This article draws on evidence from loosely structured interviews and data from original surveys of 5,130 delegates in township, county and municipal congresses to argue that congressional representation unfolds as authoritarian parochialism in China. It makes three new arguments. First, popularly elected local congresses that once only mechanically stood in for the Chinese mass public, through demographically descriptive and politically symbolic representation, now work as substantively representative institutions. Chinese local congressmen and women view themselves and act as “delegates,” not Burkean trustees or Leninist party agents. Second, this congressional representation is not commonly expressed in the quintessentially legislative activities familiar in other regime types. Rather, it is an extra-legislative variant of pork-barrel politics: parochial activity by delegates to deliver targeted public goods to the geographic constituency. Third, this authoritarian parochialism is due to institutional arrangements and regime priorities, some common to single-party dictatorships and some distinct to Chinese authoritarianism.

Reforms carried out by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have long followed a traditional model of “experimentation under hierarchy.” This article will attempt to develop this model further by building a framework to illustrate the influence of both the political dynamics of hierarchical central–local relations and local economic circumstances in the introduction of large-scale political reforms. The initiation and expansion of “experimental points” are only permitted in those select few provinces with both favourable political and economic local conditions, allowing the CCP to minimize risk and make informed decisions regarding possibilities for nationwide reform. This article proposes that the hierarchical interaction of central and local political elites, and in particular provincial secretaries, can explain the extent of reforms, whereas the type of reform is linked to distinct provincial economic conditions and the provincial secretary's interpretation of provincial priorities. Put succinctly, the CCP's model of political reform can be specifically characterized as “experimentation under hierarchy in local conditions.” This article presents a detailed discussion of both the political and economic considerations inherent in this concept, and provides examples of reform programmes in Guangdong and Sichuan to illustrate the model in practice.

China's national leaders see restructuring and diversification away from resource-based, energy intensive industries as central goals in the coming years. On the basis of extensive fieldwork in China between 2010 and 2012, we suggest that the high turnover of leading cadres at the local level may hinder state-led greening growth initiatives. Frequent cadre turnover is intended primarily to keep local Party secretaries and mayors on the move in order to promote the implementation of central directives. While rotation does seem to aid implementation by reducing coordination problems, there are also significant downsides to local leaders changing office every three to four years. Officials with short time horizons are likely to choose the path of least resistance in selecting quick, low-quality approaches to the implementation of environmental policies. We conclude that the perverse effects of local officials’ short time horizons give reason to doubt the more optimistic claims about the advantages of China's model of environmental authoritarianism.

China's relatively recent dramatic increase in forest area has been hailed domestically and globally as one of the world's few environmental success stories, but significant problems remain in China's reforestation efforts. We describe the challenges that China still faces if it is to meet its laudable – but sometimes contradictory – goals for its forest sector: improving rural livelihoods, sustaining and restoring ecosystem services, and increasing output of the forest product-dependent manufacturing and construction sectors. We do so while pointing out the unintended consequences of implementing these policy goals: overstatement of the quantity and quality of the forest recovery, domestic human and ecological costs of the reforestation, and externalization of China's continually growing demand for timber and forest products in the form of increased imports from vulnerable forests in other parts of the world.

In the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, government officials, scholars and outside observers eagerly hoped that the emergency relief and reconstruction process would bring about the emergence of civil society and increase grassroots democratic participation. Contrary to this optimistic assessment, this article contends that the local state used the opportunity of the disaster as an experimental laboratory to implement an array of already existing national development plans. The urgency with which the reconstruction was to be completed and the opportunities to meet national development targets as well as access reconstruction funds were too tempting to resist. However, the ham-fisted Leninist implementation style met with local resistance and has contributed to a significant deterioration in local state–society relations. The fact that many local residents continue to question why, despite the huge resources invested by the state in the reconstruction project, they have yet to see any improvement in their economic and overall living conditions points to a deficit of local participation and a breakdown in political communication and trust. By focusing on the different political economies of disaster reconstruction, this article attempts to illuminate the regime's vision for developing the countryside, rural politics, and state–society relations in China more broadly. Unless the state is able to incorporate local needs into its development plans, it will not win the trust and support of local residents, regardless of the amount of money it invests or the benevolence of its intentions.

This study estimates the impact of road expansion on off-farm activities in rural China. To achieve this goal, econometric models that capture the impact of road expansion on migration and local off-farm works are developed and estimated using individual data. Estimation results show that road expansion encourages farmers to participate in local off-farm work rather than migrate. In addition, road expansion also has a significant impact on the working time and income of local off-farm work.

Throughout its period of economic transition, the Chinese state has readjusted its relationship with industry and developed new regulatory schemes. China's first industry-specific independent regulatory agency, the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC), was created in 2003. Its operation does not follow Western practice which adopts the best institutional arrangement for autonomous regulators. This article will examine the failings and regulatory capture of SERC. I argue that because the process of creating a new regulator involves resource reallocation and power redistribution, SERC has suffered both endogenous and exogenous disadvantages since its inception. The compromised institutional design, along with insufficient resources and fragmented authority, has considerably weakened SERC's regulatory capacity. Moreover, SERC was not designed as part of the reform schedule, but rather emerged later as a response to institutional necessities, which also contributes to its vulnerability. As a result, the state has exposed SERC to potential capture by both government entities and regulated enterprises.

The narrative about Chinese NGOs active in defending migrant workers' rights describes these organizations as increasingly powerful instruments through which Chinese people take part in public affairs, develop and articulate personal interests, and collectively form a more active and participatory citizenry. This article challenges not only the idea of labour NGOs as a progressive force for political change, but also the belief – widely shared among the international labour movement – that these organizations are sprouts of independent unionism in China. After a short overview of the historical process which led to the birth of labour NGOs in China, this article analyses the relations between these NGOs and four fundamental actors – the state, the workers, international donors and other NGOs – and argues that many of these organizations are struggling as a consequence of a substantial lack of “social capital.”

Given their critical influence on society and politics, university students are one of the key target groups for authoritarian political control around the world. To further our understanding of the endurance and resilience of authoritarianism in post-Deng China, it is necessary to examine one of the Party-state's most crucial control frameworks: the institutional mechanism through which it preserves social stability in the nation's 2,358 university campuses, and maintains control over its more than 22 million college students. Drawing upon intensive field research conducted in 2011, this article attempts to map out the structures and measures deployed by the post-Deng regime to nurture political compliance and consolidate its domination of university campuses. By deciphering an essential component of the state's political control apparatus, this article aims to shed new light on the internal operations of the authoritarian system that is running China today.

The memory of the Anti-Rightist Movement has long been a blind spot in Chinese debates, with historiography limited to elite politics and little engagement with the repercussions of the movement at grassroots level. However, the publication of Yang Xianhui's 2003 book, Chronicles of Jiabiangou, marked a turning point. Based on extensive oral history interviews, Yang's book makes a substantive connection between the Anti-Rightist Movement and the establishment of dedicated laojiao camps such as Jiabiangou in Gansu province. Documenting what he claims was a policy of dehumanization, he suggests that intellectuals were far from the only victims of a movement characterized by its extra-legal procedures. Ordinary people were often drawn into it and were more able than intellectuals to resist the legitimizing discourse of loyalty to the Party to which many intellectuals continued to cling. For Yang, the testimonies of the Rightist victims in Jiabiangou provide a fruitful field in which to investigate the breakdown of elementary social trust in society during the Anti-Rightist Movement. Situated ambiguously between oral history and literary intervention, Yang's work has, together with other recent publications such as Tombstone, contributed to reopening the debate on Maoism in Chinese society today.

Rare earth elements (REE) captured a startled world's attention during the 2010 Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands crisis, when it appeared that China withheld access to them during its border dispute with Japan. China asserts that its sovereign right to environmental regulation and national production quotas is unassailable. However, China's trade measures appear to be inconsistent with WTO rules, as well as with environmental protection and conservation, since they incentivize illegal mining and smuggling practices. In an upcoming case (DS431), the United States, the European Union, Japan and 16 third parties will argue before the WTO that China's trade measures on rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum constitute discriminatory behaviour and are illegal. This raises the question of whether China is inappropriately using the environment as a defence against allegations that its rare earth trade policies are in violation of its WTO obligations.