Bringing knowledge about China to the disciplines has reduced the outsized role that research on Europe and America has on many topics. But mainstreaming China studies also leads to certain tradeoffs. How should we manage these tradeoffs and produce research that is both true to China and contributes to the social sciences? In the last 40 years, China scholars have developed many strategies to navigate the territory between area studies and the social sciences. I myself have vacillated about how China studies and political science should interact and inform each other. How are scholars addressing this issue now, in an era of mixed methods, sophisticated quantitative research, experiments and "big data?"
Bringing knowledge about China to the disciplines has reduced the outsized role that research on Europe and America has on many topics. But mainstreaming China studies also leads to certain tradeoffs. How should we manage these tradeoffs and produce research that is both true to China and contributes to the social sciences? In the last 40 years, China scholars have developed many strategies to navigate the territory between area studies and the social sciences. I myself have vacillated about how China studies and political science should interact and inform each other. How are scholars addressing this issue now, in an era of mixed methods, sophisticated quantitative research, experiments and "big data?"
In studies of popular politics a split exists. Some scholars focus on rather tame forms of participation while others become interested mainly when political action spills out onto the streets. This article considers acts located near the boundary between official, prescribed politics and politics by other means. It explores popular pressure that is arguably legal, permissible in some eyes but not in others. The episodes of boundary-spanning contention examined center on implementing elections in rural China. What is to be gained by investigating this form of contention? First, it promises a better understanding of causal processes insofar as it draws attention to state and movement trajectories. Second, it can help close the gap between analysts who study the dynamics of contention and those who are concerned with the consequences of contention. Third, it promises to bring the relationship between states and contentious politics into clearer focus. Finally, studying boundary-spanning acts can help locate a regime across a number of dimensions: what is institutionalized and what is not, what is participation and what is resistance, who is a challenger and who is a polity member, what citizenship entails and who enjoys it.
In this article, I assess the state of political citizenship in rural China. After discussing the often local and rural origins of citizenship and the meaning of the term itself, I review the limited reforms that have taken place in the election of high-ranking state leaders and people's congress deputies. I then turn to a more promising avenue of inclusion: the villagers' committee (VC) elections that began in the late 1980s. Here, we see notable efforts to heighten cadre responsiveness and draw rural residents into the local polity. At the same time, sizable obstacles to inclusion remain, not least because many electoral rules and practices do not enfranchise villagers reliably. The inescapable conclusion that villagers enjoy (at best) a partial citizenship needs to be qualified, however, owing to evidence that some rural people are starting to challenge improper elections using the language of rights. Building on a rules consciousness and a sensitivity to government rhetoric that have existed for centuries, as well as exploiting the spread of participatory ideologies and patterns of rule rooted in notions of equality, rights, and the rule of law, these villagers are busy advancing their interests within prevailing limits, forcing open blocked channels of participation, and struggling to make still-disputed rights real. In this regard, certain citizenship practices are emerging even before citizenship has appeared as a fully recognized status, and we may be observing the process by which a more complete citizenship comes about.
In this article, I assess the state of political citizenship in rural China. After discussing the often local and rural origins of citizenship and the meaning of the term itself, I review the limited reforms that have taken place in the election of high-ranking state leaders and people's congress deputies. I then turn to a more promising avenue of inclusion: the villagers' committee (VC) elections that began in the late 1980s. Here, we see notable efforts to heighten cadre responsiveness and draw rural residents into the local polity. At the same time, sizable obstacles to inclusion remain, not least because many electoral rules and practices do not enfranchise villagers reliably. The inescapable conclusion that villagers enjoy (at best) a partial citizenship needs to be qualified, however, owing to evidence that some rural people are starting to challenge improper elections using the language of rights. Building on a rules consciousness and a sensitivity to government rhetoric that have existed for centuries, as well as exploiting the spread of participatory ideologies and patterns of rule rooted in notions of equality, rights, and the rule of law, these villagers are busy advancing their interests within prevailing limits, forcing open blocked channels of participation, and struggling to make still-disputed rights real. In this regard, certain citizenship practices are emerging even before citizenship has appeared as a fully recognized status, and we may be observing the process by which a more complete citizenship comes about.
This article examines the ongoing tug-of-war between the centre and lower levels by analysing the implementation of the Organic Law of Villagers' Committees. The law provides a framework for reorganizing China's villages and rejuvenating local political institutions and is the centrepiece of a central program designed to enhance cadre accountability and village autonomy while reaffirming state control over the countryside. However, some villagers' committees scarcely function and many operate in a fashion quite unlike that prescribed by the Organic Law. The author suggests that success has largely hinged on the amount of bureaucratic attention a village has received and on how villagers and local cadres have perceived their interests and understood their resources in relation to each other and to higher levels. In many localities, assorted forms of cadre resistance and villager skepticism have been important causes of patchy implementation, and balancing demands both to complete state tasks and to increase popular participation have frequently impinged on the interests of cadres and villagers for separate but reinforcing reasons. -from Author
Why has it been exceedingly difficult to restructure China's village-level, political institutions? Over and above hurdles arising from belated leadership support and bureaucratic squabbling, implementation of The Organic Law of Villagers' Committees has depended on how villagers and local cadres perceive their interests and understand their resources. Although the Law does not generate a single pattern of concerted, localist opposition, aspects of it alienate one or another affected party almost everywhere. Outside the singularly favorable conditions found in not poor, "up-to-standard" villages with a strong collective sector, cadre resistance and villager skepticism have been considerable. In many paralyzed, authoritarian, and "run-away" localities, balancing demands to increase state penetration and popular participation have impinged on the interests of both cadres and villagers and simultaneous acceptance of both key aims of the Law has proven to be difficult to secure.
Many scholars have analysed bargaining between supervisory bureaucracies and Chinese large and medium-sized factories. Walder identified a web of informal, semi-bureaucratic relationships that structures negotiations over revenues, payments and subsidies. Granick and Tidrick pointed out that divided bureaucratic control increases the parties to bargaining, while conflicting interests present opportunities to play supervisors off against each other. Huang found collusive behaviour that occurs when local government agencies and firms rob the state treasury by increasing central subsidies and reducing central exactions in exchange for fees that go directly to local coffers. Numerous authors have noted that the focus of bargaining has shifted from material to financial transfers and have used (or questioned using) Kornai's "soft budget constraint" to explain the persistence of bargaining since the onset of reform.
Critical deputy speeches and opposition to draft bankruptcy, enterprise, and villager committee laws have led some observers to conclude that the National People's Congress (NPC) is a conservative, obstructionist force in Chinese politics. This article reviews the evidence for this claim and finds that the NPC's institutional impact is more accurately described as procedurally conservative than as substantively conservative. Not a staunch opponent of market reforms nor of redefining the role of the Communist Party, the legislature instead stands for rationalizing and legalizing policymaking and for guaranteeing policy implementation; it weighs in on the side of caution, carefully-planned change, and minimizing risks, and against campaign-style politics and reliance on revolutionary enthusiasm and charisma.
Critical deputy speeches and opposition to draft bankruptcy, enterprise, and villager committee laws have led some observers to conclude that the National People's Congress (NPC) is a conservative, obstructionist force in Chinese politics. This article reviews the evidence for this claim and finds that the NPC's institutional impact is more accurately described as procedurally conservative than as substantively conservative. Not a staunch opponent of market reforms nor of redefining the role of the Communist Party, the legislature instead stands for rationalizing and legalizing policymaking and for guaranteeing policy implementation; it weighs in on the side of caution, carefully-planned change, and minimizing risks, and against campaign-style politics and reliance on revolutionary enthusiasm and charisma.
To understand the consequences of Xi Jinping's rise, one must look down as well as up. Even in the face of increased repression, people have a say over how it unfolds and the shape it takes. Many Chinese pastors are adapting to harsher policies and new ideological narratives by striving to lessen the threat Protestantism is perceived to pose. They reduce ideological competition, by not preaching about politics, dissociating from dissidents, and supporting the China Dream; security concerns, by becoming financially self-sufficient, severing ties to missionaries, and building a Chinese church; and collective action fears, by dividing congregations, avoiding networking, and viewingsmall churches as part of God's plan. By adjusting Protestant practice and incorporating the Party ideologies into their faith, pastors aim to show they can live with and are being steeled by repression.
