A comprehensive up-to-date overview of China's local administration has been long overdue. The publication of this book is timely because local government reforms and further decentralization are on the agenda of the 12th Five-Year Plan with the project to extend the successful local business and governance models of the coastal provinces to the hinterland. This book sets benchmarks in regards to what is required knowledge about the history, structure and complexity of China's local administrative and institutional infrastructure.
Jae Ho Chung and Tao-Chiu Lam's edited volume presents an overview of China's local administration from a governmental perspective. The nine chapters that follow Jae Ho Chung's introduction cover the traditional subdivisions of local government: province, centrally administered city, ethnic autonomous region, prefecture, county and township. Two additional chapters cover the newly emerged subdivisions of deputy provincial city and urban district. Ray Yep's chapter on the Hong Kong SAR reflects a useful and interesting Hong Kong perspective. The contributors of the PRC chapters rely to varying degrees on a balance of international research published in English and studies and policy documents which reflect a Chinese academic and government perspective. All chapters trace their local subdivision back in history and through the different stages of the PRC.
The volume includes predominantly descriptive chapters on the four centrally administered cities and the ethnic autonomous regions. Other chapters in this volume open the way for further inquiry which Jae Ho Chung foreshadows in his introduction: urbanization, hierarchy, local government incentives, path dependency, restructuring and local political legitimization. Some of the chapters make outstanding contributions to this agenda and to emerging new fields of research.
John Donaldson opens his chapter on provinces with a table comparing population, size and purchasing power parity GDP per capita of China's provinces with other countries. His chapter, which includes a summary of different aspects of decentralization, illustrates the complexity and diversity of China's provinces and dispenses with the preconception that China's centralized governance can be equated with uniformity. Provinces are not equal; the relationship between provinces and the centre is not a zero-sum game; different provinces have different degrees of autonomy in policy making; they have incentives to grow their economies and to compete against each other; they interact with cities in promoting economic growth; and they are unlikely to press for a federalist system in spite of informal fiscal federalism.
Chung's chapter on deputy provincial cities helpfully places the various levels of cities with special planning and administrative rights into their hierarchical context. He shows how these cities which operate outside the constitutional framework add levels of complexity to China's market economy through different and competing planning, local revenue raising and project approval. This is one of the chapters which, by linking economic transformation and public service provision, add to our understanding of China's complex institutional infrastructure.
Shiuh-Shen Chien's chapter on prefecture-level administration similarly acknowledges the importance of informality and competitive policy implementation in the interest of local economic growth. However, in line with the administrative logic which informs this book, he differentiates between positive and negative competition arguing that the former leads to administrative co-operation and the latter potentially to a race to the bottom.
Tao-Chiu Lam's chapter on the county moves another step further by including aspects of governance which are less emphasized in other chapters. In particular he points to the disconnection between revenue collection and assignment of expenditure responsibilities and the resulting financial crisis at county and township level.
Yang Zhong argues that townships have always been in a difficult situation between the county level above extending its formal reach and the demand for flexibility from below. He rightfully makes the point that the township level represents the practical interface between policies and local implementation. However, this chapter also shows the limitations of the focus on formal structures alone. Townships have thrived in the informal spheres from TVE privatization and extra-budgetary revenues which are not covered in this chapter.
A final useful chapter on urban districts by Tao-Chiu Lam and Carlos Wing-Hung Lo rounds off the book. This chapter points to things to come with the increasing expansion of cities, the conversion of rural areas into industrial districts and administrative streamlining. It is to the credit of the editors that these aspects have been included at a time when the final shape and role of these administrative subdivisions is far from clear if not controversial.
This book takes a major step towards a theory of Chinese governance which is still some way off. The next step could be an equally thorough and comprehensive overview of the dynamic aspects of China's local governance. A dynamic analysis based on what this volume reveals about the flexibility, informality and seeming inconsistencies of China's local governments and administration would explore the economic rationale operating at local level, which we know from its results but do not fully understand. The question would be: how has local administration co-evolved with local economies? The current volume defines the administrative framework. It will be an indispensible research and reference tool for anyone interested in China's local government, public administration, provision of public services and political reform.
