Political Machinations in a Rural County

Abstract

A long-running discourse both within China and abroad castigates local leaders for corruption and a related tendency to implement central government policy selectively.1 The interesting question is how and why this takes place. 2 What are the mechanisms and internal logic of corruption and selective implementation for local Party élites and the bureaucracy, and why does such behavior persist? 3 A previous debate on the origins of "selective policy implementation" involves questions of the central government's failure to reduce the "peasant burden" during the 1990s, and whether that indicated a loss of control over its local agents.4 This article examines corruption and selective policy implementation as 1 The first major instance of this practice of blaming local cadres, rather than central policies, occurred after the Great Leap Forward.See Xiaobo Lü, Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist Party (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp.98-106.A recent article goes further, arguing that "divided state power" has become a strategy for improving the CCP's resilience and legitimacy.While this is an intriguing thesis, the interpretation of causality is problematic.

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