Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County

By Jean C. Oi and Steven Goldstein

China has undergone dramatic change in its economic institutions in recent years, but surprisingly little change politically. Somehow, the political institutions seem capable of governing a vastly more complex market economy and a rapidly changing labor force. One possible explanation, examined in Zouping Revisited, is that within the old organizational molds there have been subtle but profound changes to the ways these governing bodies actually work. The authors take as a case study the local government of Zouping County and find that it has been able to evolve significantly through ad hoc bureaucratic adaptations and accommodations that drastically change the operation of government institutions.

Zouping has long served as a window into local-level Chinese politics, economy, and culture. In this volume, top scholars analyze the most important changes in the county over the last two decades. The picture that emerges is one of institutional agility and creativity as a new form of resilience within an authoritarian regime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Feb 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781503604551

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Preface

Mike Oksenberg and Zouping: An Appreciation

Steven M. Goldstein

Mike Oksenberg and Zouping County enjoyed a love affair that lasted from the 1980s until Oksenberg’s death in 2001. This book represents the continuing legacy of that affair as well as the fruits of his efforts to start and sustain the project that resulted.

As the recent declassification and publication of the documents relating to the administration of President Jimmy Carter amply demonstrate, Mike Oksenberg played a major role in pushing forward the mutual recognition of the United States and the People’s Republic of China.¹ Although he had no previous government service, he plunged into the Washington bureaucracy and served from 1977 to 1980 with the same kind of energy and enthusiasm that had made him a successful teacher of Chinese politics. And he did so with the same commitment that drove his teaching—to build Sino-American relations on a firm base of mutual understanding. Thus, even as he addressed the nature of the evolving political relationship, he sought to use his connections with the Chinese to lay the basis for intellectual exchanges between the two nations.

One result of his efforts was an agreement with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to permit American researchers to live in and do research in the county seat as well as a number of open villages in Zouping beginning in 1987.² A broad range of issues related to rural China were permitted, access to archives was granted, and the use of questionnaires and interviews was allowed. American scholars had a research perch (even a specially constructed guest house in a village) from which to observe the dramatic changes that were taking place in post-Mao China. Most of the first researchers were students of Oksenberg’s who were convinced that rural China was the real China and that the only way to truly know it was to live in the countryside. As he put it to one party cadre in Zouping, I am an American scholar studying China. If you want to understand China, you must understand the Chinese countryside. To understand Shanghai and Beijing is not the same as understanding China.³ Over time other scholars also began doing research in Zouping. According to one Chinese source, as of 2009 more than two hundred scholars had done work in Zouping.⁴

However, Oksenberg’s attraction to the countryside stemmed from more than its research value. Oksenberg’s parents were Polish Jews who had fled the Nazis and settled on farms, first in Virginia and then in Florida. He considered himself to be very much a product of—and a part of—the culture of rural America as evinced by his fanatical devotion to country and western music and his surprising knowledge of agricultural economics.

This background was reflected in his research interests. His PhD thesis was a carefully detailed study of water conservancy campaigns in China, and much of his subsequent scholarship was focused on the nitty-gritty of how the Chinese bureaucracy and local leadership were managed. In many ways, his research trajectory followed that of his adviser and intellectual mentor, A. Doak Barnett, who, even while he wrote broad-brush studies of Chinese foreign and domestic policy, often returned to his roots as a newspaper correspondent to write careful, detailed studies of the Chinese political system. The most prominent of these was Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in China,⁵ which is probably the most detailed treatment of the Chinese political system on the eve of the Cultural Revolution drawn from extensive interviews with cadres who had left China.

Having played a key role in establishing Zouping as a research site, Mike Oksenberg not only sent his students but he also began his own research project that would eventually bring him back six times in eleven years. Most of these visits were neither ceremonial nor superficial. As the Chinese expression goes, it was not a matter of viewing the flowers from horseback (走马观花). With visits ranging from two weeks to nearly two months, Oksenberg was able to investigate topics in depth.

One has only to read through the more than a thousand pages of notes that he took during his major research visits from 1988 to 1999 to see this. During his stays in Zouping, Oksenberg met with officials at every level, from the county to the village, as well as managers of economic enterprises. The protocols of these interviews are simply staggering in the amount of detail that they contain. True to his roots as a student of Barnett’s, Oksenberg clearly intended to chart and understand as much as possible about the inner workings of the party-state bureaucracy.

Almost every interview begins with an outline of the organization of the unit being visited and the number of officials currently serving, their age, background, and so forth. There are detailed discussions of the responsibilities of the unit and how they may or may not have evolved as a result of economic and political changes that Zouping had undergone. Having established the basics, Oksenberg would pursue themes that are typical of his other works, such as bureaucratic conflicts, overlapping responsibility, relations with the party, vertical and horizontal authority relations (条/块), and how budgets are set. There was no organization apparently considered too unimportant to be fully explored once he met with it. In an interview with the Cultural Bureau, he discussed the books in the library as well as the selection criteria used (for example, no books on Molotov cocktails would be available).⁶

Although the coverage is not complete, the notes cover some units or organizations that are visited one or more times in subsequent years, thus providing some longitudinal data. In other cases, one can trace the changing economy or ecology as beer and cotton production begin to emerge or water conservancy projects develop. The important role of township and village enterprises during the late 1980s and the 1990s is chronicled, as are the beginnings of privatization at the end of the twentieth century. There is considerable data on budgets, taxation, and the banking system as well as the development of the village election system.

Finally, reading through the notes, one can sense how Oksenberg’s familiarity with Zouping deepened over time, resulting in increasingly probing and substantive questions about bureaucratic behavior. Also, one has the sense that the candor displayed by his interlocutors increased over time, as did his access to what might be considered more sensitive organizations such as the Communist Party. In part this was undoubtedly a result of growing mutual familiarity, but it seems also to be the result of Oksenberg’s vigorous efforts to build rapport with his interlocutors and the awareness on the part of officials of the benefits of foreign researchers in Zouping.

When Oksenberg arrived in Zouping, his prominent role in Sino-American relations and in creating the research site was well known. Yet from the beginning, Oksenberg made obvious efforts to build rapport with Zouping officials. For example, as the Zouping project was taking shape, the head of the county’s Foreign Affairs Office, Shi Changxiang, was told to travel to Beijing to meet with Oksenberg concerning the future project. In a remembrance Shi Changxiang wrote the following:

Since he had not met with him before, Shi Changxiang thought: since he was once a high official in the United States, might he not be an arrogant guy? When he saw him, Oksenberg limped over and hugged him tightly, saying, I am honored to see my new friend, and slapped him on the back. At that time Shi Changxiang was suffering from shingles and was very sore. This slap made the pain more unbearable. However, because of this action, he felt that Oksenberg was, after all, a good guy. . . .

While chatting, Shi Changxiang called him professor. He said, You don’t have to call me that. . . . I am an American devil (美国鬼子) who can speak Chinese.

Such a small joke eased the tension and narrowed the difference between the two sides.⁷

Oksenberg’s activities reflect similar efforts to diminish the distance between himself and the individuals he met in Zouping. This involved bicycle rides with stops to chat with local farmers (those of us who have been to Zouping marvel that he could understand anything); compulsory banquets accompanied by innumerable toasts; talks on topics such as environmental issues or Sino-American relations; the proffering of advice on a wide range of subjects ranging from beer manufacturing to waste management to suggested linkages with foreign corporations; and so forth.⁸

Such advice was, of course, a part of the benefit that Zouping gained from the visits by Oksenberg and other scholars. Deng Xiaoping’s open-door policy was developing, and the foreign researchers provided a useful window on an unfamiliar world. However, they also provided a vehicle by which Zouping could increase its visibility to, and contacts with, the outside world. At the end of a dinner in 1996, the first party secretary bid farewell to Oksenberg with the request that he publicize Zouping to the outside world. Of course, by the time Oksenberg made his final visit, the Chinese media itself had taken up the cause of promoting Zouping. Zouping had gone from a relatively average rural area in China to one of the most prosperous and was touted by the media as such.⁹

However, Oksenberg didn’t need any encouragement to promote Zouping. For those of us who knew him, the descriptions of his tireless research and affection for Zouping reflected in Chinese sources should come as no surprise. His attachment to the county stemmed from more than a proprietary interest in an institution that he helped to establish; this was clearly an emotional attachment that seemed to be rooted in Zouping’s rural environment and its resonance with what Oksenberg felt was the essence of historical China. He considered it to be his second home (第二故乡), and the special bond that he seemed to have with the county was apparently reciprocated by those whom he encountered in Zouping who spoke of him with unusual warmth after his death.

Thus, it was no coincidence that when Sino-American relations worsened and the Zouping program was suspended in the wake of the June 1989 events, Oksenberg traveled to Zouping in August despite the temporary suspension of the program. According to Chinese sources, he spoke of the dangers of mutual isolation and misunderstanding, assuring the Foreign Affairs Office that the exchange program would continue the following year.¹⁰ It did, and it continued well into the 1990s as Oksenberg actively encouraged graduate students and faculty to travel there and experience the real China. At the same time, his commitment to creating an authoritative record of the events of June 1989, which he described as the most dramatic political struggle in the People’s Republic of China since the Cultural Revolution, and to offering what he called a testimony to its tragic climax, is well-documented.¹¹ In Zouping, however, he saw hope for the future of Sino-American relations.

However, Oksenberg’s most successful effort at promoting Zouping to the outside world came with the visit of President Jimmy Carter to the county. According to his interpreter, Oksenberg had been asked by officials to assist in promoting economic growth, but he demurred, saying that he was not qualified to do so. Rather, he said he would bring President Carter to Zouping, and he did so in July 1997. Not only did Zouping exploit the visit to publicize its own vibrant economy, but upon his return, Carter wrote an op-ed in the New York Times warning against demonizing China.¹²

The most important project that Oksenberg committed himself to was the writing of a monograph that would trace the economic and political development of Zouping during the reform era based on the extensive data he had accumulated as a result of his research trips. However, in the summer of 2000, he learned that he was suffering from advanced-stage cancer and would not live long enough to undertake that project. When Mike broke the news of his illness to Jean Oi, who was by then his colleague at Stanford, his major concern was not for himself but for his inability to see the Zouping volume through to completion.

In the fall of that same year, Mike called together Jean Oi, Andrew Walder, and myself to discuss the Zouping project. Walder had already organized one book project that published some of the research findings of the Zouping project.¹³ Oksenberg hoped that we could somehow continue his project and chart the trajectory of the Zouping political economy during the reform era. It was a request to which it was difficult to say no. But it was equally difficult to see how any one person could recapitulate and advance the ambitious research agenda that Oksenberg’s notebooks reflected.

However, Jean Oi had a number of graduate students, some of whom had studied with Oksenberg and served as his research or teaching assistants and who either had done work in Zouping or were on the verge of beginning their field research. In addition, of course, there were some first-generation Zouping scholars, such as herself, who had worked with Oksenberg. After distributing relevant parts of the Oksenberg notes to potential paper writers, the outlines of a book project focusing on different aspects of change in Zouping and using the Oksenberg notes for background was planned. While some of the authors in the volume explicitly draw more heavily on the notes than others, for all authors Oksenberg’s notes provided an essential context for understanding the county as it was and as it has evolved.

The organizers received generous support from the Smith-Richardson Foundation for research trips, and the essays in this volume are the product of those researchers’ efforts. For yet another generation of scholars to continue Mike Oksenberg’s work in his beloved county is a fitting tribute to his efforts to establish and maintain this important base for American research on China.

Notes

1. David P. Nickels, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980,vol. 13, China (Washington, DC: US GPO, 2013), http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977–80v13 accessed September 15, 2013.

2. Prior to this the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China (CSCPRC) sent in two survey teams to assess the research conditions. Thomas Bernstein and Bob Geyer were sent in August 1985, followed by Guy Alitto and Thomas Gold in July 1986.

3. Zouping, wo dierh guxiang (Zouping my second home), http://www.sdqb.cn/show_1209.aspx, accessed September 21, 2013.

4. For more on the background to the project, see Field Research in Rural China: A Five Year Program, http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=59887, accessed September 25, 2013; Shandong Zouping: Waiguo ren guancha Zhongguo nongcun bianhua di chuangkou (Shandong Zouping: A window for foreigners to observe changes in rural China), http://www.laozhanyouwang.com/action-viewnews-itemid-1305, accessed September 4, 2013; and Xiangtu Zhongguo di Bianqian (Change in rural China), http://wenku.baidu.com/view/57ab6615c5da50e2534d7f0d.html, accessed August 15, 2013.

5. A. Doak Barnett, with Ezra Vogel, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967).

6. One of Oksenberg’s interpreters describes his research method in Aokesenboge yu Zouping kaocha (Oksenberg and Zouping surveys), http://blog.renren.com/share/232453794/8748640688, accessed September 15, 2013.

7. Shi Changxiang yi Aokesenbaoge (Shi Changxiang remembers Oksenberg), http://blog.renren.com/share/232453794/8748582552, accessed September 12, 2013.

8. See Lan Xinchen, Scholarly Retreat, http://www.bjreview.com.cn/quotes/txt/2008–12/23/content_171383.htm.

9. See Anne-Marie Brady, Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Lanham, MD: Rowen and Littlefield, 2008), 164–65.

10. Zouping, wodi dierh guxiang (Zouping, my second home), www.sdqb.cn/show_1209.aspx, accessed September 10, 2013.

11. See Michel Oksenberg, Lawrence R. Sullivan, and Marc Lambert, eds., Beijing Spring, 1989: Confrontation and Conflict: The Basic Documents (New York: M.E. Sharpe), xii.

12. Aokesenboge yu Zouping kaocha and Women jizhe Aokesenboge (We remember Oksenberg), http://news.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper148/20010318/class014800019/hwz339840.htm.

13. Andrew Walder, ed., Zouping in Transition: The Process of Reform in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

PART ONE

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Change within Continuity

Zouping County Government

Jean C. Oi and Steven M. Goldstein

Observers have often pointed out that China has undergone dramatic change in its economic institutions without corresponding changes in its political institutions. On the surface, this seems an obvious point. China remains a one-party state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The institutional structure and the formal organization of the government and party bureaucracies have changed little since the onset of economic reform. Yet the political institutions have so far seemed capable of governing a vastly more complex market economy that has a much more heterogeneous and rapidly changing labor force. Is it possible that China’s political institutions have somehow managed to cope despite remaining basically unreformed, or have there been more subtle and profound changes in the way that the existing organizational structures actually operate? This is the core question pursued in this book.

The research collected in this volume suggests that the old organizational structures in fact have come to operate in surprising new ways. Drawing on fieldwork at the lowest levels of the administrative bureaucracy in one Chinese county, this volume offers new insights into the adaptability of this communist one-party system. Such findings also may shed new light on the concept of authoritarian resilience, which has gained currency in the political science literature (with the case of China front and center) as many attempt to explain how economic change progresses seemingly without political reform.¹ Andrew Nathan’s seminal piece argues that it works through institutionalization, the creation of new mechanisms that address critical issues such as succession, promotion, functional specialization, and increased political participation.² Kellee Tsai builds on the institutional perspective by showing how new institutions come about, a process that she sees resulting in adaptive informal institutions, whereby the rules eventually change regarding actions or groups that were originally outside of the system.³ Ben Hillman takes a different direction to argue that it is in fact informal institutions, specifically patronage networks, that contributes to resilience.⁴ Others, such as Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth Perry, reject the focus on institutions, formal or informal, as too narrow and instead argue that one needs to look at unique policy mechanisms, especially at those that may precede the reform period, back to the Chinese Communist Party’s past.⁵ They argue that methods inherited from the guerrilla and revolutionary style of governance explain China’s success.

The search for answers is far from over. Our understanding of authoritarian systems remains incomplete, especially when it comes to China’s one-party state. While Nathan and Tsai shed light on how new institutions and agencies come into being, and Heilmann and Perry help explain how policy changes are more easily achieved in China than in other countries, both approaches pay far less attention to the adaptive capacities of the existing system. The first perspective is about subtracting or adding to existing institutions; the latter is about policy changes and their implementation. Some important new work is being done on how the state has managed to maintain a smaller core bureaucracy while reducing the size of the larger bureaucracy overall.⁶ Others worry that township governments have turned into hollow shells with fewer and fewer resources.⁷ Many unanswered questions remain about what has happened within China’s existing institutional structure, inside the agencies of local government, after reductions are made and resources are taken away.

This volume looks inside existing institutions of local governance to see if and how they have evolved over time in response to changing economic and political contexts. We examine how a local government has been able to govern within a radically changed economic and political environment while the preexisting Leninist structure remains. The fundamental finding that emerges is that China’s economic reforms and growth have not only affected incomes and quality of life but have significantly changed ways of governance, despite the fact that institutional forms of governance often appear unchanged.

Our approach recognizes the importance of informal relations, the existence of corruption, and the many problems facing local governments as China develops, but we argue that there is more to the story of governance, one that can easily be overlooked when one focuses only on the problems. That said, while none of the chapters focus on complaints that may lead to protests, a number of the chapters provide new insights into how local governments actually respond to problems and who in those governments are working to find solutions. Some might wonder whether our special relationship with the county limited our research and prevented us from probing informal relations and problems. On the contrary, because of good connections developed over the years, we sometimes gained privileged insights about problems in governance as we will discuss below. We seek to go beyond describing problems to analyze how the system has coped with challenges and adapted to the economic and political changes.

This volume describes ad hoc bureaucratic adaptations and accommodations that change the operation, if not the organizational form, of government institutions. In this process, existing agencies play new and unexpected roles. What emerges in this volume is a perspective close to what Martin Dimitrov calls adaptive institutional change.⁸ It is a story of how state agencies, faced with rapid and far-reaching economic changes that create new demands and challenges, are adapting, sometimes in a creative and entrepreneurial fashion, in the ways they carry out their functions and exercise their authority. The picture that emerges is one of institutional agility, with ongoing political change masked by outward continuity in formal organizations. Local government agencies have changed almost imperceptibly to meet new challenges.

A Window onto China: Zouping County, Shandong Province

Almost a decade after the policy of reform and opening was adopted, most places in China remained closed to foreign researchers. As Steven Goldstein’s preface details, through the efforts of Michel Oksenberg, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan who was serving on the staff of the White House National Security Council at the time of diplomatic normalization in 1979, an agreement was reached between the United States and China that provided an open field site for American researchers. That site was Zouping County in Shandong Province. Beginning in the mid-1980s, American researchers were allowed to conduct research in the county seat as well as in a number of open villages in Zouping County. Since then Zouping has provided a window on the changes that have been taking place at the local level. At least two hundred foreign scholars have been hosted by the county, and Zouping has been featured or used as a case in numerous studies.⁹ A representative collection of the first wave of research was published in Andrew Walder’s edited volume on Zouping, Zouping in Transition, almost two decades ago, which focused heavily on economic changes and their consequences during the earliest phase of market reform.¹⁰

In Walder’s 1998 volume, Zouping County was described as unexceptional in either the pace and nature of change . . . or in its historical and geographical endowments.¹¹ In the late 1980s, the county seat looked like so many others in rural China, with few automobiles, a limited road network, and little commercial development. The county government’s guest-house had limited modern facilities. A member of the service staff inquired every evening how many buckets of hot water would be needed for bathing the next morning. Each morning, a line of staff members would deliver the buckets of scalding hot water, which would be poured into the large bathtub, where the hot water could be mixed with the cold water from the faucet. International phone calls were possible but had to be placed and received at the front desk. The most imposing building in town was the three-story Russian-style concrete government and party headquarters, where the offices were poorly furnished and dimly lit, cooled in summer with fans. Officials, including bureau heads, lived in cramped government-owned apartments. A few lived in larger quarters, but the dwellings were rustic single-story structures, often with tamped-earth floors. The few passenger cars that existed belonged to the county or township governments. A few rich villages, like the one where foreign scholars lived when doing research in the countryside, also had cars. But that was the old Zouping soon after the beginning of the reforms.

Today, more than three decades later, Zouping is far from unexceptional. Its subsequent growth has made it nothing short of spectacular. By 2003 the county was officially ranked as one of the thirty richest within Shandong Province. In 2005 it ranked among the richest 100 counties nationally. In 2008 it became the second-richest county in Shandong and was ranked fifteenth nationally among small-and medium-size cities.

The new prosperity is reflected in the development of the county seat. It has become a bustling commercial entity with a wide array of shops, modern hotels, and restaurants. The restaurants, which serve a range of local and foreign cuisines, include a branch of a Taiwanese soy milk breakfast shop, a Brazilian steakhouse, and a French-style bakery that sells freshly made