State monopoly, Chinese style : a case study of the tobacco industry

Adopting a historical institutionalist approach, this study focuses on the tobacco industry as a case study to explore why competition would happen in this state-monopoly regime from its outset and how it evolved during the past three decades in China. I argue that the emergence of competition in the tobacco state monopoly resulted from a particular industrial governance pattern, which formed up incrementally and became strengthened via interactions between local governments and the local agents of China’s National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC). As the institutional settings where local governments and the CNTC’s local agents were embedded changed, the governance pattern and the resulting competition type continually transformed over three distinctive phases: quasi-free competition under the two-track system (1982-1993), restrained competition under prevalent local protectionism (1994-2004), and quasi-oligopoly competition under the central-led competitive monopoly (2005-2012). Tracing the development of the three phases discloses not only how local governments have already become the de facto agents for serving the CNTC but also how this circumstance has indirectly strengthened the control capacity of the monopoly, thus reinforcing and intensifying state control and the competition alike. The “state monopoly, Chinese style” was thus formed in this context.the KNAW China Exchange Program (the Netherlands), the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Academia Sinica (Taiwan), and the Ministry of Education (Taiwan)Asian Studie

Fragmented authoritarianism and politics of hydropower in China : case studies of TGP & NRP

Thanks for economic improvements since the ‘open-door policy’ in 1978; China’s international status has been improving economically and even politically. For instance, she has become a major contributor of BRIC which is a group of four most rapidly developing countries in the world, i.e. Brazil, Russia, India and China, and the largest buyer of U.S. treasury bonds in the world. Nevertheless, a number of intellectuals like Liu and Shirk pointed out that there are still a number of difficulties – both exogenous and endogenous – underneath.1 This research would like to concentrate on one of the aspects which Chinese investigators frequently highlighted: the hydropower development. This thesis will concentrate on the most controversial dam construction projects in China – Three Gorges Project in central China and the Nu River Project in Yunnan (hereafter abbreviate as ‘TGP’ and ‘NRP’ respectively) to examine the roles, influences and linkages of several critical actors in midst of decision-making processes – i.e. central leadership, provincial governments and the civil society in diverse perspectives. By utilizing the model of ‘Fragmented Authoritarianism’ (hereafter abbreviate as ‘FA’) suggested by Kenneth Lieberthal, I argue that the central leadership is still the most critical stakeholder who determines the success or failure of mega hydropower development projects albeit the increasing decentralization and rapid emergence of environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the recent decades after economic liberalization of China. Besides, the thesis would sketch out the tactics of participating and negotiations in the policy making processes of local leaders and social organizations and explain the apparent deliberation for hydropower development of the central authorities and the abilities of social organizations to halt dam constructions in the latest NRP in spite of being the most deterministic stakeholder in the polity. In the end, I would summarize general findings and enrich the FA model to facilitate the predictability of the model after social and economic changes associated with economic reforms

Central-provincial Politics and Industrial Policy-making in the Electric Power Sector in China

In addition to the studies that provide meaningful insights into the complexity of technical and economic issues, increasing studies have focused on the political process of market transition in network industries such as the electric power sector. This dissertation studies the central–provincial interactions in industrial policy-making and implementation, and attempts to evaluate the roles of Chinese provinces in the market reform process of the electric power sector. Market reforms of this sector are used as an illustrative case because the new round of market reforms had achieved some significant breakthroughs in areas such as pricing reform and wholesale market trading. Other policy measures, such as the liberalization of the distribution market and cross-regional market-building, are still at a nascent stage and have only scored moderate progress. It is important to investigate why some policy areas make greater progress in market reforms than others. It is also interesting to examine the impacts of Chinese central-provincial politics on producing the different market reform outcomes. Guangdong and Xinjiang are two provinces being analyzed in this dissertation. The progress of market reforms in these two provinces showed similarities although the provinces are very different in terms of local conditions such as the stages of their economic development and energy structures. The actual reform can be understood as the outcomes of certain modes of interactions between the central and provincial actors in the context of their particular capabilities and preferences in different policy areas. This dissertation argues that market reform is more successful in policy areas where the central and provincial authorities are able to engage mainly in integrative negotiations than in areas where they engage mainly in distributive negotiations

Essays on China’s Political Organization and Political Economic Institutions

The present dissertation is a compilation of three individual papers, and an introduction chapter. While the introduction lays out the theoretic backdrop of the project as a whole, the papers represent interventions into three specific dimensions of China’s Party-state order: structural organizational issues, decision-making institutions, and political economic dynamics. These three dimensions are presented as aspects of the same political organizational order, a Party-state order assembled around the hegemony of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC), conceptualized in the introduction using a Gramsci-inspired theory of the state. Employing a historical institutional approach, the three papers engage with specific strands of literatures of China Studies in a conceptual and theoretic manner, while also contributing with empirical findings. They discuss the concept of Fragmented Authoritarianism (FA), the organization and institutionalization of Leading Small Groups, and the social embeddedness of state-owned enterprise (SOE). FA has been an influential concept to explain structural issues of China’s bureaucracy, and with China’s energy administration as example, I review its value as a theoretic notion today, 30 years after its inception. Discussing the growing importance of Leading Small Groups, the second paper addresses some of the institutional “fixes” to decisionmaking and policy coordination, which have evolved in response to structural fault-lines described in the FA paper. The third paper takes the dissertation into the political economic dimension of the Party-state order, providing a case study of how China National Petroleum Corporation, a central, state-owned and CPC led SOE, is organizationally rooted in its local operations, remaining institutionally embedded in local society through its legacy as a socialist work unit (danwei). Using Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness, the paper reveals how SOEs are split into two tiers each tasked with the respective objectives of economic development and political stability, and thus as Party-state organizations are used to flexibly support CPC hegemony

Contested constitutionalism: constitutionalization in contemporary China

This thesis was written on the constitutional changes of contemporary China, with the 1982 Constitution as the object of researches. This constitution is the currently valid constitution in China, and is expected by constitutional scholars to be put in “juridification”. However, for thirty years since its birth, this task is yet to be realized. What is more, the claim of “judicialization of the constitution” as Chinese legal constitutionalists held especially during the 1990s, is now contested by emergent constitutional schools as one of many constitutions in China. They are arguing that China’s constitutional reality should not be colonized by the Western-originated constitutional science –classical constitutionalism. Having perceived the critical merits of China’s new constitutional schools, this thesis is wary of confirming unconditionally the other end of arguments, namely, applying critical theories to condense into “constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics”. The use of “constitutionalism” to describe the Chinese model, however, should be examined against whether it has indeed resolved the material problems in China’s constitutionalization, or is merely an inflationary application of the terminology. If China’s legal constitutionalism is seen as implanting formalism of Hayekian theory in service of global capitalism, in the second-generation constitutional discourse, have we opted out of this mentality and re-constituted ourselves? Constitutionalization in contemporary China hence is a complex issue covering the grounds of institutional, political as well as conceptual controversies, more than a practical issue of applicable mechanisms. The conceptual arguments on “what is constitutional” are especially challenging to classical constitutionalism, when combined with “identity politics” and “constitutional pluralism”. Between the material and conceptual level, I am insisting that the ‘democratic deficit’ caused by China’s 1990s economic reforms and the market mentality still needs a redress, before we could render its hybrid outcomes as “constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics”

Rapid Growth amid Failed Policies: Market Transition, Industrial Policy, and the Paradoxical Success of China's Auto Industry.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017

When the Wells Ran Dry: A Treadmill Analysis of Political Capitalism and Environmental Degradation in the Minqin Oasis

My dissertation is a case study examining how changes in land tenure and taxation policies created underdevelopment in the region worst affected by desertification in China: the Minqin oasis in the Gansu province. I argue that the tragedy of the commons occurred due to the significant decline in institutional credibility of land tenure in the oasis, driven by central-local tensions embedded in a tax farming system. My dissertation discusses the concepts of political capitalism and its application to the changing roles of the communist state on resource management during the collective and tax reform eras in China. I first examined the environmental history of the oasis, showing the intricate yet repetitive pattern of interactions between the state extraction policy and the ecology of the oasis from the 14th century to the communist collective era. I then used Weber’s analysis of center-periphery relations to dissect the treadmill of production in a politically-oriented capitalist regime. I show that the institutional disarray in the 1980s created a fiscal crisis that pushed the central government to decentralize public goods provisions. Under constant pressure to increase tax revenues, the unitary bureaucracy intensified the collection of unregulated fees and levies from farmers. They also encouraged cash-cropping in massive land reclamation projects by contracting the rights for use of wastelands and the groundwater underneath. Local state agents prohibited the traditional customs of water-sharing among villagers and operated higher tax rates in mutually cultivated areas as compared to privately reclaimed areas. The disruption of productive relations reduced the institutional credibility of land rights among the peasantry and, together with the ever-increasing need to accumulate capital for industrialized farming, created the homo economicus and corporatist state in the ecological catastrophe. In conclusion, I discuss how the case study of Minqin adds to the vibrant literature about the treadmill of accumulation theory in environmental sociology, and the impact of institutional transformation in post-socialist societies on nature is also discussed. The data came from an 18 month-long ethnography, 157 oral history interviews conducted with three generations of peasants living in the Minqin oasis, and 7,237 policy documents gathered from provincial and county record offices in northwestern China. Data gathering was completed in 2013

Persistent powers: party politics, commercialisation, and the transformation of China s state publishing industry

China's media have undergone significant commercialisation since the introduction of the economic reforms initiated three decades ago. But how this process is unfolding is still not well discussed. Book publishing, the oldest media sector but the one least studied, has been in the forefront of media commercialisation and provides a useful vantage point for the investigation of this transformation. This thesis will examine the role of the party-state and the market during the commercialisation of state publishing, paying particular attention to the core processes of conglomeration and corporatisation and, since the party-state has also been decentralised, to the role of regional government. Drawing on original documentary research and primary data generated in an internship in a provincial publishing group, this thesis advances three main arguments. Firstly, that the process of commercialisation in publishing cannot be fully understood outside of the transformation of the wider economic and political context, especially the shift in the general organisation of industry and the evolution of party ideology. Secondly, that this process has been marked by persistent tensions and contradictions. And thirdly, that despite the ongoing commercialisation the publishing industry remains controlled predominantly by the party-state and is far from being a market-driven business. Decentralisation may have enabled local governments to gain strong control over the economics of local publishers, but the central party-state remains dominant on political issues

China’s Foreign Policy in the ‘Going Out’ Era: An Analysis of China’s Zambia Policy

This dissertation analyses Chinese foreign policymaking in the context of Sino-Zambian relations in the ‘Going Out’ era (1997-2022). China’s foreign policymaking system tends to be regarded as a ‘black box’ by foreign observers, owing to their limited access to it. In particular, Western researchers’ ability to understand Chinese foreign policymaking is stymied by impediments such as language barriers and difficulties in gaining access to key actors inside the system. Unusually in this context, this dissertation presents the findings of twelve elite interviews with senior officials that shed new light on the Chinese foreign policymaking process. Situated theoretically within a fragmented authoritarianism framework that rejects the conventional image of Chinese foreign policymaking as centralised, top-down, and highly coordinated, the dissertation instead explores how Chinese foreign policy is made “on the ground,” with all the messiness, confusion, and contradictions this entails. In the process, the dissertation develops the concept of “policy lagging” in order to explain some of the notable failures of China’s foreign policy when it comes to Zambia. It finds that China’s foreign policymaking system is surprisingly ineffective at coordinating the various actors involved in the process. Furthermore, communication between those actors is compromised by a system of policy-related information flows that is not fit for purpose. China’s foreign policymaking system proves to be insufficiently proactive: policy adoptions are slow to occur, and important matters escalate before resolutions can be found. These problems are exacerbated by policymakers’ willingness to justify policy failures and their unwillingness to make timely policy adaptions