What Drives the Local Chinese State, and What Explains China’s (Uneven) Economic Growth? Authoritarianism, Neoliberalism, and Party-state Entrepreneurialism

Keywords: China, state, governance, authoritarianism, entrepreneurialism, neoliberalism
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

China’s decades long economic growth and its political institutions have raised two crucial questions: 1) what drives the behavior of the multi-scalar Chinese state and 2) what explains China’s overall and spatially uneven economic growth. A common answer, usually associated with the so-called ‘promotion tournament’ thesis and ‘regionally decentralized authoritarianism’ thesis, is that China’s national economic growth and subnational variations are explained by fierce inter-jurisdictional competition orchestrated by local party-state officials who are motivated by a career concern of promotion which is benchmarked by their demonstrated performance in boosting local economic growth. Such neoclassical or Weberian conceptulizations have frequently been echoed by Marxian capitalist state theory, in the name of neoliberalization, ‘urban entrepreneurialism’, ‘state rescaling’, and ‘state entrepreneurialism’ though the emphasis is placed instead on class domination and exploitation. Grounded on a state-in-society perspective, and informed by empirical evidence and the comparative politics literature on regime types, political survival, political settlements, political coalitions, and political factions, in this paper we argue that the Chinese authoritarian party-state is sturutured by both formal institutions and informal patron-client networks. Party-state officials at all levels are motivated by both loyalty and competency concerns, which may be neither mutually compatible nor productivity-enhancing. The coalition building of bureaucrats may involve both upper-level patronage building and local-level community building, generating local heterogeneity in governance. Finally, economic growth may be propelled by both state participation and state withdrawal, and enabled by contingent domestic variables (e.g., demographic structure) and favorable international contexts, many of which are now turning unfavorable.