Survival Strategies of Township Governments in Rural China: from predatory taxation to land trade

Based on my fieldwork in rural China in 2004–2005, where I conducted semi-structured interviews with 108 local cadres and villagers, this article explores the survival strategies of township governments as the most recent tax reforms (i.e. the tax-for-fee reform and the abolition of the agricultural tax) have been implemented since 2000. It argues that township governments have taken adaptive strategies to maintain over-quota personnel even under pressure to reduce it. It finds that the strategies have changed from predatory taxation in the 1990s to land trade in the last decade, while the implementation of the rural tax reforms has brought fiscal crises in agricultural villages. Local officials have a limited incentive to respond to collective resistance on taxation but do not have the same incentive on land disputes.