Changing Governance Models in China

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel explores the dramatic changes that Xi Jinping has made in China’s governance model, both in governing personnel and policy. As seen when scholars and policymakers are surprised by Xi’s promotions during the recent Party Congress and by regulatory crackdowns like on Fintech, the use of previous governance models no longer helps us understand China today. Paper presenters explore how this evolving governance model help us better understand policy and promotion decisions in China, by exploring changes to the cadre evaluation system, promotion patterns, local monitoring and digital surveillance, cadre punishment, campaign-style governance, and the extensive use of leading small groups. This panel aims to comprehensively outline the changes to the former Fragmented Authoritarianism model to sketch out initial patterns of this new governance model, and to explore the implications for China’s ‘resilient authoritarianism’ on elite cohesion in a single-party system and for good governance in the absence of local adaptation and innovation.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• How Bureaucratic Incentives Shape Repression in China - Victor C. Shih, UCSD; Jonghyuk Lee, University of California, San Diego; Erin Baggott Carter, University of Southern California

• From Control to Diffusion and Back: The Evolving Logic of Cadre Rotation in China - David Janoff Bulman, Johns Hopkins University

• Bureaucracy as a Vocation - Iza Ding, Northwestern University; Xiang Gao, Zhejiang University

• Patterns and Paradoxes of Urban Governance in the Xi Jinping Era - Kyle Alan Jaros, University of Notre Dame

• Digital Governance: The Rise of China’s Digital Administrative State - Xiang Gao, Zhejiang University; Jessica C. Teets, Middlebury College

Chair

• Andrew Mertha Johns Hopkins, SAIS

Discussants

• Dali L. Yang University of Chicago

• Jessica C. Teets Middlebury College