Chinas Provinces In Reform

China is a far larger and more diverse country than many people in the West realise. The provinces that make up the country are considerable social, economic and political systems in their own right. They are comparable in size and complexity to European states. China's Provinces in Reform is concerned with the impact of economic reform and social and politial change within the provinces at the immediate sub-central level of the People's Republic of China. One of the main aims of this book is to question over-generalizations about China's development in the reform era. However, the provincial analysis of social and political change in China also has the potential to reveal even more in a comparative perspective. This is the first volume of a series and covers Guangxi, Hainan, Liaoning, Shandong, Shanghai, Sichuan and Zhejiang. It is part of a project conducted by the Institute for International Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, that will provide the most thorough and up to date analysis of China's provinces yet published.

In 20 years of reform in China, the key development has been the opening-up of the market to foreign trade and international investment.

This is the third volume in a series examining the political importance of China's provinces under reform. The present book provides a survey of provinces as echelons of the peoples Republic of China. It seeks to locate the province as an administrative level in the Chinese state, through an examination of history, economic, social and political developments of these units. By situating the province history, this volume identifies new developments in the territorial administration of the People's Republic over the reform era. It also charts the consequent emergence of the city as an intermediate unit, situated between the province and the country, and providing challenges to the hierarchy of the bureaucratic state. This book includes detailed analyses of Chongqing, Henan, Guangdong, Anhui, Yunnan and Heilongjiang. It contains extensively researched empirical data collected from these provinces, and user friendly maps of these regions.

Focusing on the role of provincial leadership in the initiation and implementation of economic reform, this text studies economic decentralization in eight Chinese provinces. In each area, resource allocation and acquisition of foreign capital and investment are investigated.

This study reviews the context of and prospects for China's only Special Economic Zone (SEZs) that covers an entire province. When Hainan became a province in 1988, the central government wanted to make it a special zone that would go far beyond even the other (SEZs in system reform. It was to have a small government and large society, implying very little state-operated enterprise and minimal government. Despite its essential backwardness, pockets of absolute poverty, inadequate infrastructure and other difficulties, Hainan has made progress in economic development, attracting investment from both the mainland and overseas. Its economy, previously dominated by state-owned rubber and iron ore industries, has diversified through substantial growth in services and small-scale enterprise, including export-oriented joint ventures. However, the pace of reform and investment slowed during the national austerity program from early 1989 to late 1991, calling into question the ambitiousness of some of Hainan's plans to lead the way in reform experiments in agriculture, industry and human resource development. Recently, though, the reform agenda seems to have regained momentum, as Hainan deals in greater depth with the trade, investment and fiscal modernization that could propel it into prosperity. This study also suggests ways in which the province's reform agenda might be accelerated as the next key steps are identified and opportunities seized by both Beijing and Haikou.

Explores the impact of social and political change on China's provinces during the reform era. Offering an in-depth comparative anaysis of a number of major provinces, it challenges generalizations over the nature of change in China

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chine

This book discusses the Belt and Road Initiative at the provincial level in China. It analyses the evolution of the role of local governments in Chinese foreign policy since the opening of China’s economy in 1978, showing how the provinces initially competed with each other, and how the central government was forced to react, developing more centralised policies. Unlike other books on the Belt and Road Initiative, which focus on the international aspects of the initiative, this book demonstrates the importance of the Belt and Road in reinforcing China’s unitary status and for managing and coordinating development at the local level as well as centre-province relations and province to province relations inside China.

This book is based on an empirical research on the governance and reform of the contemporary township system in China. It provides an insightful and innovative understanding of China's township system. The book consists of four parts. The first part discusses the historical changes, present situation and practical operation of China's township system. The second part compares several practice models of reform, and analyses the motivational forces, path and trend of the reform process. The third part studies the reconstruction of modern township governance system and other relevant institutional innovations. The fourth part focuses on the investigation and case analysis of the actual operation of the township system at multi-dimensional levels.

Based on a Cato Institute conference, cosponsored by Fudan University in Shanghai and held in September 1988 at the Shanghai Hilton.