2017

Promoting supply-side structural reform of agriculture and fostering new momentum for developing countryside

2018

Implementing rural revitalization strategy

2019

Insisting on priority of three rural issues

Source Xinhua News Agency, 2019

financial crisis, China faced surplus capacity in goods production, and rural development was thought of a way to boost domestic consumption (Wu 2015, p. 196–209; Looney 2015). For example, some favorable policies, such as “household appliances going to the countryside” (jiadian xiaxiang) were formulated to promote rural consumption—listed refrigerators and washing machines could even get state allowance in the schemes of “trading old for new.” In addition, there was also another unspoken motivation behind rural reconstruction. Social crises lurked in China’s cities; there was an ever-increasing investment impulsion for the urban middle class. In post-crisis period, the uncertain floating people in cities needed a stable “impounding reservoir” for employment. Both needs could be met in the rural reconstruction fever.

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2.2.2 Fiscal Background in the Formation of Rural Programs Tax-sharing reform in 1994 established sufficient conditions for the formation of rural programs (Lin and Wong 2012; Qu et al. 2009; Qu 2012). In the new scheme then, taxes in China were divided into three categories: central, local, and shared taxes (Wang 1997). In contrast to the previous situation, financial capacity of the central government was strengthened unprecedentedly. For example, 70% of the value-added tax collected from the localities would return to the central. In response to the bottom-up extraction mechanism, a top-down redistribution system from central to local governments was set up (Shen 2005). The central government arranged transfer payment to local governments, which can narrow regional disparities, as well as spread developmental outlook of the central efficiently. In the scale terms, the reform compelled a rescaling up of fiscal responsibility. Huang (2008) viewed it as “Chinese style”, in which the center maintained control of political decisionmaking, while cities controlled locally specific economic decisions. The funding from the center that triggered local program fever is a manifestation of such political directives. The funding from central government was the initial driving force for the rise of the programs. However, comparing to the rapidly expanding programs, both in scale and scope, the central government’s capacity was woefully inadequate. Empirical studies on direct subsidy programs revealed that the central initiatives imposed a growing burden on local governments for co-financing, and the differences in local fiscal capacities could thwart the central intent of curbing regional wealth gaps (Lin and Wong 2012). Therefore, what stood out in literature was centralized but also decentralized nature of the Chinese fiscal system. It indicated that intergovernmental relationship was an important research agenda regarding the rural programs in China. The early 2000s fiscal reform in the countryside necessitated the rise of rural programs. At the grassroots end, the tax-sharing reform had more or less transferred the fiscal burden to the farmers as town-level governments turned to farmers for revenues (Qu 2012). Due to heavy taxes and fees collected for various reasons, the social confrontation between the state and farmers climbed to a peak at the turn of the century. The State Council led by Wen Jiabao made a quick response and gradually implemented the fiscal reform in the countryside. Tax-for-fee (collecting tax instead of fees) reform was first initiated, and then fees and levies were abolished gradually. Agricultural tax was finally phased out nationwide in 2006. However, as I mentioned in the research background part, the abolishment of agriculture tax resulted in declining revenue at the town level, which caused a new governance crisis of hollowing state (Chen 2014; Kennedy 2007; Smith 2010; Yep 2004). The government suddenly found that there was no instrument (zhuashou) to govern the countryside effectively, and the public services lacked a long-term financial support (Zhao 2016). Rural programs were then introduced to cope with such situation.

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2.2.3 Booming State-Led Programs in the Countryside Comparing the bulging wallet of higher level government with the shrinking pocket of the town-level governments, it is not surprising that the countryside was targeted as “impounding reservoir” for state investment. According to a budget report published by the Ministry of Finance of China (2013), central government funding for the “three rural issues” increased from 214.4 billion yuan in 2003 to 595.6 billion yuan in 2008, and to 1379.9 billion yuan in 2013. This represented average annual growth of 22.7% during the 2003–2008 period, and 18.3% since the 2008 global financial crisis (Fig. 2.1). Most of the investment would be carried out in the form of programs. Under the soaring central funding, at least 100 national rural programs have been introduced by the central government so far (Zuo 2014). Table 2.2 lists some representative rural programs at the central and provincial levels. Those rural programs in China are totally different from those in the US or UK context. The programs from the relevant departments of the UK or US governments are initiated with an emphasis on community participation. The non-governmental organizations such as local enterprises or community organizations can apply for and use such grants (Swindal and McAreavey 2012; Ward and McNicholas 1998). In contrast, nearly all of the programs in China are initiated and implemented by the governmental sector, via either vertical system of a department or bureau from central to local government, or horizontal local government which administrates one territory. In order to better understand various rural programs shown in Table 2.2, I will distinguish the concepts of program, project, and strategy here. A rural program consists of various specific projects. Those projects involve activities or engineering on the rural ground and refer to concrete or specific operations of a program (Fig. 2.2). The “Village Officers from College Students” program is a good example. With funding support, specific projects in this talent program formulated detailed incentives and schedules to improve the talent structure among village cadres (Table 2.2). Fig. 2.1 The central budget for “three rural issues”, 2003–2013. Source Ministry of Finance of China, consecutive years from 2003 to 2013

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Table 2.2 Representative rural programs at the central and/or provincial levels Theme

Focus

Initiating Organization

Launching Date

Coordinating urban–rural development

Comprehensive

Central Committee of CPC

October 2003

New socialist countryside construction

Comprehensive

Central Committee of CPC

October 2005

Village officers from college students

Human resources

Central Committee of CPC and State Council

March 2008

Hectares of Farmland

Land

Department of Land and Resources of Jiangsu Provincial Government

September 2008

Village environment renovation (VER)

Rural habitation

Jiangsu Provincial Government

September 2011

Ecological modernization, beautiful China

Comprehensive

Central Committee of CPC

November 2012

Featured idyllic countryside

Comprehensive

Jiangsu Provincial Government

July 2017

Rural revitalization

Comprehensive

Central Committee of CPC

October 2017

Source Compiled from official documents by author

Fig. 2.2 Relationship between strategy, program, and project. Source Compiled by author

However, it is hard to identify concrete projects in some programs which are comprehensive in nature. With broad guidelines for local practices, those programs can be interpreted as strategic stimulus from the central government. One example is the program of “New Socialist Countryside Construction” (NSCC and hereafter). Ahlers and Schubert (2009: 57) commented that it is “an intentionally vague but holistic policy framework initiated by the central government to be adapted to local conditions.” Even in a comprehensive program, the strategy of the state can only be projected upon the rural ground through the implementation and consolidation of specific projects.

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Therefore, “program” in this book is regarded as a comprehensive state-funding system, comprising the connotations ranged from state strategy to specific project. It is sometimes analogous to an isomorphism, from which it is hard to simply separate strategy and project.

2.2.4 Programs and Foundations in History The crisis produced by China’s fiscal restructuring in the 1990s and 2000s motivated the establishment of the program to funding rural development and governmental intervention in rural areas. The “new approach” is not actually new, but a reinterpretation of the legacies hailed from early years of the People’s Republic. A set of campaigns were initiated after 1949. As in the “Great Leap Forward” of the 1950s or “Learning from Dazhai in Agriculture” of the 1960–70s, the campaign mode was used nationwide for economic construction. Villages then should develop collective economies in the form of “people’s communes”. In many respects, the three-tier administrative-cum-productive system established through the campaigns still prevails in China’s vast countryside today; although “townships” have replaced “people’s communes”, “administrative villages” have replaced “production brigades” and “natural villages” have replaced “production teams”. In addition to the mass campaign, some grand development projects in the planned economy also exhibited a key feature of China’s political regime. The entire bureaucracy was often mobilized to achieve visible progress within a short time. It was in the 1st Five-year Plan period when over 156 mega projects were launched primarily in the interior and frontier provinces with Soviet aid; this was also the case when the third-front development program was launched in the 1960s and early 1970s to develop military-related industries in the remote part of the country. In these ways, scale worked as the state’s scaffolding of persuasion—controlling the movement of fiscal resources or the human capital “up” and “down” the administrative hierarchy. In the post-reform period, the tactics of “jumping scales” were often employed by the authority to realize polarized growth in some regions. Program-based initiatives such as the designation of special economic zones and coastal open cities were of major importance in stimulating urban and regional growth. In the investigation of rural programs, scholars also highlighted this historical connection (Looney 2015). Perry (2011) argued that the NSCC program should be understood as a “managed campaign” because the program powerfully combined technocratic pragmatism with Mao-era campaign tactics, including thousands of propaganda teams and lecturing teams. Carefully avoiding the wording of “campaign”, contemporary programs deploy these terms with less political meaning, such as actions (xingdong), to highlight the pragmatic aspects of the programs (see more rural actions in Sect. 4.2).

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2.2.5 Program System Embedding Bureaucracy and Market In contrast with the eastern European countries that adopted the “shock therapy” with exclusive and radical reforms (Sachs 1994), the circumstance in China demonstrated a gradual trajectory of transformation (Wei 2002). In the post-reform experience of 40 years, a kind of “dual-track” logic consistently threaded across China’s institutional changes and economic practices—the system protected existing institutional stock while developed incremental system (Qu et al. 2009). The system of the program, treating the bureaucracy and market as existing stock, was identified by some scholars as the incremental reform in state governance. The state governance in China typically possessed the characteristics of “bureaucracy”, of which Max Weber proposed and articulated certain traits as “clear division of obligation, hierarchical relationship with vertical management” (tiaotiao) (Weber 2009). Taking the central–local relationship and interjurisdictional competition into consideration, local protectionism (Bai et al. 2004) offered another horizontal (kuaikuai) dimension in the analysis of China’s bureaucracy (Cartier 2005). However, the introduction of the program system transformed the conventional structure. By re-organizing personnel and fiscal arrangement, it implemented explicit policy goals, and broke away aforementioned vertical department hierarchies and horizontal jurisdiction arrangements (Qu 2012). Compared to the conventional bureaucracy, the system behind program placed more emphasis on the legitimacy of performance, which was guaranteed by technocratic rationality in the program (Qu et al. 2009). The idea of technocratic governance was deeply rooted in the ideology that diffused in every social and economic sphere of China. It was firmly believed that, only by means of rational design and process control, the contract-out governmental programs can cut off uncertain interference factors and regulate the arbitrary local behaviors. Hence, the extraction and allotment of the earmarked fund should go through a series of well-designed procedure of standards: program initiation, application, verification, supervision, assessment, penalty, and reward. Even the experts and scholars were invited to participate in the whole process to evaluate the technocratic rationality. The main difference between the program and market system is probably the strong state intervention of market in economic growth. As a state with a long tradition of macroeconomic regulation, the role of the central government, like a visible hand by Adam Smith, should never be underestimated in China. In the wake of the global financial crisis, China introduced the largest stimulus package in the world. The announced totaled 4-trillion-yuan national effort was comprised of 1.18 trillion in central government funding plus local government inputs and bank credit (Wong 2011). To consume such amount of investment in a short time, the State Council required greater standardization and professionalism to hand out the package. Programs were convinced as a reliable channel to distribute the fiscal package, and the countryside was targeted as one of the most concentrated fields. What we are witnessing in contemporary China, it seems, is not simply the replacement of an outmoded bureaucracy with modern market tools, but rather a complex

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amalgam of the two. Conclusively, the system of the program can be regarded as an outcome of embedding market within the bureaucracy, using competitive fiscal transfer payment, highlighting government’s legitimacy of maintaining equity. The bureaucracy had the strength of structure stability but weak in operation performance; the market was an expert in promoting efficiency, while deficient in maintaining inclusive development. Theoretically, the system of the program was designated to integrate the superiorities of both, yet the performance should be tested in practice.

2.3 Rural Governance Changes Driven by State-Led Programs in China 2.3.1 Intergovernmental Relations Concerning the intergovernmental relation driven by programs, She and Chen (2011) constructed a three-level hierarchical governance framework. It is concluded that the central government contracted out programs, local government (usually the city or county level) packed different programs, and villages and towns competed for the programs. Given the status quo of intergovernmental finance, it was not hard to understand the behaviors of contracting out and competition in programs. Nonetheless, local government’s packaging behavior was more complicated. The local government was not just a deliverer in the process, receiving and passing on the fiscal packs, but more a packer, embedding as many programs as it can to realize its own political ambition. Three traits can be extracted from existing literature. First, the programs had marked reproductive capacity (Qu 2012). Since the output of individual program was unpredictable, the following-up program was inevitable to resolve the problems caused by its predecessor. Thus in practice, it was found that investment in grassroots society was not confined to a single program, but often involved a chain of programs (Xun and Bao 2007). The second trait can be summarized as “bait” for the central government and “excuse” for the local government. In some cases, allocated programs usually required local governments to provide a certain amount of “matching funds”. The initial funds from the central played as the “bait” to lure more funds from local governments, as well as mobilize local capacity to expand the central ideology in development (Zhou 2005). More interestingly, local government manipulated the programs with an anticontrol logic (Xun and Bao 2007). On the pretext of fancy program discourse from the central, local government coordinated and packaged multiple programs into the comprehensive plan, which was designed to maximize their interests. Third, program platform was constructed at the local level. In this process, program acted as a pivot that attracted all kinds of capital and uplifted the policy status of local actions. On this platform, local government merged many comprehensive intents together, as long as they had any relevance with the original proposed. The mobilization capacity of the local governments was strengthened dramatically,

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whether in political, economic, or social spheres. To achieve performance as soon as possible, “program office” was established as the headquarter of program campaign (Chen 2013). It profoundly altered the conventional bureaucratic system. In conclusion, taking advantage of program reproduction and the bait–excuse interaction, the local government successfully constructed the “small plot of its own”. As She and Chen (2011) pointed out, programs had become dynamic cells that catalyzed economic development, or investment platform that consolidated various funds in the localities.

2.3.2 Performance of State-Dominated Programs The rural programs and matched plans emerged as new governance techniques for the state in governing the countryside. In Wu’s urban China watch, he pointed out that the growth-oriented planning exclusively represented the rising capacity of the state during the market transition (Wu 2015, p. 196–209). The top-down planning regime played hardly any role in coordinating the grassroots stakeholders. Due to the lack of public participation in policy formulation, the plans cannot explicitly represent the public interest (Wu 2015, p. 196–209). However, when it comes to the countryside where tangible interests of farmers and collective exist, it remains a question whether the state governing is a monolithic whole, resembling the phenomenon in urban context. The utopian CURD strategy from the central is often manipulated and disassembled into programs carting to the local government benefits. Under the strict policy of farmland protection, the central government maintains a rigorous land quota system upon the local governments, who bargain for more land for development. Since the central government only controls the accumulative total of the urban and rural built-up areas, the local governments resort to the countryside within their municipal territories to exploit more quota for urban growth. Against the background, the linking balance policy between increase of urban construction land and decrease of rural construction land was promulgated in 2005,3 and many local programs had been launched correspondingly. The “increasing vs. decreasing balance” programs can be deemed as a compromise between central control and local entrepreneurialism. Facilitated by the state hegemony on the urban–rural land market, a top-down approach was adopted in the so-called “government-assisted accelerated reconstruction” (Long et al. 2012). In a bid to save land quota, the scattered rural villages were merged, and the land used for farmer houses (zhaijidi, homestead) was converted to large-scale farming land. Scholars had widely investigated the effectiveness of the land-related programs from the perspective of multi-level governments. The central government triumphed as it mandated the localities to carry out the policy and 3 See the document “To Standardize the Implementation of Linking Up Increased Urban Construction Land with Decreased Rural Construction Land at Selected Pilot Sites”, Ministry of Land and Resources, No. 207 Document, 2005.

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defended the bottom line of the prime arable land (Chien 2015; Long and Zou 2010). The local government obtained the saved land use quota to advance its agenda of urban expansion and economic growth (Chien 2015; Qian and Wong 2012). The grassroots governments at the town or sub-district level, who were in charge of practical affairs but without fiscal autonomy like their superiors, were confronted tremendous financial pressure in the resettlement of displaced farmers (Huang et al. 2014; Tian et al. 2017). However, these state-dominated programs were often characterized by aggressive removal and imposed resettlement of farmers, regardless of their preference (Long et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2014; Zhang and Lu 2010). It was criticized that the grassroots participation was limited, and there was no sufficient time for enrolling local actors into negotiation. In some cases, the farmers were not adequately compensated, and much revenue was captured by the local government (Wang et al. 2012). Even violent protests occurred where farmers refused to comply in the way anticipated (Long et al. 2012). The negative performance of the state-dominated programs can be explained by the conflict of dualism on the state and society—the gain to one party is offset by the loss to another. However, the participation of community and market is urgently needed. In a tourism study of an ancient village where tourism management shifted from village-based to local government intervention, the deserted courtyard houses faded the efforts of the government, due to the insufficient participation of villagers (Guo and Sun 2016). International experiences also implied the importance of the engagement of non-governmental groups. It was found in a Thailand agritourism initiative that some groups were established to ensure the governmental funds while other stakeholders were not provided with substantial support. It also limited the success of the rural programs (Srisomyong and Meyer 2015). The experiences of the European Union also manifest that the fulfillment of the integrated rural development objectives necessitate diverse and embedded activities among the grassroots, as well as inclusive agency remits (Long et al. 2012). In parallel with the top-down approach by the government, the strategy of endogenous community development should also be put into effect (Bristow 2000; Li et al. 2016; Woods 2010, pp. 130–161).

2.3.3 Effects on Local Governance The logic in the programs was abided by a rigorous flow seemingly. However, as long as the programs grounded on the countryside, the practical situation was not so perfect. The original purpose of the program system attempted to establish new vertical linkages to buttress the old horizontal ties. However, it often came to the results that the old horizontal ties either found new ways of cultivating their territory or collapsed because of the tough implantation of new vertical linkages. Some empirical studies revealed the negative effects. Although one of the original motivations of programs was to improve public benefits in grassroots society, the programs experienced alienation in the complex interaction with local conditions. Xun and Bao (2007) gave a telling narrative on the

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program process of ecological migration in Inner Mongolia. The ecological improvement program, which packaged migration, technical import, infrastructure construction, and capital operation together, eventually transformed a prairie reserve into a development zone. Consequently, the whole ecosystem collapsed, and the land use structure evolved from pasture into desert irreversibly. Socially, the herdsmen migrated out of the prairie and the ecosystem lost the support of human activities. In Zhou’s (2012) case study of compulsory education in Heilongjiang, education bureau transferred money directly to rural schools, rather than via township government. All the expenditures of the rural schools, including the emergency ones, should submit an application to the county-level government. Under the new system, not only the efficiency in administration was lowered, but the original intimate relationship between rural schools and township government also detached from each other (Zhou 2012). Some studies at the village level exemplified the utilitarian side that the programs created new inequities (Ahlers and Schubert 2009; She and Chen 2011). Under given purpose, the exemplary significance was an important criterion in the selection of pilot villages. The program designers always tended to allocate the programs to the model villages or poor villages, yet the median villages were ignored artificially. High dependency on land finance was another negative effect. The forge of the program platform can be regarded as a new wave of entrepreneurialism among local governments (Mai and Zhang 2013). To raise enough funds for growth ambition, local finance turned out to be a kind of “debt-based development” model. As the agency but actual holder of the state-owned land, local government often took the urban land as the collateral for fundraising. In this way, vicious circle interweaving the “trinity of land finance revenue” persisted. Embedded with an inherent financial risk, the program platform would definitely weaken assumed sustainable governance (Pan et al. 2016).

2.4 Summary Governance in China is a pervasive but disputable concept. From the stances of technocrat, authority, and academic, the concept denotes a complex set of structures and processes. For a better understanding of the rural governance of contemporary China, it urges us to combine the western experience and China’s legacy together. Inspired by the literature review, it is argued that three dimensions should be taken into consideration in the following research: intergovernmental relation, state–private– farmer partnership, and grassroots participation. The intergovernmental relation is a very important dimension to unravel the dynamics behind the rise of the state-led programs. In history, the state played an intangible but influential role in rural governance. At present, fiscal reform between different levels of governments motivates the rise of programs. Scholars conducted some seminal institutional comparison between the emerging system of the program, and that of bureaucracy and market, yet those theoretical hypotheses need to be further tested in empirical studies.

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Compared to the rural governance in the West, grassroots participation, as well as public–private–farmer partnership, are insufficiently investigated in China. Very few studies concentrated on the land-related governance issues by the agency of cooperatives. Most of the studies criticized that the grassroots participation was limited, and there was no sufficient space for enrolling local actors into negotiation. For this reason, participation and partnership in rural governance will be paid more attention in the following case studies, especially when the non-state groups are empowered to devise their solutions in the programs. For the sake of policy implication, the performance of the programs will also be evaluated. Learning from the international organization experiences in less developed countries, I will do the assessment by the principles of effectiveness and sustainability. On the basis of the above literature review, the next chapter will develop a conceptual framework to lead the whole empirical research and try to contribute new understandings about rural governance in China.

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Chapter 3

Conceptual Framework and Methodology

Abstract Based on the above review of theoretical and empirical studies, a processbased conceptual framework is proposed here for analyzing the rural governance changes driven by programs. The key concepts articulating with each other in this framework can be categorized into three parts, i.e., theoretical perspective, empirical analysis, and conclusion and discussion. Keywords Research framework · Intergovernmental relation · Partnership · Participation

3.1 Conceptual Framework and Research Process Based on the above review of theoretical and empirical studies, a process-based conceptual framework is proposed here for analyzing the rural governance changes driven by programs (RGCDP). The key concepts articulating with each other in this framework can be categorized into three parts, i.e., theoretical perspective, empirical analysis, and conclusion and discussion (Fig. 3.1). The research focus in this book is fixed on RGCDP. More than seeing governance as the research ontology, I also employ the governance theory as a perspective to understand the current rural transformation in China. In Chap. 2, existing governance theories and rural governance studies are reviewed. I am trying to conduct a comparative review of the literature—theories and experience in the West are retrospected, and thoughts and legacies in China are also summarized. The rural program is another concept buttressing the research focus. I anatomize the rise and implementation of rural programs from aspects of fiscal background, institution, as well as international experience. Derived from the literature review, three theoretical issues are identified and examined in the empirical analysis: intergovernmental relation, partnership, and participation. Since the programs are a sort of public policies, evaluations are also conducted in the case studies. Inspired by relevant literature proposed by some international organizations, the research adopts two indicators of effectiveness and sustainability. Economically, effectiveness measures the output increase triggered by governance changes in farming scale, managerial structure, etc. From a long-term perspective, © Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3_3

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Fig. 3.1 A conceptual framework for analyzing rural governance changes driven by programs in China. Source Compiled by author

sustainability then socially considers the village capacity to ensure lasting positive development after program fever. Echoing the existing literature, I will try to conceptualize the RGCDP in the last part of conclusion and discussion. The distinctions of the new model of state-led rural revitalization will be clarified in aspects of dynamics, process, mechanism, etc. Lastly, relevant policy implications will also be proposed based on the program evaluation.

Fig. 3.2 The research process of main issues in the book. Source Compiled by author

3.1 Conceptual Framework and Research Process

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In accordance with the conceptual framework, research process of the book can be spelt out (Fig. 3.2). As the pivot of the whole book, the conceptual framework is drawn after literature review and research background, and it plays a central role to arrange the substantial parts of the book. Three cases are analyzed to examine the three conceptual variables in RGCDP. Correspondingly but not exclusively, I will use the first case of Jiangning to explore intergovernmental relations in the program campaign, use the second case of Tangjiajia to unravel the partnership building in the rural eco-tourism, and use the third case of Xinhui to examine the grassroots participation in farming. Functionally, the Jiangning case at meso-level also provides the following two micro-level cases a background analysis. Furthermore, conceptualizing RGCDP and policy implications will be conducted in the last step.

3.2 Research Area 3.2.1 Jiangning District Nanjing is the capital city of Jiangsu Province of coastal China (Fig. 3.3). It lies about 300 km from Shanghai along the Yangtze River, with a population of 8.16 million in 2012 and a territory of 6587 km2 (Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Statistics 2013). As a sub-provincial level city, Nanjing has more direct connections with the central government than nearby prefecture-level cities in South Jiangsu. Whatever

Fig. 3.3 Location of Nanjing in China. Source Compiled by author

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Fig. 3.4 Urban–rural income ratio among the cities of South Jiangsu. Source Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Statistics, 2013

in aspects of geography, society or economy, the urban–rural relationship in Nanjing demonstrates a typical characteristic of “big city with vast countryside.” In 2012, the number of rural residents in Nanjing was 2.03 million and accounted for 24.9% of the de jure population. Although the ratio is the lowest in South Jiangsu, the imbalance between urban and rural development is the most significant (Zhou and Liu 2015: 81– 85). I use urban and rural resident income ratio to illustrate the imbalance. Compared to Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, and even Zhenjiang, the ratio of Nanjing was much higher, floating between 2.3 in 2009 to 2.5 in 2012 (Fig. 3.4). It indicated an uneven development between urban and rural Nanjing. I choose Jiangning, a district adjacent to the city proper yet under the jurisdiction of Nanjing, as the focused field site. In addition, two village-level cases—Tangjiajia and Xinhui—are also located in Jiangning (Fig. 3.5). Jiangning was originally a self-contained suburban county. After the administrative annexation of “county-fordistrict” in 2000, Jiangning becomes a district of Nanjing but retains most of its former administrative power of a county. Different from usual districts in the city proper, Nanjing municipal government cannot implement full administration in Jiangning (Zhang and Wu 2006). Hence, Jiangning district resembles a county or county-level city with high autonomy, and this is a precondition to understand the behaviors of Jiangning as a typical local government. Several actors are identified in this study. It is true that governments of Nanjing and Jiangning are different players with different administrative power. For simplicity, they are grouped together as local governments (municipal and/or district) in this book. From the perspective of the municipality or the district, policies from both the province and the center would indeed appear as equivalently policies from top. Therefore, for simplicity, the State Council, Jiangsu provincial government, and the Central Committee of CPC, are grouped as higher level governments (central and/or

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Fig. 3.5 Location of three case sites in Nanjing. Source Compiled by author

provincial). Although the CPC committees are not part of conventional governments, they have profound influence on the governmental policy-making. In addition to the two levels, the sub-district/town governments in Jiangning are categorized as town-level governments. As the agencies of the district government to administrate sub-divided units, the town-level governments in Jiangning, such as Hengxi and Tangshan, are primarily in charge of program implementation with little autonomy in the process of rural programs. But this does not rule out that such town-level governments have much autonomy in other local affairs such as road construction and power supply. Lastly, the non-governmental actors in the analysis include the local enterprises and farmer organizations such as cooperatives.

3.2.2 Tangjiajia Village The first specific village case in my fieldwork is Tangjiajia, a village in Tangshan sub-district in the east wing of Jiangning (Fig. 3.5). Considering partnership and public goods provision as theoretical issues in empirical analysis, Tangjiajia is one

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Fig. 3.6 Tangjiajia and its immediate surroundings. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map

of the best villages for case study. (1) The surrounding area has many places of natural beauty that attract tourists (Fig. 3.6). By virtue of the extensive distribution of geothermal groundwater along Nanjing–Zhenjiang Ridge, Tangshan has been a hot spring attraction since the Republic of China. (2) The size of the village is suitable for a case observation. As a natural village,1 Tangjiajia had a population of 412 residents and 108 households in 2012 (Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013) and is subordinated to the administrative village,2 called Tanggang. (3) The governance foundation of Tangjiajia is representative of the vast villages of contemporary China. Tangjiajia was originally an ordinary settlement close to town center of Tangshan. In the 1990s, due to the demolition caused by road expansion in the town center, dozens of households in Tanggang had to move to the sloping site planned by the government (Fig. 3.6). Local people thus named this new settlement the “second community of Tanggang” (Tanggang er xiaoqu). On that account, Tangjiajia is not an indigenous village dominated by one or more clans, but a typical rural community lacking indispensable social attachment. This type of socially atomized village pervades in post-reform China, especially in the counties of the Yangtze River Basin (He 2012). Tangjiajia is also losing its residents. Many villagers have migrated to Nanjing city proper in recent years, leaving a significant proportion of deserted dwellings. As a village experiencing consumption shifts, Tangjiajia is also under the national campaign of building a “beautiful countryside.” The turning point of the village came in late 2012 when a marketing concept of a “grassroots hot spring in every family” was proposed. Since then, a comprehensive spatial layout backed by the government has been initiated, and corresponding state-led programs have been launched to promote 1 Natural village (ziran cun) is the rural settlement formed naturally without designated administra-

tive status. 2 Administrative

village (xingzhen cun) is incorporated by natural villages with a designated administrative status. In Jiangsu, an administrative village is comprised of 15 natural villages on average.

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rural eco-tourism in the village. In some sense, the village realized the revitalization of rural economy and community building. In Chap. 5, I will concentrate on the commodification of the village, and the interplays between the state, entrepreneurs, and villagers at various stages will be examined in details.

3.2.3 Xinhui Village Xinhui is an administrative village in the southwest of Jiangning (Fig. 3.5). It has a population of 6,200 and a territory of 8.2 km2 . Because the village is adjacent to the right bank of the Yangtze River, the farmland parcels are expansive, flat, fertile, and valuable (Fig. 3.7). Xinhui is confronted with the encroachment of urban sprawl from the north. However, the land use is under rigid regulation because the whole village is zoned as greenbelt, separating the built-up areas between Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces. Most of the residents in Xinhui still rely on farming for their livelihood, which follows a rotation system of wheat–rice double crops per annum, similar to numerous villages in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD and hereafter). The

Fig. 3.7 Location of the Xinbo family farm in Xinhui village. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map

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sown acreage of crops in Xinhui covers 8,200 mu, among which 7,000 mu3 is prime farmland (jiben nongtian).4 Xinhui is one of the best villages for a case study evaluating the performance of the two-tier model promoted by policies. (1) The village has both a farm and cooperative with close ties—the Xinbo family farm and the Xinggen cooperative— that perfectly satisfy the two-tier model, at least in theory. (2) The case also provides the effects of using the farm and the cooperative as examples. Both the farm and the cooperative have been repeatedly extolled by the government or covered in the media.5 (3) The district of Jiangning, where Xinhui is located, is a typical region with abundant natural resources and strong financial support for agriculture. The official statistics collected in my fieldwork covering various attributes of cooperatives and farms also boost the reliability of using the Xinhui case. (4) The village is a unit of observation to investigate the livelihood changes of the villagers triggered by the agricultural programs. In Chap. 6, I will use the Xinhui case to depict the process of farmer selforganization in farming. The recent land tenure reform in China has sparked nationwide consolidation of farmland, merging parcels from hands of individual farmers to big farm owners. Xinhui is a great case to illuminate the series of rural changes of land use, farming model, as well as villager livelihood that triggered by the land and agriculture programs.

3.3 Data Sources and Collection The data of this research are collected from both primary and secondary sources during the continuous investigation from 2013 to 2015. Using the localized qualitative case studies to elucidate the complex internal workings of governmental behavior and local response in China, the research is exploratory in nature. A pilot field study was undertaken in December 2013, and two intensive fieldworks were conducted in the summers of 2014 and 2015. In the fieldwork of 2014 summer, I mainly focused on the general background of the rural program evolution in Jiangning, as well as the intergovernmental relations for the first case. The interviews with some key persons in the third case were also conducted in this round. In the fieldwork of 2015 summer, I quartered at Xinhui and Tangjiajia for two weeks, respectively, and collected most of the data at the micro-level then. Also, a make-up fieldwork was undertaken in December 2015, aiming to trace some new developments in Tangjiajia.

3 Mu

is a Chinese area unit. 15 mu is equal to one hectare; thus one mu equals to 666.67 m2 . with Yan, a village cadre of Xinhui, July 2014. 5 See Xinbo family farm, retrieved from http://jsnews2.jschina.com.cn/system/2013/05/10/ 017202085.shtml; see Xinggen cooperative, retrieved from http://cs.hbagri.gov.cn/snmgzsbgs/ ywgz/147599.htm, and http://www.nanjing.gov.cn/xxgk/qzf/jnq/jnqnyj/201712/t20171213_ 5192637.html. 4 Interview

References

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On the concrete methods in the first-hand data collection, two types of investigations are employed in the process.6 To get familiar with the local context and informants, participant observations were the initial step in the field. I was actively engaged in the meetings, public affairs, daily lives, and even farming works in the two villages. Farmers and village cadres developed friendly relationship with me and also introduced new informants. In the participant observations, different types of data are collected, such as photos of farmer lives, records of village events. Apart from that, the most important advantage of this method was that it helped me to formulate sensible questions in an appropriate language and get an intuitive understanding of what was going on in the rural context. In the book writing, it allowed me to speak with confidence about the exact meaning of collected data. Semi-structured interviews then provided many substantial materials in my fieldwork. In the first case, I interviewed the officials at different levels of Jiangsu, Nanjing, and Jiangning governments, asking questions about their opinion on the programs and the programs’ impacts on rural revitalization. The officials were from Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department of Jiangsu, Rural Working Commission of CPC Jiangning, Planning Bureau of Jiangning, Planning Bureau of Nanjing, and Rural Working Commission of CPC Nanjing. All the bureaus and commissions were relevant authorities on rural issues, and the gathered information could be used to mutually substantiate with other data sources. For the sake of a comprehensive understanding, village cadres, farmers, planners, and entrepreneurs were also covered. In the second and third case, the interviews mainly focused on those grassroots stakeholders in the programs, including the cadres, merchants, farm owners, employees in the inns or farms, etc. In total, I conducted 28 interviews with 22 interviewees. Some key persons were interviewed twice because they were engaged in both of my two cases (see Appendix 1, for the sake of privacy, all the interviewees are anonymous). Each interview lasted for half an hour to two hours. Similar questions were asked to cross-check a great deal of information acquired from various channels. Before the interviews, I prepared a list of topics that I wanted to propose. I always let the interviewers lead my exploring, while kept my research questions in mind. The questions covered but not restricted to their general knowledge about the governance changes in the countryside, personal experience, and opinions about the rural programs (see Appendix 2). The secondary data source mainly came from the governmental documents, statistic data, media news, satellite images, etc. There was a good research foundation for me to study the three cases. Other than conventional materials open to the public, there were abundant official working reports, rural plans, program guidelines in Jiangning, and the two specific villages. All of them have helped me to form a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the state-led programs.

6 The

field methods benefited a lot from the workshop on “Ethnographic Research”, hosted by Professor Joseph Bosco, Department of Anthropology from CUHK. I herewith give acknowledgement to Professor Bosco.

42

3 Conceptual Framework and Methodology

References He X (2012) On regional variation of rural China: a social structure perspective. Open Times 10:108–129 (in Chinese) Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Statistics (2013) Statistical Yearbook of Nanjing 2013. Phoenix Publishing House, Nanjing (in Chinese) Zhou L, Liu D (2015) Jiangsu rural human settlement environment survey. The Commercial Press, Beijing (in Chinese) Zhang J, Wu F (2006) China’s changing economic governance: administrative annexation and the reorganization of local governments in. Reg Stud 40(1):3–21

Chapter 4

Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs in Jiangning

Abstract Over the last decade, a large part of the Chinese countryside has experienced a “hollowing-out” process in economy and state administration, as rapid urbanization and development have concentrated in urban areas. To deal with this challenge, the Chinese government has launched rural programs, resulting in significant transformation in the countryside. Applying the state rescaling theory as an analytical lens, this chapter argues that these state-led rural programs have strengthened the state role in governing the countryside significantly based on the case study of Jiangning. These programs are not fixed yet developed and expanded through the interaction of multi-level governments. While local governments follow the discourse of the higher level governments in this process, they also restructure the state apparatus for program implementation. Local governments have some autonomy by echoing and responding to the initiative of the higher level governments actively. Thus the program evolution is not simply a top-down process as it encompasses interesting dynamics of state rescaling. Generally speaking, the state plays an important role in moving toward “good governance” in rural China at the initial stage. The state-led rural programs enable the state to regain its leading role in the countryside and restore the rural public administration to some extent. There is still a long way to go for the civil society to achieve self-governance in the countryside. Keywords Rural program · State rescaling · Governance · Intergovernmental politics · China

4.1 Introduction The state remains heavily present in many spheres of governance (Pierre and Peters 2000). In this chapter, I will put emphasis on the actions of the state in the program regime. The program evolution is not purely a top-down process from center to grassroots as there are intense interactions among governments at different levels in the program campaign. The current dynamics in rural China needs good explanation from the perspective of governmental changes (Radin et al. 1996), as the Chinese governments have a hierarchical structure (Ma 2005) and paternalism legacy on the rural issues. © Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3_4

43

44

4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs …

In this respect, this chapter introduces the state rescaling theory into the rural governance analysis. Scale is understood as the organizational principle according to which geographical differentiation takes place at, across and transcends different spatial “levels” (Cartier 2005). Scaling refers to “the establishment of geographical differences according to a metric of scales—etches a certain order of empowerment and containment into the geographical landscape” (Smith 2000). By contrast to the notion that the nation-state boundary and “level” of territory is neutral, rescaling theory recognizes the shifting in the power and control over scales, such as from the national scale to the urban scale or to the global scale. In China studies, specifically, a state rescaling perspective focuses on how actual processes work through the territorial administrative hierarchies—from the center to provinces, cities, counties, and towns, and, in turn, how such political territories are constructed, mutable, and dynamic (Cartier 2005; Chung 2007; Shen 2007) . Based on the first-hand data collected through fieldwork in Nanjing, I attempt to answer the following working questions in this chapter. How is the role of the state in governing the countryside strengthened through the state-led rural programs? How do local governments interact with the higher level (central/provincial) governments and the town-level governments in the process of program implementation? This chapter will unravel the intergovernmental politics on rural issues and evaluate the new governing pattern. The research will refine the theoretical interpretation of state rescaling in the rural context. The findings will also be useful for policy-making to decide what should be done to revitalize the hollowing-out countryside. The following section first introduces the program evolution process and intergovernmental mobilizations. After that the rationales embedded in the local rhetorical legitimization as well as path-dependent implementation are illustrated with substantial evidences. A discussion of the pros and cons of the new state-led pattern is followed, and some conclusions are reached in the last section.

4.2 Local Response to Policy Directives Implementation of the rural programs encompasses “politics of scale” and “production of scale.” The “politics of scale” involve distinct state actors and institutions, influencing goals, policies, and ideologies in scale contexts. In contrast, “production of scale” prioritizes thinking about scale through spatial processes that transcend and rework scale, rather than via a skeletal framework of ascending levels of state territory (Cartier 2005). As Swyngedouw (1997: 169) explains, “the theoretical and political priority, therefore, never resides in a particular geographical scale, but rather in the process through which particular scales become (re)constituted.” Conventionally, the division of labor between governments at different levels follows a top-down manner: higher level governments initiate new programs, and the local governments allocate fund to town-level governments for implementation. However, this tangible process cannot explain the whole picture. The more fundamental mechanism can be revealed by a review of the program rationale which

4.2 Local Response to Policy Directives

45

Fig. 4.1 Process and rationales of local response. Source Compiled by author

explains why the programs expand at the local and why more stakeholders are involved in the program campaign (Fig. 4.1). The first rationale involves bottomup action from the local government who seeks legitimacy from the higher level government for their programs. The legitimacy then helps to justify the mobilization process, in which town-level governments and non-government stakeholders, mainly enterprises, farmers, and social organizations, are also mobilized to participate in programs.

4.2.1 Intergovernmental and Social Mobilization The intergovernmental relations in the programs illustrate the “politics of scale” where the operating strategies of existing state apparatus exist. For successful program implementation, resource mobilization is of vital importance in the program campaign similar to many other social movements (McCarthy and Zald 1977). This mobilization process is premised on the legitimacy of programs. To maximize the program effect, more manpower, material resources, and funds need to be mobilized to implement the program. Apart from the governments, farmers, private enterprises, and social organizations are also mobilized to contribute to the programs. Through co-financing (Lin and Wong 2012), the programs are embedded with a mechanism of intergovernmental mobilization. There is an aspect of neoliberalization here (Harvey 2007). Analogous to the tried and true strategy that is consistently used by US federal government (Jin et al. 2005), the province and the center in China have provided incentive financing schemes, which encourage local governments to provide “matching funds” for rural development. In Chap. 2,

46

4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs …

Table 4.1 The funding sources from multi-level governments in the VER program Region

South Jiangsu (million yuan)

Middle Jiangsu (million yuan)

North Jiangsu (million yuan)

Central

158

42

50

Provincial

N/A

21

50

Municipal and county level

273

42

25

Town and village level

44

4

1

Source Jiangsu Finance Department, an unpublished document, 2011

I elaborated a lot on the rise of the programs initiating from central and provincial governments. In this chapter, I will detail the process of the local response in Jiangning. In the provincial VER program, Jiangsu government required local governments to provide a certain amount of “matching fund” as an essential condition to apply for start-up fund. In the 2010 actual budget of this program, the higher level governments spent 158 million yuan on the countryside of South Jiangsu, while the local governments invested 273 million yuan, nearly twice that of the former (Table 4.1). In this case, the fund from the higher level governments acts as the “bait” to lure investment from low-level governments. The programs can realize “self-expansion” and penetrate into the rural society through social mobilization (Chen 2013). Private and voluntary sectors are invited to participate in these programs, while there are no significant voluntary actions by the villagers. As one village cadre told us, the initial program from Nanjing government was an important “wind indicator” for local capital. The “attention of higher level government” ensured an advantage in business promotion and good cooperation attitude of the farmers. The farmers tended to value the short-term performance of a program. Thus, the initial success was very important to mobilize the farmers to participate in these programs. Also, the development vision stated in the rural planning was a significant tool to stimulate farmers’ enthusiasm in. program participation1 This view is also shared by farmers to some extent. When asked the same question in the villager interviews, farmers often claimed that they welcomed changes in the villages.2 Many villagers were hired by the agencies of the state-led programs. However, as farmers were not well organized, grassroots initiatives seldom occurred, especially among the youngsters. Seeking quick success and instant benefits, the state-led programs still exclude the villagers to some extent, even though villager participation is repeatedly claimed in propaganda.

1 Interview

with a village cadre in Jiangning, May 2014. with villagers in Jiangning, July 2014.

2 Interviews

4.2 Local Response to Policy Directives

47

Table 4.2 Representative rural programs at the local level Theme

Focus

Initiating organization

Launching date

Coordinating urban–rural development (2005)

• Political echo to central CURD initiative • Subsidy on less developed countryside

CPC Nanjing, Nanjing government

May 2005

New socialist countryside construction

• Political echo to central NSCC initiative • Rural public service facilities

CPC Nanjing, Nanjing government

March 2006

Coordinating urban–rural development (2010)

• From previous policies on paper to concrete actions • Comprehensive fields including land, industry, environment, irrigation, etc.

CPC Nanjing, Nanjing government

August 2010

Five blossoms

• Pilot experiments in five villages for demonstration effect

CPC Jiangning

September 2011

Coordinating urban–rural development (2011)

• Comprehensive rural land consolidation

CPC Nanjing

October 2011

Village environment renovation

• Routine echo to provincial VER initiative

Nanjing government

March 2012

Beautiful countryside (2013)

• Ecological design in VER • Self-contain development of villages

CPC Nanjing, Nanjing government

May 2013

Beautiful countryside (2014)

• From pilot villages to whole Jiangning

CPC Jiangning

April 2014

Source Compiled from official documents by author

4.2.2 Reconstructing the State Apparatus The reorganization of the state agency then exemplifies “production of scale” in the program evolution. To mould a program-tailored regime, temporary agencies have been established to liaise with different governments and CPC departments. They coordinate the programs initiated by different bureaus and commissions (Fig. 4.2), and the statecraft gains greatly in governing the rural issues. As Fig. 4.2 shows, the permanent agencies of Nanjing have two systems—CPC and government system. Given that the administration in China follows the stateparty system, CPC and government agencies overlap in some domains with different

48

4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs …

Fig. 4.2 Integrating temporary agencies into permanent agencies. Source Compiled by author

emphases. The CPC agencies are more focused on policy-making and affair coordination. They often have a broad administrative domain, corresponding to more than one department in the government system. Due to the significance of the rural issues for the party, CPC Nanjing has a specific working commission, named “Rural Working Commission of CPC Nanjing” , to coordinate “three rural issues.” Its mission is mainly to optimize production relations in the countryside. In contrast, the government agencies focus on executive works under the guidance of the party. For example, the agriculture bureau in the government system is committed to promoting rural productivity. Other government agencies concerning rural issues include commissions/bureaus of urban–rural construction, finance, planning, land resources, etc. To coordinate rural programs, two temporary agencies, namely, “Coordinating Urban–Rural Development Working Committee” (Working Committee and hereafter) and “Beautiful Countryside Steering Group” (Steering Group and hereafter), were established in the CPC and government system, respectively (Fig. 4.2). From the wording of “working committee” (gongzuo weiyuanhui) and “steering group” (lingdao xiaozu), we can differentiate their positions from the very beginning. The Working Committee was set up according to the document of CURD action outlined in 2010. As the top authority for directing and coordinating rural works, the configuration of Working Committee ensures its leading position. It is co-chaired by the party secretary and mayor of Nanjing. Directors of relevant departments of

4.2 Local Response to Policy Directives

49

CPC and city government are committee members. Its general office was set up in the Rural Working Commission of CPC Nanjing. The general office functions as the standing body of the committee in charge of routine business. Its major tasks include the coordination of programs from multiple channels (e.g., summarizing the applications from various departments, allocating funds to operators, and avoiding double funding), investigation and data collection, implementation evaluation, document drafting, etc.3 Working Committee mobilizes the state capacity that is dispersed at different levels and departments within the governmental sector for maximum effect. The relocation of the general office of Steering Group offers us an interesting case on the reconstruction of state apparatus. In this process, the capacity as well as the flexibility of the state apparatus is expanded. It was in March 2012, before the 18th CPC Congress, when the discourse of “Beautiful Countryside” first appeared in the official document of Nanjing (Table 3). The document was a routine response to the provincial VER program, but using a discourse of “Beautiful Countryside” by Nanjing. Because VER was mainly initiated by the provincial department of housing and urban–rural development, the general office of Steering Group was set up and attached to the corresponding commission of Nanjing government, i.e., Nanjing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction. However, after the launch of the program campaign under the theme of “Beautiful Countryside” of 18th CPC Congress, there were many coordinating affairs that could not be handled by the Nanjing Municipal Commission of Housing and UrbanRural Construction. The general office of Steering Group was then relocated to the rural working commission of CPC Nanjing. This relocation means that Steering Group becomes a unit of the powerful party system, like Working Committee. Thus, the general office of Steering Group becomes more powerful to coordinate various departments backed by the party system and party leaders.

4.2.3 Rural Planning The allocation of the program fund undergoes a series of well-designed procedures— rural planning, program initiation, application, supervision, assessment, etc. (see more in Sect. 2.2.5). Among these stages, rural planning is the primary outline that guides the distribution of state fund and political resources. Rural planning in China adopts a two-layer system to facilitate the program procedure. The first layer is the village system plan. The whole territory of Jiangning is divided into three parts according to their distinctive features in physical and cultural landscape. In the formulation of rural plan, each part delimits definite geographic boundary and has respective village system plan. Even though the themes of the plans may vary according to respective programs (e.g., Beautiful Countryside, VER), the essence of the plans on this layer is fixed as development outlines that stipulate respective projects in specific villages (Fig. 4.3). The subordinate layer is the detailed plan. 3 Interview

with an official in Rural Working Commission of CPC Nanjing, July 2014.

50

4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs …

Fig. 4.3 Land use layout of west Jiangning as a village system plan, named Demonstration Area of Beautiful Countryside Plan. Source Shenzhen LAY-OUT Planning Consultants Ltd., 2013

This plan is formulated by the unit of respective village. In the plan, the land use layout and even designs of village buildings are put forward, and through this plan, the projects of different themes in the village system plans can fall upon the rural ground. An official who is in charge of the village system plan for the provincial office of VER confirmed as the following: The fund of our program is contributed by various departments in Jiangsu government, such as departments of poverty relief, water resources, land resources, agriculture and so on. However, the general office is set up in the provincial department of housing and urban-rural development as it is in charge of the rural planning works. In our rural plans, we classify the 180 thousand villages of Jiangsu into two types, the well-off livable villages, and the ordinary villages. Some model villages are also selected from the former. Furthermore, different guidelines will be formulated for each type of village in the program.4 Thus, the

4 For

the well-off livable villages, the standard is more stringent according to the guidance of “six renovations and six improvements” criteria. The six renovations cover garbage, sewage, the cluttered environment, waste from agricultural production, industrial pollution sources, and maintenance of watercourse and ditch ponds. The six improvements refer to transport access, buildings with local characteristics, everyday management, public services and facilities, access to safe drinking water, and greening the living environment. The ordinary villages are required to follow the “three renovations and one guarantee” criteria. The “three renovations” cover the requirement of garbage, the cluttered environment, and the maintenance of watercourse and ditch ponds and “one guarantee” refers to the fulfilment of basic living conditions of farmers. See more in Wu and Zhou (2013), Zhou et al. (2013).

4.2 Local Response to Policy Directives

51

village list generated by rural plans is an important database in dealing with rural issues of the entire province.5

The planning regime mandates very detailed standards for the rural construction (Bray 2013), and it also offers a contested arena for coordinating interests of actors in the countryside (Smith 2014). Before the formation of the “Beautiful Countryside” plans, planners conducted a full-covered survey on featured resources in rural Nanjing. The cultural heritages, historical sites, and handicraft arts were all recorded and graded according to their value for conservation. Each rural plan has a project library, which is crucial for program implementation and evaluation. The project library does not only contain a coordinated list of specific projects sorted by location and category, but also facilitates the task allocation among town-level governments. Through so-called “projectization” (setting up specific projects in one program), Jiangning government can draw clear lines of responsibility for the sub-district governments. The project library contains information about deadlines, attached requirements for each project, and explicit criteria for program evaluation (Table 4.3). One official, who is in charge of rural planning affairs in the Planning Bureau of Nanjing, commented as follows in my interview: Projectization is an obvious trend in the plan making process. In the formation of rural planning, we strongly emphasize its operability. To avoid project overlap, we need to integrate projects from different departments. Therefore, it is required that each rural plan should be enclosed with explicit “project library”. Without such kind of project list, the town-level governments will find it hard to carry out the plan.6

Therefore, rural planning is emphasized as the technical platform for program implementation at the local level. It helps to ensure that the rationales of the program are carried out in the process of implementation. More specifically, through rural plans, programs are packaged to gain legitimacy, and then unpacked into explicit projects for mobilization and implementation at the grassroots.

4.3 State Rescaling Through Programs National-based modes of production have been disarticulating into multi-scalar arenas and toward complex reconstitution of state activity at various scales (MacLeod and Goodwin 1999). Thus the state, while clearly national, is not specific to one scale. Compared to the western literature, post-reform China studies on rescaling largely concentrated on the dynamics at and below the state level, among which the theory has been examined with the cases of regional planning and coordination (Chen et al. 2014; Li and Wu 2012; Smart and Lin 2007) and administrative reconstruction (Li and Wu 2014; Luo et al. 2014). The process of local appropriation in program 5 Interview

with an official in Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of Jiangsu Province, July 2014. 6 Interview with an official in Planning Bureau of Nanjing, July 2014.

Eco-tourism

Information center

2

3

Miaozhuang

Panlongyunshui

Gingko lake

Road/ Farmland/ Drainage

Datangjin

Shitangwei

Project locale

Source Shenzhen LAY-OUT Planning Consultants Ltd, 2013

Scenic spot

Green grid

3

1

Forest park

2

Tourism

Ecological restoration

1

Landscape

Project type

No.

Category

December 2013

December 2013 June 2014

December 2013

2.2 km2 12.6 km2

3000–5000 m2

December 2013

December 2013

Deadline

Whole demonstration area, 35 km2

6400 mu

N/A

Scale

Table 4.3 Project library in the Demonstration Area of Beautiful Countryside Plan of west Jiangning

Jiangning sub-district

Jiangning sub-district, Communication Construction Group

Guli sub-district

Moling, Guli, Hengxi sub-district, Forestry Bureau

Guli sub-district, Forestry Bureau

Hengxi sub-district

Bodies in charge

Parking lots, toilets, local specialty shop

N/A

N/A

98% Coverage

N/A

N/A

Other requirements

52 4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs …

4.3 State Rescaling Through Programs

53

evolution reveals such kind of state rescaling. This local appropriation emerges in at least three ways: the first is rhetorical legitimization. Local governments use the new program as a slogan to re-brand or expand activities they are already undertaking.

4.3.1 Rhetorical Legitimization The process of rhetorical legitimization plays a catalytic role in the program evolution. To expand the influence of their pioneering works, Nanjing and Jiangning purposely followed the central discourse to seize the priority for their programs. From the stance of local governments, the higher level discourse provides a rhetoric channel to rescale their rural program practice, namely, scaling-up process. According to respective launching dates, a time series analysis of the programs can be made by combining Tables 2.2 and 4.2 to observe the discourse process (Fig. 4.4). Generally speaking, the programs from Nanjing and Jiangning pay more attention to specific projects than those from the higher level, but the program density along the time axis is not regular. Before 2010, the documents issued by Nanjing were routine echoes to the central initiatives of CURD and NSCC. However, since August 2010 when the document entitled “Action outline on speeding up coordinated development and building new Nanjing of urban-rural integrated development” was released, the rural programs in Nanjing have entered a booming phase. Kicked off by this milestone document, rural programs have transformed from previous policies on paper to concrete actions with an explicit roadmap. Another important milestone was the 18th CPC Congress in November 2012. In this power handover conference, the Central Committee released the ideological slogan of “Ecological Modernization” and “Beautiful China” . The keynote report

Fig. 4.4 A timeline for analyzing programs of multi-level governments. Source Compiled from official documents by author

54

4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs …

articulated that the overall layout of socialism with Chinese characteristics should be a pattern of “Five in One,” including the construction of economy, politics, culture, society, and the newly added ecology. As a local response, the countryside is well placed to practice the central ideology, especially for those coastal provinces with intense man–land relation. Seizing the buzzword “beautiful”, seemingly conferred by the central and irresistible to the mass, Nanjing and Jiangning tactfully advertised their pioneer work with the discourse of “Beautiful Countryside”. The proactive echo definitely scaled up local practices and was helpful in seeking legitimacy and facilitating propaganda. Legitimization can be deemed as the aim of rhetorical rescaling. Local governments have become more and more entrepreneurial by initiating various development programs in post-reform China (Oi 1992; Shen 2007). But the local state entrepreneurship needs the blessing of the higher level governments. Legitimacy here can be understood as the acceptance and recognition by the higher level government of a program initiated by a low-level government. In some cases of the central and western regions of China, it is contended that a programmatic campaign launched by the central may result in chaotic local practices (Li 2007). Nevertheless, the circumstance in Nanjing is just on the contrary. Nanjing has many bottom-up programs that need to be endorsed by the central government. The central possesses the ultimate power (Shue 2004). The local government can gain the legitimacy by positively echoing to the strategic slogans or programs of the central. Only when the local government gets the “blessing”, can it realize its ambitious plan and programs to develop the countryside. We can examine the legitimation process in detail from the story told by an official. During an inspecting visit to rural Jiangning on November 20, 2012, just one week after the closing of 18th CPC Congress, the mayor of Nanjing came up with the idea “to build Jiangning into a demonstration area of beautiful China, beautiful countryside.” He wrote it down on a piece of paper right away and handed over to his Jiangning subordinates. 7 In this story, the local leader keenly grasped the ideological signal released in the party congress. “Beautiful China” , which has become a buzzword nowadays, emphasizes ecological aspect in local development. With this vogue word, the pioneer practices in Jiangning got sufficient legitimacy to mobilize the grassroots.

4.3.2 Path-Dependent Implementation Implementation of rural programs is path-dependent. Areas that have received program resources in the past are likely to receive resources in the future. Local governments seek to establish demonstration or model villages that they can show to higher level officials as proof of their success, thereby improving their chances of

7 Interview

with an official in Planning Bureau of Nanjing, July 2014.

4.3 State Rescaling Through Programs

55

Fig. 4.5 The simulacra making of Shitang Home. Source Nanjing Broadcasting System, 2013

promotion. With the blessing of legitimacy, Jiangning and Nanjing employ the measure of program packaging to amplify its impact. This process shows that the local government is not just a deliverer, receiving and passing on the fiscal packages of central programs; but more like a packer, embedding ongoing rural works into programs to realize own ambition (She and Chen 2011). Thus, the program investment in the countryside is not confined to a single program, but a chain of programs (Xun and Bao 2007). A scale perspective does not assume that processes necessarily move up and down a territorial hierarchy but recognizes that social processes may move unevenly across a space and sometimes jump scales. The model villages exemplify “jumping scale” through uneven program implementation. Since 2011 when Shitang village in Jiangning was first selected as the experimental site of rural eco-tourism, its title has evolved from “Five Blossoms” to “Featured Model Village of Beautiful Countryside.” As soon as Jiangning was asked to join a specific program, the district government always gave the priority to Shitang village to join the new program. With the additional input of non-governmental capital, the simulacra making of “Shitang Home” attracted investment of more than 100 million yuan in the past three years.8 The infrastructure in the village was improved significantly. Farmhouse inns and restaurants were opened up, a new sewerage system was built, cottage façades were painted with a uniform local style, and the deserted ponds around the dwellings were cleaned and dredged. The programs aesthetically epitomized a look of the idyllic village, featuring white walls, black roof tiles, waters flowing along the foot of the hill, and night camping under the dome of starlight (Fig. 4.5). Those programs were organized by different departments but concentrated in the same village. Benefiting from these programs, Shitang village gains self-sufficiency in the rural economy led by eco-tourism.

8 Interview

with an official in Planning Bureau of Jiangning, July 2014.

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4 Governing the Countryside Through State-Led Programs …

4.3.3 Legitimizing Land Expropriation Local governments use the programs to capture resources. Over the past ten years, central and provincial governments have sought to constrain local governments from expropriating rural land with rigorous farmland protection policy. Since the central government only controls the accumulative total of the urban and rural built-up areas, the local governments resort to the countryside within their municipal territories to exploit more land quota for urban growth. Indeed the programs can be used to evade such restrictions. With the intention to achieve fund balance, local governments use the programs to legitimize land expropriation in rural areas. The financial return from such land-related programs supports the local government to initiate additional programs. But it may have a negative effect on villagers’ right in land properties. With the progress of the CURD program in Nanjing, the rural works of Nanjing in 2012 focused on a sub-program called “Comprehensive Rural Land Consolidation.” This program was originally designated to release construction land and promote large-scale cultivation in the countryside (Huang et al. 2014). Packaged as a CURD program, the legitimacy of land expropriation from the villages was justified. It was implemented more easily, saving a lot of social costs for Jiangning government. Due to the introduction of the “increasing vs. decreasing balance,” policy the land quota saved from the program could be transferred to Nanjing city and sold in the land market (Long et al. 2012; Tian et al. 2015). According to an internal agreement signed by the government heads of Jiangning and Nanjing,9 the latter would allocate 100 million yuan to each pilot sub-district in Jiangning for the land consolidation program. However, there was a condition that Jiangning government should sell the saved land quota to Nanjing government at the price of 500 thousand yuan per mu.10 With the net revenue generated by the land price gap, Nanjing government promised to subsidize the rural programs of remaining sub-districts in a rolling way.

4.4 Conclusion The state administration of rural China experienced a hollowing-out process after the tax reform. The governments were trapped in a status with no effective tools to steer the rural development. The state-led rural programs have changed the embarrassing situation successfully in some regions. Based on the empirical study of Jiangning, this chapter shows how the state role in governing the countryside has been strengthened significantly through the rural programs and how local city/district

9 The

document is titled “Commitment for Returning Start-up Fund in Comprehensive Rural Land Consolidation Program.”. 10 The land price in Nanjing city proper is around 5 million yuan per mu, about ten times the purchasing price from Jiangning.

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governments interact with the higher level governments in program implementation. While the close intergovernmental interaction is the particular focus of the chapter, this research also sheds light on the contribution of the state-led program to the rural governance theory. The following are some preliminary findings. First, a new pattern of state governing is in the making in the countryside. In the state-centered society of China, the state-led programs are contributing to rebuild the rural governance in a unique way. Facing the rural governance crisis and the consensus on “rural issues matter,” rural programs are initiated by governments to support the countryside with earmarked fund. Through those rural programs, the state apparatus reconstructs and expands; central government successfully penetrates into the countryside and regains the leading role in rural development and governance. Furthermore, as an exogenous drive that aims to vitalize the hollowing countryside, the self-organization power of the villagers vis-à-vis that of the state is still limited. Generally speaking, rural programs have brought significant transformation in the countryside and also triggered new governance question. Second, rural development driven by programs encompasses interesting dynamics of state rescaling. As revealed in the literature on policy implementation in China (Lieberthal and Oksenberg 1988), local governments adapt the programs of the province and the center to achieve their own objectives. Compared to the higher level governments who emphasize politics and stability of the countryside, local governments show more utilitarianism and to some degree change the policy directives of the province and the center. They pay more attention to the demonstrating effects of some pilot villages and the growth of local economies. In this study, it relates back to the problem of higher -level incentives and drives the nature of appropriation in localities. To be specific, higher level governments initiate and lead rural programs. Prioritizing the rural issues, they invest a large amount of resources in program campaign and funding, and have the final say on the legitimacy of programs. However, higher level governments only provide broad guidelines and limited seed funds for concrete programs. The local governments possess discretionary power in the program campaign. They successfully harness the discourse and restructure the state apparatus for program implementation. Third, there is also an aspect of neo-liberalization in the intergovernmental interactions through co-financing programs—the higher level governments provide incentive financing schemes, which encourage local governments to provide matching funds for rural development. In the case study, we observe that the central and provincial layers of government seek to use their recentralized fiscal power to mobilize lower level action on rural development and the lower levels of government seek to use the new development programs to recapture control over centrally controlled or regulated resources.

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Shue V (2004) Legitimacy crisis in China? In: Gries PH, Rosen S (eds) State and society in 21st Century China: crisis, contention and legitimation. Routledge Curzon, New York, pp 24–49 Smart A, Lin GCS (2007) Local capitalisms, local citizenship and translocality: rescaling from below in the Pearl River Delta Region, China. Int J Urban Regional Res 31(2):280–302 Smith N (2000) Scale. In: Johnston RJ, Gregory D, Pratt G et al (eds) The dictionary of human geography. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 724–727 Smith NR (2014) Living on the edge: Household registration reform and peri-urban precarity in China. J Urban Aff 36(sup1):369–383 Swyngedouw E (1997) Excluding the other: the production of scale and scaled politics. In: Lee R, Wills J (eds) Geogr Econ. Arnold, London, pp 167–176 Tian L, Guo X, Yin W (2015) From urban sprawl to land consolidation in suburban Shanghai under the backdrop of increasing versus decreasing balance policy: a perspective of property rights transfer. Urban Studies, in press Wu F, Zhou L (2013) Beautiful China: the experience of Jiangsu’s rural village improvement program. In: Colman J, Gossop C (eds) Frontiers of planning: visionary futures for human settlements. ISOCARP, Hague, pp 156–169 Xun L, Bao Z (2007) Environmental policies based on government mobilization and their local implementation: a sociological analysis of ecological migration at s banner in Inner Mongolia. Soc Sci China 5:114–128 (in Chinese) Zhou L, Yu C, He P (2013) Small village, big strategy: practice in Jiangsu to promote integrated urban-rural development. City Plann Rev 37(11):20–27 (in Chinese)

Chapter 5

Commodification of Tangjiajia and Sustainable Governance in Question

Abstract This chapter examines the commodification process initiated through a series of state-led programs and questions the sustainable public goods provision in rural China. I challenge the unilateral understanding of spontaneous commodification by the profit-seeking community and argue that the influence exerted by the Chinese government cannot be ignored. It is found that a preliminary partnership among the state, private investors, and villagers was formed to create a hot spring village called Tangjiajia in suburban Nanjing. The reconstruction was the result of a state-led renovation of the built environment, but it also catalyzed villager entrepreneurship and boosted community consensus. Regarding the public goods provision, stakeholders in the village now enjoy high-quality facilities and services provided by the government for free but have failed to foster reciprocal cooperation to replenish the subtractability of the rural commons. It is claimed that state intervention is temporal but not a cure-all. A pricing mechanism for the sustainable delivery of public goods is urgently needed in the community. The state-led commodification has undermined the previous low-level equilibrium of rural governance. From the stance of rural sustainability, only self-organization of the rural community can solve the dilemma. Keywords Rural commodification · State-led program · Sustainable governance · Public goods · China In Chap. 4, I shed light on the increasing governing capacity of multi-level governments in jiangning. The state-led program is such a pervasive state instrument that different villages receive varied types of programs. The following two chapters will examine the rural governance changes at the village level in more details in Chap. 5. I will first use the case of Tangjiajia an eco-tourism village in east Jiangning to scrutinize different stages of the village’s commodification and articulate the governance structure for public goods provision.

© Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3_5

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5.1 Introduction According to international experience, one of the most significant restructuring in rural areas is the transformation from an economy based on agricultural production to one based on a commodified countryside (Fløysand and Jakobsen 2007; Woods 2005, pp. 172–185). The rural transition from productivism to post-productivism is a global trend (Cloke and Goodwin 1992; Wilson 2001), and China is no exception. During the 1980s and 1990s, rural China adopted a productivist paradigm, i.e., in situ industrialization pioneered by township and village enterprises. Because dispersed enterprises often lack efficient pollution prevention and control, the countryside was experiencing serious ecological degradation (Ma and Fan 1994; Muldavin 1997; Zhao and Wong 2002). This has led to a call for more sustainable development that is environmentally friendly. The commodification of cultural and environmental resources is a simultaneous process paralleling the rapid urbanization and industrialization of the country and decreasing employment in the agricultural sector (Long et al. 2016; Shen 1995). China’s first cohort of commodified villages emerged in the late 1990s, when rural areas near large cities such as Chengdu initiated a new industry named rural ecotourism (nongjiale, which means “experiencing the happy life of rural areas” in Chinese). Because of the advantages of natural affinity, high accessibility, and low cost, rural eco-tourism has become the most popular leisure activity for urbanites, especially on the weekends. An increasing number of urban residents go to the countryside for recreation, enjoying eco-life, visiting rural scenic spots, and breathing better quality air. The onsite activities include “staying in a typical rural house, eating organic food, and engaging in farming” and even “enjoying happiness from being part of a rural family” (Marsden et al. 2011; Newton and Franklin 2011). The host villages, as a result, experience a transformation from living spaces to spaces of consumption (Wu 2015, pp. 99–103). The statistics illustrated in Fig. 5.1 also buttress the argument. The tertiary-sector income in Jiangning agriculture maintains an increasing pace from 2010 to 2017, and the corresponding percentage is expanding as a whole. Villages under commodification have a more sophisticated governance structure than those engaged in subsistence agriculture. Other than villagers and the state, entrepreneurs and tourists are also involved in eco-tourism. Meanwhile, local communities face many challenges in the development of eco-tourism (Coria and Calfucura 2012). In the case of rural Jiangning, the state role is multi-scalar and pervasive. The boom of the rural eco-tourism in Jiangning originates from the district-level experiment of “Five Blossoms” (see more in Sect. 5.4.2). And afterward, the pilot villagers were absorbed and promoted through provincial VER program, in which the renovation of built environment in rural areas is used as a breakthrough point to revitalize the rural society (Wu and Zhou 2013). Based on the literature review, we identified a research gap in existing knowledge as well as potential contributions of this chapter: (1) An abundance of literature theoretically anatomizes the commodification of rural areas with political–economic

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Fig. 5.1 The increasing tertiary-sector income of rural Jiangning and its percentage in all sectors of rural economy. Source Jiangning District Bureau of Statistics, 2012–2018. Note The tertiary-sector income of rural Jiangning is an aggregated account comprising sectors of catering, service and retailing in rural economy

or socio-cultural perspectives (Perkins 2006, pp. 243–257), whereas in-depth and well-organized empirical study is urgently needed, especially in cases of rural China; (2) In the context of China’s recent national campaign of building the “beautiful countryside,” it is inadequate to unilaterally emphasize the penetration of the market into the countryside and deliberately ignore the variegated roles of the state in the process toward commodification; (3) Most of the existing literature finds that the public goods provision of rural China follows a monocentric mode dominated by the state. As for villages experiencing consumption shifts, the occurrence of multiple stakeholders urges a re-examination from a sustainable governance perspective, and Ostrom’s hypothesis of polycentricity needs to be tested (Ostrom 1999). To fill the knowledge gap, we need to include the state’s role in rural commodification research. Furthermore, research in the urban context supports that the growthoriented plans and programs represent the rising interest and capacity of the state during market transition (Wu 2015, pp. 196–209). In this sense, this chapter also has research significance for comparative studies—when state-led programs come to rural settings, it remains a question whether the state governs as a monolithic whole or spurs new dynamics in the countryside. In the following part, I will first give a retrospect on the rural commodification and the theory of commons. After that, an anatomy of the Tangjiajia case will be addressed in detail. The analysis of the commodification will mainly devote to the evolving role of the state, and the engagement of the community and market at different stages. After that, I will discuss the sustainability of the commodifying village through lens of public goods provision. Lastly, the conclusions and implications from the Tangjiajia case will be drawn in the last section.

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In the following sections, an anatomy of the Tangjiajia case will be first addressed in detail, mainly focusing on the evolving role of the state and the engagement of the community and market. After that, a theoretical analysis of the rural commons provision is employed to decipher the dilemma in Tangjiajia. Lastly, conclusions and policy implications are drawn.

5.2 Rural Commodification, Rural Commons, and the State Role 5.2.1 Rural Commodification and Entrepreneurialism The commodification of rural areas is defined whereby rural environments are being exploited to meet the demands for contemporary consumption (Cloke and Goodwin 1992). In recent cases of either the global north or south, the objects of consumption have changed from material realities to social constructions of the countryside, i.e., rurality. The attributes of an imagined rural idyll—scenery, nature, tranquility, and authenticity—are translated into commodities that can be bought and sold (Woods 2010, pp. 92–129). The new consumptive economy of the countryside blurs the rural–urban boundaries and rural space and then is reconstituted into “something more akin to that of the urban” (Phillips 2005; Smith and Holt 2005). The villages under tremendous reconstruction are often adjacent to flourishing metropolises and attract crowds of urbanites who are fond of consuming the idyllic countryside for recreation. The urban lifestyles, both materially and culturally, are expanded into the countryside, with the implantation of boutiques, special stores, clubs, chain stores, and gated mansions (Ghose 2004). Borrowing the concept “simulacrum”, by French postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard (1994), scholars in rural studies reiterated “rural simulacrum” to contour the trend in the post-productivist countryside. It was argued that the simulacrum society existed purely as virtual consumption—the exchange value of rural goods exceeded their direct usefulness to rural residents—a situation of hyper-reality foreseen by Baudrillard (Best 2000; Perkins 2006, pp. 243–257; Thomas et al. 2001, pp. 105–122). The corresponding examples included various farms, parks, shopping villages, and stylish county resorts, which often mirrored the environments from which the visitors escaped (Mitchell 1998; Wilson 1992). As such, the epistemology of rural commodification has already sparked heated theoretical debates, while empirical studies with substantial evidence of evolving processes deserve equal discussion. In the case studies of rural consumption shifts, rurality is marketed as a tourism product through which contemporary popular knowledge is projected in imagined pre-touristic cultural contexts (Crouch 2006). Community entrepreneurialism catering to the urban market is emphasized (Bryant 1989; Mitchell 1998), especially the rent-seeking behaviors of indigenous villagers (Qian

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et al. 2013). However, the state’s role is relatively ignored compared with studies in the urban setting, which has left a significant research gap. In the Anglo-American context, entrepreneurs sought to satisfy post-modern consumers’ desire to give a tangible expression to the countryside ideal. The “entrepreneurial culture,” which involved a seemingly bottom-up (indeed market-led) strategy of fostering community development based on localized resources and enterprises, was stressed in the literature (Pettigrew 1987). Bryant (1989) highlighted the environments that enabled rural entrepreneurialism in two ways. First was the need to do speculative things differently, and the second was whether any benefit can be derived from the entrepreneurial activities. Many studies found that the entrepreneurial activities, as manifested by the decisions and actions of individuals or communities, played a crucial role in the economic revitalization of declining villages (Bunce and Bunce 1994; Liu and Li 2017; Mitchell 1998; Urry 1995). Rural areas in contemporary China accommodate vibrant hybridities and mobilities, especially the villages on the peripheries of metropolises. The recent national campaign of building the “beautiful countryside” and the discourse of rural nostalgia have whipped up a heat wave of rural revitalization across the country through tourist and creative industries. To cater to the urban middle class’ preferences of cultural and leisure consumption, local governments also have enthusiastically embraced opportunities to support rural reconstruction (Shen and Shen 2018a). However, the government role has not received adequate attention in the scholarly works, especially those focused on rural commodification. In the observations based on the Pearl River Delta (PRD and hereafter), various types of rural commodification were identified, such as rural gentrification (Qian et al. 2013), studentification (He 2015), and the culture clusters in the making (Li et al. 2014; Wang and Li 2016). Commodification of the villages was intensified by the interplay between the aestheticisation of rural living for urban dwellers, the rent-seeking behaviors of indigenous villagers and even the entrepreneurial and consuming choices of students (He 2015; Qian et al. 2013). In contrast, the local state played an indirect role, at most setting up a business-friendly atmosphere for rural change (Li et al. 2014; Qian et al. 2013). In recent research on the artist villages in the suburbs, Li (2015) exclusively attributed the commodification to the entrepreneurship of local villagers. Inspired by the classic migration theory, the phenomenon was considered an “adaption” of villagers to the marketization and urbanization: they took the market risk, utilized their social capital, and mined local resources and the informality of rural space.

5.2.2 Interventional State and Rural Public Goods Provision In contrast to the invisible role among most of the scholarly records of rural commodification, the state has demonstrated its notable dominance and strong intervention in the delivery of public goods. In China, the local government bears nearly complete fiscal responsibility for rural public goods provision (Sato 2008; Zhang et al.

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2004). Whether the performance is a success or failure, the effects may be exclusively attributed to the almighty state. To demystify rural economic growth and increased well-being of farmers in postMao China, a large volume of literature found that the state, especially the initiatives of local governments, has played an irreplaceable role (Cai and Treisman 2006; Che and Qian 1998; Landry 2008; Oi 1992; Whiting 2000). Concerning public funding reform at the turn of the century, scholars noticed that the abolition of agricultural taxes caused a hollowing-out crisis of public finance at the grassroots (Smith 2010). The intergovernmental fiscal transfers did not necessarily produce improvements in rural public goods (Sato 2008), while direct election of village leaders did yield benefits (Luo et al. 2007). State funding is absolutely not the cure-all for public goods provision in the countryside. Through implementation of a state-led road project in northern China, Zhou (2012) disclosed the unintended consequences that led to huge collective debts and erosion of the collective basis of rural governance. Assembled with wide-ranging observations of top-down programs, James Scott (1998) emphasized the perils of the interventional state. Those state-led programs were designated with great intention for public goods provision, but eventually led to disastrous consequences for the countryside in the global south. Other scholars have also emphasized the role of social organizations and networks in resource mobilization and rural problem-solving. Those social processes, incorporating village kinship, network ties, and communal trust, provide a basis for rural governance (Duara 1988; Huang 1990; Ostrom et al. 1999), and even encompass an informal accountability for public goods provision (Tsai 2007). Generally speaking, the public goods provision in China has followed a monocentric model. The state, as the central authority, often dominated all others in the public affairs of the countryside. Most empirical studies have explored the impact on rural governance exerted by variegated organs of the state, such as multi-level governments, departmental bureaucracies, state policies, and village cadres (Che and Qian 1998; Landry 2008; Oi 1992; Zhou 2012). Ostrom et al. (1999) advocated a polycentric system, in which each unit may exercise considerable independence to make and enforce rules within a circumscribed scope of authority, to deal with problems. Regarding the circumstance of the commodifying villages, this theory may inspire a new path for rural sustainability. In rural areas, interactions among villagers are often reciprocal, following customs of informality, and are far from being embedded into so-called “institutional fabrics” (Berger and Luckmann 1966). Property rights in rural settings are often ambiguous; thus, corresponding goods produced or consumed in the public domain are difficult to classify. Samuelson (1954) started the classification of goods by using the attribute called the “rivalry of consumption.” He distinguished the public consumption goods from the private consumption goods because, in the latter scenario, one person’s consumption is subtracted from the total available for others. Musgrave (1959) argued for the excludability attribute of goods. This criterion depends on whether someone can be excluded from benefiting once a good is produced, and this principle is associated with a major policy concern over the role of the government in allocating resources (Ostrom 2003).

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Ostrom and Ostrom (1977) did some integrative work to establish a general theory on goods classification and optimization. Combining the aforementioned two dimensions, they constituted a four-quadrant matrix to identify the fundamental differences that affect the incentives facing individuals. In this framework, the term “commons” is used to refer to all the goods produced or consumed in the public domain, i.e., toll goods, common-pool resources, and public goods in a narrow sense (Ostrom 1990). The previously loosely defined concept “public goods” has been used here appropriately to denote a subset of collective action problems where there is no excludability of beneficiaries and subtractability of use (Olson 1965). More importantly, the definition matrix explicitly uses “common-pool resources” to denote the natural and human-constructed resources in which the exclusion of beneficiaries through physical and institutional means is especially costly, but exploitation by one user may reduce resource availability for others (Ostrom et al. 1994). The added terminology of “common-pool resources” is significant for the commons in the countryside. Because in rural scenarios concerning forests, water systems, or fisheries, people often have incentives to maximize their short-term dividends rather than ensure longterm viability (Porter and Scully 1987; Vitaliano 1983). When resource users interact without the benefit of effective rules limiting access and defining rights and duties, substantial free-riding occurs (Cook 1995; Royer 1995; Ostrom et al. 1999). Concerning the mechanism to deliver rural commons, Ostrom et al. (1999) disagreed with Hardin’s metaphor in the influential article “The tragedy of the commons”. According to Hardin, the users of the commons are caught in an inevitable process that leads to the destruction of the very resources on which they depend. Social psychologists have clarified that individuals facing a public good or commonpool resource can communicate, sanction one another, or make new rules (Bowles et al. 1997). Humans adopt a narrow, self-interested perspective in many settings but can also use reciprocity to overcome social dilemmas (Cosmides and Tooby 1992, pp. 163–228). Conventional policy prescriptions, such as Leviathan or privatization, often bring disastrous consequences, whereas self-organized and self-governed approaches with long-enduring effects are advocated by Ostrom (1990).

5.3 State-Led Partnership Attracting the Community and Market 5.3.1 Tangjiajia—Grassroots Hot Spring in Every Family In view of the consumption trend, the government’s role in China is different from those in advanced market countries. In Britain, the need to protect and preserve the countryside from change has remained a central objective for rural planning (Marsden et al. 2005). The plans restricted growth by denying new buildings and basic services. At the same time, the regulation is also underpinned by societal dynamics of rural gentrification—the enduring lifestyles claimed by the new rural

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migrants are protected while the indigenous population is priced out (Gallent et al. 2008, pp. 31–68). The commodification of Tangjiajia was triggered by government-backed marketing in late 2012. In the 12th Five-Year Plan, the Jiangsu provincial government initiated the VER program to improve rural habitation and revitalize economies in the countryside (Shen and Shen 2018a; Wu and Zhou 2013). To provide more incentives for subordinate governments, the provincial government offered earmarked funds to advance the program. The Jiangning district government had its own considerations and seconded the program with more funds. The eco-tourism fever of rural Jiangning originated from a district-level experiment in 2011 and 2012, with five experimental villages called “Five Blossoms”. After an initial success, Jiangning sought new villages to join the “blossoms”. Tangjiajia was therefore selected as one of the ten newly launched pilot villages. Before the new program wave including Tangjiajia, the Jiangning authority had reflected on past experiments and recognized the shortcomings. The pilot villages increasingly resembled a carefully nurtured bonsai, awaiting gardening work from the government. Urban dwellers indeed appreciated the rural idyll and landscape, but meanwhile rural residents were highly dependent on exogenous powers other than themselves. Aimed at forging a more sustainable mode through the Tangjiajia case, the Tangshan sub-district office hired a planning firm and stipulated a detailed layout for marketing in the contract, in which the self-sufficient economy of the community was emphasized. Compared to the “Five Blossoms” mainly concentrated in west Jiangning, Tangjiajia has no remarkable resources. It is deficient in natural scenery and also lacks a vast agriculture hinterland.1 Because it is a resettlement community dating back to the 1990s, there are no indigenous crafts or industries based in the village. The strengths depend on the resources of the immediate region. Outbound transportation of the village is convenient. Tangjiajia has a high level of accessibility to the tourist-generating area—the village is located by the side of the exit lane linking the Shanghai–Nanjing Expressway, which is one of the busiest traffic corridors across the prosperous region of China (Fig. 3.6). Regarding the regional endowment sustaining the community economy, there is no doubt that hot springs are the primary resources. Since the formation of the Republic of China, many celebrities, Chiang Kai-shek, for instance, have built hot spring villas in the town. In recent years, the suburban area surrounding Tangjiajia has set up many luxurious hot spring resorts (Fig. 3.6), most of which are gated communities that economically exclude local villagers. Planners recognized the market potential and proposed the idea of positioning Tangjiajia as a village of grassroots hot springs. The idea extended the consumption spectrum with a less expensive hot spring experience for visitors, and also lowered the threshold for the villagers to join the local industry. In the early consulting, the Tanggang village received its “proprietary name”—Tangjiajia—literally means “grassroots hot spring in every family” (Fig. 5.2). Guided by the marketing strategy, a spatial plan regulating the whole layout of the village was also formulated (Fig. 5.3).

1 Interview

with a planner, July 2015.

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Fig. 5.2 Logo of Tangjiajia, symbolizing a new tourist attraction focused on grassroots hot springs. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013

Fig. 5.3 Site layout plan of Tangjiajia. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013

China has made a large investment in infrastructure, as widely noted by Western media and observers (Barreda and Wertime 2013; Chen et al. 2013). All five levels of the Chinese government have shown extraordinary enthusiasm about the reconfiguration of the built environment, which is often deemed by authorities as a cure-all to

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Fig. 5.4 Ad hoc “program office” for an eco-tourism building in Tangjiajia. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013

fix emerging socioeconomic problems. The emergence of VER program is against such background. As the grassroots government in the administrative hierarchy, the Tangshan sub-district office is in charge of program implementation. As soon as the planning firm finished the rural plan, the Tangshan government promptly signed a contract with an engineering contractor and required the latter to commence work in March 2013. Accordingly, an ad hoc program office for the Tangjiajia eco-tourism building was established to coordinate various departments and handle unexpected affairs onsite (Fig. 5.4). Unexpected issues especially occurred during episodes of heightened mobilization when different parts of the bureaucracy have become temporarily and tightly coupled for selective policy implementation (Shen and Shen 2018a; Zhou 2012). The project in Tangjiajia ran smoothly and efficiently. In just two months, basic infrastructure and hygiene facilities were significantly improved. The treatment pond for animal manure was ditched; a dual system of drainage and sewage was established; cluttered wires and cables were buried under the ground (Fig. 5.5) and a comprehensive garbage collection system consisting of bins and a compression station was set up. Moreover, with the intention of creating an aesthetic village, a beautification campaign was carried out at the same time. A parking lot fenced with bamboo was erected to demonstrate an eco-friendly concept. Hectares of daisies, canola flowers, and a peach orchard were planted to form an all-season field of flowers on the west side. The residents and particularly those living near main entrances were encouraged to green their living environment according to either one of the four proposed scenarios in the plan (Fig. 5.6). Funding for the initial stage of the Tangjiajia program came exclusively from governmental sectors. Under the national “Beautiful Countryside” campaign, packages of state-led programs are not fixed, and they are developed and expanded through the interaction of multi-level governments (Shen and Shen 2018a). From

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Fig. 5.5 Project designated to bury the cluttered wires and cables underground. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013

Fig. 5.6 Status quo of a courtyard and a proposed scenario in the plan. Source Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University, 2013

the stance of political achievements, lower level governments often echo the discourse of their superior governments, and even allocate earmarked funds to ensure the implementation of programs. The Tangjiajia program is no exception. As stated by an official who served in the program office, governmental spending on the project was 18 million yuan. The provincial program granted 4 million yuan; the Nanjing municipal government followed up to allocate 5 million yuan, and the remaining half came mainly from earmarked funds from different bureaus of Jiangning, such as construction, transportation, and tourism (Table 5.1). After the opening on May 2013 when the physical projects were finished, the Tangshan government also followed up to advertise the Tangjiajia brand of grassroots hot springs. Expressway billboards were erected, a website was created, and snapshots of the Tangjiajia scenery were also posted through a WeChat public account.

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Table 5.1 List of governmental investments in Tangjiajia Funding organization

Theme of program

Investment amount

Launch date

Jiangsu provincial government

Village environment renovation

4 million yuan

October 2012

Nanjing municipal government

Beautiful countryside

5 million yuan

December 2012

Bureaus of Jiangning district government

Rural settlement

9 million yuan

January 2013 to April 2013

1 million yuan

May 2013 to April 2014

Roads and facilities Tourism

Tangshan sub-district government

Property management

Source Compiled by author

5.3.2 Community Entrepreneurship and Market Response The “benevolent motivation” of the state may not be fully acknowledged by the villagers. Witnessing the spare-no effort of officials, villagers took a wait-and-see attitude at the very beginning. An incentive mechanism was then introduced by the government to catalyze entrepreneurship among local residents. In Tangshan, all hot spring resources are operated by a state-owned enterprise affiliated with the subdistrict government, and the spring water consumption is metered separately for each client. In the Tangjiajia program, a newly built hot spring pipeline was laid alongside other water pipelines, and conventionally, the cost was to be shared by the clients. The program office promised to potential households of commodification that the pipeline access fee would be waived for the first batch of start-ups. Additionally, entrepreneurs would be granted extra subsidies of 5000 yuan, to be used for the courtyard decoration, as well as the construction of a foot bathing pool (Fig. 5.7). Fig. 5.7 A foot bathing pool in a restaurant, subsidized by the government. Source Photographed by author

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The twelve pioneers in the first batch are mostly local residents of Tangjiajia, and their houses are located along the main road on the east side of the village (Table 5.2 and Fig. 5.8). Their businesses are mainly focused on providing local food to customers, while the experience of a hot spring foot bath is just a bonus. It was not until the arrival of merchants from other places that the services provided in Tangjiajia became diversified and upgraded. The new commodifiers normally rent a set of homesteads from villagers, including a three-storey building and its surrounding courtyard. Most of them opened lodges featuring a hot spring bath, but specific themes vary from a subtropical Dai2 rainforest to a Japanese spa. The merchants, mainly urban dwellers, are experts in catering to the tastes of the middle class from cities. They emphasize the perceptive authenticity of rural life in the outdoor decorations while creating a cozy family atmosphere indoors (Fig. 5.9). For some popular inns, the average room rate in the busy season reaches as much as 800 yuan per night.3 The entrepreneurship of the commodifiers does not merely rest with profit-making but also with doing speculative things differently (Bryant 1989). They earnestly practice a lifestyle of counter-urbanism—being closer to nature, offering a second rural residence for families—all resembling the rural gentrification in Western countries (Cloke et al. 1991; Darling 2005; Phillips 1993). As the boss of the “Offline Inn” expressed in the interview: I have visited many pastoral-style inns in Zhejiang, but there is no such kind of lodges along the Shanghai-Nanjing corridor. In 2014 summer when our family visited Tangshan, I took a fancy of this beautiful place. Since then we have invested more than 2 million yuan here. It is a bit risky, but I am happy to engage in it. My husband and I are operating an advertising agency in Nanjing. We are fond of the flavor of “petty bourgeoisie”, and happy to share the lifestyle with friends. Thus in my inn, I would like to convey to my customers a message of escaping the boring urban life and omnipresent network—an off-line lifestyle. It makes sense to me that the business is interesting and then secondly comes to the profit-making.4

In the course of rural commodification, the originally disunited stakeholders in the countryside became tightly coupled, but the process seemed temporary. It was also inevitable that the very amenities of local residents were threatened, and the competitive tension between newcomers and indigenous people emerged (Gill 1999; Li et al. 2014; Qian et al. 2013; Thomas et al. 2001, pp. 105–122). There was growing awareness among residents, particularly those who did not benefit financially from commodification, that their daily life was being eroded (Fan et al. 2008; Mitchell 1998). In the case of Tangjiajia, the commodification catalyzed the revalorization of the housing market and homeowners were glad to see it. The yearly leasing fee for a homestead surpassed 40 thousand yuan, rising from just 3 thousand before the commodification. On the other hand, the newcomers also learned to deal with the local habits of villagers. The boss of a new inn under construction (Fig. 5.10) offered a telling episode: 2 One

ethnic group living in Yunnan, China. with a village cadre of Tanggang, July 2015. 4 Interview with a hot-spring inn owner, July 2015. 3 Interview

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Table 5.2 Statistics of the business in Tangjiajia No.

Name

Type of service

Origin of owner

Establishment date and remarks

1

Zhuyuanyaju

Lodging

2

Xinquan

Catering

3

Woaijia

Retailing

4

Yixiangju

Catering

Tanggang

2013

5

Yangning

Catering

Newcomer

2013

6

Huangmao

Catering

Newcomer

2013

7

Xinyunyuan

Lodging

Tanggang

2013

8

Gufengting

Lodging

Tanggang

2013

9

0758

Catering

Newcomer

2013

10

Sanjiemei

Catering

11

Jingxinxiaozhu

Lodging

12

Tiantong

Lodging

13

Fengquange

Catering

14

Yishanpanshui

Catering and Lodging

15

Taoranju

Lodging

16

Longyan

Catering

17

L.A.B.

Lodging

Newcomer

Estimated 2016, Under decoration

18

Lanhuali (Offline II)

Catering

Tanggang

2013, closed and leased to Offline

19

Youth encounters

Lodging

2014

20

Unknown name

Lodging

Under decoration

21

Unknown name

Lodging

Under decoration

22

Wenquankezhan

Lodging

23

Shuizhiyuan

Lodging

Tanggang

24

Unknown name

Lodging

Newcomer

25

Mengla

Lodging

Newcomer

26

Tanglong

Catering

Tanggang

Closed

27

Jingwen

Catering

Tanggang

Closed

28

Shuiyijiangnan

Catering & Lodging

Newcomer

29

Xiyiweichang

Catering

30

Gangshan

Retailing

31

Yuanwei

Catering

32

Offline

Lodging

33

Qingtangyuan

Catering

34

Qietingju

Lodging

Tanggang

35

Unknown name

Lodging

Newcomer

Tanggang 2015

2013 2013 Tanggang 2013, closed Tanggang 2013, closed

2014

2014 2013 Closed

Newcomer

2014 2013 Under decoration

Source Drafted by Tanggang village committee, updated by author in December 2015. Note The blank cell means there is no data

5.3 State-Led Partnership Attracting the Community and Market Fig. 5.8 Spatial distribution of the business in Tangjiajia. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map

Fig. 5.9 Offering a family life atmosphere in a hot spring inn. Source Photographed by author

I rented three neighboring sets of homesteads in Tangjiajia, and the design of public platform between them will be the best selling point. To ensure the privacy of the courtyard, the designated height of the west wall is 2.2 m. During the construction, our west neighbor Aunt Tu stopped the work. She contended that the wall would affect the indoor daylight of her east wing-room. We negotiated for some days and finally the wall was lowered to 1.6 m. There is no clear building regulation or guidelines on construction in the countryside, so communication with villagers is very important.5

5 Interview

with a hot-spring inn owner, December 2015.

75

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5 Commodification of Tangjiajia and Sustainable Governance …

Fig. 5.10 A hot spring inn under construction. Source Photographed by author

5.3.3 Home Consensus of the Community The improvement of the built environment in Tangjiajia has transcended hygiene and tidiness in the village and created social and cultural values in the community. In contrast to the wildness of the rural areas in the North American context (Thomas et al. 2001, pp. 66–70), the countryside in China is perceived as a “homeland” for the nation (Shen et al. 2015). Nonetheless, being exposed to the unprecedented urbanization and mass migration, the “home consensus” for the rural communities is fading. Numerous rural researchers and practitioners have advocated for the rebuilding of the community ethos (Shen and Zhang 2015; Sturgis 2014; Zhang et al. 2015). The east side of the village was originally a cement-paved square built in the NSCC period around 2006. The square lost its vitality because of the dust and noise generated by the neighboring linkage road to the expressway. It was even the only plot of public space in the village. In the Tangjiajia program, the square was targeted as a prime area for renovation. A series of infrastructure developments were carried out in the initial phase. A line of boscage was set up to be a barrier from the busy lane; a towering tree was transplanted in the center of the square as an attractive landscape. Moreover, the deserted watercourse and ditch ponds were dredged and interconnected as a flowing system; a group of pseudo-classical buildings were established as a tourist information center, tea house, and culture corridor. While landscaping may not bring immediate economic benefits, it enhances the quality of these places as a tourist destination (Wang 2012), as well as the social cohesion of the community. It is worth mentioning in particular the role of the public hot spring in building community. In the square improvement project, two strips of foot bathing pools were planned and built. The pools provide a free hot spring foot bath between 10:00–11:15 a.m. and 5:00–8:00 p.m. every day. The service is very popular among the elders. The not-so-graceful public space dramatically incubates mutual communication within the community and beyond—and even involves residents outside the village (Fig. 5.11). Villagers in Tangjiajia have more opportunities to access

5.3 State-Led Partnership Attracting the Community and Market

77

Fig. 5.11 The elderly in the village square, taking a hot spring foot bath for free. Source Photographed by author

external information, and outside appreciation boosts community attachment of the villagers. One cadre who was in charge of the project then elaborated: Many people enjoy the free foot bath in Tangjiajia. Our villagers are also getting more and more proud of that. As long as the weather is good, dozens of the aged would gather along the benches of the pool, doing pebble foot massage by themselves and waiting for the hot spring to be turned out. I even know some retired people from downtown Nanjing among them. They take the free bus to Tangshan early in the morning and buy the very fresh organic meat and vegetables in the market. After that, they walk directly to the public bath pool and enjoy a massage. When the whole body is warmed up, it is just the time to go home by bus and cook a yummy lunch for their grandchildren, who have just finished morning schooling.6

In the evening immediately after dinner, the middle-aged women in the village do group dancing in the square. It is also a show time for the community. Sometimes, the elderly even beat the time with clappers for the dancing grannies, accompanied by the rhythmic music. What a harmonious picture of country life! As for the officials, it is also a great chance to share their common interests and reach a consensus between the government and locals. One official added in the interview laughing loudly: I often walk into the happy crowd at dusk and raise some inspirational questions to them. “Is our village more beautiful and lively than before?” “How are you feeling after sticking to the foot-bathing those days?” “If what we have done make you feel good, give more support to our work!”7

Apart from the physical environment building, the state has also deployed some soft instruments to empower villagers with more community engagement, such as the mobilization of the party members and training schemes for more professionals. In the commodification process, increasing village affairs calls for more talented people to facilitate community entrepreneurship. The party branch of the village mobilized the warm-hearted members to join the volunteer team. Their commitments were posted in the square, promising services including social work, family conflict resolution, and tour guides (Fig. 5.12). In addition, an occupational training scheme 6 Interview 7 Ibid.

with an official of Tangshan sub-district office, July 2015.

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Fig. 5.12 Service commitments of the party members in community, including social work, family conflicts resolving, tour guide. Source Photographed by author

was also initiated. The so-called 355 scheme, which was designed to enroll villagers for professional training, included ten pedicures, ten local food cooks, ten gardeners, five hot spring specialized families, and five folk craftsmen.

5.4 Sustainable Provision of Public Goods in Question 5.4.1 Paradox and Provisionality in Rural Governance The limits of the state-led commodification of Tangjiajia were exposed after the infrastructure building boom. In cities, public goods are provided by the government, behind which is an enforced pricing mechanism between the government and its taxpayers (Clarke 1971; Zhao 2009). In Zhao (2009) the provisional commodification process, villagers did not pay for the project but rather received subsidies. However, the issue of maintenance was inevitable in the long run. Who is going to pay the bills for sustaining the public goods provision in the countryside? The government, the rural residents, or the ambiguous “collective”? The Tangshan sub-district government has gradually retreated from the renovation program since Tangjiajia’s opening to the visitors. In April 2014, the government handed over all the built-up real estate, mainly located in the village square, to the Tanggang village committee. In some sense, it is similar to the classic projectfinancing model named “build–transfer”. The particular point is that the build party in the “concessional contract” is not the private sector, but the Tangshan government. As for the village collective, the injection of assets is absolutely a million-dollar gift presented by the government. However, the gift has evolved to become a hot potato for Tangjiajia in terms of property management. As the party secretary of the village complained to us: The maintenance of Tangjiajia as a scenic attraction is really a financial burden for our collective. We hire security clerks, cleaning workers and receptionists. The daily operation

5.4 Sustainable Provision of Public Goods in Question

79

of facilities is also costly. The bathing pool in the square is free to the public, but we have to purchase hot-spring water from the company at a price of 25 yuan per ton. The guide landmarks and lantern-style street lamps are fancy, but they are also vulnerable. When you take charge of the affairs, money is needed everywhere. It is roughly estimated that the annual expenditure is about one million yuan.8

The paradox for sustainable rural governance reveals the provisionality of state-led commodification in Tangjiajia. The public goods necessitated by rural commodification are consumed, yet lack a sustainable pricing mechanism. The village committee, as the “collective” agent, temporarily purchased the services for property management. However, there is no charge to the actual users—the merchants, residents, and even tourists—for the public goods. Unlike other villages underpinned by village enterprises, the Tanggang village has no stable collective revenue. Thus, there is no considerable interest linkage with individual villagers. Due to its adjacency to the town, it was recently designated as a community (shequ), an administrative status that qualifies it for civil affairs administration rather than economic development. The village collective in China is a group of villagers sharing their common socioeconomic rights, nominally a bottom-up organization. In practice, it is often a grassroots elongation by the top-down regime of the state, although there is no such provision in the Constitution of China. As Marsden and Murdoch (1998) pointed out, rural governance is sensitive to this elaborate topography of power, and rural areas should be seen as differentially linked to local/non-local network configurations. Traditionally, the state exerts more influence in the countryside of YRD (He 2012), which is different from the fragmented governance in PRD (Po 2011; Xue and Wu 2015) or that of Latin America (Chapple and Montero 2016). In YRD, there exists an isomorphism between the collective and grassroots governments, and the boundary concerning rights and liabilities between the two is also ambiguous. We had brief conversations with the villagers who were not engaged in eco-tourism. They have retained their life as it was previously and were unconcerned about what happened in the village. Ordinary people in the village cannot recognize the different roles of the stakeholders in the program, let alone who is paying for the public goods, or from where the free hot spring messages come.9 Therefore, while the state actively intervenes in rural governance, it also brings government with unlimited responsibility.10 As a part of public goods, the business environment for rural commodifiers also manifests incompatibility with the rural arena. When the “urban wine” is poured into a “rural bottle”, institutional tensions occur. Hostel management in China has a set of prevailing official regulations that detail fire prevention criteria, public security,

8 Interview

with the CPC secretary of Tanggang, December 2015. had some short conversations with the villagers who were not engaged in the eco-tourism. They were largely unconcerned about what happened in the village and kept their former life. 10 In an academic dialogue on urban governance, Bing Zou, an urban planner serving Shenzhen government, also mentioned this viewpoint with a case of “violating rights of urban residents to enjoy sunshine.” See Sun et al. (2015, p.84). 9I

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5 Commodification of Tangjiajia and Sustainable Governance …

and taxation. The standards are rooted in urban scenarios, yet might not be applicable in the countryside. Troubled entrepreneurs have asked for more help from the government: We are tenants of the country houses. According to the contracts with housing owners, we cannot alter the building structure arbitrarily. The odd thing is that the authority mechanically requires us to be up to the fire-prevention standard of urban lodges, albeit the firing aisle within country houses cannot satisfy such standard at all. We cannot get the fire-prevention permit, let alone subsequent taxation registration and lodger identity authentication system issued by related departments. For this reason, the official invoice required by some lodgers cannot be issued, and it is also a hidden risk regarding public security.11

5.4.2 Introducing Private Management—PPP Model in the Making The Tanggang collective obviously felt financial pressure to manage the scenic-like village, and its response was also prompt. In the fieldwork, the village cadres told us that they were negotiating with a Taiwanese enterprise that had years of experience in eco-tourism operation. After the Chinese New Year of 2016, we were informed that the bilateral agreement had been reached, and a management team had assumed the Tangjiajia office. The agreement stipulated the responsibility of the enterprise that the contractor should take over the duty of property management and guarantee an undiminished quality of the village as before. The Taiwan enterprise could occupy the facilities for managerial use, and the total leasing fee was 500 thousand yuan per annum.12 On the other hand, the agreement ensured the status of the enterprise as a “general contractor” in the village. The enterprise had a series of schemes to brand Tangjiajia tourism in a market-like way. They planned to lease the homesteads from local residents in batches, cultivate picked Taiwan fruits and flowers in the west orchard to diversify the tourism activities, develop a tourist route jointly with travel agencies, and even unify present commodifiers to build a pricing alliance for hot spring inns. Nonetheless, all of the above depended on the willingness of the existing stakeholders, and the enterprise cannot compel others to obey. According to a telephone interview, the second wave of commodification did not go as well as planned. The enterprise was calling for more in-between mediations from the government.13 The CPC secretary of Tanggang explained the transaction. “The remaining work should be accomplished by the market, after the significant improvement led by the government.” From the stance of the government/collective, the cadre further outlined the purpose. The first driving force was the fiscal burden of the collective; second, the handover would ensure the appreciation of the collective assets; and 11 Interview

with a hot-spring inn owner, December 2015. with the CPC secretary of Tanggang, December 2015. 13 Telephone interview with a village cadre of Tanggang, March 2016. 12 Interview

5.4 Sustainable Provision of Public Goods in Question

81

third, the retreat from the exhaustive management affairs, which were in essence the duties for the market, would free the collective and allow us to focus more on the administrative issues. “We could then attach more importance on regulating the development rights of the village, such as planning and construction monitoring,” the cadre added.14

5.4.3 Sustainability in Question When the technical efficiency of rural public investments rises to relatively high levels, the village-level democratic systems and its governance become the key factors that influence the sustainable public goods provision (He et al. 2016). In the subsequent stage of Tangjiajia, when infrastructure construction is not as urgent, the government retreats from direct economic investments. The government then orients itself as a mediator15 in the commodification rather than a dominating player in rural development. Theoretically, a model of public–private partnership is in the making in Tangjiajia. However, profit-making is the prime principle for a venture, and the Taiwan enterprise would not supply the public goods for free. It is becoming more necessary to draw a clear line to the users who are going to bear the cost of the service. The new model is just underway in Tangjiajia, and more evidence needs to be gathered in the future. When the new commodifiers become veterans in the village, what will be their reactions to the new rural governance? Is there any conflict of interest between the indigenous residents and the enterprise? What about the performance of the government and collective? Even though the interplays between the community, state and private sector can only be assessed in the coming stage, we are still able to discuss the future of Tangjiajia in the course of public goods provision. The commodification of Tangjiajia exposes the lack of a mechanism in the public goods provision and the temporality of program-driven governance. In the context of rural China, the conventional “common goods” based on collective ownership are non-excludable but depletable. Each member can get access to the goods, but resources are limited because there is no pricing mechanism to sustain the goods regeneration (Hardin 1968). The temporal launch of rural programs is equivalent to an introduction of “public goods” in the countryside—the goods are both nonexcludable and non-rivalrous, which are often built on the tax-paying mechanism of an urban context. However, after the program boom, a paradox emerged that the service providers of the scenic-like village, either the collective or the Taiwan enterprise, have not established a clear pricing mechanism in the village. There is no charge to the actual users; thus, rural sustainability is in question. 14 Interview

with the CPC secretary of Tanggang, December 2015. and Zhao (2015) revealed the mediated role of the state in the advancement of the less developed regions in China, in which the state used a unique and centralized personnel management system to shift knowledge and resources.

15 Chien

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5 Commodification of Tangjiajia and Sustainable Governance …

Through commodification, the government endeavors to transplant the urban consumption system into the rural soil but ignores the institutional supply to match the demand. In the Tangjiajia case, we witness the strains and confrontations between the two. The paradox in the provision of public goods is a principal representation. As Berger and Luckmann (1966) elucidated in their theory of the social construction of reality, “When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized…. In the process, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people’s conceptions (and beliefs) of what reality is become embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Reality is therefore said to be socially constructed.” From spatial construction to the socially constructed countryside, what is in urgent need is the institutionalization of social norms and rules in the state-led reconstruction of rural China.

5.5 Conclusion In this chapter, we challenge the conventional viewpoint that rural commodification is merely community action catering to urban consumption trends. The observation in Tangjiajia shows that, at the initial stage, the state exerts strong intervention through infrastructural investment. The state–private–farmer partnership was initially established in the commodification of Tangjiajia. The formation adopted a state-induced strategy and emphasized the gradual involvement of others in rural governance. The government chose the built environment as a breakthrough point and invested a lot to accelerate commodification. Interestingly, the renovation programs catalyzed entrepreneurship in the village and boosted the community consensus. Unlike many unsuccessful top-down rural programs, the practice in Tangjiajia did not involve large-scale demolition, but rather stressed the willingness of residents and the self-sufficient industry of the rural community. The idea for eco-tourism originated from the government, while its translation into a viable development initiative was enhanced by the wider participation of the market and community. The latter two dominated the subsequent stages of commodification. Before the commodification, the village experienced a low-level equilibrium of rural governance. The injection of the state-led program offered a fulcrum to leverage the rural revitalization process. This was especially important in the initial stage, when the profit-oriented entrepreneurs, as well as the hollow rural community, had no incentive to carry out the project. Second, state intervention or financial support itself cannot solve the problem of the sustainable provision of rural public goods. In the Tangjiajia case, the government (either provincial, municipal, or district level) cannot keep paying the programs realistically because massive government debt has to be reduced. The governmentsponsored public project undermines the basis of rural governance, and a new public goods provision system underpinning rural sustainability has not been established. Intensive state investments at all stages are impractical. The government recognizes the problem and eventually retreats from the paternalistic model. It comes to the

5.5 Conclusion

83

paradox that the service providers of the scenic-like village, either the collective or the Taiwan enterprise, have not drawn clearly defined boundaries for the public goods provision of the village. There is no charge for the actual users, and the status quo is unsustainable. The villagers and entrepreneurs tend to depend on the state rather than their own in rural governance, and the government cages itself with unlimited responsibility. Therefore, there is a negative side of the strong state intervention in the program-driven governance. The state-led programs are not so successful from a commercial perspective. An institutional design of pricing collective consumption, which denotes the nature of rural planning (Zhao 2016), is in urgent need for further program implementation in the countryside. Third, the villages experiencing consumption shifts call for self-organization in the public goods provision, and as such, the endogenous community capacity should be given a more centric position for future rural policies. In some ways, the periodic governmental “meddling” spoils the efforts of rural locals. No one can predict when the government joins the efforts and when it will not. Of course, it is hard to promote self-organization of locals, but these efforts may, in the long run, be more profitable, and reduce wasted government investment as well. In contrast to their urban counterparts, rural residents in China have more initiatives to engage in programs because the interests behind collective ownership are directly attached to individual households (Hin and Xin 2011; Zhang 2014).16 As Ostrom et al. (1994) highlights, neither the state nor the market is effective in governing the common-pool resources. It is the community collective itself that can carry out effective governance based on several preconditions, such as stable membership and the preference of most members to increase reciprocity. Existing practices in rural China have proposed some solutions, and the reciprocal exchanges for mutual benefits are totally different from the contractual society in urban context. The informal rules need to be applied in a commodifying scenario to provide effective norms, expectations, and even sanction mechanisms to encourage Samaritans and discourage free riders.

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Chapter 6

Grassroots Participation in Xinhui and Challenges of Farming Governance

Abstract Agriculture and land policy in China are transitioning from a marketoriented model into one with more balance. Accordingly, farming governance at the grassroots is also undergoing a transformation. Underpinned by state-led programs, policies have been implemented supporting a new two-tier model unifying cooperatives and family farms. In the two-tier model, the family farm is designated as the basic unit of farming, while the cooperative offers social services to its farm members. Using a case study in Xinhui village in Nanjing, this chapter unravels the organizational changes in farming initiated by these programs, as well as the extent to which the two-tier model is accomplished in practice. It is found that the new model benefits agricultural production by increasing farmers’ participation and boosting their income. However, the empirical study also reveals a pseudo-two-tier model. When examining the main criteria of social services and profit allocation, it is apparent that the cooperative functions more like a private company controlled by a former village official, rather than a voluntary association of farmers for their mutual benefit. The research suggests that rigorous monitoring of land-related program implementation, as well as building a participation ethos at the grassroots, should have a more central role in policy-making. Keywords Farming governance · Farmer participation · Land tenure system · Rural program · China

6.1 Introduction Grassroots governance at the village level is undergoing a transition in contemporary China (Chen 2015a, pp. 232–233; Zhao 2013). An increasing number of self-organized cooperatives in charge of the village’s collective assets have been established to grant farmers more property rights (Chung 2014; Po 2008, 2011; Zhu and Guo 2015). Meanwhile, the governance structure in villages has been reconfigured, so economic power is separated from political power (Po 2011). However, most rural governance studies published in English identify the villages as experiencing extensive conversion from arable land into non-agrarian uses (Chung 2014; Li et al. 2014; Po 2008, 2011; Qian et al. 2013; Wong 2015; Xue and Wu © Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3_6

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2015; Zhu and Guo 2015). Less attention has been devoted to the rural areas where farming is still predominant in the local economy, and the effectiveness of cooperative farming among the grassroots has rarely been examined (Bijman and Hu 2011; Deng et al. 2010; Zhao 2013). From fragmented smallholder farming to agrarian capitalism, China’s rural governance of agriculture is changing rapidly (Zhang and Donaldson 2008). Reconstruction should be analyzed against the background of land tenure system reform. Formed gradually during 2008–2013, the new farmland system officially permits the circulation of land usufruct, which refers to “management rights”. Many successful experiments in localities have convinced the central government that the consolidation of land usufruct is necessary for efficient and industrialized agriculture. However, since large farms tend to encroach on the interests of smaller farms, farms must be the appropriate size (Han 2014; Zhang and Donaldson 2008) . Following new policy directives, the family farm model (jiating nongchang)—neither the market-oriented agribusiness model nor the traditional smallholder farming—has been designated as the prime entity of farming (Chen 2013; Han 2014). Family farms that are large farms worked and managed by families have expanded significantly through statebrokered leasing of land. The government encourages the circulation of large tracts of farmland to families who devote themselves to commercial farming. These farms are intended to be the main beneficiaries of governmental subsidies.1 With the launch of the corresponding program by the central government in 2013, a new two-tier farming model, constituted by specialized cooperatives and family farms, is discussed in this chapter. Triggered by a series of institutional reforms and incentive programs, a new mode of “program-driven farming governance” is being developed (Shen and Shen 2018a, b; Zhou 2012). Over the past decade, the central government has gained control over fiscal resources pertaining to rural issues and are using transfers through program funds to effectively motivate local resources to adopt top-down policies (Gong and Zhang 2017), such as the NSCC. Yet, the performance of the agricultural policies has less to do with funding, or having a novel development strategy or leadership of an exceptional individual, but has more to do with effective governance in the countryside (Stark 2005). In implementing rural revitalization programs, such as village beautification or infrastructure building, residents may be onlookers while multi-level governments use their own resources to deliver tangible results (Shen and Shen 2018a). However, in agriculture programs, effective implementation depends on the participation and cooperation of the grassroots (Callahan 2006; Gong and Zhang 2017; Stark 2005), which is the focal point of this chapter. The case study is based on the intensive fieldwork concerning the development of cooperatives and family farms in Xinhui village, Nanjing. Through evaluating the effectiveness of the two-tier model, this chapter unravels the changes in farming governance in the village. The study refines our interpretation of the “program-driven farming governance” in China. The findings also provide rural policy-makers an 1 See

General Office of Central Committee of CPC, General Office of State Council, 2014, Suggestions on Guiding Farmland Usufruct Circulation and Promoting Appropriate Farming Scale.

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alternative to the top-down model. We focus on two working research questions: (1) With respect to farmers’ participation, how effective is the performance of farming governance driven by state-led programs? (2) Is the two-tier model of governance being implemented effectively?

6.2 Cooperatives, Family Farms, and Rural Governance 6.2.1 Cooperatives and Their Governance Farm cooperatives are important actors shaping grassroots governance in rural China (Chen 2015b; Po 2011; Xue and Wu 2015). A cooperative is an autonomous association of people who voluntarily work together for mutual social, economic, and cultural benefits (Hendrikse and Veerman 2001). We argue that, judging by international standards, such as the International Cooperative Alliance (2015), cooperatives in China have had distinct historical trajectories and characteristics in practice. We can categorize cooperatives in China into two types (Table 6.1). One type is a comprehensive community-based cooperative, which has postcommunism characteristics but a shareholding reconstruction of the collective economy. As an experimental reform, the first wave of cooperatives emerged in Shunde and Nanhai of Guangdong Province in the early 1990s (Chen and Davis 1998). In the Pearl River Delta, the rampant industrialization and urbanization after 1978 generated tremendous benefits from the assets in villages. The central action of the reform was to quantify the total value of the collective land and assets, and convert the ambiguous collective property into shares for eligible villagers (Chen 2015b; Zhu and Guo 2015). With the village as the basic management unit, these cooperatives of the collective economy were essentially community-based clubs with exclusive memberships. Scholars evaluated the reform positively because it served not only to rebuild the collective economy but also to empower the farmers and promote more Table 6.1 A typology of cooperatives in China Category

Sub-category

Membership acquisition

Functions

Comprehensive community-based cooperative

–

Inherent membership in a community or collective

Land-related dividend allocation, cultural and moral education, even political activities

Specialized voluntary cooperative

Social service provider

Voluntary to join and withdraw from membership

Specific types of agricultural produce

Specialized producer Source Compiled by author

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democratic village governance (Chen 2015b; Po 2011; Wen 2011). Driven by the dividends, the villagers went from being unconcerned about governance to shareholders who elected their representatives for property management. They also recognized the importance of community engagement. In some cases, the representatives even had a different standing from the party secretary and village committee director (Po 2008, 2011; Zhu and Guo 2015). In response, the state imposed restrictions on the comprehensive operations of the community-based cooperatives. For example, the 2006 national cooperative law was enacted, which officially defines cooperatives in China.2 The other type is a specialized voluntary cooperative. An open membership principle, meaning farmers can voluntarily join the organization at will, applies to this type of cooperative. These cooperatives are derived from the aforementioned 2006 law, which focuses more narrowly on cooperatives that assist agricultural production and market-specific types of agricultural produce. According to the definitive article, the specialized voluntary cooperative can also be sub-divided into two categories, namely, specialized producer and social service provider (Table 6.1). The cooperative was initiated to cope with the marketization of agriculture that began in the late 1990s (Bijman and Hu 2011; Huang et al. 2008). As fragmented smallholder producers, farmers in China were vulnerable to powerful market forces (Deng et al. 2010). To conduct joint marketing, they united and hired brokers to bargain more powerfully with buyers (Fock and Zachernuk 2006). Such cooperatives were frequently named after a specific agricultural produce (e.g., rice, silkworm, tea). Soon after, some cooperatives providing specialized services (in the phases of pre-, mid-, and post-production) also appeared, such as agriculture machinery cooperatives and seed-raising cooperatives. This chapter focuses on the latter type, which are officially termed “farmers’ specialized cooperatives” (nongming zhuanye hezuoshe, FSC and hereafter). Regarding the governance performance of cooperatives, recent case studies in various regions across China cast doubt on the validity of cooperatives, and the critics often describe a dim future in which the essence of cooperatives is eroding (Deng and Wang 2014; Hu et al. 2017; Lammer 2012; Zhu and Guo 2015).

6.2.2 Land Tenure Reform and Family Farms The land tenure system is closely related to grassroots farming governance in China. In the debate on China’s farmland reform, two distinctive camps exist: neoliberals and conservatives (Ho 2001; Zhang and Donaldson 2013) . Some neoliberals aggressively promote the privatization of farmland in China because privatization would benefit millions of Chinese farmers (Wen 2014; Zhou 2013). They assert that free trade of 2 Article

2 of the law does not mention comprehensive community-based cooperatives or credit cooperatives in the definition; it focuses more narrowly on specialized voluntary ones, see Hu et al. 2017.

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Fig. 6.1 The rights bundle in the tripartite tenure system for farmland in China. Source Compiled from official documents by author

land ownership is a precondition for large-scale and mechanized agriculture in China (Bramall 2004; Mead 2003). The conservatives, on the other side, contend that the current household responsibility system provides a safety net for farmers, and that radical reform would only exacerbate class inequality in the countryside (He 2010; Hua 2013; Zhang and Donaldson 2013) . The latter camp of conservatives in China highlights the realities of having a large population but limited arable land (Huang 2011; Qiu 2013). In both academia and the media, the debate had reached its climax before the 3rd Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of CPC in 2008. This major meeting was deemed a watershed on rural land reform in China. Rural land reform has always been a politically sensitive issue in China. In the document released after the meeting,3 the party did not provide a direct statement about the two sides, but a balanced-goal solution was adopted. On the one hand, the document declared that the household responsibility system would be stably maintained in the long term. On the other hand, it advocated the circulation of land usufruct. Since then, local initiatives have gradually moved toward market exchanges of land usufruct (Zinda 2014). It was not until the power handover during the 18th Central Committee of CPC in late 2012 that the party explicitly reformed the previous obscure land tenure system into a “tripartite system” (Fig. 6.1). With the affirmation of the inviolability of collective ownership, the new system adopted the modern jurisprudence of the West in which land ownership is likened to ownership of a bundle of sticks comprising the right to occupy, use, sell, mortgage, bequeath, give away, lease, or use the land as loan collateral (Ye et al. 2013). The unique farmland system of China is classified into a tripartite bundle of rights, i.e., ownership of collectives (jiti suoyou), contract rights of rural households (jiating chengbao), and usufruct of farming entities (duoyuan jingying) (Zhang 2014). The most significant contribution of the reform lies in the separation of the contract rights and the usufruct, which builds a legal environment for land circulation for the actual farming entities. 3 See

Central Committee of CPC, 2008, Resolution on Some Major Problems of Promoting Rural Reform and Development, 3rd Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of CPC.

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Against the background of land tenure reform, the family farm has been repeatedly highlighted in central documents since 2008 and was eventually designated as the predominant unit of farming by the government in 2013. In the epochal document released in the 3rd Plenary Session of 18th Central Committee of CPC, the family farm, along with the FSC, was described as a new type of farming entity. This meant that the new two-tier model was officially recognized as an ideal farming organization in rural China. Accordingly, different levels of governments initiated the state-led programs, attached with specific funding, to promote the new model nationwide.

6.2.3 An Ideal Governance Model The basic agricultural policy in China had favored agribusiness firms aligned with agrarian capitalism (Zhang and Donaldson 2008) . The family farm program can be viewed as a policy shift from the market-oriented model to a more balanced-goal model. By definition, a family farm mainly depends on family members (a middleaged couple is typical) rather than employees for labor (Chen 2013). According to Xiwen Chen, the top agriculture advisor of the CPC, the family farm program in China is viable for two reasons. First, unlike a streamlined industry, the calculation and monitoring of the workload in agriculture are very difficult. Families are still the optimal farming unit, even in countries with high levels of mechanization. Second, the family farm is the appropriate farming scale for China with intensive manual techniques. The acreage of family farms in China ranges from dozens to hundreds of mu, with some as large as one thousand in Northeast China (Chen 2013). In comparison, the scale of farms during the agricultural revolution in eighteenth-century England averaged about 40 ha (600 mu), and those in the present-day U.S. average 175 ha (2,600 mu) (USDA and NASS 2014). The re-emphasis of policy on family farming has triggered a reconfiguration of grassroots governance. In the market-oriented model of agribusiness prevalent in some Western countries, the large farms or enterprises can realize “horizontal integration” themselves (Huang 2011). That is, different sectors of production are organized under a single firm. However, under the new two-tier model, a different scenario may exist. The smallholder farm is faced with high “transaction costs”, as noted by Coase (2012) in his firm-market analysis. It is impossible for a family farm to rely on itself for plowing, fertilizing, and harvesting, let alone successfully carry out transportation, storage, processing, and marketing. Thus, FSCs are necessary to realize the “vertical integration” among farms. By taking advantage of volume discounts and cost sharing, the cooperatives can provide various social services to their member farmers (Cobia 1989, p. 50). The division of labor between cooperatives allows each to occupy one rung of the entire ladder from cultivation to processing to marketing (Huang 2011). In cultivation, the cooperatives can provide the seeds, fertilizers, chemicals, fuel, and farm machinery in the phase of plowing and harvesting. In processing and marketing, the cooperatives can provide a series of interconnected

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Fig. 6.2 A theoretical governance structure under the two-tier farming organization. Source Compiled by author

activities involving production planning, grading, packing, transport, storage, food processing, distribution, and sales. As such, the theoretical governance structure for a two-tier farming organization has been established, with the model unifying the cooperative and its member farms (Fig. 6.2). From institutional reforms to incentive programs, the state has built an external environment for accountable farming governance. Theoretically, a family farm is well supported by the social service system under the two-tier model. The FSCs can supply professional services to the member households, and then the family farm only needs to focus on the daily management in the field. The most important criteria in the model are that such cooperatives allow the cultivators to share the profits gained from processing and marketing, rather than devote the entire profits to leading enterprises or merchant brokers (Huang 2011).

6.3 Xinbo Family Farm and Xingen Cooperative The Xinbo family farm is located in the southwest of the village, with a sown acreage of 703 mu (Fig. 6.3). The farm has an “appropriate scale” of 100–500 mu and is nominally registered by two families, the Chen and the Xu families. Both family heads are retired village cadres of Xinhui who have great affection for farming, and they jointly conduct the daily management of the farm. Approximately, 650 mu parcels are for seed grains.4 The remaining 50 mu are mainly greenhouse plots for horticulture, which includes rotation farming of peppers, strawberries, and watermelon. The Xinbo 4 Seed

grain refers to high standard wheat or rice that is circulated to the market for use as seeds.

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Fig. 6.3 Crop layout in the Xinbo family farm. Source Compiled by author, satellite image from Baidu Map

farm is a member of the Xinggen seed–grain cooperative, which is also a Xinhuibased FSC. As the upper layer business entity for farms, the cooperative links the seed company5 and its member farms.

6.3.1 Xinbo Family Farm The Xinbo farm was established in 2009 and registered as a family farm in 2013. The farm was created in 2007 after a land acquisition by the government for use as a warehouse. The site was originally composed of the individual household responsibility plots of nearby villagers. Planned as warehouse land, the fragmented plots of 703 mu were merged into a large parcel, pending the expansion of the Jiangning Riverside Industry Park. The villagers who leased the land received 700 yuan of rent for each mu: 400 yuan paid by the industry park and the remaining 300 yuan paid by the sub-district government. With a strict policy to retain 1.8 billion mu of farmland 5 China’s

seed industry had been monopolized by the government. In recent years, more and more private or multinational seed companies are encouraged to enter the market with necessary supervision. The seed company here is such private enterprise and registered with the government. It distributes planting orders for seed grains every year, and purchases from Xinggen FSC directly, rather than individual farms.

6.3 Xinbo Family Farm and Xingen Cooperative

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Fig. 6.4 Rice paddy in Xinbo family farm. Source Photographed by author

in China (Chien 2015; Long et al. 2010), the original expansion plan for the industry park was suspended, and the Xinhui village was re-zoned as a greenbelt. In the fall of 2009, the Xinhui village committee invited Chen and Xu to resume farming on the parcel that had been out of cultivation for two years. The village party secretary promised to continue the sub-district government subsidy of 300 yuan per mu, while the remaining 400 yuan circulation fee6 originally paid by the industrial park would be paid by the two farm owners. In the spring of 2013, Chen and Xu recognized the strong willingness of the government to promote family farms and registered for Xinbo. The farm became the first family farm in Nanjing (Fig. 6.4).

6.3.2 Xingen Cooperative The Xinggen seed–grain FSC originated from the Xinggen planting center established in 2002. After the enactment of the FSC law, the original planting center was registered as a specialized cooperative and gained its legal status as a business entity. The prosperity of the grain-seed cooperative is largely due to the opening-up policy for the seed market. Start-up seed companies sought partners to breed seed grains. As a broker between the seed companies and farms, the Xinggen cooperative receives orders from the companies and then distributes the planting plans to individual farms. The Xinggen cooperative has 172 participating households from sub-districts of Jiangning, and even nearby counties in Anhui Province. The total 6 Smallholding farmers own the land usufruct which can be leased to other users (called circulation).

But such users of the land need to pay the rent to smallholding famers (roughly ranges from 200 yuan to 800 yuan per mu across China) . For farmers in China, the rent is commonly known as land circulation fee (tudi liuzhuanfei). In some cases, to encourage circulation, the government often pays part of the land rent through hidden subsidy, that is, land circulation subsidy (e.g., the aforementioned 300 yuan per mu land circulation subsidy from the sub-district government).

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Fig. 6.5 Drying yard and storehouses of Xingen cooperative. Source Photographed by author

acreage of participating farms exceeds 20 thousand mu, and 10 seed companies have business with Xinggen. The Xinggen cooperative plays an important role in coordinating seed–grain production among individual farms. Since farming is done by families, the main task of the cooperative is quality supervision of the participating farms.7 In spring, the cooperative assigns the planting plan to farms and promotes new techniques for specific varieties. During the halfway point of the crop’s growth, members discuss field management issues, such as weeding, pest control, and fertilization. When the harvest is approaching, the cooperative conducts spot checks to ensure the grain quality. During the slack season, briefings concerning the cooperative business are also held from time to time. Apart from the above, the cooperative often invites technicians from agriculture institutes and pesticide and fertilizer enterprises to give talks about key issues in farming (Fig. 6.5). Regarding the allocation of profit, the law and regulations stipulate that the Xinggen cooperative distributes profits proportionally to its member farms, according to their bulk purchases and sales. Yet, this does not happen in practice.

6.4 Grassroots Participation Driven by State-Led Programs 6.4.1 The State-Led Programs State subsidies and incentives contribute largely to the ever-increasing grain yield in China (Veeck 2014). After the national cooperative law, the subsidy programs for promoting cooperatives surged. In 2009, the Nanjing municipality formulated a loan subsidy program. Under the program, government funds paid 80% of the interest on the cooperatives’ loans. As program implementation progressed, the government identified fraud related to state funding. During an inspection by a provincial leader, 7 Interview

with Zhang, the director of Xinggen cooperative, July 2014.

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some cooperative members were unable to spell the names of their cooperatives, even though they were officially registered.8 Policy-makers decided that there needed to be a clear linkage of the benefits between the state and real farmers, rather than agribusiness or fake cooperatives. Hence, the incentive programs for cooperatives in Jiangning were gradually phased out, and the major targets of the funding shifted to the basic farming entities—the family farms. The smooth implementation of the family farm program is facilitated by statebrokered land transfers. The state evolved from merely passively watching over the famers’ initiatives to becoming dedicated to accelerating the process. Farmers originally undertook land circulation spontaneously. Since the mid-1990s, an increasing number of farmers in Jiangning found jobs in industrial parks and gave up farming. One of the pre-requisites for obtaining an urban hukou, important for migration to a city, is that the rural-to-urban farmer needs to find a villager willing to take over responsibility for their farmland. To prevent the farmland from being abandoned, the village committees had to record all private transactions and issue a certificate to the migrant farmer. The farmers who leased others’ land through state-brokered rentfree arrangements achieved a modest level of scale and profit, and their businesses became the first set of bottom-up family farms.9 Echoing the family farm policy of the central government, the Jiangning government implemented the central directive in a similar manner, launching a pilot family farm program in 2014. The pilot family farms were selected from those registered with the government and were supported with the expectation that they would serve as examples for their counterparts. Three basic criteria are required for the nomination. First, the acreage of the family farm should exceed 200 mu. Second, new grain varieties and new agricultural techniques should be applied in cultivation. Third, the farm must join a specific machinery FSC.10 For the purpose of equality, the pilot list is created on a rolling basis. Thus, the subsidies are not allocated to only a handful of farms, and new farms have the opportunity to receive them.11 According to program regulations, the Jiangning government spends two million yuan per annum to subsidize the pilot family farms. Once nominated, the pilot farms can apply for a subsidy for a project to be implemented in the next year. For further evaluation, the applicant should provide a proposal containing specific development details and a corresponding budget. After the completion of the project, a third-party evaluation is conducted. The audit agency checks whether the project met the requirements in the proposal.12 The two-million yuan fund is allocated to the pilot farms in 8 Interview

with Ding, an official of Rural Working Commission of CPC Jiangning, September 2015. 9 Interview with an official of Agriculture Bureau of Jiangning, September 2015. 10 To meet the criteria to be a pilot family farm and receive the funds from Jiangning district, the sub-district government paired the Xinggen farm with a machinery FSC called Jiaxin, even though the two did not have substantive cooperation. 11 See Agriculture Bureau of Jiangning, 2014, Verification and Management Regulations on Family Farm s in Jiangning. 12 Interview with an official of Agriculture Bureau of Jiangning, September 2015.

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proportion to their actual expenses, and the subsidies can cover approximately onethird of the total expenses of the projects. The Xinbo farm was listed as one of the 18 pilot family farms in 2014. After spending 750,000 yuan in a reconfiguration project of an irrigation channel and motor road, Xinbo successfully received a subsidy of 200,000 yuan from the government. The application-funding model for individual farms is more effective than the unified funding model. Previously, the government introduced the “Comprehensive Rural Land Consolidation” program to facilitate large-scale cultivation. In the program, the government radically implemented unified reconfiguration projects: the land that was formerly hedgerows and ditches was reclaimed and the channels and field ridges were rearranged (Huang et al. 2014). All of these favored the model of industrialized agriculture. Yet, the farmers were not satisfied with this assistance from the government. As Zhang, the director of Xinggen cooperative, commented on the program, The effect of the consolidation program is not good. The farmland after state consolidation is not easy to use in practice. Driven by short-term performance, the government emphasizes the size of the consolidated farmland, rather than the quality. The soil fertility after consolidation suffered different degrees of degradation. In contrast, I prefer the current program. Through competitive application, the funds can be allocated to the farms that are willing to consolidate their own farmlands.13

The statistics of registered family farms provide more information about the program (Table 6.2). There are totally 641 registered family farms in Jiangning. In general, the farms that cultivate grain, vegetables, fruit, garden plants, and tea are registered as planting farms (zhongzhi nongchang), and those engaged in livestock, poultry, and aquaculture are animal farms (yangzhi nongchang). Compared to the planting farms, the animal farms have more income and laborers, a higher share of mixed farming, and business registration. For example, the average poultry farm income can reach as much as 660,000 yuan per year, and the average number of full-time employees is 13.8 workers. The above figures for Jiangning are similar elsewhere across Jiangsu Province (Kang and Shen 2017) and illustrate the characteristics of capital–labor dual intensification for family farms in China (Huang 2011). The statistics on the average land lease for planting farms indicate some challenges. Long-term leasing contracts with smallholders of farmland are more important for planting farms than farms breeding livestock and poultry because grains have longer growth cycle than animals. However, the average duration of a land lease for grain farms is only 8.6 years (Table 6.2), which is significantly shorter than farms breeding livestock or other types of farms. Zhang argued as follows: The farm owners … are worried about making a long-term investment. In my cooperative, the land lease duration is often three or five years. If the contract with the tenant farmers can be extended to 15, even 20 years, farm owners will be more enthusiastic in farm management, and even soil conservation.14

13 Interview 14 Ibid.

with Zhang, the director of Xinggen cooperative, July 2014.

12

10

Livestock

Poultry

N/A

109.4

16000.0

789.2

69.5

73.7

168.2

Av size (mu or head)

6.9

15.3

40.0

50.0

6.5

8.6

8.0

Share of mixed farming (%)

12.9

16.6

30.0

41.7

12.9

9.3

24.7

Share of business registration (%)

225

319

660

437

231

221

300

Av farm income (1,000 yuan)

3.2

2.7

3.7

4.8

4.1

3.2

2.7

Av family members in farming

4.9

3.8

13.8

5.7

9.3

4.5

3.1

Av full-time employees

10.8 10.9

10.6

19.4

18.1

13.5

9.5

8.6

Av land lease duration (years)

10.8

32.6

11.7

17.5

9.3

8.7

Av seasonal employees

Source Agriculture Bureau of Jiangning, 2015. Note Farms adopting mixed farming are counted in the statistics of each category

641

186

Gardening and tea

Total

162

Vegetable and fruit

163

174

Grain

Aquaculture

No.

Category

Table 6.2 Statistics of family farms registered officially in Jiangning

6.4 Grassroots Participation Driven by State-Led Programs 101

102

6 Grassroots Participation in Xinhui and Challenges …

6.4.2 Farmers’ Participation The enthusiasm of the farmers participating in farming is related to the earnings from the family farm. The financial performance of the Xinbo family farm has been very good in recent years. Using past yields as an indicator, the break-even yield should be around 250 kg/µ for wheat and 450 kg/µ for a rice paddy. The yield exceeding the break-even line can be deemed as net profit. Under normal circumstances, the annual yield of wheat can be as high as 300 kg/µ, and the average profit is 130 yuan per mu; the yield for a rice paddy is around 550 kg/µ, and the average profit is 340 yuan per mu (Table 6.3). Following the wheat–rice rotation farming system, the yearly profit per mu reaches about 470 yuan. In summary, the farm’s total profit is around 300,000 yuan per year, which is a moderately good income for two households. The balance sheet of the Xinbo farm (Table 6.3) identifies the role of the subsidy programs. First is the farming subsidy. After the abolition of agriculture taxation, the state launched a program to subsidize the actual farming cultivators (Chen 2015a). In Jiangning, this subsidy is up to 120 yuan per mu per year. Second is the hidden subsidy to support land circulation. This aforementioned 300 yuan per mu land circulation subsidy is paid by the sub-district government. Together these subsidies contribute 420 yuan per mu to the farm, which is almost equal to the net profit (470 yuan) of Xinbo. The interview with an official from the Agriculture Bureau of Jiangning also revealed the subsidy–profit reality; he stated that: Table 6.3 Incomplete balance sheet of Xinbo family farm in 2014 Category

Sub-category

Yield (kg/mu)

Income/Expense per unit

Area (mu)

Sub-total

Income

Rice paddy

550

3.4 yuan/kg

650

1,215,500

Wheat

300

2.6 yuan/kg

650

507,000

Program subsidy

Farming subsidy

120 yuan/mu

650

78,000

Land circulation subsidy

300 yuan/mu

650

195,000

Expense

Rent for circulated farmland

700 yuan/mu

650

455,000

Labor

650,000

Machinery

N/A

Pesticide and fertilizer

N/A

…… Balance

……

Paddy rice

550

340 yuan/mu

650

221,000

Wheat

300

130 yuan/mu

650

84,500

Source Compiled by author, according to the data collected in the interviews with Chen and Xu

6.4 Grassroots Participation Driven by State-Led Programs

103

Fig. 6.6 Seasonal employees who were busy with seedling transplanting. Source Photographed by Chen

The government has set up some agriculture zones in Jiangning. The farms in the agriculture zones can enjoy certain subsidies to cover a proportion of the circulation fee. The farm owners are very sensitive to the fee. For the farms devoted to commodity grain, the annual profit per mu is only about 200 yuan. Once the actually-paid rent for circulated farmland exceeds 500 yuan per mu, there is no profit for the farms.15

The salary of employees of the farm triggered participation among the ordinary villagers, but this does not explain the whole story. The annual labor cost of Xinbo farm is approximately 650,000 yuan and accounts for 50% of the total expenses.16 The farm has four full-time employees. All are former production team leaders who served in the collective but who retired and became “unemployed laborers” in the village. Even though their salary of 1,500 yuan per month is not very high, they are happy to follow Chen and Xu to “have things to do.” Aside from the full-time employees, seasonal employees are in great demand in peak periods. In the prime days from late May to mid-June every year, intensive plowing and transplanting is required and lasts 15 days. The daily labor costs reach as high as 10 thousand yuan.17 According to Chen, as many as 110 workers participated in the busy season of 2015 (Fig. 6.6). All the workers came from Xinhui village. Their daily salary ranged from 80 to 120 yuan per day, depending on their job type. For example, a male worker was paid 200 yuan per day for plowing. The wives of the farm owners provided the catering services. Chen elaborated on the workers on the farm: According to my fifty-year farming experience, once the acreage of a farm exceeds 100 mu, it is insufficient to rely on a couple alone. Hence full-time employees are necessary for daily field management, and in the peak periods, we should also hire some seasonal employees

15 Interview

with an official of Agriculture Bureau of Jiangning, September 2015. with Xu, co-owner of Xinbo family farm, September 2015, see also Table 6.3. 17 Interview with Chen, co-owner of Xinbo family farm, July 2015. 16 Interview

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6 Grassroots Participation in Xinhui and Challenges …

Table 6.4 Statistics of cooperatives registered officially in Jiangning Category

Sub-category

Social service provider

Machinery

14

2.8

18.6

Pest control

3

0.6

10.0

0.0

Specialized producer

Grain

53

10.8

377.6

47.2

134

27.2

235.0

60.4

74

15.0

285.7

51.4

114

23.1

194.2

50.0

Tea

42

8.5

371.4

9.5

Livestock and poultry

27

5.5

76.4

11.1

Aquaculture

48

9.7

147.8

31.3

Eco-tourism

9

1.8

16.7

0.0

27

5.5

133.6

48.1

493

100

223.5

43.4

Vegetable Fruit Gardening

Unclassified Total

No.

Share of total (%)

Average participating households

Share of shareholding cooperatives (%) 0.0

Source Rural Working Commission of CPC Jiangning, 2015. Note The cooperatives adopting mixed farming are counted in statistics of each sub-category

from our village. The workers on the farm are in their fifties, sixties and even seventies. There are no young guys who are interested in farming.18

6.5 Less-Than-Ideal Governance in the Two-Tier Model 6.5.1 Social Service by Cooperatives The degree of vertical social services largely determines the effectiveness of governance in the two-tier model. My survey in Jiangning reveals that it is not as ideal as expected. Table 6.4 displays the statistics of the cooperatives registered by Jiangning government, in which the degree of vertical social services can be measured. The social service providers in Jiangning are underdeveloped. Many of them are shell cooperatives without actual member farms. Farmers are reluctant to join the social service cooperatives because most of them are actually profitable companies rather than voluntary organizations for mutual benefit. Only two types of these cooperatives exist in Jiangning: machinery cooperatives and pest control cooperatives. The number of each type of cooperative is very small (14 and 3, respectively), only 18 Interview

with Chen, co-owner of Xinbo family farm, July 2015.

6.5 Less-Than-Ideal Governance in the Two-Tier Model

105

accounting for 3.4% of all cooperatives in Jiangning (Table 6.4). Participants of these cooperatives fluctuate from ten to twenty households. More importantly, none are under shareholding ownership. In the interview with him, Chen lamented what he saw as the incompetence of the social services offered by these alleged cooperatives from his own user perspective: To meet the standards of the pilot family farm, the farming service station in our subdistrict paired my farm with two cooperatives. One is a pest control cooperative; the other is a machinery one. But I never had any connections with them, because they are actually profitable companies rather than voluntary organizations formed by farms. Their services are too expensive. For example, for the spring plowing, the machinery cooperative asked for 80 yuan per mu. This meant that the plowing cost alone would be 54,000 yuan. Actually, I am an experienced tractor driver. I plowed the farmland by myself, and the cost was only 10,000 yuan, which was mainly spent on fuel.19

The official in charge of the cooperative administration had a different view: That is because the proportion of the family farms that join the social service cooperatives is too low. For a machinery cooperative, if more farms join and share the cost, the plowing fee would decline naturally.20

In contrast, cooperatives of specialized producers are flourishing. When doing business with the market, an individual farmer has disadvantages, such as information asymmetry and the absence of a business entity. Thus, farmers unite to enter the large market (baotuan chuang shichang).21 This is the initial motivation for the establishment of these cooperatives. The need for cooperation is most evident among the vegetable and fruit farms. More than half of cooperatives are shareholding. Through mortgaging their land contracts, member farms pool their plots together as shares in a specialized cooperative. The advantage is that farms can enjoy a unified order-sale system before and after production. The average number of participants exceeds 200 (Table 6.4).

6.5.2 The Allocation of Profit The process of profit allocation directly indicates the extent to which the two-tier model of governance can be considered genuine. However, in practice in Xinhui, the cooperative is actually an agriculture corporation owned by the director himself, which undermines its authenticity as a cooperative. The ideal two-tier model experienced a de-cooperativization process: Xinggen may have begun as an authentic cooperative, but it has gradually abandoned its original mission. While Xinggen sometimes provides technology and marketing services to member farms, it is apparent that it was founded and is controlled by the private owner, or a group of village 19 Interview 20 Interview

with Chen, co-owner of Xinbo family farm, July 2015. with Ding, an official of Rural Working Commission of CPC Jiangning, September

2015. 21 Interview with Liu, an official of Rural Working Commission of CPC Jiangning, September 2015.

106

6 Grassroots Participation in Xinhui and Challenges …

elites. The cooperative has no genuine cooperation with members, nor does it share profits with them. According to the regulations in the cooperative law s,22 the profit allocation within the cooperative should follow two steps. The first is profit payback (fanli). Each fiscal year, the gross profit should cover the deficit from the last year and a certain amount should be reserved for the coming year. After that, the remaining sum is the cooperative’s profits, which should be distributed. The law stipulates that no less than 60% of net profit should be allocated to the members according to their transaction volume with the cooperative in this first step. The second step is the dividend allocation (fenhong), which means that the remaining part after profit payback should be allocated to members according to their individual shares in the cooperative investment. While this is how things should work, in practice it is very different. The designated deployment of the profit distribution with a sharing system applies to both the benefits and risks and is necessary for the sustainable development of cooperatives. With specific reference to seed–grain production, the two-step profit allocation in the Xinggen cooperative should be carried out as follows. First, after harvest, the cooperative purchases the seed–grain from the member farms at the stateprotected price and ensures the underlying profit for the farms. Second, after trading with seed companies, the cooperative deducts public operation costs and re-allocates the remaining profit to its members, on the basis of individual transaction volume with the cooperative. Most importantly, other than the necessary capital accumulation of the cooperative, the whole chain of earnings in the farming needs to be shared by individual farms. Of course, the farms need to share in the losses as well. In its first two years, the Xinggen cooperative was unsuccessful in implementing the above model. In the winter of 2008, the cooperative suffered a serious loss. A heavy snowstorm damaged the seed–grain quality, and the seed–grain did not meet the standard of the seed company. The loss suffered by the cooperative had to be allocated to each member, but many farmers questioned this. Zhang commented on the collaboration as follows: “Farmers have weak contractual awareness. In business, they are only obedient to the earnings, while avoiding bearing the loss. As the director of the Xinggen cooperative, many things are out of my control.” Zhang further added that, “Farming is essentially an industry at the mercy of the heavens. The weather can determine 60–70% of the yield. Risks in farming are everywhere. Individual farms are much more vulnerable to the risks than a cooperative, yet they are reluctant to share the risk as they often attribute the loss to collective action.”23 As Zhang told us in the interview, he subsequently merged the two steps into one, and the members accepted a once-and-for-all deal. Instead of selling the seed grain on the market and distributing profits, Zhang purchased the grain from the farms directly to shift the responsibility for trade with the market to himself. Compared to the ordinary commodity grain, the seed–grain has higher quality and more production costs. The cooperative procured the seed–grain from farms at a price 10% higher 22 See

National Law on Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives of PRC, and Provincial Ordinance on Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives of Jiangsu. 23 Interview with Zhang, director of Xinggen cooperative, July 2014.

6.5 Less-Than-Ideal Governance in the Two-Tier Model

107

than the state-protected price. For example, the state-protected price of wheat was 2.36 yuan per kg in 2014. The cooperative, which was essentially Zhang himself, purchased the grain from the farms at a price of 2.6 yuan per kg. In the trade with the market, Zhang would “take all the responsibilities on his shoulders,” which can be risky. In particular, depending on the market, Zhang would either retain the profit or suffer the loss. Zhang said in the interview: The seed companies do not always keep their promise. When they place a seed-grain order in spring, they make no advance payment. But we cannot owe money to the farms in the procurement; sometimes we need to resort to the bank for loans. In 2014, the total wheat yield of the cooperative was as much as 5 million kg, and this farming scale was determined according to the spring orders from seed companies. However, the seed market was in a slump after the procurement. The companies only bought back 3 million kg of seed-grain from my cooperative in the end. According to the seed law, our cooperative cannot sell the grain in the form of seed as it has no permission as a seed company. I had to sell the remaining 2 million kg on the commodity-grain market at the state protected price. The 10% increase in the original procurement was my net loss.24

If we pool the information from different stakeholders, we find that the two-step allocation can be effective and profitable, even in current circumstances. However, transparent governance at the grassroots is a pre-requisite. Using the 2014 wheat business as an example, according to Chen,25 the state-protected price of wheat was 2.36 yuan per kg and the procurement price from the farms was 2.6 yuan per kg in 2014. For the remaining 2 million kg sold to the commodity grain market, the loss was 0.48 million yuan. For the 3 million kg seed–grain sold to the seed company, a selection process, with a loss of 15%, needed to be conducted by the cooperative. Together with the expenses of drying, packaging, and transportation, the cost of the seed wheat was as high as 3.2 yuan per kg.26 At a selling price of 3.4 yuan per kg, the cooperative would have profited 0.6 million yuan, and overall, the cooperative still would have earned a profit of 0.12 million yuan in 2014. Thus, risk sharing among participating farms can be feasible and profitable. At the procurement price, the profit margin for farms in wheat production is approximately 0.4 yuan per kg (Table 6.3). If no issues are encountered and the yield of 5 million kg remains the same, the anticipated profit from step two of the seed wheat alone can reach 1 million yuan (0.2 yuan per kg*5 million kg), which would be considered for a potential dividend allocation. Theoretically, this is how the cooperative is supposed to work, yet the arrangement does not actually operate in this manner. In the actual purchase-order business, even when the cooperative pays a higher price than the protected price, one-third of the profit still goes to the cooperative, which in the case of the Xinggen cooperative goes to the director himself, Zhang, not the member farms. As such, the cooperative serves more like Zhang’s own enterprise, rather than a voluntary association of farmers for mutual benefit.

24 Interview

with Zhang, the director of Xinggen cooperative, July 2014. with Chen, co-owner of the Xinbo family farm, July 2015. 26 Interview with Zhang, the director of Xinggen cooperative, July 2014. 25 Interview

108

6 Grassroots Participation in Xinhui and Challenges …

6.6 Conclusion Farmland reform in China is headed toward a more liberal tenure system. Land circulation is encouraged among the grassroots, with policy created to subsidize farms that are the appropriate farming scale. A new two-tier model, comprised of cooperatives and family farms, is favored by central and local policies. Nevertheless, without the participation and self-organization of the farmers, the state-led programs will not successfully influence the daily practices of the villagers. The case study of Xinhui village provides insights into the effectiveness of “program-driven farming governance” in China from a grassroots perspective. First, the programs of the two-tier model are beneficial for agricultural production. Some farmers have been incentivized by these programs to engage in farming and are enjoying a modest boost to their income. Cooperatives yield benefits to member farms by providing an outlet for marketing farm crops. However, grassroots farming is increasingly relying on subsidies from the government. In the case of the Xinbo family farm, the farming subsidy, together with the hidden sub-district subsidy to support land circulation, is almost equal to the net profit of the farm. At the same time, unemployment has declined and the livelihoods for some have improved to a certain extent due to these programs. Second, viewing the cooperatives through the criteria of social services and profit allocation mechanisms, the empirical study also reveals a pseudo-two-tier model, which may prevail across rural China. The external intervention imposed by the government empowers farmers to devise their own solutions, and it ensures the effectiveness of the two-tier governance outlined in the policy. However, the inherent difficulties in farmer collaboration hinder the effectiveness and sustainability of the rural economy. The cooperative’s role in providing vertical social services to farms is underdeveloped, whereas farms tend to join cooperatives of specialized products to exploit the market. In the case of Xinhui, the benefits for farms from the Xinggen cooperative remain limited, while most of the revenue accrues to the individual who effectively owns the so-called cooperative. The vision of cooperatives as organizations of farmers helping each other to overcome the difficulties of the modern economy is, therefore, unfulfilled (Hu et al. 2017). Third, it should be reiterated that the village elite still have influence, and social cohesion and trust are needed for effective grassroots farming governance. The method of profit allocation demonstrates that the cooperative is indeed an agriculture corporation owned by the director himself. In Xinhui, the farms do not collectively own the cooperative’s assets, but they still voluntarily join the so-called cooperative. As a member of the village elite, the director is the former leader of the village and he has connections with current cadres and seed companies, which individual farm owners do not have. This circumstance is a legacy of corporatism, as many entrepreneurial activities in the countryside are typically established and controlled by current or former village leaders (Hu et al. 2017; Oi 1992). However, rural society urgently needs social cohesion and trust. Farmers share in the earnings, while avoiding the losses. They are willing to accept a once-and-for-all deal with the Xinggen cooperative, even

6.6 Conclusion

109

though the latter enjoys a considerable proportion of profit. Findings in Xinhui confirm the short-termism of farmers, which is also found in other areas of countryside endeavor (Cook 1995; Porter and Scully 1987; Royer 1995; Vitaliano 1983). The incoherence and distrust among farmers undermine their ability to form a genuine cooperative for mutual benefits because the productive life of collective resources is longer than the time span an individual can claim for generating dividends (Porter and Scully 1987; Vitaliano 1983). The study findings have three policy implications. First, it should be reiterated that the farmers are the most important stakeholders in rural governance. Their interests and typical practices should be fully respected in any rural program, which is crucial for a successful policy. Farmers welcome programs that can be applied and implemented by individual farms, rather than those that are exclusively undertaken by the government. Some land consolidation programs dominated by the state have led to negative effects for farmers (Long et al. 2012; Tang et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2014; Liu et al. 2016). Second, the government needs to enforce relevant laws strictly, as well as use matched subsidies reasonably because misdirected support from the government may generate new social differentiations in the countryside. The national cooperative law is strict but is not well enforced (Hu et al. 2017). The law only contains incentive clauses and does not have any punitive terms. As an official in the interview complained, there are no compulsory measures to deal with fraud in government subsidies. The subsidies are rarely used for their intended purposes, and they attract numerous applicants to register as a cooperative. Many receiving subsidies are actually de facto private agribusinesses and even shell corporations. In this sense, farmers have become increasingly polarized in terms of the scale of production and income. While some small-scale farmers lack the wherewithal to secure such subsidies, wellconnected, larger scale farmers and businesses often capture the benefits to which they are not legally entitled (Hu et al. 2017; Zhang and Donaldson 2013) . Good governance in farming should avoid creating an unfair environment and should formulate targeted policies for real bottom-up cooperatives. Third, effective governance in the countryside relies not only on the institutions, but also on an ethos of building social cohesion and trust among the grassroots. In many cases in rural China, state-led programs have encountered a serious collective action problem in an increasingly disjointed rural society (Shen and Shen 2018b). Many farmers claim they are willing to cooperate but then complain about a lack of resources or a center around which to organize (Hu et al. 2017). The government has made a large investment, but the benefits of the investment often go to village elites. Overcoming this problem requires cooperation that fosters social cohesion and trust. Thus, the first step must be ethos building before economic cooperation (Ostrom 1994). In the context of rural China, the social cohesion and trust often relies on dedicated, selfless leaders. As Lacy (2001) noted, “perhaps our greatest challenge is to create and teach a new civic ethos that emphasizes and values sustained participation, not sporadic and episodic participation.” Given that unincorporated farmers in essence form the status quo, it will require a long time to develop in the Chinese countryside.

110

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Ye Y, LeGates R, Qin B (2013) Coordinated urban-rural development planning in China. J Am Plann Assoc 79(2):125–137 Zhang H (2014) New trends in the production relation of the agriculture in China. Retrieved May 19, 2016 from Communist Party of China Website: http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/0114/ c40531-24108732.html (in Chinese) Zhang QF, Donaldson JA (2008) The rise of agrarian capitalism with Chinese characteristics: agricultural modernization, agribusiness and collective land rights. China J 60:25–47 Zhang QF, Donaldson JA (2013) China’s agrarian reform and the privatization of land: a contrarian view. J Contemp China 22(80):255–272 Zhao Y (2013) China’s disappearing countryside: towards Sustainable land governance for the poor. Routledge, London Zhou F (2012) The problems of fiscal earmarked funds: on “governing the state through programs”. Chinese J Sociol 32(1):1–37 (in Chinese) Zhou Q (2013) China between urban and rural. China Citic Press, Beijing (in Chinese) Zhu J, Guo Y (2015) Rural development led by autonomous village land cooperatives: its impact on sustainable China’s urbanisation in high-density regions. Urban Stud 52(8):1395–1413 Zinda JA (2014) Book review: China’s disappearing countryside: towards sustainable land governance for the poor. J Peasant Stud 41(3):437–440

Chapter 7

Conclusion and Discussion

Abstract Triggered by the programs, a new model of state-led rural revitalization is emerging in rural China. The state-led programs accelerate the building of the state–private–farmer partnership, as well as promote the participation of grassroots society toward rural revitalization. At the initial stage to improve the hollowing-out countryside, the state role is important in mobilizing the non-governmental sectors’ engagement. However, it does not mean that the new paradigm guarantees a sustainable governance. In forms of land tenure reform, infrastructure investment, and even subsidies, the programs just empower the farmers and other stakeholders to engage in the rural reconstruction. The ultimate triumph depends on sustainable pricing mechanism for public goods provision, as well as genuine self-organization of grassroots. Generally speaking, the pervasive rural programs in China provide a unique perspective to reconsider the theory of rural governance. The capacity of rural governance, which was hollowing out by fiscal reform previously, has been enhanced significantly through state-led programs. Given the low degree of citizen involvement and long-standing paternalism political ideology in China, the state in rural revitalization ought to act as a facilitator that enables communities to govern themselves, yet by no means an almighty provider for all public interests. Keywords Rural program · Rural planning · Rural governance · Public goods · Land tenure system in China · Intergovernmental relationship · Rural revitalization · Sustainability This chapter will summarize the major findings of this research. The first three research questions proposed in Chap. 1 will be answered in the first section. The fourth research question concerning theoretical implications for rural revitalization will be discussed in detail in the second section. In the last two sections, I will present the corresponding policy suggestions for rural revitalization in practice, and figure out the research limitations and future research agenda.

© Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3_7

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7.1 Main Research Findings This section returns to the research focus, objectives, and questions proposed at the beginning. The whole book anchors on the rural governance changes driven by programs (RGCDP) as the research focus. To unfold the theme, the study conceptualizes the changing governance structure from three dimensions, i.e., intergovernmental relation, state–private–farmer partnership, and grassroots participation. Based on that, a conceptual framework for analyzing RGCDP is established. Furthermore, I use the conceptual framework to anatomize the three cases from Jiangning. In the empirical studies, the dynamics behind the rise of the state-led programs in the countryside are revealed, and various interest groups and the networking process are identified. The research also evaluates the effectiveness of the programs and discusses the sustainability of the program-driven model of governance. With reference to three research questions proposed in Chap. 1, the main research findings are summarized as follows. (a) How does the process of intergovernmental politics evolve on rural program issues? The evolution of the intergovernmental relations on rural issues is a unique dimension to understand the rural governance in China. The process also offers an institutional background to understand the rural programs initiated by the state. Through the lens of rural programs in Jiangning, I argue that the state role in governing the countryside has been strengthened significantly. These programs are not fixed but interweaved among multi-level governments, of which the local governments play the most active role. On the one hand, the local governments follow the discourse from the central/provincial governments. On the other hand, they also restructure the bureaucratic system and introduce the market-like mechanism to realize their growth ambition. Conventional bureaucracy often manifests a rigid division of obligation among hierarchies. The intergovernmental relations in the research are by no means a oneway process, but intensive interactions between the central/provincial, local, and township levels. Central/provincial governments generally initiate and lead rural programs. Prioritizing the rural issues, they invest a large amount of resources in program campaign and funds, and have the final word in the approval and legitimacy of programs. However, central/provincial governments only provide broad guidelines and limited seed funds for concrete programs, while the local governments possess discretionary power in the program campaign. They successfully harness the discourse and restructure the state apparatus for program implementation. With the legitimacy obtained by actively echoing the initiative of the central, they mobilize the township-level governments and the society to participate in the program. New tools and techniques have been applied to steer the state-led programs for rural revitalization. These new measures in rural governance comprise those inherited from the bureaucratic legacies such as top-down mobilization, and also the market incentives such as streamlined management and peer competition. In the Jiangning

7.1 Main Research Findings

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case, it is highlighted that the employment of legitimation and mobilization are crucial rationales for the local government in program campaign. By the means of guidance rather than command, the enthusiasm among different stakeholders in the rural governance is catalyzed, and the smooth operation of the programs is ensured. Other than that, rural planning is also formatted as a technical platform to standardize the program implementation and evaluation. (b) What is the mechanism behind the interplays between the state, private sector, and farmers in rural programs? The cases of Tangjiajia and Xinhui verify the preliminary success of the programs in building a state–private–farmer partnership, as well as promoting the participation of grassroots society toward rural revitalization. In conclusion, the formation of the interplays between the state, private sector, and farmers in the programs reckons on two key mechanisms, namely, the initial state intervention and the flexible framework of program regime. The state intervention is especially important in the initial stage for revitalizing the countryside. In the post-agriculture-tax era, rural China is confronted with a hollowing-out crisis. The atomized rural community, as well as the profit-oriented entrepreneurs, has no incentive to initiate the transformation. The state then plays an ice-break role in the process, as it offers a fulcrum to leverage the rural revitalization. Different levels of governments invest a lot into the subsidy programs and induce the positive formation of partnership and participation. Either in the sectors of farming or commodification, the rural space is often employed as a breakthrough point by the state to restore the countryside. The space-related programs economically catalyze the entrepreneurship of the farmers and socially boost the community building in the villages. It is just the flexible designation of the program regime that ensures more farmers and entrepreneurs to participate in the campaign. In the cases with effective governance, a loose but holistic policy framework is often adopted in the program regime. The framework reserves enough room for the initiatives from grassroots stakeholders while also emphasizes a gradual involvement of others in rural governance. In the first case, the intentionally vague policies from the central/provincial leave Jiangning government sufficient pretext and space to manipulate the discourse and stuff local schemes. The practice in Tangjiajia stresses the willingness of residents at all stages and highlights a self-sufficient industry of rural community after the start-up infrastructure investment. The case of Xinhui illuminates that the government has shifted the top-down way of land consolidation program to incentive environment building through the free-applied fund, which empowers the farmers to devise their own solutions in farming. All of those are counterevidence to Scott’s argument that the endogenous homogenization and simplification of the state program ignore the diversity and practical knowledge on the ground (Scott 1998, p. 4–5). (c) To what extent is the program-driven governance model a sustainable one? The temporality of the program-driven model limits the sustainability of relevant rural governance. In the initial stage, the state subsidy programs can mitigate the

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governance crisis and build an external environment for rural governance in China, but it does not mean that the model is a cure-all or guarantees good governance in a long running. In forms of land tenure reform, infrastructure investment, or subsidies in farming and eco-tourism, the programs just empower the farmers and other stakeholders to engage in the rural revitalization. The ultimate triumph for sustainable governance comes up with a pricing mechanism for public goods provision, as well as the self-organization of grassroots. The commodification of Tangjiajia exposes the lack of mechanism in public goods provision and the temporality of program-driven governance. In the context of rural China, the conventional “common goods” based on the collective ownership are non-excludable but rivalrous—each member can get access to the goods, but the resources are limited because there is no pricing mechanism to sustain the goods regeneration (Hardin 1968). The temporal launch of rural programs is equivalent to an introduction of “public goods” in the countryside—the goods are non-excludable and also non-rivalrous, which are often built on the tax-paying mechanism in an urban context. However, after the program fever, it comes to the paradox that the providers of the scenic-like village, either the collective or the Taiwan enterprise, have not set up a clear pricing mechanism for future public goods provision in the village. There is no charge for the actual users, and sustainability of the village is in question (Shen and Shen 2019). The farming case of Xinhui sheds lights on the importance of farmer selforganization in rural governance. It is found that the inherent disadvantages of farmer collaboration, such as free-riding, short-termism, still hinder the effectiveness and sustainability in the rural economy. The state invests a lot through the programs, but the bonus is susceptible to be captured by village elites. The cooperative role of providing vertical socialized service to the farms is underdeveloped, whereas the farms tend to join the cooperatives of specialized products for exploiting the gigantic market. In the allocation of the profits, farmers are obedient to the earnings, while avoid sharing the loss. They are willing to accept the once-for-all deal in business, while reluctant to build a self-organized cooperative for collective benefits, despite that the latter is essential for sustainable economic governance.

7.2 Conceptualizing Rural Governance Driven by State-Led Programs This section aims to conceptualize the rural governance driven by state-led programs. To extract theoretical implications, I try to keep a dialogue with the classic governance theory generalized from western experience, as well as the historic legacy of rural China. Meanwhile, the fourth research question will be addressed, i.e.,

7.2 Conceptualizing Rural Governance Driven by State-Led Programs

117

(d) Are there any new theoretical implications for rural revitalization, deriving from the state-led paradigm in China? Underdeveloped governance capacity as the context. The context of rural governance changes driven by programs in China is totally different from the classic governance theory of the West developed since the 1970s. The latter came amid the Anglo-American context and was against the backdrop of the fiscal crisis of the welfare state. The traditional power of the state declined due to the neoliberal transformation of privatization, deregulation, and decentralization (Brenner 2003). Meanwhile, various non-state agents (such as NGOs, private enterprises) emerged and participated in the decision-making process to fill the gap left over by the retreat of the state. Therefore, the hypothesis of the classic theory is based on a relatively mature society, where modern governance structure and strong governance capacity exist. In contrast, the program paradigm is built on a hollowing-out status of rural China. Before programs, both the state capacity and villager self-governance had declined to the minimum, and it disturbed the stability of the countryside (see pyramid II in Fig. 7.1). In this way, the governance here is interpreted as an evolving process, rather than a static standard stipulating the power proportions of different groups. Based on the evidence in Jiangning, it is argued that the rural governance capacity has been enhanced significantly through programs (see pyramid III in Fig. 7.1). The state-led programs have evoked the engagement of the non-governmental sectors: farmers are mobilized to pay more concerns on the public affairs, and community consensus is building; the market sector is introduced into the new model for rural revitalization, which was previously absent in the hollow status of rural China. State role in the model. The programs are initiated and funded by the governments, and it signifies the feature of the program model in situating the state role in rural governance. With a dominant position in governing the countryside, the state often spares

Fig. 7.1 A comparison of three pyramid models of rural governance structure. Source Compiled by author

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no effort and the investments are often cost-insensitive. Using the development of the program as a narrative thread, the book unravels the intergovernmental interactions, as well as the state role in the interactions with non-governmental sectors. The empirical study of the book verifies the argument by Jessop (1997: 19), an “increase in governance need not entail a loss in the power of government as if power is a zero-sum resource rather than a social relation.” We should be cautious against an uncritical acknowledgement of the unilinear trends that the processes of government and governance are mutually exclusive (MacLeod and Goodwin 1999). In the original definition, the concept of governance is different from government. It is often assumed that state intervention should be reduced to the minimum to ensure enough room for citizen involvement in governance (Rhodes 1996; Swyngedouw 1997). In the classic governance theory, the law of waxing and waning applies between the governmental and non-governmental sectors. Thus, it is not surprising to see very few studies on the traditional structures among governments themselves (Pemberton and Goodwin 2010). However, increasing cross-national evidences also showed that even the proponents of reducing state intervention recognized that effective state capacity was needed for successful implementation of good governance (Fox 1995). Furthermore, I argue that the new model of state-led rural revitalization has characteristics of new public management, of which the rural programs are widely regarded as purchased services by government. In the new model, private sector management methods have been introduced into the public sector: the implementation stresses hands-on professional management, explicit standards, and measures of performance (Rhodes 1996). Through the evaluation by the upper level government, incentive mechanism is introduced to form a quasi-market competition within the governmental sector. What’s more, as a process of public service provision, the governments also contract out the programs to the market and farmers. A de facto principal–agent relation is established between government and non-governmental sectors. Many stakeholders, such as villager committees, enterprises, NGOs, have been involved in the rural public affairs. They are all potential actors in a broader system of rural governance. The mighty governments in China show paternalism on the rural issues, but it does not mean that all the problems can be solved by the state. Such program campaign in a short time may not ensure the sustainable development of the countryside. In a certain sense, the state-led programs have not cured the essential weakness of the rural governance in China, which calls for a pricing mechanism for public goods provision, as well as the self-organization of grassroots. As Scott (1998, p.6) claimed in his notable monograph, “designed or planned social order is necessarily schematic…the formal scheme was parasitic on informal process that, alone, it could not create or maintain.” Regardless of either source or field of the funding, farmers are the ultimate implementers, as well as the designated beneficiaries in rural programs. Their wisdom accumulated from practical experience, as well as their network inherited from traditional society, are crucial elements to improve the economy and governance in the countryside.

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The gene in rural governance. Some legacies of the rural governance in China still exist after the introduction of the program model. The empirical study supports that local social network still matters in some cases. This network is hard to be explained by the classic governance theory. In Xinhui case, the profit allocation discloses that cooperative is indeed an agriculture corporation owned by Zhang himself, instead of a shareholding system. On this occasion, farmers do not cooperate as members with substantial shares; they still voluntarily join the so-called cooperative because village elite has some connections with village and seed company while individual farmers do not have. The rural context also carries some positive genes for good governance toward rural revitalization. In contrast to the urban counterparts, rural residents have more endogenous incentives in public affairs of villages. Because of the collectively owned system either in the land tenure or some common goods, the interests behind are directly attached to individual households (Hin and Xin 2011; Zhang 2014a, b). As long as the state-led program is inclusive of others, the interests in the countryside are more immediate and tangible for the community, than those in cities. In this way, the countryside provides a great arena to practice the public participation initiated by the state-led program, compared with the circumstance in cities.

7.3 Policy Implications for Rural Governance Given the problems in the program model that have been recognized in this research, this section proposes the following policy implications for rural revitalization. The implications will be useful for policy-makers to decide what should be done to better revitalize the countryside in an appropriate way. First, the incorporated urban–rural administrative system of China is an advantage for rural development in the program model. Geographically, the municipal governments in China are actually regional authorities that administrate the urban centers, as well as the rural areas. In the existing literature, it is widely criticized that the countryside sacrificed a lot in the urban-biased system. According to the investigation in the program paradigm, the system has become an institutional bonus for flourishing the countryside instead. Municipal governments deem the rural areas as a new arena that accommodates fierce interjurisdictional competition. Through the program investment, prosperous cities regurgitate and feedback the countryside. The pilot villages get benefited first, and the programs roll out across the countryside, reaching a full-coverage standard. Suppose that the countryside is in an administratively unincorporated status, the result may be quite different in China. Second, the state ought to retreat from taking on all things in the programs and concentrate on monitoring state funds. Under the state paternalism, the villagers and entrepreneurs tend to depend on the state rather than stand on their own in rural governance. In some sense, the government cages itself with unlimited responsibility. There is a negative side of the strong state intervention in the program-driven governance. The endogenous capacity should be given a more centric position for further

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rural policies. As the principal of the programs, the government needs to monitor strictly the enforcement of the laws and relevant funds. For instance, the national cooperative law only contains the incentive clauses without any punitive ones. As the official complained in the interview, there were no compulsory measures when they were confronted with fraud practices cheating state funding. Third, it needs to be reiterated that the farmers are the most important stakeholders in rural governance. Their interests and usual practices should get fully respected in any rural programs which are crucial for a successful policy. Farmers welcome programs applied and implemented by individual households, rather than those exclusively undertaken by the government. We can also learn the lesson from the negative sides of the nationwide programs for land consolidation (Long et al. 2012; Tang et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2014). The fulfillment of the effective governance in the countryside relies not only on the institutional building, but also on the building of participation ethos amidst grassroots. As Lacy (2001) put it, “perhaps our greatest challenge is to create and teach a new civic ethos that emphasizes and values sustained participation, not sporadic and episodic participation.” Given that the status quo of unincorporated farmers in essence, it needs a long time to be fostered in the Chinese countryside. Putting aside the largely rosy picture of the rural governance driven by programs, it should be admitted that the self-organization power of the farmers vis-à-vis that of the state is still limited. Some features of Chinese policy process and political system would undermine the ultimate success of the program model. For grand development programs, the pressure to deliver results drives local officials to exert maximum control over the policy process. In the context of campaigns, participation may be allowed or even encouraged, but is almost always controlled (Looney 2015). Confronted with a strong state, many villagers agree to change and look to program agents for help negotiating the best deal possible. In the empirical parts of the book, we can observe the induced but limited participation of villagers. As the program campaign intensifies, however, the space for negotiation becomes smaller. The dynamics are reinforced by the weak position of many rural organizations, which often serve as instruments of the state rather than as representatives of villagers. Perhaps, if the government had involved more self-governed rural organizations and social activists, the outcomes of the programs would have turned out differently. Villager-driven change is certainly possible in China. However, this study suggests that it is not so optimistic for a greater role of farmers in large-scale development campaigns driven by state-led programs. Good governance in the countryside calls for a reposition of the relationship between farmers and government in programs. Taiwan’s achievements in the realm of grassroots collectives have attracted the greatest admiration from observers (Perry 2011: 48–49). The farmer associations (nonghui), first established under Japanese colonialism but systematized in the 1970s, are praised as a model to bridge farmers and the government. The associations are lauded for providing a channel for the articulation of farmer interests as well as for promoting official policies, agriculture techniques, and the like (Wu and Yuan 2006). In some pioneer regions of mainland China, the ongoing shareholding cooperative reform reifies rural land property rights to the benefits of individual

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members in a collective (Guo et al. 2016; Po 2011; Zhu and Guo 2015). State leadership is but one form of rural governance among many. Recent work on the “New Rural Reconstruction” movement in Anhui and Hubei shows a more positive role of the non-governmental and self-organized associations in micro-level community building (Hale 2013; Thøgersen 2009). To empower the grassroots engagement, institutional reforms (e.g., land tenure system reform) in the governmental sector, as well as the reconstruction of the traditional rural society, are needed.

7.4 Limitations and Future Research Agendas Beyond current research framework and empirical materials of this book, the limitations and research agendas are also proposed as follows. First, due to the limitation of the cases, the study only investigates the countryside in coastal China where the local financial resource is strong, and focuses on the model villages where program islands have emerged. However, the status quo of governance structure varies across different regions in China; it depends largely on the economic development and the degree of clan influence. The new model of state-led rural revitalization may be beneficial to farmers and rural development in the cases of this study, but not all cases. To obtain a full picture of the state-led pattern and its impact on rural revitalization, the geographical variation should be taken into consideration. More case studies should be conducted to accumulate our understanding about rural changes caused by state-led programs. Second, it needs to further anatomize the underlying reason that why the local government is so fond of promoting the programs. In the book, it is argued that the central government aims to use the ambiguous framework to stuff more programs to strengthen the state authority in the countryside, since the stability in the countryside is the prime concern for the party-state. Regarding the local governments, it is found that they try to use planning and program of countryside to unshackle regulatory constraints from the central government. The current conclusion only explains part of the incentives from the intergovernmental perspective; some other aspects, such as urban–rural relationship, promotion of officials, should be examined carefully in further research. Third, a longitudinal study should be undertaken in the future. For example, the PPP model in Tangjiajia case is just underway. The state-mediated role remains unclear in the new partnership. If the state retreats from the paternal investment in the countryside, can the rural society realize self-governance in commodification? To depict a long-range picture of the rural changes through program evolution, continuous investigation of the selected cases is needed.

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Appendix A

List of Interviewees

Interviewee No.

Position

Affiliation

Site

Date

1

Village cadre

Shitang Village, Jiangning

Jiangning

20140527

2

Planner

Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Nanjing University

Nanjing

20140703 & 20150722

3

Entrepreneur

Xingencooperative

Xinhui

20140704

4

Village cadre

Xinhui village, Jiangning

Xinhui

20140704 & 20140722

5

Official

Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department of Jiangsu

Nanjing

20140709

6

Official

Rural Working Commissionof CPCJiangning

Jiangning

20140714 & 20150930

7

Official

PlanningBureau of Jiangning

Jiangning

20140715

8

Official

PlanningBureau of Nanjing

Nanjing

20140721

9

Farmer

XinboFamilyFarm

Xinhui

20140722 & 20150720 (continued)

© Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3

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Appendix A: List of Interviewees

(continued) Interviewee No.

Position

Affiliation

Site

Date

10

Official

Rural Working Commissionof CPCNanjing

Nanjing

20140725

11

Farmer

XinboFamilyFarm

Xinhui

20150720 & 20150929

12

Official

Tangshan sub-district office

Tangshan

20150724

13

Village cadre

Tanggang village, Jiangning

Tanggang & telephone

20150725 & 20160314

14

Entrepreneur

Restaurant owner

Tangjiajia

20150726

15

Entrepreneur

Hot spring inn owner

Tangjiajia

20150726

16

Entrepreneur

Hot spring inn owner

Tangjiajia

20150803

17

Official

Agriculture Bureau of Jiangning

Jiangning

20150928

18

Farmer

Ordinary member ofXingencooperative

Xinhui

20150929

19

Official

Rural Working Commissionof CPCJiangning

Jiangning

20150930

20

Village cadre

Tanggang village, Jiangning

Tanggang

20151202

21

Entrepreneur

Hot spring inn owner

Tangjiajia

20151202

22

Entrepreneur

Hot spring inn owner

Tangjiajia

20151202

Source Compiled by author. Note The list is in chronological order by the date of interview. Names and specific positions of the interviewees are omitted for privacy

Appendix B

Semi-structured Interview Questions

Case Study 1: Governing the countryside through state-led programs in Jiangning Question 1: Canyouintroduce the context of the initiation of various rural programs in Jiangning? (a) What is your opinion about the central policies regarding “three ruralissues”? (b) From “Coordinating Urban–Rural Development” to “New Socialist Countryside Construction”, and to “BeautifulCountryside”, is there any continuity and variation between the evolving policies? (c) What do you think about the booming state-led programs in the countryside? Question 2: How do the multi-level governments coordinate with each other in the program system? (d) Concerning the program issues, how to differentiate the roles between the governmental hierarchies and departments? (e) What is your opinion about the local response to central programs? Question 3: Which kind of role does the planning regime play in the rural programs? (f) Can you introduce the rural plans that copy with the programs? (g) What do you think about the phenomenon of “projectization” in the rural plans? Case Study 2: Commodification of Tangjiajia Question 1: Can you introduce the context of the governmental marketing in Tangjiajia? (a) Why do the government choose Tangjiajia as one of the “new ten blossoms”? (b) What kind of role does the initial marketing layout play in the whole process? Question 2: How about the business condition of your restaurant/hot spring inn? (c) Why do you choose to start up your business in Tangjiajia?

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128

Appendix B: Semi-structured Interview Questions

(d) Are there any difficulties in your business? Question 3: What does the government do in the commodification of Tangjiajia? (e) Can you tell me some details in the initial stage of infrastructure construction? (f) How do the farmers and other merchants get involved in the state-led programs? (g) From an official perspective, is there any further plan regarding the development of Tangjiajia? Case Study 3: Grassroots Participation in Xinhui Question 1: Canyouintroduce your personal experience in farming? (a) What is your opinion about the agriculture industry in China? (b) What do you think about the land and agriculture subsidypolicies in recent years? Question 2: Can you give me more details about the development of your familyfarm/ cooperative? (c) A series of programs concerning land consolidation and new type of farming entities are initiated by the government. How do they affect your business? (d) Are there any difficulties in your business? Question 3: What is the relationship between familyfarm and cooperative? (e) How is the cooperation between different farms going on? (f) What kind of instructions can the cooperative offer in the family farming? (g) How to handle the public fundsand profitallocation in the two-layer governance?

Index

A Abolition of agricultural tax, 66 Accountability, 9, 15, 66 Adaption, 65 Administrative domain, 48 Administrative villages, 22, 38, 39 Aestheticisation, 65 Agency, 13, 18, 26, 27, 36, 46–48, 73, 80, 99 Agrarian capitalism, 90, 94 Agrarian communities, 1 Agribusiness, 90, 94, 99, 109 Agricultural industry, 2 Agricultural production, 50, 62, 89, 92, 108 Agricultural revolution, 94 Agricultural tax, 19, 66 Agriculture corporation, 105, 108, 119 Agriculture hinterland, 68 Agriculture taxation, 102 Agriculture techniques, 120 Agritourism, 26 Ahlers, A.L., 15, 21, 27 Allocated programs, 24 Allocation of profit, 98, 105, 106, 108, 119, 128 Anatomy, 63, 64 Anglo-American context, 65, 117 Anhui, 39, 97, 121 Apparatus, 3, 43, 45, 47, 49, 57, 114 Application-funding model, 100 Appropriate hypothesis, 4 Appropriate language, 41 Articulation, 120 Artist villages, 65 Assessment, 5, 15, 23, 28, 49 Asymmetric power relations, 13 Audit agency, 99

Authenticity, 64, 73, 105 Authority, 3, 9, 11–13, 22, 41, 48, 66, 68, 69, 80, 121

B Bai, C., 23 Bao, Z., 5 Barnes, M., 13 Barreda, D.M., 69 Baudrillard, J., 64 Beat the time, 77 Beautiful countryside, 2, 38, 47–52, 54, 55, 63, 65, 70, 72, 127 Beautiful Countryside Steering Group, 48 Beneficiaries, 67, 90, 118 Benevolent motivation, 72 Bequeath, 93 Berger and Luckmann, 82 Berger, P.L., 66 Best, S., 64 Bijman, J., 90, 92 Bilateral agreement, 80 Blair, T., 13 Bottom-up, 16, 19, 45, 65, 79, 99 Bottom-up cooperatives, 109 Bottom-up programs, 54 Bowles, S., 67 Bramall, C., 93 Brand, 71, 80 Bray, D., 51 Brenner, N., 117 Bristow, G., 26 Broad guidelines, 21, 57, 114 Bryant, C.R., 64, 65 Built environment, 62, 69, 76, 82 Built-up areas, 25, 39, 56

© Science Press and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 M. Shen, Rural Revitalization Through State-led Programs, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1660-3

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130 Bunce, M.F., 65 Bureaucratic system, 25, 114 Business registration, 100, 101 C Cai, H.B., 66 Callahan, K., 15, 90 Campaign, 22, 38, 54, 63, 65, 70, 115, 120 Capital accumulation, 17, 106 Cartier, C., 23, 44 Case study, 4, 5, 13, 27, 28, 33, 37, 39, 40, 57, 64, 90, 92, 108, 121, 127, 128 Catalytic role, 53 Cement-paved square, 76 Center, 1, 19, 36, 38, 43–45, 52, 57, 76, 97, 109, 119 Central government, 2, 10, 17, 19–21, 23– 25, 35, 54, 56, 57, 90, 99, 121 Central–local fiscal reform, 10 Chain of earnings, 106 Chain stores, 64 Challenges, 3, 5, 13, 17, 62, 82, 100, 109, 120 Changing governance, 12, 114 Channel, 16, 23, 41, 49, 53, 100, 120 Chan, R.C., 12 Chapple and Montero 2016, 79 Chapple, K., 79 Che, J.H., 66 Chen, A., 2, 19, 89, 91, 92, 102 Chen, F., 91 Cheng, H., 89 Chengxiang tongchou fazhan, 17 Chen, H., 51 Chen, J., 25, 46 Chen, X., 90, 94 Chen, Y., 69 Chiang Kai-shek, 68 Chien, S., 26, 97 China, 1–6, 9–12, 14–23, 25, 27, 28, 33– 35, 37, 38, 40, 43–45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 62, 63, 65–69, 73, 76, 79, 81–83, 89–94, 96–98, 100, 108, 109, 113–121 China’s urban and regional governance, 12 Chinese characteristic, 10, 11, 54 Chinese mainland, 120 Chung, H., 12, 44, 89 Circulation fee, 97, 103 Circulation of land usufruct, 90, 93 Citizen involvement, 113, 118 City, 5, 11, 12, 17–19, 22, 24, 35, 36, 38, 44, 49, 56, 62, 73, 78, 99, 119

Index Civic ethos, 109, 120 Civil society, 5, 9, 11–14, 43 Clan influence, 121 Clarke, E.H., 78 Classic governance theory, 5, 116–119 Classification, 66, 67 Class inequality, 93 Clientelism, 16, 17 Clientelist model, 16 Cloke, P., 13, 17, 62 Coalition, 5, 12, 15, 83 Coase, R.H., 94 Co-financing, 19, 45, 57 Collective action, 9, 67, 106, 109 Collective assets, 89 Collective basis, 66 Collective debts, 66 Collectively owned system, 119 Collective ownership, 81, 83, 93, 116 Collective resources, 109 Commins, P., 13 Commission, 41, 47–49, 99, 104, 105, 125, 126 Commodification, 6, 38, 61–65, 68, 72, 73, 77–82, 115, 116, 121, 128 Commodified countryside, 62 Common goods, 81, 116, 119 Common-pool resources, 67, 83 Commons, 63, 64, 67 Common socioeconomic right, 79 Communist Party of China (CPC), 2, 11, 17, 18, 21, 36, 41, 47–49, 53, 54, 79–81, 90, 93, 94, 99, 104, 105, 125, 126 Community, 1, 13, 20, 26, 38, 61–65, 68, 72, 76–79, 81–83, 91, 113, 115, 119 Community-based, 14, 91, 92 Community building, 13, 38, 76, 121 Community consensus, 13, 61, 76, 82, 117 Community engagement, 63, 64, 77, 92 Comprehensive rural land consolidation, 47, 56, 100 Compulsory measures, 109, 120 Compulsory villagization, 14 Conceptual framework, 4, 6, 28, 33, 34, 114 Concrete program, 57, 114 Configuration, 13, 48, 79 Conflict, 26, 77, 78, 81 Connections, 22, 35, 105, 108, 119 Conservatives, 27, 92, 93 Consolidation of land usufruct, 90 Constraints, 121 Construction land, 25, 56 Consumption shift, 38, 63, 64, 83

Index Consumption trend, 67, 82 Containment, 44 Contemporary consumption, 64 Context, 3, 11, 15, 20, 25, 44, 63, 65, 76, 81, 83, 109, 116, 117, 120, 127 Contractor, 70, 80 Contractual awareness, 106 Contractual society, 83 Cooke, B., 13 Cook, M.L., 67, 109 Cooperatives, 27, 37, 39, 40, 89–92, 94–100, 104–109, 116, 119, 120, 125, 126, 128 Coordinating affair, 49 Coordinating urban-rural, 17, 21, 47, 127 Coordinating Urban–Rural Development (CURD), 17, 21, 25, 47, 48, 53, 56, 127 Coria, J., 62 Corporatism, 17, 108 Cosmides, L., 67 Cost-insensitive, 118 Countryside, 2–6, 10, 13–23, 25, 26, 35, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46–52, 54–57, 62–68, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78–83, 90, 93, 108, 109, 114–121, 127 County, 2, 12, 16, 24, 27, 36, 46, 64 County-for-district, 36 County-level city, 36 Courtyard, 26, 71–73, 75 Creative industry, 65 Criterion, 27, 66 Crouch, D., 64 Cultural heritages, 51 Cure-all, 66, 69, 116

D Danwei, 11 Darling, E., 73 Data collection, 40, 49 Davis, J., 91 Debt-based development, 27 Decentralization, 10, 117 Decision-making process, 13, 117 Decomposition of rural governance, 6 De-cooperativization process, 105 Delivery, 24, 55, 65 Demand, 15, 64, 82, 103 Demonstration, 47, 50, 52, 54 Deng, H., 90, 92 Departmental bureaucracy, 66 Deregulation, 117

131 Deserted dwellings, 38 Designation, 22, 115 Destination, 76 Detailed plan, 49 Development vision, 46 Dilemma, 61, 64, 67 Directors, 16, 48, 92, 98, 100, 105–108 Discourse, 11, 24, 49, 53, 54, 57, 65, 71, 114, 115 Distribution, 13, 37, 49, 75, 95 District-level experiment, 62, 68 Diversity, 115 Dividend allocation, 91, 106, 107 Dominant position, 117 Donaldson, J.A., 90, 92–94, 109 Driving force, 19, 80 Dual track, 23 Dual-track governance theory, 16 Duara, P., 16, 66 Dynamics, 4, 16, 17, 25, 27, 33, 43, 44, 51, 57, 63, 67, 114, 120 Dynamic transition, 5

E Earmarked fund, 23, 57, 68, 71 Earnings, 102, 106, 108, 116 Easton, D., 15 Ecological modernization, 21, 53 Economic cooperation, 109 Economic growth, 23, 26, 66 Economic revitalization, 65 Eco-tourism, 5, 6, 35, 38, 52, 55, 61, 62, 68, 70, 79, 80, 82, 104, 116 Edwards, B., 13 Effects, 26, 27, 39, 45, 47, 49, 56, 57, 66, 67, 100, 109 Elaborate topography of power, 79 Embedding bureaucracy and market, 23 Emerging market, 5 Emerging market power, 11 Empirical analysis, 33, 37 Empirical study, 3–5, 16, 19, 26, 27, 33, 56, 63, 64, 66, 89, 108, 114, 118, 119 Empowerment, 44 Endeavor, 82, 109 Endogenous community, 26, 83 Endogenous incentives, 119 Enforcement, 120 Engagement of the community and market, 63, 64, 117 Enterprise, 15, 16, 45, 62, 65, 72, 79–81, 83, 94–96, 98, 107, 116–118

132

Index

Enthusiasm, 46, 69, 102, 115 Entity, 10, 90, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 105, 128 Entrepreneurial activity, 65, 108 Entrepreneurialism, 25, 27, 64, 65 Entrepreneurs, 3, 38, 41, 62, 65, 72, 80, 82, 83, 115, 119, 125, 126 Entrepreneurship, 54, 61, 65, 72, 73, 77, 82, 115 Episodic participation, 109, 120 Eroding, 92 Ethos building, 109 Evaluation, 14, 15, 33, 34, 51, 99, 115, 118 Excludability attribute, 66 Exemplary significance, 27 Exogenous powers, 68 Experimental site, 55 Expressway, 68, 71, 76 External environment, 95, 116 External intervention, 108 Extra subsidy, 72

Fiscal packages, 23, 55 Fiscal packs, 24 Fiscal reform, 3, 4, 10, 17, 19, 27, 113 Five blossoms, 47, 55, 62, 68 Five in one, 54 Flexible framework, 115 Fløysand, A., 62 Fock, A., 92 Foot bath, 73, 76, 77 Fostering community, 65 Foucault, M., 11 Fox, J., 118 Framework, 15, 21, 24, 33, 44, 67, 115, 121 Fraud, 98, 109, 120 Free-applied fund, 115 Free-riding, 67, 116 Fukuyama, F., 10 Full-time employees, 100, 101, 103 Funds, 24–27, 44–46, 49, 50, 56, 57, 68, 90, 98–100, 114, 119, 120

F Family farms, 39, 40, 89, 90, 92, 94–97, 99–105, 107, 108, 125, 126, 128 Family planning, 3 Fan, C.N., 73 Farm, 14, 39–41, 64, 90, 91, 94–109, 116, 125, 126, 128 Farmer, 1–6, 16, 18, 19, 25–27, 37, 40, 41, 45, 46, 50, 66, 82, 89, 91–94, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104–109, 113–121, 125, 126, 128 Farmer associations, 107, 120 Farmer organizations, 37, 45, 92, 108 Farmer resistance, 4 Farmers’ self-governance, 5, 16 Farmers’ Specialized Cooperative (FSC), 92, 94–97, 99, 106 Farming model, 40, 90 Farming scale, 33, 90, 94, 107, 108 Farmland parcels, 39 Farmland protection, 25, 56 Farmland reform, 92, 108 Fei, H. T., 2, 15, 16 Fei, X., 16 Fieldwork, 37, 40, 41, 44, 80, 90 Financing scheme, 45, 57 First-hand data collection, 40 Fiscal, 17, 19, 22–24, 57, 65, 66, 80, 90, 106 Fiscal autonomy, 26 Fiscal background, 6, 19, 33 Fiscal crisis, 117

G Gallent, N., 68 Gated mansion, 64 Gene, 119 General contractor, 80 General theory, 67 Geographical landscape, 44 Geographical variation, 121 Geothermal groundwater, 37 Ghose, R., 64 Gill, A.M., 73 Global scale, 44 Gong, W., 90 Good governance, 9, 14, 15, 43, 109, 116, 118–120 Goods, 18, 66, 67, 81, 116 Goods regeneration, 81, 116 Goodwin, M., 118 Governance, 1–3, 5, 6, 9–17, 19, 23–25, 27, 33, 38, 41, 43, 57, 63, 79, 81, 83, 89–92, 94, 95, 104, 105, 107–109, 115–121, 128 Governance structure, 15, 61, 62, 89, 95, 117, 121 Governance theory, 3, 10, 12, 33, 57 Governance triangle, 5 Governing pattern, 44 Governing structures, 3 Governmental documents, 41 Governmental intervention, 22 Governmentality, 11

Index Government-backed marketing, 68 Governmental sector, 20, 49, 70, 118, 121 Government system, 47, 48 Grassroots, 4, 6, 16, 17, 19, 24–26, 41, 43, 46, 51, 54, 66–71, 79, 89, 90, 92, 94, 107–109, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121 Grassroots hot spring in every family, 38, 68 Grassroots participation, 4–6, 9, 26, 27, 35, 98, 114, 128 Great Leap Forward, 22 Greenbelt, 39, 97 Gross profit, 106 Ground, 20, 21, 50, 70, 115 Growth machine theory, 5 Growth-oriented plan, 25, 63 Guanzhi, 11 Gu, C., 5, 12 Guidance, 48, 50, 115 Guo, Y., 89, 91, 92, 121 Guo, Z., 26

H Hale, M., 121 Han Changfu, 2 Handicraft arts, 51 Han, J., 17, 90 Hardin, G., 67, 81, 116 Harpham, T., 9 Harvey, D., 45 He, C., 81 Hendrikse, G.W.J., 91 Hereafter, 2, 4, 15, 21, 39, 48, 65, 92 He, S., 93 He, X., 38, 79 Hidden sub-district subsidy, 108 Hierarchical structure, 43 High accessibility, 62 Higher level, 36, 44, 46, 53, 57 High-modernist, 14 Hin, L.L., 119 Hirst, 9 Historical sites, 51 Historic legacy, 5, 116 Hollowing-out countryside, 44, 113 Hollowing-out process, 43, 56 Hollow status, 117 Home consensus, 76 Homegrown, 15 Homestead, 25, 73, 75, 80 Ho, P., 92 Horizontal integration, 94

133 Horizontal jurisdiction arrangements, 23 Horizontal ties, 26 Household responsibility system, 93 Housing and Urban-Rural Development Department of Jiangsu, 41, 51, 125 Housing reform, 11 Huang, J., 92 Huang, P.C.C., 66, 93–95, 100 Huang, X., 26, 56, 100 Huang, Y., 19 Hua, S., 93 Hubei, 121 Hu, D., 90, 92 Hu, H., 16 Hukou, 17, 99 Hu, Y., 11 Hu, Z., 108 I Ideological signal, 54 Idyllic village, 55 Imagined pre-touristic cultural context, 64 Immediate region, 68 Implementation, 5, 15, 21, 25, 33, 44, 49, 51, 57, 66, 70, 71, 90, 99, 118 Implementation evaluation, 49 Implementers, 118 Incentive programs, 90, 95, 99 Income, 18, 36, 62, 63, 100–102, 108, 109 Incompatibility, 79 Incorporated urban–rural administrative system, 119 Increasing vs. decreasing balance, 25, 56 Independence, 66 Indigenous crafts, 68 Individual households, 83, 96, 119, 120 Industrialized agriculture, 90, 100 Industrial parks, 97, 99 Informality, 65, 66 Informants, 40 Information asymmetry, 105 Infrastructure building boom, 78 Infrastructure investment, 113, 115, 116 Initial stage, 70, 82, 113, 115, 128 Initial state intervention, 115 Initiating organization, 21, 47 Initiatives, 3, 6, 11, 14, 15, 19, 22, 26, 46, 47, 53, 66, 82, 83, 93, 99, 114, 115 Institutional bonus, 119 Institutional building, 120 Institutional fabric, 66, 82 Institutionalized mode of civil participation, 12

134 Institutional reforms, 90, 95, 121 Institutions, 13, 15, 33, 44, 109 Instruments, 15, 19, 61, 77, 120 Interactions, 3, 14, 16, 25, 27, 43, 66, 70, 82, 114, 118 Intercity cooperation, 12 Interest group, 4, 11, 13, 114 Intergovernmental interactions, 57, 118 Intergovernmental mobilization, 44, 45 Intergovernmental politics, 4, 44, 114 Intergovernmental relation, 4, 9, 24, 27, 33, 35, 40, 45, 114 Interjurisdictional competition, 23, 119 Internal workings of governmental behavior, 40 International Food Policy Research Institute, 2 Interplay, 5, 38, 65, 81, 115 Intervention, 6, 14, 23, 65, 82, 83, 115, 118, 119 Interventional state, 65, 66 Intuitive understanding, 41 Investigation, 22, 40, 49, 119, 121 Investment, 18, 20, 23–25, 46, 55, 69, 72, 81–83, 100, 106, 109, 118, 119, 121 Invisible role, 65 Isomorphism, 11, 22, 79

J Japanese spa, 73 Jessop, B., 118 Jiadian xiaxiang, 18 Jiangning, 6, 35–37, 39–41, 43, 46, 47, 49– 56, 61–63, 63, 68, 71, 72, 96, 97, 99–105, 114, 115, 117, 125–127 Jiangsu, 21, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 46, 50, 51, 68, 72, 100, 106, 125 Jiben nongtian, 39 Jin, H., 45 Jones, O., 13 Jumping scale, 22, 55

K Kang, Z., 100 Kennedy, J., 2 Knowledge, 5, 41, 62, 64, 81, 82 Knowledge gap, 63 Kuaikuai, 23 Kung, J., 17

Index L Labor cost, 103 Lacuna, 5 Lacy, D., 109, 120 Lam, K.C., 15 Lammer, C., 92 Land circulation, 93, 97, 99, 102, 108 Land consolidation programs, 56, 109, 115 Land expropriation, 56 Land quota, 25, 56 Landry, P.F., 66 Landscape, 49, 52, 68, 76 Land tenure reform, 40, 92, 94, 113, 116 Large-scale cultivation, 56, 100 Launching date, 21, 47, 53 Laws, 9, 11, 92, 97, 98, 106, 107, 109, 118, 120 Layout, 38, 50, 54, 68, 69, 96, 127 Leading role, 3, 6, 57 Learning from Dazhai in Agriculture, 22 Leasing fee, 73, 80 Legacy of rural governance, 6, 15 Legitimacy, 13, 14, 23, 24, 45, 51, 54–57, 114 Legitimation, 54, 115 Leisure consumption, 65 Lieberthal and Oksenberg, 57 Lifestyle, 1, 64, 67, 73 Li, L. C., 2 Limitation, 6, 113, 121 Limited seed funds, 57, 114 Lin, N., 16 Lin, W., 19 Li, S., 73 Little, J., 12, 13 Liu, Y., 65, 109 Livelihoods, 4, 39, 40, 108 Li, Y., 51 Li, Z., 65 Lizheng, 11 Loan subsidy program, 98 Local administration, 16 Local capital, 46 Local context, 40 Local enterprises, 20, 37 Local finances, 10, 27 Local governance, 26 Local government intervention, 26 Local governments, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 23–27, 36, 43–46, 53–57, 65, 66, 114, 115, 121 Local protectionism, 23 Local response, 13, 40, 44–46, 54, 127

Index Local rhetorical legitimization, 44 Local service provision, 2 Local social network, 119 Local state, 16, 17, 54, 65 Local state corporatism, 16 Long, H., 17, 25, 26, 56, 62, 97, 109, 120 Longitudinal study, 121 Long-term leasing contracts, 100 Looney, K.E., 18, 22, 120 Loss, 26, 106–108, 116, 118 Low-level equilibrium, 82 Low-level government, 46, 54 Luo, R., 66 Luo, X., 5, 12, 51 Lure investment, 46

M Macleod, G., 9, 51, 118 Macroeconomic regulation, 23 Mai, J., 27 Ma, L., 43, 62 Management, 12, 15, 23, 26, 50, 72, 78–81, 91, 92, 95, 98–100, 103, 114, 118 Management rights, 90 Managerial structure, 33 Managerial use, 80 Man–land relation, 54 Mao-era, 22 Market, 5, 9, 11, 12, 23–27, 56, 63–65, 67, 68, 73, 77, 80–83, 92–97, 105–108, 114, 116–118 Market incentives, 114 Marketing services, 105 Marketing strategy, 68 Marketization, 65 Market-like mechanism, 114 Market-oriented agribusiness model, 90, 94 Market potential, 68 Market transition, 25, 63 Mass migration, 76 Matching funds, 24, 45, 46, 57 Marketization, 92 Marks, G., 3 Marsden, T., 12, 13, 67, 79 Material reality, 64 Maximum effect, 49 McCarthy, J.D., 45 Mead, R.W., 93 Mechanism, 2, 4, 5, 16, 19, 34, 44, 45, 67, 72, 81, 83, 108, 114–116, 118 Mechanization, 94 Mechanized, 93

135 Media news, 41 Merchant, 41, 73, 79, 128 Merchant brokers, 95 Meta-concept, 3 Methodology, 6 Metis, 14 Metropolis, 64, 65 Micro-level community building, 121 Middle-aged women, 77 Middle class, 18, 65, 73 Minimum, 117, 118 Ministry of Finance of China, 20 Mitchell, C.J., 64, 65 Mixed farming, 100, 101, 104 Mobility, 16, 65 Mobilization process, 45 Model village, 27, 50, 54, 55, 121 Modern agricultural industrial system, 2 Modern governance structure, 117 Modernization, 2, 18, 21, 53 Modernization of state governance, 3, 11 Monocentric mode, 63 Monocentric model, 66 Monopoly, 3 Mortgage, 93 Muir, J., 13 Muldavin, J., 62 Multi-level governments, 6, 25, 43, 46, 53, 61, 66, 70, 90, 114, 127 Municipal government, 36, 71, 72, 119 Municipal territory, 25, 56 Murdoch, J., 79 Musgrave, R.A., 66 Mutual benefit, 83, 104, 107, 109

N Nanjing, 35–38, 41, 44, 46–49, 51, 53–56, 61, 68–73, 77, 89, 90, 97, 98, 125, 126 Nanjing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction, 49 Narrow sense, 67 National-based modes, 51 National campaign of building, 38, 63, 65 National Congress, 2, 11 National cooperative law, 92, 98, 109, 120 National scale, 44 Nation-wide programs for land consolidation, 120 Natural affinity, 62 Natural scenery, 68 Natural villages, 22, 38

136 Neo-liberalization, 45, 57 Neoliberals, 3, 9, 92, 117 Neo-traditionalism, 16 Neoliberal soils under Thatcherism, 9 Neoliberal tendency, 3 Neoliberal transformation, 117 Net profit, 102, 106, 108 Networking process, 114 New era, 13, 17 New public management, 118 New Rural Reconstruction, 121 New socialist countryside, 18, 21 New Socialist Countryside Construction (NSCC), 21, 22, 47, 53, 76, 90, 127 Newton, J., 62 Ng, 12 Non-agrarian, 89 Nonghui, 120 Non-governmental actors, 37 Non-governmental capital, 55 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), 15, 20, 117, 118 Nuances, 6 O O’Brien, K. J., 4 Observation, 5, 38, 40, 65, 66, 82 Occupy, 80, 93, 94 Official policies, 120 Official working reports, 41 Offline Inn, 73 Oi, J.C., 16, 17, 54, 66 Olson, M., 67 Once-and-for-all deal, 106, 108 One-way process, 114 Opening-up policy, 97 Optimization, 67 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 14, 15 Ostrom, E., 66, 67 Ostrom, V., 67 Outbound transportation, 68 P Pan, F., 27 Paradigm, 3, 5, 62, 113, 117, 119 Park, 52, 64, 96, 97 Participant observations, 40 Participation, 2, 3, 5, 12, 13, 15, 20, 26, 28, 33, 46, 82, 90, 91, 102, 103, 108, 109, 113, 115, 120 Participation ethos, 120

Index Partnership, 3, 4, 6, 13, 27, 28, 33, 35, 37, 61, 67, 82, 113–115, 121 Party building at grassroots, 3 Party congress, 54 Party-state, 121 Paternalism, 17, 43, 113, 118, 119 Paternalist era, 13 Path-dependent implementation, 54 Peak periods, 103 Pearl River Delta (PRD), 65, 79, 91 Peer competition, 114 Pemberton, S., 118 People’s communes, 22 Performance, 4, 15, 17, 23–26, 28, 39, 46, 66, 81, 90–92, 100, 102, 118 Periphery, 65 Perkins, H.C, 64 Perry, E.J., 22, 120 Personal experience, 41, 128 Pervasive rural programs, 113 Pettigrew, P., 65 Phillips, M., 73 Pierre, J., 43 Pilot family farm, 99, 100, 105 Pilot field study, 40 Pioneer practices, 54 Pioneer regions, 120 Planned economy era, 17 Planner, 41, 51, 68, 79, 125 Planning, 12, 14, 25, 38, 41, 48, 50–52, 54, 55, 68–71, 81, 95, 121, 125, 127 Planning Bureau of Jiangning, 41, 55, 125 Planning Bureau of Nanjing, 41, 51, 54, 125 Po, L., 79, 89–92 Policy, 2, 10–13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 23–25, 28, 34–36, 39, 44, 47, 48, 53, 56, 57, 66, 67, 70, 83, 90, 94, 96, 99, 108, 109, 113, 115, 120, 127, 128 Policy concern, 66 Policy implications, 5, 6, 28, 34, 35, 64, 109, 119 Policy-maker, 5, 13, 90, 99, 119 Porter, P.K., 67, 109 Post-communism, 91 Potential dividend allocation, 107 Political mobilization, 4 Political resources, 49 Political system, 15, 120 Politics of scale, 44, 45 Pollution mitigation, 3 Polycentricity, 63 Poor villages, 27 Position, 48, 83, 119, 120, 125, 126

Index Post-agriculture-tax era, 2, 115 Post-modern, 65 Post-productivist countryside, 64 Post-reform period, 22 Post-tax epoch, 17 Practical knowledge, 14, 115 Preliminary finding, 57 Pricing mechanism, 78, 79, 81, 116, 118 Prime arable land, 26 Private sector, 1, 5, 11, 13, 78, 81, 115, 118 Private transactions, 99 Privatization, 67, 92, 117 Procurement price, 107 Production brigades, 22 Profit allocation, 89, 105, 106, 108, 119, 128 Profit distribution, 106 Program agents, 120 Program campaign, 6, 25, 35, 43, 45, 49, 57, 114, 115, 118, 120 Program density, 53 Program-driven, 4, 5, 14, 81, 83, 90, 108, 114–116, 119 Program-driven model of governance, 4, 114 Program evolution process, 44 Program guidelines, 41 Program implementation, 5, 37, 44, 45, 51, 55, 57, 70, 98, 114, 115 Program office, 25, 70–72 Program participation, 46 Program phenomena, 3 Program regime, 43, 115 Program-tailored regime, 47 Projectization, 51, 127 Promotion of officials, 121 Property right, 11, 66, 120 Proprietary name, 68 Province, 12, 22, 35, 36, 39, 44, 45, 51, 54, 57, 91, 97, 100 Provincial department of housing and urban– rural development, 49, 50 Provincial program, 71 Public affair, 2, 40, 66, 117–119 Public benefits, 26 Public consumption goods, 66 Public domain, 66, 67 Public finance, 66 Public funding reform, 66 Public funds, 5, 128 Public goods, 5, 6, 37, 61, 63, 65–67, 78, 79, 81–83, 113, 116, 118 Public goods provision, 5, 6, 37, 61, 63, 65, 66, 78, 81–83, 113, 116, 118 Public participation, 5, 25, 119

137 Public policies, 5, 33 Public–Private Partnership (PPP), 80, 81, 121 Public sector, 13, 118 Public security, 79, 80 Purchased services, 118 Q Qian, H., 26 Qian, J., 66, 90 Qin, H., 16 Qiu, B., 93 Quasi-market competition, 118 Qu, J., 3, 14, 19, 23, 24 Quota, 25, 26 R Radin, B.A., 43 Rampant urbanization, 2 Rationale, 10, 44, 45, 51, 115 Ray, C., 14 Recentralized fiscal power, 57 Reconfiguration, 69, 94, 100 Recreation, 62, 64 Redistribution, 3, 19 Regional authorities, 119 Regional culture, 4 Regionalization, 12 Regional planning, 12, 51 Registered family farms, 100 Regulation, 12, 67, 75, 79, 98, 99, 106 Remarkable resource, 68 Renovation, 10, 21, 47, 50, 62, 72, 76, 78, 82 Rent-seeking behavior, 64, 65 Reposition, 120 Representatives, 20, 21, 38, 47, 92, 120 Research foundation, 41 Research objectives, 4 Resettlement community, 68 Residence, 73 Resource mobilization, 45, 66 Responsibility, 19, 51, 65, 79, 80, 83, 93, 96, 99, 106, 107, 119 Restore the countryside, 115 Results, 26, 54, 62, 90, 119, 120 Retrospect, 63 Revitalize economies, 68 Rework scale, 44 Rhetorical legitimization, 53 Rhodes, R. A., 3, 13, 118 Rigid regulation, 39 Risk sharing, 107

138 Rivalry of consumption, 66 Road expansion, 38 Royer, J.S., 109 Rural areas, 2, 3, 5, 17, 18, 22, 56, 62, 64–66, 76, 79, 83, 90, 119 Rural community, 38, 61, 76, 82, 115 Rural context, 41, 44, 119 Rural development, 3, 5, 12, 17, 18, 22, 26, 36, 45, 48, 56, 57, 81, 119, 121 Rural economy, 2, 38, 55, 63, 108, 116 Rural gentrification, 65, 67, 73 Rural gentry, 16 Rural goods, 64 Rural governance, 1–4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15–17, 24, 27, 28, 33, 34, 44, 57, 61, 66, 78, 79, 81–83, 89–91, 109, 114–121 Rural Governance Changes Driven by Program (RGCDP), 4, 14, 33–35, 114, 117 Rural habitation, 21, 68 Rural issue, 1, 2, 3, 17, 18, 20, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 51, 57, 90, 114, 118, 127 Rurality, 64 Rural living, 65 Rural nostalgia, 65 Rural planning, 46, 49–51, 67, 83, 115 Rural plans, 41, 49–51, 70, 127 Rural programs, 1, 3–6, 15, 17, 19–22, 25, 26, 33, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 53, 54, 56, 57, 81, 82, 109, 114–116, 118, 120, 127 Rural public administration, 6, 43 Rural public goods provision, 65 Rural reconstruction, 18, 65, 113 Rural residents, 2, 35, 36, 64, 68, 78, 83, 119 Rural revitalization, 1, 2, 3, 5, 18, 21, 33, 41, 65, 82, 90, 113–119, 121 Rural scenic spots, 62 Rural setting, 63, 66 Rural society, 2, 16, 17, 46, 62, 108, 109, 121 Rural sustainability, 61, 66, 81, 82 Rural-to-urban farmer, 99 Rural transformation, 33 Rural Working Commission of CPC Jiangning, 41, 99, 104, 105, 125, 126 Rural Working Commission of CPC Nanjing, 41, 48, 49, 126

S Sachs, J., 23 Samuelson, P.A., 66 Sannong wenti, 2

Index Satellite images, 38, 39, 41, 75, 96 Sato, H., 66 Scale, 12, 14, 19, 22, 25, 44, 47, 51, 52, 55, 56, 82, 93–95, 99, 100, 109, 120 Scenario, 66, 67, 70, 71, 80, 83, 94 Scenic-like village, 80, 81, 83, 116 Scott, J., 14, 66, 115, 118 Scully, G.W., 109 Seasonal employees, 101, 103 Secretary, 2, 48, 78–80, 80, 81, 92, 97 Seed company, 96–98, 106–108, 119 Self-centered, 15 Self-contained suburban county, 36 Self-expansion, 46 Self-governance, 5, 6, 16, 17, 43, 117, 121 Self-organization, 40, 57, 83, 108, 113, 116, 118, 120 Self-organized associations, 121 Self-sufficient economy, 68 Self-sufficient industry, 82, 115 Semi-structured interviews, 41, 127 Service, 2, 19, 47, 50, 63, 67, 73, 74, 76–79, 81, 83, 91, 92, 94, 95, 103–105, 108, 116, 118 Shareholding system, 119 Sharing system, 106 Shell corporations, 109 Shen, G., 100 Shen, J., 5, 12, 19, 44, 62, 90, 109, 116 Shen, M., 68, 70, 90, 109, 116 She, X., 24, 25, 27, 55 Shift, 3, 15, 17, 38, 63, 64, 81, 83, 94, 106 Shitang village, 55, 125 Shock therapy, 23 Shopping villages, 64 Short-termism, 109, 116 Shue, V., 54 Simulacrum, 64 Simulacrum society, 64 Skeletal framework, 44 Slack season, 98 Slogan, 53, 54 Smallholder, 90, 92, 94, 100 Small plot of its own, 25 Smart, A., 51 Smith, D.P., 64 Smith, G., 2, 19, 23, 66 Smith, N., 44 Smith, N.R., 51 Social activists, 120 Social cohesion, 76, 108, 109 Social differentiations, 109 Social mobilization, 45, 46

Index Social movements, 1, 45 Social organization, 11, 45, 66 Social service provider, 91, 92, 104 Socio-cultural perspective, 63 Socioeconomic conditions, 3 Socioeconomic inclusion, 13 Soil conservation, 100 Somerville, P., 13 Space-related programs, 115 Spatial plan, 68 Spatial processes, 44 Specialized producer, 91, 92, 104, 105 Specialized products, 108, 116 Srisomyong, N., 26 Stability, 1, 2, 15–17, 24, 57, 117, 121 Stakeholder, 3, 10, 11, 25, 26, 41, 45, 63, 73, 79, 80, 107, 109, 115, 116, 118, 120 Standards, 9, 23, 50, 51, 80, 91, 95, 105, 106, 117–119 Stark, N., 13, 15, 90 Start-up fund, 46, 56 State apparatus, 3, 45, 47, 49, 57, 114 State authority, 13 State-brokered land transfers, 99 State-centered society, 57 State-dominated, 25, 26 State-funding, 22 State funds, 49, 119 State instrument, 61 State intervention, 6, 14, 23, 61, 82, 83, 115, 118, 119 State leadership, 121 State-led paradigm, 5, 117 State-led programs, 3, 4, 6, 20, 24, 27, 38, 41, 46, 57, 61, 63, 66, 70, 82, 83, 89, 91, 94, 98, 108, 109, 113, 114, 116–121, 127, 128 State-led rural revitalization, 33, 113, 118, 121 State-party system, 47 State–private–farmer partnership, 4, 6, 9, 82, 113–115 State-protected price, 106, 107 State rescaling theory, 44 State–society dichotomy, 17 State-sponsored schemes, 3 State subsidies, 98 State territory, 44 Statist era, 13 Statistic data, 41 Stoker, G., 3, 9 Strategy, 2, 15, 18, 20–22, 25, 26, 45, 65, 68, 82, 90

139 Streamlined management, 114 Sturgis, 1, 76 Stylish county resort, 64 Sub-district governments, 51, 72, 78, 96, 97, 99, 102 Subordinate, 49, 54, 68 Sub-program, 56 Subsidy, 19, 47, 72, 78, 90, 97–100, 102, 103, 108, 109, 113, 115, 116, 128 Subsistence agriculture, 62 Substantial evidence, 44, 64 Subtractability, 61, 67 Sun, X., 17 Superstructure part of rural governance, 4 Supervision, 23, 49, 96, 98 Supply-side structural reform, 18 Sustainability, 4, 6, 15, 28, 33, 63, 66, 81, 82, 108, 114–116 Sustainability of the commodifying village, 63 Sustainable governance, 63, 113, 116 Sustainable pricing mechanism, 79, 113 Sustainable rural development, 5 Sustained participation, 109, 120 Swindal, M., 13, 20 Swyngedouw, E., 44, 118

T Tanggang, 38, 68, 73, 74, 78–81, 126 Tangible process, 44 Tangjiajia, 6, 35–38, 40, 61, 63, 64, 67–82, 115, 116, 121, 126–128 Tangshan sub-district, 37, 68, 70, 72, 77, 78, 126 Tang, Y., 109, 120 Tan, Q., 4 Taxation, 80, 102 Tax-for-fee, 19 Tax-paying mechanism, 81, 116 Tax reform, 56 Tax-sharing reform, 19 Technical platform, 51, 115 Technocratic pragmatism, 22 Temporality, 81, 115, 116 Tenure system, 17, 90, 92, 93, 108, 121 Territorial administrative hierarchies, 44 Territory, 2, 20, 25, 26, 35, 39, 44, 49, 56 Theoretical perspective, 33 Theory of governance, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 16, 33, 57, 116–119 Third-front development program, 22 Third-party evaluation, 99

140 Thøgersen, S., 121 Thomas, A.R., 64, 73, 76 Three-level hierarchical governance framework, 24 Three rural issues, 2, 17, 18, 20, 48, 127 Three-tier administrative-cum-productive, 22 Tian, L., 26, 56 Tiaotiao, 23 Time axis, 53 Top-down mobilization, 114 Tourism product, 64 Town, 2, 19, 20, 24, 26, 36–38, 44–46, 51, 68, 79 Township-level governments, 114 Traffic corridor, 68 Training scheme, 77 Tranquility, 64 Transaction costs, 94 Transfer payment, 19, 24 Transformation, 2, 4, 23, 33, 57, 62, 115, 117 Transitional China, 12 Transparent governance, 107 Trinity of land finance revenue, 27 Tripartite system, 93 Tsai, L.L., 66 Turn of the century, 19, 66 Two-tier farming model, 90 Typical practices, 109

U Underdeveloped governance capacity, 117 Unemployed laborers, 103 Unemployment, 108 Unger, J., 16 Unified order-sale system, 105 Unilinear trends, 118 Unincorporated farmers, 109, 120 Unintended consequences, 66 Upper layer business entity, 96 Upper level government, 118 Urban-biased system, 119 Urban counterparts, 83, 119 Urban dweller, 65, 68, 73, 83 Urban expansion, 26 Urban growth, 25, 56 Urbanization, 1, 2, 43, 62, 65, 76, 91 Urbanized cores, 12 Urban regime theory, 5 Urban resident, 1, 62, 79 Urban–rural income ratio, 36 Urban–rural relationship, 35, 121

Index Urban sprawl, 39 Urry, J., 65 US federal government, 45 V Variegated organ, 66 Variegated role, 63 Veeck, G., 98 Veerman, C.P., 91 Vertical department hierarchies, 23 Vertical integration, 94 Vertical linkages, 26 Vertical socialized service, 116 Vertical social services, 104, 108 Veteran, 81 Vibrant hybridities, 65 Village cadre, 16, 17, 20, 39–41, 46, 66, 73, 80, 95, 125, 126 Village election, 4 Village elites, 106, 108, 109, 116, 119 Village Environment Renovation (VER), 21, 46, 47, 49, 50, 62, 68, 70 Village-level democratic systems, 81 Village Officers from College Students, 20, 21 Villager committees, 118 Villager-driven change, 120 Virtual consumption, 64 Visitor, 64, 68, 78 Vitaliano, P., 109 Volume discounts, 94 Volunteer team, 77 W Wait-and-see attitude, 72 Walder, A., 16 Wang, H., 26, 76 Wang, J., 65 Wang, L., 5 Wang, Q., 26, 109, 120 Wang, S., 10, 14 Ward, N., 12 Warehouse, 96 Warner, M., 13 Watershed, 93 Weber, M., 23 WeChat public account, 71 Weiss, T.G., 9 Wei, Y.D., 23 Well-being, 66 Well-off farmers, 2 Wen, G.J., 92

Index Wen, T., 92 Wheat–rice double crops, 39 Whiting, S.H., 66 Wide-ranging observation, 66 Willingness, 80, 82, 97, 115 Wilson, G.A., 62 Wind indicator, 46 Wong, C., 23 Woods, M., 3, 13, 62, 64 World Bank, 9, 14, 15 World factory, 17 Wu, F., 12, 18, 25, 62, 63, 90, 91 Wu, L., 120 X Xiaoqu, 38 Xi, J., 11 Xinbo, 39, 40, 95–97, 100, 102–105, 107, 108, 125, 126 Xinbo family farm, 39, 40, 90, 95–97, 99, 103–105, 107, 108, 125, 126 Xingdong, 22 Xingen, 95, 97, 98, 125, 126 Xingen cooperative, 95, 97, 98, 125, 126 Xinhui, 6, 35, 36, 39, 40, 89, 90, 95–97, 103, 105, 108, 109, 115, 116, 119, 125, 126, 128 Xin, L., 119 Xin, Q., 4 Xiwen Chen, 94 Xue, D., 89, 91 Xu, J., 12 Xun, L., 5, 24, 27, 55 Xu, Y., 4 Xu, Z., 90

141 Y Yangtze River Delta (YRD), 39, 79 Yep, R., 2, 19 Yield benefit, 66, 108 Yigong cunong, 17 Yuan, S., 120 Yu, F., 10 Yu, K., 3, 10, 11

Z Zachernuk, T., 92 Zero-sum resource, 118 Zhaijidi, 25 Zhang, H., 5, 12, 93, 119 Zhang, J., 12, 26, 36, 76 Zhang, Q.F., 90, 92–94, 109 Zhang, S., 12, 83, 119 Zhang, X., 66 Zhao, S X B, 62 Zhao, Y., 19, 83, 89, 90 Zhili, 10, 11 Zhili as ruling, 10 Zhili as therapy, 10 Zhou, F., 3, 27, 90 Zhou, L., 10, 36 Zhou, Q., 92 Zhou, X., 24, 66, 70 Zhuashou, 19 Zhu, J., 12, 89–92, 121 Zinda, J.A., 93 Zou, J., 109 Zuo, M., 20