经济发展论坛工作论文
FED Working Papers Series
No. FE20050095
Decentralization and Local Governance in China’s Economic Transition
Justin Yifu Lin Ran Tao Mingxing Liu看见英语
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Decentralization and Local Governance in China’s Economic
Transition
中国汉字发展史
Justin Yifu Lin* Ran Tao** Mingxing Liu***
Abstract
金菌灵胶囊This chapter will focus on the decentralization and governance issues at local level, and strive to illustr
ate the structure and evolution of inter governmental arrangements at higher levels that constitute the institutional background in China. We argue that the centralization-decentralization cycle is endogenous to the traditional plan system, which featured heavy industrialization. Although decentralization in market-oriented reforms helped to promote economic growth by hardening local budget constraints and promoting local incentives to foster economic growth, it has led to lower central redistributive power and enlarging spatial inequality. Without clear and appropriate intergovernmental expenditures, responsibility division and equalizing transfer arrangements, the recentralization in 1994 has significantly impaired the local capacity to provide decent public goods and rvices in less developed regions and brought about rious local-governance issues in China.
Keywords: Decentralization, Transition, Unfunded Mandate.
* China Center for Economic Rearch, Peking University, e-mail: jlin@ccer.pku.edu; ** Institute for Chine Studies, the University of Oxford, Center for Chine Agriculture Policy, China Academy of Sciences, e-mail: ran.ac;*** School of Government, Peking University, e-mail: mxliu@ccer.pku.edu.
Introduction
感恩手抄报
血怎么洗掉小窍门
In any discussion of China’s decentralization and local governance, three aspects derve special attention. First, China is a large country with five levels of government. Below the central government are 31 provincial level units (42 million population on average), 331 prefecture level units (3.7 million people on average), 2,109 counties (580,000 people on average), and 44,741 townships (27,000 people on average). Furthermore, there are about 730, 000 more or less lf-governed villages in rural areas below the township level (World Bank, 2002). The multi level nature of Chine bureaucracy frequently caus confusion when people talk about decentralization and local governance in China, since the level can range from provincial to village.
Second, the fact that China is still a transitional economy in a process of marketization makes the existing literature on China’s decentralization somewhat different from the general decentralization literature. Since China ud to be a planned economy and most of the economic activities were under center’s control in the plan period, the reforms initiated since the late 1970s can be viewed as a process of delegating more decision-making powers in investment approval, firm entry, revenue mobilization, and expenditure responsibilities to lower levels of government and granting more autonomy in production and marketing to state-owned enterpris. As a result, much of the literature on China’s decentralization actually dealt with China’s economic transition and liberalization (e Qia
n and Weingast, 1996, as an example), compared to the general literature of decentralization that focus on the transfer of public functions to lower-level governments.
Third, China is still a party state with all levels of government officials
四人小游戏大全appointed from above by the ruling Communist Party. Unlike many countries of Africa or Latin America that are often plagued by bureaucracies that lack experience or organizational capacity, the Chine bureaucracy is an elaborate network that extends
to all levels of society, down to the neighborhood and working unit, and exhibits a high degree of discipline by international standards (Parish and White, 1978, 1984). Within each level, an impressive organizational apparatus is able to transmit state policies down to lower-level government agencies step-by-step through veral layers of government bureaucracy (Oi, 1995). In the 1990s, grass root elections took place extensively at the village level, which is not formally a level of government. Therefore, the concepts of constitutional decentralization and political decentralization do not quite fit in the ca of China since there are no institutionalized rights of local governments in the central decision-making procedures and no widely accepted genuine elections at and above the township level.
This chapter focus on a limited number of topics considered esntial to an understanding of China’s decentralization and local governance by the authors. Considering the multi level nature of Chine bureaucracy, we focus on the decentralization and governance issues at local level, and strive to illustrate the structure and evolution of inter governmental arrangements at higher levels that constitute the institutional background. Since China is still a transitional economy, the Chine state is involved in some competitive ctors and intervenes in its citizens’ social and economic lives on many fronts. The decentralization process in China has been accompanied by institutional changes, such as the granting of more power in nonpublic functions (such as investment approval and entry of non state firms) to local
嬴柱governments. Given that the decentralization of nonpublic functions constitutes an important element in China’s economic transition and in many cas took place simultaneously with the decentralization of public functions, both dimensions are explored here. Furthermore, the centralized political system has shaped the administrative and fiscal decentralization process, and also constitutes the basis for understanding major local-governance issues in China, such as unfunded mandates, farmer’s tax burdens, and ineffectiveness in antipoverty programs.
凉拌包菜的做法The chapter begins with a review of the centralization-decentralization cycles in the plan period befor
e 1978 and the logic for such cycles. We discuss administrative and fiscal decentralization in China’s market-oriented reforms since the late 1970s; their impacts on economic growth, spatial inequality, and poverty reduction; the recentralization since 1994 and its affect on local public finance and public goods provision; and bad on analys of China’s intergovernmental fiscal and political arrangements, explore two major local governance issues in China, unfunded mandates and ineffectiveness in antipoverty efforts.
The Centralization-Decentralization Cycle in the Plan Period
The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 marked a new era in Chine history. Government leaders believed that to defend the new socialist system and to keep pace and even overtake Western industrial countries, rapid industrial development, especially the establishment of a complete t of heavy industries, was esntial. Learning mainly from the Soviet experiences, the Chine government began to
