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 Here

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.

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.

Grassroots Elections in China

Grassroots Elections in China PDF Author: Kevin J. O'Brien
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317987209
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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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.

Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China

Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China PDF Author: Merle Goldman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674830073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
When they found their efforts had produced negligible results, they tried to introduce new institutions such as a free press, a legislature with real power, the rule of law, and truly competitive elections.

Maoism at the Grassroots

Maoism at the Grassroots PDF Author: Jeremy Brown
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674287207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
Maoism at the Grassroots challenges state-centered views of China under Mao, providing insights into the lives of citizens across social strata, ethnicities, and regions. It reveals how ordinary people risked persecution and imprisonment in order to assert personal beliefs and identities, despite political repression and surveillance.

Cultural China 2020

Cultural China 2020 PDF Author: Séagh Kehoe
Publisher: University of Westminster Press
ISBN: 1914386221
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Cultural China is a unique annual publication for up-to-date, informed, and accessible commentary about Chinese and Sinophone languages, cultural practices, politics and production, and their critical analysis. It builds on the University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre Blog, providing additional reflective introductory pieces to contextualise each of the eight chapters. The articles in this Review speak to the turbulent year that was 2020 as it unfolded across cultural China. Thematically, they range from celebrity culture, fashion and beauty, to religion and spirituality, via language politics, heritage, and music. Pieces on representations of China in Britain and the Westminster Chinese Visual Arts Project reflect our particular location and home. Many of the articles in this book focus on the People’s Republic of China, but they also draw attention to the multiple Chinese and Sinophone cultural practices that exist within, across, and beyond national borders. The Review is distinctive in its cultural studies-based approach and contributes a much-needed critical perspective from the Humanities to the study of cultural China. It aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics that inform life in cultural China today, offering academics, activists, practitioners, and politicians a key reference with which to situate current events in and relating to cultural China in a wider context.

Revolutionary Legacy, Power Structure, and Grassroots Capitalism Under the Red Flag in China

Revolutionary Legacy, Power Structure, and Grassroots Capitalism Under the Red Flag in China PDF Author: Qi Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108474926
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Shows that in a predatory regime localized property rights protection is possible due to elite cleavage within the regime.

Maoism and Grassroots Religion

Maoism and Grassroots Religion PDF Author: Xiaoxuan Wang
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190069384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Maoism and Grassroots Religion explores grassroots religious life under and after Mao in Rui'an County, Wenzhou of southeast China, a region widely known for its religious vitality. Drawing on unexplored local state archives, records of religious institutions, memoirs, and interviews, it tells the story of local communities' encounter with the Communist revolution, and its consequences, especially competition and struggles for religious property and ritual space. Xiaoxuan Wang shows that Maoism permanently altered the religious landscape in China, especially by inadvertently promoting the localization and even (in some areas) expansion of Protestant Christianity, as well as the reinvention of traditional communal religion. He contends that the post-Mao religious revival had deep historical roots in the Mao years, and cannot be explained by contemporary economic motives and cultural logics alone. The book calls for a new understanding of Maoism and secularism in the People's Republic of China.

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.