Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China

Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China PDF Author: Elizabeth J. Perry
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Observers often note the glaring contrast between China's stunning economic progress and stalled political reforms. Although sustained growth in GNP has not brought democratization at the national level, this does not mean that the Chinese political system has remained unchanged. At the grassroots level, a number of important reforms have been implemented in the last two decades. This volume, written by scholars who have undertaken substantial fieldwork in China, explores a range of grassroots efforts--initiated by the state and society alike--intended to restrain arbitrary and corrupt official behavior and enhance the accountability of local authorities. Topics include village and township elections, fiscal reforms, legal aid, media supervision, informal associations, and popular protests. While the authors offer varying assessments of the larger significance of these developments, their case studies point to a more dynamic Chinese political system than is often acknowledged. When placed in historical context--as in the Introduction--we see that reforms in local governance are hardly a new feature of Chinese political statecraft and that the future of these experiments is anything but certain.

Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China

Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China PDF Author: Elizabeth J. Perry
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Get Book

Book Description
Observers often note the glaring contrast between China's stunning economic progress and stalled political reforms. Although sustained growth in GNP has not brought democratization at the national level, this does not mean that the Chinese political system has remained unchanged. At the grassroots level, a number of important reforms have been implemented in the last two decades. This volume, written by scholars who have undertaken substantial fieldwork in China, explores a range of grassroots efforts--initiated by the state and society alike--intended to restrain arbitrary and corrupt official behavior and enhance the accountability of local authorities. Topics include village and township elections, fiscal reforms, legal aid, media supervision, informal associations, and popular protests. While the authors offer varying assessments of the larger significance of these developments, their case studies point to a more dynamic Chinese political system than is often acknowledged. When placed in historical context--as in the Introduction--we see that reforms in local governance are hardly a new feature of Chinese political statecraft and that the future of these experiments is anything but certain.

Grassroots Elections in China

Grassroots Elections in China PDF Author: Kevin J. O'Brien
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317987217
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Twenty years after the launch of village elections, the time is ripe to assess the progress and impact of China’s most notable political reform. Where have elections been conducted well and where have they been conducted poorly? How have procedures changed over the years and have elections truly transformed how power is exercised in the countryside? What methods are researchers employing to study elections and how have scholars from different disciplines contributed to our knowledge of grassroots politics in China? This book carefully examines the implementation and effects of China’s village, township, and people’s congress elections, both in terms of democratizing the polity and spurring other changes in state-society relations. The chapters in this book have been published across several issues of the Journal of Contemporary China.

Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China

Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China PDF Author: Xi Chen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107014867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Xi Chen explores the dramatic rise in, and routinization of, social protests in China since the early 1990s.

China in Transition

China in Transition PDF Author: D. Teather
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0333983823
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The authors focus on the important, controversial issues and policies of contemporary China. These include new intellectual currents and re-assessment of socialism in the PRC, grassroots political participation in rural China, public maladministration and bureaucratic corruption, and legal reform.

Muddling Toward Democracy

Muddling Toward Democracy PDF Author: Anne F. Thurston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780756700478
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Among the most significant political reforms implemented by the Chinese government since 1989 is the introduction of competitive elections into rural villages. This study examines China's efforts to bring competitive elections to the country's rural areas & attempts to explain why local democracy has proved more successful in some places than in others. The study also attempts to reintroduce China-as-China into public dialogue. Chapters: rural Sichuan Province, Nov. 1995; the roots of political reform in China's villages; the varieties of village self-governance; the requisites for success; & the U. S. response to Chinese political reform.

Ballot Box China

Ballot Box China PDF Author: Kerry Brown
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848138229
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Since 1988, China has undergone one of the largest, but least understood experiments in grassroots democracy. Across 600,000 villages in China, with almost a million elections, some three million officials have been elected. The Chinese government believes that this is a step towards `democracy with Chinese characteristics'. But to many involved in them, the elections have been mired by corruption, vote-rigging and cronyism. This book looks at the history of these elections, how they arose, what they have achieved and where they might be going, exploring the specific experience of elections by those who have taken part in them - the villagers in some of the most deprived areas of China.

The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China

The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China PDF Author: Joseph Fewsmith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139620428
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In the 1990s China embarked on a series of political reforms intended to increase, however modestly, political participation to reduce the abuse of power by local officials. Although there was initial progress, these reforms have largely stalled and, in many cases, gone backward. If there were sufficient incentives to inaugurate reform, why wasn't there enough momentum to continue and deepen them? This book approaches this question by looking at a number of promising reforms, understanding the incentives of officials at different levels, and the way the Chinese Communist Party operates at the local level. The short answer is that the sort of reforms necessary to make local officials more responsible to the citizens they govern cut too deeply into the organizational structure of the party.

Participation and Empowerment at the Grassroots

Participation and Empowerment at the Grassroots PDF Author: Gunter Schubert
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739174800
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This monograph ties in the scholarly debate on Chinese village elections and their consequences for China’s political system. It draws on comparative fieldwork conducted in six villages in two counties in Jiangxi and Jilin Provinces and one district in Shenzhen between 2002 and 2005, producing data from some 140 in-depth interviews of villagers and local officials up to the prefectural level. The major objective of this book is as much a critical assessment of the research literature of Chinese village elections published over the last fifteen years as to sharpen the reader’s sight for the scope and limits of this important reform to generate regime legitimacy in the local state, an issue which has so far been neglected in the study of Chinese village elections. It hence contributes to our understanding of the nexus between political participation and cadre accountability at the grassroots, and highlights a number of factors ensuring the persistence of one-party rule in contemporary China.

Non-Governmental Organizations in Contemporary China

Non-Governmental Organizations in Contemporary China PDF Author: Qiusha Ma
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134224117
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Based on documentary materials including interviews with key players in China, this book charts the development of non-governmental and non-profit organizations in China from the late 1970s to the present day. It recounts how in the aftermath of the 1978 reforms that created a market economy and diversified interests and social life, new institutions and organizations outside of the state system increased dramatically in number, size and influence. These organizations, which barely existed before the reforms began in the late 1970s, carry out many social, economic and cultural tasks neglected by the government. Qiusha Ma examines two key questions crucial to understanding the development of NGOs in China: First, is it possible under China’s one-party state for non-governmental organizations to thrive and play important economic, social and political functions? And secondly, are NGOs facilitating the formation of a civil society in China?

Chinese Democracy after Tiananmen

Chinese Democracy after Tiananmen PDF Author: Yijiang Ding
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774842105
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
In 1989, most observers believed that China's political reform process had been violently short-circuited, but few would now dispute that China is in a very important transition. Central to this transition has been an extraordinary change in the formal intellectual conception of 'democracy.' In this book, Yijiang Ding presents a multi-dimensional picture of China at the political crossroads. Chinese Democracy looks at the significant change in the state-society relationship in contemporary China in three interrelated areas: intellectual, social, and cultural. Drawing heavily on recent Chinese scholarship, Ding shows that the emergent theory on the dualism of state and society is contemporaneous with a new cognitive and cultural appreciation of the people's independence from state authority. Is China moving toward liberal democracy? Does Western engagement with China contribute economically and politically to this shift? These are the questions at the heart of the book. Which are especially timely, given the recent reconstruction of political regimes worldwide.