1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910813235603321

Autore

Chŏng Chae-ho <1960->

Titolo

Centrifugal empire : central-local relations in China / / Jae Ho Chung

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Columbia University Press, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

0-231-54068-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (229 p.)

Disciplina

320.80951

Soggetti

Central-local government relations - China

Decentralization in government - China

Chinese autonomous regions - Government policy

Local government - China

China Ethnic relations Political aspects

China Politics and government 2002-

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Preface -- 1. China as a Centrifugal Empire: Size, Diversity, and Local Governance -- 2. China Goes Local (Again): Assessing Post- Mao Decentralization -- 3. The Subnational Hierarchy in Time: Institutional Changes (and Continuities) -- 4. The Center's Perceptions of Local Bureaucracy in China -- 5. The Center's Instruments of Local Control -- 6. Determinants of Local Discretion in Implementation: Exploring Policy- Contingent Variations -- 7. The Political Economy of Vertical Support and Horizontal Networks -- 8. Conclusion -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Despite the destabilizing potential of governing of a vast territory and a large multicultural population, the centralized government of the People's Republic of China has held together for decades, resisting efforts at local autonomy. By analyzing Beijing's strategies for maintaining control even in the reformist post-Mao era, Centrifugal Empire reveals the unique thinking behind China's approach to local governance, its historical roots, and its deflection of divergent interests.Centrifugal Empire examines the logic, mode, and instrument of local governance established by the People's Republic, and then



compares the current system to the practices of its dynastic predecessors. The result is an expansive portrait of Chinese leaders' attitudes toward regional autonomy and local challenges, one concerned with territory-specific preoccupations and manifesting in constant searches for an optimal design of control. Jae Ho Chung reveals how current communist instruments of local governance echo imperial institutions, while exposing the Leninist regime's savvy adaptation to contemporary issues and its need for more sophisticated inter-local networks to keep its unitary rule intact. He casts the challenges to China's central-local relations as perennial, since the dilution of the system's "socialist" or "Communist" character will only accentuate its fundamentally Chinese-or centrifugal-nature.