This book examines contemporary Chinese political reform through an examination of a number of policy initiatives taken in recent years. These include programs designed to improve administrative efficiency, transparency, and accountability, as well as directives aimed at rebuilding the regime's political support though strengthening local legislatures, overhauling the health care system, enacting labor contract laws, opening up mass media, and improving governance in China's minority regions.
This book provides an all-round analysis and exploration of the course, status quo and future of the Chinese Government's governance reform under the framework of government governance modernization. The authors bring their decades of experience in crafting policy in China to explain the relationship between China's government and market, between government and society, between the central government and local governments, functional transformation, organizational structure optimization, reform of public institutions, allocation of fiscally supported personnel, the building of a law-based government and other major issues, while also laying out a case for structural changes in the years to come.
In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce. With China’s urban population projected to rise to about one billion – or close to 70 percent of the country’s population – by 2030, China’s leaders are seeking a more coordinated urbanization process. Urban China is a joint research report by a team from the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council which was established to address the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in China and to help China forge a new model of urbanization. The report takes as its point of departure the conviction that China's urbanization can become more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. However, it stresses that achieving this vision will require strong support from both government and the markets for policy reforms in a number of area. The report proposes six main areas for reform: first, amending land management institutions to foster more efficient land use, denser cities, modernized agriculture, and more equitable wealth distribution; second, adjusting the hukou household registration system to increase labor mobility and provide urban migrant workers equal access to a common standard of public services; third, placing urban finances on a more sustainable footing while fostering financial discipline among local governments; fourth, improving urban planning to enhance connectivity and encourage scale and agglomeration economies; fifth, reducing environmental pressures through more efficient resource management; and sixth, improving governance at the local level.
Despite a centralized formal structure, Chinese politics and policy-making have long been marked by substantial degrees of regional and local variation and experimentation. These trends have, if anything, intensified as China’s reform matures. Though often remarked upon, the politicsof policy formation, diffusion, and implementation at the subnational level have not previously been comprehensively described, let alone satisfactorily explained. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book explores how policies diffuse across China today, the mechanisms through which local governments actually arrive at specific solutions, and the implications for China’s political development and stability in the years ahead. The chapters examine how local-level institutions solve governance challenges, such as rural development, enterprise reform, and social service provision. Focusing on diverse policy areas that include land use, state-owned enterprise reform, and house churches, the contributors all address the same overarching question: how do local policymakers innovate in each issue area to address a governance challenges and how, if at all, do these innovations diffuse into national politics. As a study of local governance in China today, this book will appeal to both students and scholars of Chinese politics, comparative politics, governance and development studies, and also to policy-makers interested in authoritarianism and governance.
Written by scholars from both inside and outside China, this wide-ranging collection of essays explores the complexity of the relationship between governance and civil society by combining theoretical exploration and empirical case studies based on the governance practice in China.
“This book provides the first book-lengthy study focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Chinese characteristics, in line with China’s open ambition of becoming an AI superpower by 2030. China’s unique domestic politics has developed distinct characteristics for its AI approach. By analysing national strategy, security and governance aspects of AI in China, this book argues that China’s AI approach is sophisticated and multifaceted, and it has brought about both considerable benefits and challenges to China. First, many characterize China’s AI approach as a nationally concerted top-down geopolitical strategy to advance Beijing’s unified objective. This book argues that this view is mistaken. It shows that China’s AI politics is largely shaped by economically rather than geopolitically motivated domestic stakeholders. In addition, China’s national AI plan is an upgrade of existing local AI initiatives to the national level, reflecting a bottom-up development. Thus, China’s AI strategy is more of a political manifesto rather than a concrete policy plan. The second part of the book discusses how the Chinese central government has been securitizing AI in order to mobilize local states, market actors, intellectuals and the general public. This security discourse is built on China’s historical anxieties about technology, regime security needs and the growing tension caused by great power competition. Despite its help in convincing domestic actors, however, this securitization trend may undermine key AI objectives. The third part of the book studies the Chinese governance approach to the use of AI. It argues that China’s bold AI practices are part of its broad and incoherent adaptation strategy to governance by digital means. AI is part of a digital technology package that the Chinese authoritarian regime has actively employed not only to improve public services but also to strengthen its authoritarian governance. While China’s AI progress benefits from its unique political and social environment, its ambitious AI plan contains considerable risks. China’s approach is gambling on its success in (a) delivering a booming AI economy, (b) ensuring a smooth social transformation to the age of AI, and (c) proving ideological superiority of its authoritarian and communist values. This book suggests that a more accurate understanding of AI with Chinese characteristics is essential in order to inform the debate regarding what lessons can be learnt from China’s AI approach and how to respond to China’s rise as the AI leader if not superpower.”
Using a comparative and thematic approach, this textbook looks at key aspects of the new dynamics in East Asian politics: security, political economy and society.
Using detailed case studies of the first nine mainland Chinese companies to be listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange (1993 94), Alice de Jonge examines the evolution of corporate governance law and culture in China s H-share market. A story emerges not of tensions between ideas of corporate governance from two different legal systems Hong Kong vs. mainland Chinese nor about legal convergence as China adopts concepts from Anglo-American jurisdictions. Rather, it is a story of individual firms being pragmatic in mediating the different agendas of state-agencies that own or control them. Corporate Governance and China s H-Share Market looks at corporate governance in a cross-border context is unique in providing a detailed understanding of China s H-share market reveals why a beer company was the first ever Chinese firm to be listed overseas. This fascinating work will appeal to postgraduate students and scholars of corporate governance, Asian law and legal systems and Asian business, as well as Chinese scholars more generally. Professionals such as law practitioners working in Chinese law will also find the book of interest.
Many studies of government in China either simply describe the political institutions or else focus, critically, on the weaknesses of the system, such as corruption or the absence of Western-style democracy. Authors of these studies fail to appreciate the surprising ability of China’s government to rapidly transform a once impoverished economy and to recover from numerous crises from 1978 to the present. This book, on the other hand, takes a more balanced, more positive view. This view is based on a study of changes in China’s institutions for coping with critical crises in governance since 1978. These changes include better management of leadership succession, better crisis management, improved social welfare, the management of society through treating different social groups differently depending on their potential to rival the Party state, and a variety of limited, intra-party and grassroots democracy. This book applies to the Chinese model the term “pragmatic authoritarianism.” It explains changes to and the likely future direction of China’s governance model. It compares current risks in China’s governance with threats that terminated dynasties and the republic in China over the past four thousand years and concludes that the regime can be expected to survive a considerable period despite its existing flaws. "Few topics in Chinese politics are as significant as the nature, state and prospects of the political regime. While the topic had been unduly understudied for a long period of time, a young generation of scholars has emerged on this subject. Among others, the book by Hongyi Lai stands out and provides a comprehensive and penetrating analysis on this topic....I am confident that his book will make a significant contribution to the study of Chinese politics and may well define the debate on China’s political development, governance and model for years to come." - Yongnian Zheng, Director, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore
This book argues that as new political and social values are formed in post-socialist China, Christian values are becoming increasingly embedded in the new post-socialist Chinese outlook. It shows how although Christianity is viewed in China as a foreign religion, promoted by Christian missionaries and as such at odds with the official position of the state, Christianity as a source of social and political values - rather than a faith requiring adherence to a church is in fact having a huge impact. The book shows how these values inform both official and dissident ideology and provide a key underpinning of morality and ethics in the post-socialist moral landscape. Adopting a variety of different angles, the book investigates the role Christian thought plays in the official discourse on morality and love and what contribution Chinese Christians make to charitable projects. It analyses key Christian publications and dedicates two chapters to Christian intellectuals and their impact on political liberal thinking in China. The concluding chapter highlights gender roles, the role of the Chinese diaspora, and the overlap of the government and Christian agenda in China today. The book challenges commonly held views on contemporary Chinese Christianity as a movement in opposition to the state by showing the diversity and complexity of Christian thinking and the many factors influencing it.
