Governance of resettlement compensation and the cultural fix in rural China

Abstract

Financial management of resettlement funding has always been problematic for governments and development agencies trying to mitigate the negative effects of moving people from one location to another. In China, Poverty Alleviation Resettlement attempts to rectify the shortcomings in policies designed for distributing compensation and ensuring funds reach their intended use with apparatuses of security. Governance technologies take the form of reimbursement subsidies, which mitigate the risk that funds will be corrupted or households misuse money, by reimbursing expenditures already made on village construction. These technologies convey the contradictory nature of Chinese rural development, as they employ neoliberal discourse to direct fiscal transfers from the central government to enterprising individuals, but also attempt poverty alleviation of rural societies’ most marginalized households. Resettlement technologies are therefore leading to uneven development while simultaneously claiming to adhere to transnational poverty alleviation norms. In this article, the Party-state applies a cultural fix to resolve contradictions in the development apparatus. The Party-state draws on historical governance norms to change the meaning of the corrupt official that receives disproportionate government assistance into the “ideal” all villages should emulate. In this way, the Chinese bureaucracy appropriates the power of local elites to guide conduct and achieve broader political economic goals.

Impacts of Land Use Transition on Ecosystem Services in the Dongting Lake Area

“…Under the impetus of the rural revitalization strategy, land-use subjects tend to adjust the land use structure through economic approaches such as land rent or price to control the speed of agricultural land transition [42], which could reduce the intensity of LUT. Considering the variability of rural conditions, the transition should be slow and long-lasting, which is compatible with the general characteristics of transition in rural areas [43]. The study reveals that land use transition is a mirror of social development.…”

Thirty Years of Village Corruption Research: Accounting and Smart Villages for Village Sustainability as Future Research Direction

“…The smart village model described in their research includes six smart city missions, one of which focuses on transparency, particularly financial transparency. Given that village governments often face challenges in financial administration, the urgent need for technology to improve the administration process and provide a software system is evident [63,70,71].…”