Informational efficiency,organisational development and the institutional linkages of the provincial people's congresses in China

The Provincial People's Congresses (PPCs), Chinese legislatures at the provincial level, were resumed and their Standing Committees were established in the late 1970s after a decade of political chaos during the Cultural Revolution. In their early development, the survival and maintenance of the PPCs were threatened by the information impactedness, resulting from their structural detachment from both the National People's Congress and ordinary citizens, among many severe challenges. This article probes how, in the last two decades, the PPCs have pursued a network strategy and developed a complex of institutional linkages with other power institutions and societal forces. Taking advantage of these networks, the PPCs have woven their own information networks and dramatically enhanced their ability to collect, process, and disseminate information, both from the central leadership in Beijing, and from deputies and ordinary citizens at the grassroots. They also could have played a new role, ‘information broker’ between both sides. As a result of informational efficiency and rationality maximisation in decision‐making, the PPCs have become more institutionalised and been expanding their power to the extent that they have already been power players with weight in Chinese sub‐national politics.