May 27 2006
Centralization vs. Decentralization
China’s “Soft” Centralization: Shifting Tiao/Kuai Authority Relations, by Andrew C. Mertha
counter “local protectionism” and establish standardization in policy implementation
Tiao, Kuai, Commercial and Regulatory Agencies
The makeup of administrative power: personnel, nomenklatura, BianZhi, Charts of relationship.
CCGO, jigou bianzhi weiyuanhui or bianwei
“two distinct avenues of fee collection”(shouzhi liangtiao xian)
Moreover, the principal beneficiaries of this shift to centralized management are the provinces, not Beijing.
Book Review: Beyond that, some of the authors perhaps take the claims of the Chinese state too much at face value – one example (p. 227) is the acceptance of the government’s claim to have cut coal production by 250 million tons in 1999–2000, whereas many scholars in China now believe that output in fact continued at much the same level throughout. Officials were responding to incentives and instructions to cut production by reporting production cuts but not by actually implementing them.