Under Mao Zedong, central power for the first time penetrated into China's villages by means of the Party organizations that had been installed at the very foundations of rural society. An Chen's comprehensive account of the transformation of rural governance in China reveals that, notwithstanding the persisting rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this period of communist rural governance could be coming to an end. The old conundrum of how to govern the vast Chinese countryside would seem to have surfaced once more.
Chen argues that not only marketization and social transformation, but first of all the central government's own rural reform policies – in particular, the tax-for-fee reform in 2002–04 and the abolition of agricultural taxes in 2005–06 – have contributed to the decline of political authority in China's villages. Against the background of village cadres' shrinking redistributive and administrative powers, he scrutinizes changes in the functions, agendas and agents of authority in villages. He specifically emphasizes the search for new revenues and ways of “attracting investment” as the new primary functions of village governments and the fact that, in more and more places, traditional cadres are being substituted by “entrepreneur cadres” who are simultaneously party-state cadres and private entrepreneurs.
These two trends are not new. The spread of entrepreneur cadres gained momentum in the late 1990s, and the prioritizing of economic development among local cadres has also long been evident. By approaching the transformation of governance from multiple perspectives, ranging from political power structures and policies to the fiscal system and socio-economic conditions, however, Chen shows how, since the abolition of agricultural taxes, these trends have intensified in a way that allows a new mode or pattern of governance to be discerned in rural China. To substantiate his argument, Chen draws on extensive empirical data that he collected during a time span of eleven years (2002–13) on numerous field trips to a total of 80 villages in 54 townships located in eight of China's provinces, including not only 400 interviews with individuals but also a questionnaire that separately addressed village leaders and other villagers.
The decline in the village cadres' redistributive power began as soon as the market started to play a greater role in the rural economy and the barriers to migration were lowered. However, as Chen explains in detail in chapter three, only the tax reform of 1994, which revised the rules for tax sharing to the advantage of the central government, gave rise to the serious fiscal crisis in the countryside that later prompted the leadership to completely reorient its rural policy goals. Townships, in particular, as the lowest formal administrative level in the Chinese party-state, were strongly affected by the crisis and turned to the villages to squeeze out more funds. Marketization and the abolition of agricultural taxes further shrank their budgets and cut down their workload, leaving many townships in traditional agricultural regions paralyzed; even the responsibilities of those in more affluent regions were ill-defined (chapter four).
Much of the structural dilemma faced by townships is mirrored in villages, which are the focus of the following chapters. The financial crisis demoralized many village cadres and weakened their political authority as a result of their inability to provide public goods, and the abolition of agricultural taxes further decreased their administrative capacity to organize and mobilize villagers. One of the many merits of this study is that our attention is directed towards the political impact of the abolition of agricultural taxes in villages. The case studies provide fascinating details about the cadres' disorientation after being relieved of their main task of tax collection, their reorientation towards attracting investment, often in collaboration with the township government, and, eventually, growing cadre–peasant disengagement.
Wondering why the regime has not “salvaged” but rather seems inclined to “sacrifice” village cadre power, Chen assumes that the diminishing role played by village cadres in rural governance is, in fact, part of the strategy employed by the central government to adapt CCP rule in the countryside to the new socioeconomic landscape. Since the central government's self-perceived legitimacy among the peasantry has attenuated concerns about the loss of control over the peasantry, maintaining social stability by continuing the economic development and improvement of rural living conditions has become the regime's central concern. Under these circumstances, the fact that, as Chen shows, private entrepreneurs are still increasingly interested in and may benefit from village cadre positions, no longer seems to worry the central leadership. Entrepreneur cadres tend to appear as a cost-effective solution for replenishing village governance with entrepreneurial expertise and new sources of authority, even if this authority is mainly private and the relationship to the regime more cooperative than subordinate.
The Transformation of Governance in Rural China is a truly comprehensive work on the reconfiguration of authority in the countryside that does not dismiss the variety of village governance in China today. Not all parts of this densely written book are easily accessible and some, more recent, policy developments are not considered, but having said this, the multi-disciplinary approach and the utilization of a great quantity of first- and second-hand data makes it a highly valuable reference book on rural governance during recent decades for both scholars and advanced students alike. Furthermore, it will stimulate the debate on the Chinese party-state's capacity to govern in the countryside and provoke further research on the CCP's new mechanisms of control for the changing rural society.
