Governance In China

The People's Republic of China has experienced numerous challenges and undergone tremendous structural changes over the past four decades. The party-state faces a fundamental tension in its pursuit of social stability and regime durability. Repressive state strategies enable the Chinese Communist Party to maintain its monopoly on political power, which is consistent with the regime's authoritarian essence. Yet the quality of governance and regime legitimacy are enhanced when the state adopts more inclusive modes of engagement with society. How can the assertion of political power be reconciled with responsiveness to societal demands? This dilemma lies at the core of evolutionary governance under authoritarianism in China. Based on a dynamic typology of state-society relations, this volume adopts an evolutionary framework to examine how the Chinese state relates with non-state actors across several fields of governance: community, environment and public health, economy and labor, and society and religion. Drawing on original fieldwork, the authors identify areas in which state-society interactions have shifted over time, ranging from more constructive engagement to protracted conflict. This evolutionary approach provides nuanced insight into the circumstances wherein the party-state exerts its coercive power versus engaging in more flexible responses or policy adaptations.

China has traveled a unique road to reach its present economic significance in the world with corporate governance central to political and economic policy. In Understanding Corporate Governance in China, Bob Tricker and Gregg Li look at a variety of companies in China and the challenges they face. Based on in-depth interviews with business leaders, entrepreneurs, auditors, bankers, lawyers, and others closely involved in corporate governance in China, they argue that corporate governance involves more than company law, governance guidelines, and the rules of the stock exchanges and regulatory authorities. Culture and ethics lie at the core of corporate governance. In Chinese business these are still evolving, and business-government relations continue to change. It is vital to understand how business people and officials act in practice in China. They also explain how the regulatory framework of corporate governance in Hong Kong increases the sophistication. As more and more companies based in mainland China are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and increasingly dominate the Hong Kong market, the business worlds of China and Hong Kong become intertwined and grow together. After a brief introduction to the basic theories of corporate governance and the evolution of corporate governance in China, the book guides the reader through current issues and practices in both mainland China and Hong Kong. Topics like Chinese culture and ethics, the regulatory corporate governance framework in mainland China and Hong Kong, the function and practice of the board of directors in China, and the governance of Chinese companies abroad are covered.

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.

Over the past two decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has paradoxically steered the development of a thriving capitalist economy. Unlike many faltering post-socialist states with fragile economies and weakly institutionalised democratic structures, China has witnessed a tide of economic entrepreneurialism that has raised living standards and the country's global economic stature. However, the strains of rapid economic change and the tensions between an increasingly liberalized economy and the partially reformed institutions of an authoritarian polity have become increasingly severe. Crucial to the success of further economic reform and development, good governance is the greatest challenge faced by the CCP. This groundbreaking book explores the key dimensions of governance in China. These include the prospects for political reform as a new generation of leaders comes to power and China enters the World Trade Organization; the processes of building institutions, such as developing a clean, competent, and meritocracy-based civil service, and improving the legislative framework; enhancing regime legitimacy through the sharing of power at lower levels and promoting citizen participation and voice; and finally the prevention and management of social discontent, with particular reference to worker unrest and the Falun Gong. Drawing on original fieldwork, the international group of authors provides a systematic analysis of the political, institutional, and economic causes underlying China's governance problems and considers the prospects for future social and political change.

This open access book captures and elaborates on the skill of storytelling as one of the distinct leadership features of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and the President of the People’s Republic of China. It gathers the stories included in Xi’s speeches on various occasions, where they conveyed the essence of China’s history and culture, its reform and development, and the principles of China’s participating in global governance and cooperating with other countries to build a community of common destiny. The respective stories not only convey abstract and profound concepts of governance in comparatively straightforward language, but also create an immediate emotional connection between the narrator and the listener. In addition to the original stories, extensive additional materials are provided to convey the original context in which each was told, including when and to whom Xi told it, helping readers attain a deeper, intuitive understanding of their relevance.

This volume offers systematic analysis of China’s growing engagement in global governance institutions over the past three decades. During this period, China has gone from outsider to observer to insider. The volume is based on studies of Chinese involvement in a wide cross section of regimes, including trade, finance, intellectual property rights, foreign aid, and climate change. The contributions show that China’s participation in global governance reflects the mutually interactive processes of China’s own socialization into the global community and the simultaneous adaptation of global institutions and actors to China’s growing activism. Both China and the international system are internally complex. Hence, Chinese engagement varies across economic regimes, yielding different results in terms of Chinese compliance, its influence on regimes, and the extent of cooperation and conflict in addressing challenges in international society. The chapters reveal that China is neither purely a savior nor scofflaw of the global economic system, and while China is a defender of the status quo in some areas, it is a reformer in others, and occasionally a revisionist in still other spheres. A detailed analysis of many areas of global governance, this volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of international relations, Chinese studies and global governance.

This book reveals the complex relationship between elite perceptions and behaviour, and governance, in China. It moves away from existing scholarship by focusing on functionaries, grass-roots elites, leading intellectuals, and opinion-makers in China and by looking beyond the top leadership, makes a significant contribution to our understanding of shared governance and broadened political participation in China. The chapters in this collection explore the elites’ role as opinion-makers, technical experts, producers of knowledge, and executives or managers, and pose a number of questions, the answers to which are crucial to understanding future political and economic development in China. What are elite perceptions of governance, inequality and justice; what do the elites mean by good governance; what is the influence of non-Chinese Communist Party elites in policy-making and implementation in China; how have they exerted their influence in the PRC and influenced its direction of future development; and what have grass-roots elites contributed to governance in local communities? Providing a keen insight into the role elites have played in governing China since 1978, this book is a pioneering effort to bring together elite studies and governance studies. As such, it will be highly relevant for policy-makers within international organizations, governments, and NGOs outside China as well as appealing to scholars and students interested in Chinese politics and governance.

Now available in a substantially revised 3rd edition covering the changes of the Seventeenth Party Congress and Eleventh National People's Congress and other recent developments, this major text by a leading academic authority provides a thorough introduction to all aspects of politics and governance in post-Mao China.