Chinese Law and Politics Blog

Publication: Riots and Cover-Ups: Counterproductive Control of Local Agents in China

Chinese cadre responsibility systems are a core element of Chinese law and governance. These top-down personnel systems set concrete target goals linked to official salaries and career advancement. Judges and courts face annual targets for permissible numbers of mediated, reversed, and closed cases; Communist Party secretaries and government bureaus face similar targets for allowable numbers of protests, traffic accidents, and mine disasters. For many local Chinese officials, these targets have a much more direct impact on their behavior than do formal legal and regulatory norms.

This Article argues that Chinese authorities are dependent on responsibility systems, particularly their use of strict, vicarious, and collective liability principles, as an institutional tool to address pervasive principal-agent problems they face in governing a large authoritarian bureaucracy. But excessive reliance on these methods to control local officials ironically fuels governance problems that Chinese central leaders seek to address. Central Chinese authorities do not want township officials colluding to falsify tax records or engaging in ill-conceived development projects that waste central funds. Nor do they want rural residents burning down government buildings or staging mass petitions to Beijing to protest the actions of local officials. But these are direct results of cadre evaluation systems that Chinese authorities use to govern their local agents.

Continued reliance on responsibility systems as a tool of governance raises significant conflicts with the legal reforms that Chinese authorities have pursued since 1978. And recent developments suggest that central Chinese authorities may be backing away from their efforts to govern China, and their local agents, through law and legal institutions. At least some leaders appear to favor an alternative strategy - strengthening the role of responsibility systems as a tool for monitoring their local agents. This is a fundamental conflict over the core question of how to govern China. How it is resolved will have lasting implications for China’s domestic evolution and stability. 

[This article will appear in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (2009)]

Position: Professional Staff Member, Congressional-Excutive Commission on China

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) is currently soliciting resumes for professional staff members in Washington, D.C., working on Chinese human rights and rule of law issues.  Applicants must be U.S. citizens.

Position: Intern, Congressional-Executive Commission on China

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China is currently soliciting resumes for spring internships (paid) in Washington, D.C., working on Chinese human rights and rule of law issues.  Interns must be U.S. citizens.

Position: Fellow/Senior Fellow, China Law Center, Yale Law School

The China Law Center at Yale Law School is currently soliciting resumes for an open position of Fellow or Senior Fellow, working on Chinese law and policy reform.

Position: Intern, Congressional-Executive Commission on China

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China is currently soliciting resumes for fall internships (paid) in Washington, D.C., working on Chinese human rights and rule of law issues.  Interns must be U.S. citizens.

Position: Program Associate, Human Rights in China

Human Rights in China (HRIC) is soliciting applications for a program associate, to be based in HRIC's Hong Kong office.

Article: Chinese Civil Society In Transition

The last three decades have altered the relationship between state and society in China. Market reforms have undermined the state-run communes and work units that dominated the social and economic lives of Chinese citizens before 1978. Economic growth has increased citizens’ financial resources and their leisure time. Chinese civil society has grown as a result. Citizens are founding new organisations to protect their natural environment and cultural heritage, and they are reinvigorating traditional ones such as temple or clan associations.

What is the attitude of the Chinese state toward civil society? Deep ambivalence. On the one hand, Chinese officials want to see citizens organise themselves to address a range of pressing problems, particularly given the limited resources of the state. On the other hand, Party authorities remain concerned about the emergence of social institutions outside their control, fearing these might emerge as political challenges to their authority.

[This article appeared in Issue 47 (Summer 2009) of the China Review]

Op-Ed: Back and Forth From Beijing

Imagine that you are the leader of the largest country in the world. What is your biggest day-to-day problem? Your own underlings.

How can you be sure that they do what you want? How can you guarantee that they don’t flagrantly disobey your directives, or worse, rob you blind?

In China’s authoritarian system, this is trickier than it looks. Political power at each level of the bureaucratic hierarchy is centralized in the hands of a small group of Communist Party officials. If they want to choke off information to Beijing and cover up their own corruption or incompetence they have the tools to do so.

[The full version of this op-ed appeared May 29 on the New York Times website and in the May 30 print version of the International Herald Tribune]  

Position: Program Assistant, China Environment Forum

The China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center is soliciting applications for a Program Assistant, to be based in Washington, DC.  

Position: Resident Director (China), NDI

The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) is soliciting applications for a resident director to manage its mainland China programs, to be based in Hong Kong.