The Transformation of Governance in Rural China Market, Finance, and Political Authority

The outbreak of organised, violent peasant protests across the Chinese countryside from the late 1990s to the early 2000s has attracted much scholarly interest. In this study, An Chen endeavours to understand from these protests the question of the Chinese government's control in the countryside and the impact of this violent resistance on China's rural governance in the context of market liberalisation. Utilising extensive field research and data collected from surveys across rural China, the book provides an in-depth exploration of how rural governance in China has been transformed following two major tax reforms: the tax-for-fee reform of 2002?4, and the abolition of agricultural taxes (AAT) in 2005?6. In a multidimensional analysis which combines approaches from political science, economics, finance and sociology, Chen argues that private economic power has merged with political power in a way that has reshaped village governance in China, threatening to fundamentally change its political structure.

1. Introduction; 2. The changing foundations of Communist rule in China's rural society; 3. The 1994 tax reform and rural fiscal crises; 4. The township in the era of reform; 5. The mechanisms of political power in villages; 6. Village finance: its deterioration and consequences; 7. The abolition of agricultural taxes and village governance; 8. Transformed peasant society and realignment in rural politics; 9. Entrepreneur cadres as new rural ruling elites; 10. Prospects for China's rural governance; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.

An Chen (Ph.D., Yale University, Connecticut) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of Restructuring Political Power in China: Alliances and Opposition, 1978–1998 (1999). His recent publications have appeared in Politics and Society, Political Science Quarterly, Modern Asian Studies, China Quarterly, Modern China, Democratization, the Journal of Democracy, and the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.