Reconstituting the Rural‐Urban Divide: Peasant migration and the rise of 'orderly migration' in contemporary China

The dramatic rise in China's rural-to-urban migration in recent years represents a sharp contrast to earlier decades when population movement was limited due to strict government control. This paper first traces the historical institutional conditions that prevented large-scale rural-to-urban migration in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on three interlocking mechanisms of control: urban employment policy; food rationing; and household registration, and explains the rationale behind these policies and their evolution into a system inhibiting peasant migration. It then analyzes the decline of these old institutions during the reform. The breakdown of these institutions, however, does not warrant the conclusion that the Chinese state has been sidelined in the migration process. By way of examining the rise of 'orderly migration' in recent years, the author shows that the Chinese state is deeply involved in the migration process. The author argues that 'orderly migration' represents an attempt by the state to reconstitute the historic rural‐urban divide in a new setting.     

How did China's Transitions Impact People's Welfare Benefits in the Reform Era?

This article examines changes in China's welfare programs in the context of economic transition from planned economy to a market-oriented economy. Using the 1988 and 1995 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), we develop analytical models to study the critical impacts of institutional variables such as economic ownership types and economic sectors on key welfare programs in both rural and urban areas in China. Our findings show that the Chinese government drastically reduced welfare coverage for its citizens during the economic transitional period even though Chinese urban residents' welfare income was primarily determined by the type of their employment. Outperforming many other factors, work unit's ownership nature played a significant role in the provision of welfare benefits while the economic sectors largely failed to have any significant impacts. These findings indicate that China has been moving away from the active state model in welfare provision. Yet, an industrialization and resource-based welfare system has not been realized in China in the reform era.     

Representation without Taxation: political changes in Chinese authoritarian regimes

The question of why some authoritarian regimes choose to incorporate institutions of democracy such as village elections into their governing systems remains largely unanswered. As a typical case of a resilient authoritarian state that implements democracy in its villages, China has provided an invaluable case for researchers to study. Current theories focus on the influence of political elites and rural forces separately. Insightful as they are, these theories are invalid as an explanation of the variation of local governance in China across time and thus are incomplete. It should be recognized that central fiscal strategies have great effects on local governance. Specifically, if the central government largely relies upon fiscal revenue from rural areas, it has to expand its bureaucracy to the countryside to extract revenue. In contrast, if it does not rely on the rural areas for revenue, the central government will establish local democracy in the countryside. This hypothesis is historically reflected in the authoritarian regimes led by the Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China. As opposed to the familiar story about representation through taxation, the logic of representation without taxation seems to be the case in China.     

Performance Legitimacy,State Autonomy and China's Economic Miracle

Theories that explain post-Mao China's economic success tend to attribute it to one or several ‘successful’ policies or institutions of the Chinese government, or to account for the success from economic perspectives. This article argues that the success of the Chinese economy relies not just on the Chinese state's economic policy but also on its social policies. Moreover, China's economic success does not merely lie in the effectiveness of any single economic or social policy or institution, but also in the state's capacity to make a policy shift when it faces the negative unintended consequences of its earlier policies. The Chinese state is compelled to make policy shifts quickly because performance constitutes the primary base of its legitimacy, and the Chinese state is able to make policy shifts because it enjoys a high level of autonomy inherited from China's past. China's economic development follows no fixed policies and relies on no stable institutions, and there is no ‘China model’ or ‘Beijing consensus’ that can be constructed to explain its success.     

Transnational Ties,HIV/AIDS Prevention and State–Minority Relations in Sipsongpanna,Southwest China

This paper depicts the transnational ethnic and religious ties between China and Southeast Asia and examines the cultural, political and economic implications for state–minority relations in Southwest China. It documents how transnational ethnic and religious ties facilitate cultural revival among the ethnic Dai people in Southwest China and examines the impact of Buddhist networks on local governance. In particular, it portrays the cooperative relationship between the Chinese state and the Buddhist Sangha on social issues such as HIV/AIDS prevention and care. The paper argues that the Chinese state is more willing to cooperate with transnational ethnic and religious groups when the latter can help improve local governance and generate economic development, under the condition that they do not challenge the state's ultimate legitimacy and authority.     

Bringing the local state back in: the political economy of public health in rural China

Contrary to what most alarmist reports would imply, China has not witnessed a measurable decline in the overall public health status. What explains the continuous improvement in some important domains of public health despite the pertinacious pricing, financing and institutional‐behavioral problems in China's health system change? This study provides a political economy analysis of the role the local Chinese state played in rural public health provision during the reform era. Through comparative case studies, statistical analysis, and formal modeling, the study shows that state capacity is a principal factor setting the parameters for rural public health in China. It also suggests that the post‐Mao reforms, while generating strong disincentives for the provision of public services, unleashed forces that lay down the institutional bases for sustained state engagement in the health sector.     

Male Marriage Squeeze and Inter-provincial Marriage in Central China: evidence from Anhui

Since the 1990s, inter-provincial female migration for marriage has become important in central and eastern rural China. Using survey data from X County in rural Anhui Province, we explore the arrangement of inter-provincial marriages, as well as the characteristics of husbands and wives, marital satisfaction and marital stability for these marriages. We find that inter-provincial marriage is an important option for local men to respond to the marriage squeeze and the increasing expense of marriage. It helps to relieve the shortage of marriageable women in the local marriage market. Because this kind of marriage is based on economic exchange, but not affection, it is often subject to a higher risk of marriage instability, and can lead to such illegal behaviors as marriage fraud and mercenary marriage.     

A Case Study on the Settlement of Rural Women affected by Land Requisitioning in China

Urbanization is an apparent and important dimension of modernization in China. One of the main problems in China's urbanization process is the migration of farmers from the agricultural sector to the non-agricultural sector and the concurrent conversion of agricultural lands to non-agricultural usage. According to current practice, the conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural use is carried out by the state through land requisitioning. In the past ten years, China's urbanization in the name of ‘economic development zones’ has resulted in extensive requisitioning of agricultural land. Millions of villagers have lost their land and left farming, seeking new employment in non-agricultural activities to sustain them. This study investigates the impact of land requisitioning on rural women's living, focusing on women's employment, training and settlement.

The study did not find evidence of discrimination against women in land requisitioning and settlement arrangements with regard to both the policy design and implementation. However, rural women are disadvantaged in attending education and training as compared with men even before land requisitioning. After their land is requisitioned, women also participate less in education and training, have a lower rate of success in finding jobs and are less likely to be self-employed than men. This has some negative impacts on their livelihoods. One policy implication of this study is: on the basis of relatively full compensation, the government should set up or entrust a special agency to promote skills training of the affected rural women, assist them with employment guidance and relevant information, and enhance their competitiveness in the job market.     

我国“民工荒”问题的经济法研究

经过20多年发展,"民工潮"已逐渐转变成如今的"民工荒","民工荒"问题已经成为危及当代中国经济发展前景的关键问题."民工荒"问题需要从法学、经济学、社会学等多学科角度进行分析和探讨,特别需要在经济法视野下对"民工荒"问题进行研究.本文以经济法为视角,在对"民工荒"问题涉及的相关经济法理念有所诠释的基础上,分析了"民工荒"问题的成因,并提出了解决"民工荒"问题的措施和对策.     

Disorganized Popular Contention and Local Institutional Building in China: a case study in Guangdong

Concurring with the approach stressing the role of contentious politics in (re)shaping state institutions, this study explores how disorganized popular contentions configure local institutional building in China. As Chinese citizens are not legally allowed to take organized collective action to express their grievances and demands, popular contentions, despite their common origins, similar claims and identical targets, break out here and there in large numbers without clear organizational shape. This compels the government to build institutions able to map scattered conflicts, detect potential problems and defuse them on a case-by-case basis in a timely fashion. Such a dissipative approach is distinguished, by its purpose, format and mechanism, from two common types of state responses to popular contentions—incorporation and repression—which are typically linked to democracies and authoritarian developing states where popular contentions are often organized in various ways.     

Law Guanxi: MNCs,state actors,and legal reform in China

Since 1978, China has opened itself to foreign direct investment and has undertaken significant legal reform, especially in the area of international commercial arbitration. I analyze the roles that foreign actors and state officials have played in changing Chinese legal institutions such as the Chinese International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) and personal relations, or guanxi. 1 ^1. La guanxi is a Chinese expression, meaning ‘to pull strings (to get things done)’. View all notes Foreign investors, attorneys, and non-governmental organizations are helping China to adopt formal commercial arbitral institutions that follow international norms. In that sense, foreign actors are contributing to rule of law in China. Yet, foreign investors also attempt to use guanxi to get around central regulations, thereby contributing to informal legal institutions. The combination of guanxi and formal legal institutions follows a model of path dependent institutional change. I use the terms, ‘layering’ and ‘bricolage’ to elucidate the ways that actors combine existing institutions with new legal forms introduced by foreign investors, attorneys, and NGOs.     

Rural China and the WTO

China's entry into the World Trade Organization has been applauded for the benefits it will confer on China's economy and for granting recognition to China's modernizing efforts. The scrutiny of the outside world will force China to regularize many of its practices, such as legal and economic practices. But most of the discussion of the WTO has focused on a very limited segment of China's society. This article considers the realities of rural Chinese life, warning that the consequences of China's increased pressure to reform may be more negative than positive and that the prospect for rural China is far from clear.     

Introduction: women and policy and institutional change in rural China

This is an introduction to the special section of articles that analyze the gendered modalities of policy and institutional change in rural China and examine how women are engaging with, and affected by, those changes. In two consecutive issues, eight articles examine changes in policies and institutions relating to rural development, village-level politics and property rights, marriage migration and urbanization. Through their individual case studies, the contributors elucidate how gender is integral to the conceptualization and implementation of policy and institutional changes in rural China; how those changes are altering the status, rights, resources, goals and arenas of action of different categories of rural women, thereby reinforcing or altering gendered constructs; and, finally, how women's actions are triggering further policy and institutional changes.     

Local State Corporatism or Neo-Guanxilism? Observations from the county level of government in China

Chinese economic and social development in the past three decades has been typically state-led, in which capital and government officials are gradually allied through guanxi—a social psychological network that connects individuals with continued exchanges of favours, emotions and resources. This transforms many traditional characteristics of guanxi and encodes it with new features deeply rooted in institutional settings in contemporary China, which we term as neo-guanxilism. Although ‘local state corporatism’ has strong explanatory power in analysing the alliance of enterprises and local government, we argue that this type of neo-guanxilism could fill the gap uncovered by local state corporatism, mainly through emphasizing government officials as interdependent actors instead of viewing the local state as a collective, capturing not only the developmental but also the predatory aspects of local governments.     

Hong Kong's ‘One Country,Two Systems’ Experience under the Basic Law: two perspectives from Chinese legal scholars

Hong Kong is an administrative and economic entity under Chinese sovereignty. Essentially, the local political system that Hong Kong has adopted is that of a non-sovereign state as well as a non-political entity. It is neither entirely occidental nor completely oriental, but an executive-led system which has developed according to Hong Kong's characteristics and has proved to be an effective one. 1997 was not the end of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy, but its beginning. To guarantee the policy's success is in the overall interest of both Hong Kong and China. As such, China has no greater interests in Hong Kong than to maintain its stability and prosperity. The Chinese Central Authorities will continue to abide by the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy and the Basic Law whenever problems regarding Hong Kong arise.     

关于乌鲁木齐市皖籍农民工"逆流动"的理论探索

托达罗(Todaro,1969)的绝对收入差距假说把劳动力迁移作为农村劳动力对于城乡之间存在的预期收入差距做出的反应,对于中国目前出现的迁移现象--农民工大多迁入经济发展水平较高的中国东部地区--的确具有一般的解释力.但除这一主流趋势之外,我国的中部地区亦有相当多的农民工流向经济发展水平相对较低的西北地区,出现了"逆流动"的现象.笔者通过对新疆乌鲁木齐市皖籍农民工的调查访谈,取得了实地的第一手资料,以期对"逆流动"理论进行尝试性的探索.     

Introduction to Colloquium on Women and Policy and Institutional Change in Rural China: Part II

Articles in the first part of this colloquium surveyed articulations between rural development policies, village politics and land reforms and women's capabilities in China's countryside. The second part of this colloquium focuses on policies and institutions affecting geographies of gendered power in China. Four articles detail the consequences for women, families and society of marriage migration and urbanization.     

Grand Mediation and Legitimacy Enhancement in Contemporary China—the Guang'an model

China has seen numerous instances of collective resistance in recent years. Suppression cannot stop popular resistance. It is also hard to solve all problems through the existing judicial system, administrative method or by social means. Based on a case study in Sichuan, this article studies the Grand Mediation (GM) mechanism in Guang'an as one of the ways in which the Chinese government chooses to build institutions and channel social grievances. GM is successful in containing social conflicts and helping the state to garner legitimacy by reducing people's hostility towards local government, which could enhance the CCP's legitimacy, whose paramount goal is to maintain political stability and social harmony.     

The Ascendency of State-owned Enterprises in China: development,controversy and problems

The state sector still plays an important role in China's economy. One of the key development phenomena characterizing the Chinese economy is the rapid ascendency of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the resurgence of the state. The strength of China's SOEs is projected in the centrally administrated state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). They are the backbone of the national economy, spearheading national economic development and Beijing's ‘going-out’ strategy. The CSOEs have expanded their reach and increased their power, domestically and globally. In seeking to boost local GDP growth, the eastern provinces in China have joined the western provinces in a fierce contest to attract investment from SOEs. Nevertheless, the rapid ascendency of the SOEs has brought many negative consequences for China's economic, social and political development by causing conflict with the market-oriented development direction of Chinese economic reform and hindering fair competition between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises.     

Local States,Institutional Changes and Innovation Systems: Beijing and Shanghai compared

The purpose of this paper is to look into the transformation of local innovation systems in the high-tech parks of Shanghai and Beijing and their technological learning and upgrading. The areas that we have chosen to investigate are Beijing's Zhongguancun and Shanghai's Yangpu District. The main reason that we selected these two areas for study is because they are home to most of the top universities and R&D institutes in these two cities. Our main focus will be on how institutions—the local state, inter-firm relations and the relationship between R&D institutions and firms—are co-evolving to shape and constrain a local system of innovation. Our research finds that the capacities and autonomy of the Zhongguancun of Beijing's Haidian District and Yangpu District of Shanghai differ in various aspects, but both regions are struggling to upgrade innovation and enhance economic development. The ‘high-tech cluster’ provides a useful instrument or label to achieve goals other than innovation and R&D. Elite universities are regarded as engines for network formation, but visible and invisible walls of Chinese universities discount efforts to foster a university-centered innovation hub which especially shows in the Yangpu case.