City and Local Governance in China

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

While a rich literature on Chinese politics has focused either on elite politics in Beijing or local politics at the county/township level, papers in this panel join a growing body of research that places emphasis on cities. Viewing city as an important unit of analysis, these papers examine urban governance in various policy areas. Jaros explores the changing relationship between areal and functional governance practices in major Chinese cities. By examining the changing administrative geography of cities and tracking patterns in the appointment and mobility patterns of hundreds of urban district and functional zone leaders, Jaros offers a nuanced analysis of subnational governance structures beyond the conventional conception of the Tiao-Kuai system. Zeng examines the rise of a new housing welfare state in urban China since the late 1990s. Drawing on ethnographic evidence in several Chinese cities, Zeng argues that housing welfare expansion constitutes a critical element of local states’ developmental strategy, in which the local state allied itself with other social groups to promote their vision of urban development in the name of welfare. Huang analyzes the recent campaign to construct digital governments and big data monitoring platforms in urban China. Using the concept of platform authoritarianism, Huang argues that the collusion between local officials and the platform business power has exerted unprecedented control over the society and consequently decelerated political pluralization in the digital era. Chen and Wilson study local governance from a cadre management angle, showing the homogenizing effects of cadre management in the early Reform period. Based on a novel dataset of over 50,000 local bureaucrats in Shanxi’s provincial, city, county, and township governments, they show how the varied local experiences of the Cultural Revolution ended with a uniform changing of the bureaucratic guard in the early 1980s. Together, these papers demonstrate that understanding the incentives and behaviors of political actors in major cities contributes significantly to our knowledge of the durable authoritarian governance in China.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Comparative Urban Politics

Individual Presentations

• Beyond Tiao-Kuai? Fragmented and Fused Urban Governance in China - Kyle Alan Jaros, University of Notre Dame

• In the Name of Welfare: Local State and Housing Welfare Expansion in Urban China - Nanxi Zeng, Johns Hopkins University

• Digital Leviathan: The Emergence of Platform Authoritarianism in China - Jingyang HUANG, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

• Staffing Leviathan: Homogenizing Cadre Management Across a Fragmented Local State - Hao Chen, University of Southern California; Saul Kriger Wilson, Harvard University

Chair

• Kellee S. Tsai Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Discussant

• Benjamin L. Read University of California, Santa Cruz