Journal of Chinese governance 

About: Journal of Chinese governance is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): China & Computer science. It has an ISSN identifier of 2381-2346. Over the lifetime, 17 publications have been published receiving 15 citations. The journal is also known as: JCG.

To join the top and the bottom: the role of provincial governments in China's top-down policy diffusion

Abstract: Abstract The provincial governments in China and their impact on the policy adoption of county-level administrations remain understudied. This article contributes to the study of policy adoption by dividing the roles enacted by provincial governments into the four following types: subcontractor, pressure-giver, designer, and co-provider. It utilizes the event history analysis method to examine the effects of the four aforementioned roles on policy adoption by county-level governments on the Old Age Allowance Policy (OAAP). The results suggest that provinces playing the roles of designer, co-provider, and pressure-giver exert a significantly more positive impact on the acceptance of the OAAP by their county-level administrations than provinces performing as subcontractors. Meanwhile, the subcontractor-then-designer role exerts a negative influence on the espousal of the OAAP by county-level governments. These findings deliver a new theoretical account of the vertical approach to policy diffusion and offer substantive practical implications for social policy applications in hierarchical societies.

Pandemic control vs. economic recovery: understanding the dynamics of work and production resumption policy in local China

Abstract: Abstract How local governments respond to the COVID-19 pandemic has received much scholarly attention. The existing literature mainly focuses on epidemic prevention, while the contradictory policy goals of pandemic control and economic recovery are less investigated. How do local governments respond to such tasks with tension? This article approaches the question by analysing the policy divergence between central and local governments under the influence of the conflicting goals. Utilising an original dataset of policy divergence in work and production resumption policies between central and 244 municipal governments in China, this study finds that pandemic control is the priority of local governments, and the rationality-based logic rather than the capacity-based logic is followed by local leaders when formulating policy responses. The results extend the theoretical understanding of local governments’ policy response under pandemic conditions and provide a theoretical basis for better management of the pandemic in practice.

Property rights and market participation: evidence from the land titling program in rural China

Abstract: Abstract The incomplete and unstable property rights of farmland in rural China hinder the development of the nation’s farmland rental market. The Chinese government implemented a land titling program in 2008 and conducted several pilot programs in various provinces to remove the barriers resulting from ambiguous property rights. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this paper investigates the effects of rural land titling on market participation in rural China. First, we provide novel evidence regarding the impact of land titling on land market participation and investigate the heterogeneous wealth effects and geographic locations of land rental decisions. Second, we examine the endogeneity of land titling program implementation through empirical analysis. Our results indicate that clear and well-defined farmland property rights increase land rental activities and raise rental prices. We also find a significantly negative wealth effect in land transfer decisions, indicating that land titling encourages poorer farmers to rent out farmland. Land titling is found to promote land transfer, with the strongest effect in central China, and raise rental rates, with the largest increase in western China.

Participatory budgeting and the party: Generating ‘citizens orderly participation’ through party-building in Shanghai

Abstract: Abstract This article provides a qualitative examination of two cases of Participatory Budgeting (PB) in Shanghai – a long-running PB initiative in Minhang District, organised in cooperation with the District People’s Congress, and a one-off project in Yangjing Sub-district, Pudong, in 2017, jointly organised by a community foundation and residents’ committee. The article seeks to interrogate the relationship between the Party, state and society at the sub-municipal level through one ‘state-facing’ PB initiative and one ‘society-facing’ PB initiative. We reveal how PB is deeply embedded in Party structures and networks, formally in the case of Minhang and informally in the case of Yangjing. Our research contributes to three debates on participatory governance in urban China. Firstly, contrary to the existing literature, PB neither primarily ‘emancipates’ citizens nor off-loads budgetary decisions onto them; instead, PB contributes towards party-building and citizens’ orderly participation, thereby strengthening overall Party leadership. Secondly, we challenge the widely-used term ‘party-state’, instead separating out these three entities and showing how they serve distinct roles in grassroots governance innovations such as PB. Thirdly, we show how participatory mechanisms developed in one political and cultural context can have vastly differing effects when employed in another.

Roles of institutions and dynamic capability in the relationship between collaboration and performance in emergency management: evidence from 110 cases in Shanghai

Abstract: Abstract The existing research identifies that cross-organizational collaboration is important in the enhancement of emergency management. However, little effort has been made to empirically examine how collaboration contributes to emergency performance. Within this field lies a theoretical controversy that institutional arrangement and dynamic capability compete with each other to enhance emergency collaboration. Numerous studies find that a contingency plan, as a form of institutional arrangement, is necessary for ensuring collaboration in a planned and legitimate manner. Conversely, research also suggests that absorptive capacity, as an important dynamic capability for organizations to adapt to changing environments, is beneficial to the improvement of emergency collaboration. The current study contributes to the understanding of the influence of collaboration on emergency performance by (1) investigating the relationship between collaboration networks and performance, and (2) examining the mediating roles of the contingency plan and absorptive capacity in this relationship. Employing structural equation modeling with data from 110 cases of emergency drills in Shanghai, results suggest that collaboration networks have a positive association with emergency performance, which is simultaneously mediated by contingency plan and absorptive capacity, and further demonstrate that absorptive capacity exerts a stronger effect than contingency plan. Overall, the findings point to a need to dissolve the nuanced contradiction between the institutions and dynamic capability and weigh the two approaches when implementing emergency collaboration across organizations.