In March 2006, China's National People's Congress officially promulgated the central government's intention to “build a new socialist countryside”, a new policy initiative and approach to rural development. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in two Chinese counties in 2008 and 2009, this article investigates how the new policy is being substantiated and implemented at the local level. It argues that by combining China's new fiscal system of transfer payments to poor local governments with administrative reforms, intensified internal project evaluation, and efforts to increase the rural income through a mixture of infrastructural investment, agricultural specialization, the expansion of social welfare, and accelerated urbanization, “building a new socialist countryside” constitutes more than a political slogan and has the potential to successfully overcome rural poverty and the rural-urban divide.
Effective policy implementation is a core component of the Chinese political system's adaptability and stability. A thorough investigation of local implementation mechanisms, however, is often hindered by an almost exclusive concentration on implementation efficiency. This article introduces a new analytical framework and suggests focusing on the interactions between the different administrative tiers-counties, townships, and villages-to understand local policy implementation in terms of procedural and outcome effectiveness. It argues that the triangle of central policy design, institutional constraints, and strategic agency of local implementers explains cases of effective policy implementation that can be observed throughout China. By way of studying the "Building of a New Socialist Countryside" in four cases, this article shows how effective policy implementation can be the result of what students of local governance have so far rather treated as obstructive factors, namely performance and cadre evaluation, financial scarcity, limited public participation, and the focus on models.
Models, pilots and experiments are considered distinctive features of the Chinese policy process. However, empirical studies on local modelling practices are rare. This article analyses the ways in which three rural counties in three different provinces engage in strategies of modelling and piloting to implement the central government's "Building a New Socialist Countryside" (shehuizhuyi xinnongcun jianshe) programme. It explains how county and township governments apply these strategies and to what effect. It also highlights the scope and limitations of local models and pilots as useful mechanisms for spurring national development. The authors plead for a fresh look at local modelling practices, arguing that these can tell us much about the realities of governance in rural China today.The Chinese countryside has always been subject to extensive campaigning, experimenting and modelling. The larger experimentation projects and piloting in the run-up to the rural tax-for-fee reform (RTFR), new rural cooperative medical insurance and new modes of land rights management (for example, tudi liuzhuan 土地流转) have been extensively investigated. However, perhaps owing to the well-founded scepticism that is shown towards models of any kind in the Chinese countryside, 1 the everyday, small-scale piloting and modelling practices that comprise distinctive local government tasks in rural China have not, up to now, drawn much scholarly attention.* We would like to thank are various terms that can be translated as "model," such as shifan, shidian, mofan and yangban. These terms are basically used interchangeably but may bear different meanings in different localities, or at different levels of government. Based on our field experience, we distinguish between test, pilot or experimental sites (shidian), demonstration villages (shifancun) and emulation villages ( yangbancun, mofancun). We further distinguish between "modelling" as a specific strategy of local policy implementation, and "models" as showcases of best practice solutions. 7 By effectiveness, we mean 1) that cadres take local development blueprints seriously, and 2) that policy implementation creates win-win situations for all parties concerned: county and township cadres, upper government levels and villagers. Hence, effective policy implementation is not measured against "objective" benchmarks of what would be the best (or most efficient) solutions for the Chinese countryside. See Schubert and Ahlers 2012.
The political roles of Taiwanese business people (taishang) in cross-strait relations have been increasingly noteworthy under Hu Jintao's policy of "counting on the Taiwanese people." But contrary to widely accepted allegations, this paper argues that attempts by China to use Taiwanese business people as a means to gain political leverage over Taiwan will probably not pan out as a successful strategy.
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