Marc Blecher

Into Leather: State-led Development and the Private Sector in Xinji

Students of the local state in reform-era China behold a host of different forms. Scholarly research reports debate their defining characteristics, speculate about the political participatory and non-participatory possibilities each type seems to hold out for the future, scrutinize their implications for economic development or for income distribution, and ponder if the very plurality of local governance types now seen in play across the country will prove to be a durable or only a transitory state of affairs. In a recent, commendably lucid “state of the field” essay, Baum and Shevchenko grouped the many disparate observations and models to date into four main sorts: in their relationships to economic activity, local states have been found to be entrepreneurial, clientelist, predatory or developmental. In entrepreneurial states, state agents and bureaucrats, even whole government bureaus, may go into business independently or enter into partnerships for profit; in clientelist states, officials promote and participate in the benefits of profit-making activity through personalized and particularistic ties to entrepreneurs in their localities; in predatory states, officials do not engage in business either directly or indirectly but utilize their positions instead to extract unproductive rents from producers and entrepreneurs through exorbitant fees, levies and fines; while in developmental states, officials intervene indirectly in the economy, “helping to plan, finance, and co-ordinate local projects, investing in local infrastructure, and promoting co-operative economic relations with external agencies.” In developmental states, local officials create an environment conducive to growth while not, themselves, engaging in business for profit and while “avoiding the formation of particularistic ties to ‘preferred’ enterprises and clients.” See Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko, “The state of the state,” in Merle Goldman and Roderick MacFarquhar (eds.), The Paradox of Chinas Post-Mao Reforms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 344–45. The entrepreneurial state model has had its fullest elaboration in Jane Duckett, The Entrepreneurial State in China (London: Routledge, 1998), but see also Yimin Lin and Zhanxin Zhang, “Backyard profit centers: the private assets of public agencies,” in Jean C. Oi and Andrew G. Walder (eds.), Property Rights and Economic Reform in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 203–225. Clientelist state forms have been very widely reported. For just two urban examples, see Margaret M. Pearson, Chinas New Business Elite (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), and David L. Wank, “Bureaucratic patronage and private business: changing networks of power in urban China,” in Andrew G. Walder (ed.), The Waning of the Communist State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 153–183; and for a rural example, see Gregory A. Ruf, “Collective enterprise and property rights in a Sichuan village: the rise and decline of managerial corporatism,” in Oi and Walder, Property Rights , pp. 27–48. Predatory state forms have also been widely reported in the growing literature on corruption in China. They are often associated with poverty, the heavy tax and fee burden placed upon the peasantry and with peasant protest, as in Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lu, “Taxation without representation: peasants, the central and the local states in reform China,” The China Quarterly , No. 163 (September 2000), pp. 742–763. But predatory abuses are found also in more prosperous localities, as reported in Nan Lin and Chih-Jou Jay Chen, “Local elites as officials and owners: shareholding and property rights in Daqiuzhuang,” in Oi and Walder, Property Rights , pp. 145–170. As for the developmental state model, note that Baum and Shevchenko correctly classify Jean Ois concept of “local state corporatism” as a variant within the category of “developmental” states (p. 350). See Jean C. Oi, “The role of the local state in Chinas transitional economy,” The China Quarterly , No. 144 (December 1995), pp. 1132–49; Jean C. Oi, “The evolution of local state corporatism,” in Andrew G. Walder(ed.), Zouping in Transition: The Process of Reform in Rural North China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Jean C. Oi, Rural China Takes Off (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). For a recent critique and reassessment of the “local state corporatist” conception, see Sally Sargeson and Jian Zhang, “Reassessing the role of the local state: a case study of local government interventions in property rights reform in a Hangzhou district,” China Journal , No. 42 (July 1999), pp. 77–99. But new examples of developmental state forms also continue to be found, as reported in Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan, “Inheritors of the boom: private enterprise and the role of local government in a rural South China township,” China Journal , No. 42 (July 1999), pp. 45–74. Unger and Chan deal specifically, as we do here, with the relationship between local developmental states and the growing private sector.

The Responsibility System in Agriculture

In the post-Mao years, particularly since the Third Plenum held in December 1978, China has undertaken a series of reforms in virtually all spheres of political, economic, social, and cultural life. Of all reforms, the most profound and rapid have been those in the policies, institutions, and practices in the countryside. In no other sphere has political control by the upper levels been relaxed to a greater extent; nowhere have relative autonomy and freedom in managing economic affairs on the part of the lowest-level units, the households, and the individual producers been restored more quickly; and nowhere have the market mechanism and individual incentives been given a more important place within the overall

WHEN WAL-MART WIMPED OUT

Abstract This article offers one China analysts perspective on a variety of questions related to the unionization of all sixty-six Wal-Mart outlets in China. Why did China force Wal-Mart to unionize? If, as Marx, paraphrasing Hegel, wrote, “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice,” is Mao making his comeback? Or if, as Marx immediately continued in his own right, “He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce,” is Hu Jintao playing Louis Bonaparte to Maos Napoleon? Is the Chinese state acting out of a new level of confidence that it can now challenge the worlds most prepossessing corporate giants in order to make good on its communist commitments? Is it running scared in the face of a working class that has at last managed to score a victory? Or is it actually strengthening its power through time-honored tactics of mass organizational control that have not really changed despite the new market context? Are Chinas workers being protected, empowered, or co-opted and subjected to new forms of state control? And why did one of the worlds most militantly antiunion corporations go along? Did they have a choice? Did they fear Chinas state-run union federation? And finally, what does all this portend for the future of labor relations in China?

Peasant labour for urban industry: Temporary contract labour, urban-rural balance and class relations in a Chinese county

Abstract Urban-rural relations in China have a dual character: while a higher level of urban-rural economic balance than most other countries has been achieved, a sharp structural cleavage between workers and peasants has been maintained, based mainly on strict household registrations. Peasants are prevented from migrating to towns and gaining employment there, except under specially approved contracts arranged to resolve local shortages of industrial labour. Contract labour has complex and important effects on rural and urban industrial development. It also embodies the duality of urban-rural relations in China: at the same time as it redistributes wage funds from urban to rural areas, it reinforces the class cleavage between workers and peasants (including contract workers). It also opens up a complex web of inequalities and cleavages among those peasants with contract work and those without. Contract workers have been placed in a contradictory class position which has been a flashpoint of political conflict. The relationships of contract labour to urban industrial and rural development, urbanization, urban-rural balance and structural cleavage, class structure and political conflict are examined through a study of Shulu County, an ordinary rural area with agrowing industrial centre in which over half of the industrial labour force is comprised of peasant contract workers.

The Impact of the Cultural Revolution

In organizational terms, the new organ of authority—the revolutionary committee—which emerged during the final stage of the movement in late 1969 and 1970 represented a clear departure from the unit’s organizational setup before the movement. The former positions of unit head and vice-head and the specialized committees under them were combined into one conciliar unit, linking subunits horizontally and linking cadres and masses vertically. It is important to note, however, that the former diarchy of unit head and vice-head remained embedded in the new institution—they were both vice-directors of the revolutionary committee under the PLA representative. In the early stages, in late 1969 and early 1970, however, there appears to have been little functional specialization within this multifunctional body, and lines of authority were diffuse and unclear. As the situation stabilized, however, and the organizational structure of the unit was reconstituted, three “groups” (zu) were established under the authority of the revolutionary committee. The “production group” (shengchan zu) incorporated the former technical section and the subunits, whose composition was changed in two ways. First, for apparent reasons of administrative convenience, the supply section, formerly under the unit head and vice-head, was brought under the authority of the new production group.

Organization, Growth, and Equality in Xiyang County

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The research undertaken by Tang Tsou and Marc Blecher is part of the Research Project on &dquo;Political Leadership and Social Change in China at the Local Level from 1850 to the Present, &dquo; at the University of Chicago. The support of the National Endowment for the Humanities for this project is hereby acknowledged. Tang Tsou began preliminary research on the problem of equality in China through a grant from the Joint &dquo; Committee on Contemporary China and the support of the Centerjor Far Eastern Studies and the Social Sciences Divisional Research Committee of the University of Chicago. Marc Blecher wants to acknowledge support received from Oberlin College. Mitc·h Meisner would like to acknowledge support receivedjrom the University ojCalifornia.at Santa Cruz, especially Merrill College. where much of his work on the manuscript was completed. In revising the manuscript jor publication. the authors were greatl v benefited ’

The Political Economy of Cropping in Maoist and Dengist China: Hebei Province and Shulu County, 1949–90

Chinese state socialism has, for many years, politicized what crops the countrys farmers plant. By doing so, it has transformed the agriculture radically and repeatedly. The state has adopted some strikingly different policy directions and modalities during both the Maoist and Dengist periods. Cleavages between the state and rural society have been opened, closed and re-opened more than once. The political importance and role of intermediate levels of the Chinese state – in particular, provincial and county governments – in affecting policy, mediating between society and the central state, and pursuing their own interests has long been sensed by scholars and Chinese politicians. But they remain largely unspecified.

Consensual Politics in Rural Chinese Communities: The Mass Line in Theory and Practice

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank the members of our informal mass linestudy group-Carl Dorris, Mike Goiz, Ed Hammond and Mitch Meisner-who helped stimulate much ojmy thinking on this question-In addition, they and stveral other colleaguesPaul Dawson, Vic Falkenheim. George Lany4 Vivienne Shue, and John Starr-made helpful comments on earlier drafts. The Modern China Project of the University of Chicago’s Center for Far Eastern Studies, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, provided support for a research leave during which this article was completed

Asian politics in development : essays in honour of Gordon White

Gordon Whites intellectual legacy - introduction social politics, the state, policy, comparison - Gordon Whites contribution to China studies. Politics and the state: Gordon White and development studies - an appreciation reform and the role of the state in China managing central local relations during socialist marketization - a changing role for the Communist Party treasuring the word - Mao, de-politicization and the material present state enterprise reform and gender - one step backwards for women?. Civil society: corporatist capitalism - the politics of accumulation in south india bias and capture - corruption, poverty and the limitations of civil society in India between cant and corporatism - creating an enabling political environment for the poor. Welfare: state entrepreneurship and community welfare services in urban China creating wealth and welfare - entrepreneurship and the developmental state in rural China can welfare systems be evaluated outside their cultural and historical context? A case study of childrens homes in contemporary Japan the East Asian welfare states in transition - challenges and opportunities. Globalisation: is globalisation all it is cracked up to be? globalisation, privatisation and Chinas industrial labour systems.

The Reorganisation of the Countryside

China has probably had a more sustained, elaborated and generally successful experience with collective agriculture than any other socialist country (with the possible exception of Hungary). From the mid-1960s until the late 1970s it provided a model for many other countries, and a laboratory in which students of socialism have been able to analyse the possibilities for rural transformation. It has subsequently gone further than any socialist country in criticising collective agriculture and reforming it in the direction of individual farming. This also has important implications for practitioners and observers of socialism outside China, many of whom now conclude that socialist agriculture is a very questionable enterprise. China has, in other words, been both a positive and a negative model of collective agriculture.