This paper attempts to estimate the impact of both factional ties and economic performance on the promotion of provincial Party secretaries and governors by analysing a person–year dataset of their career mobility for inclusive years 1989 to 2009. We found that for provincial Party secretaries whose promotion meant rising to a top national position, both factional ties and good economic performance increased their chance for promotion. On the other hand, for provincial governors whose promotion meant rising to a ministry-level position, only economic performance mattered for their promotion. Among provincial Party secretaries, the extent to which performance affected the likelihood of promotion was not different between factional members and non-members. This suggests that even factional members needed to show good performance to enhance the likelihood of their promotion.

This study examines church–state relations in Mindong diocese, Fujian province, from the perspective of state–society relations. The article seeks to identify the salient patterns of church–state relations in Mindong diocese, and the social factors that contribute to the formation of such patterns. I elaborate on the essential characteristics of the Mindong model in the paper. I argue that the three key factors affecting church–state relations in Mindong diocese are the competition between the open and underground churches, the mediating role of the Vatican, and the pragmatism of local government officials. I describe the Mindong model as a “negotiated resistance,” meaning that the underground church resists the control of the government and seeks organizational autonomy through continued negotiation with officials of the government. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of this church–state model in advancing religious freedom in Chinese society.

China experienced extensive civil strife in 1974, as elite factionalism during the “criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign revived popular contention in the provinces. Past research has characterized these conflicts as a “second Cultural Revolution” – an offensive by resurgent red guards and rebels to resist the restoration of purged civilian officials to powerful posts. In Nanjing, however, the conflicts were of an entirely different nature. Civilian cadres directed the campaign against army officers who still dominated civilian government throughout the province. Popular protests in Nanjing were not led by former rebels, whose ranks had been decimated by unusually harsh military suppression campaigns, but were instead protests by ordinary citizens who had suffered in the purges and rustication campaigns of the late 1960s. While the campaign in cities like Hangzhou and Wuhan was an offensive by resurgent rebels against civilian officials, in Nanjing civilian officials used the campaign to ensure their victory over military rivals. The Hangzhou and Wuhan pattern revived the politics of the 1960s, while the Nanjing pattern anticipated the protests against Cultural Revolution abuses characteristic of the end of the Mao era.

This essay challenges the widely held view of the CCP's purported “resilient authoritarianism,” which asserts that China's one-party political system is able to enhance the state capacity to govern effectively through institutional adaptations and policy adjustments. An analysis of the recent and still unfolding Bo Xilai crisis reveals the flaws in China's political system, including nepotism and patron–client ties in the selection of leaders, rampant corruption, the growing oligarchic power of state-owned enterprises, elites' contempt for the law and the potential failure to broker deals between competing factions in the Party leadership. The essay argues that the CCP's “authoritarian resilience” is a stagnant system, both conceptually and empirically, because it resists much-needed democratic changes in the country. The problems of the resilient authoritarianism thesis is traceable to the monolithic conceptualizing of China – the failure to appreciate seemingly paradoxical transformative trends in the country, which this essay characterizes as three paralleled developments, namely, 1) weak leaders, strong factions; 2) weak government, strong interest groups; and 3) weak Party, strong country. One should not confuse China's national resilience (in terms of the emerging middle class, new interest group politics, and dynamic society) with the CCP's capacity and legitimacy to rule the country. The essay concludes that if the CCP intends to regain the public's confidence and avoid a bottom-up revolution, it must abandon the notion of “authoritarian resilience” and embrace a systematic democratic transition with bold steps towards intra-Party elections, judicial independence and a gradual opening of the mainstream media.

In contrast to its decentralized political economy model of the 1980s, China took a surprising turn towards recentralization in the mid-1990s. Its fiscal centralization, starting with the 1994 tax reforms, is well known, but political recentralization also has been under way to control cadres directly at township and village levels. Little-noticed measures designed to tighten administrative and fiscal regulation began to be implemented during approximately the same period in the mid-1990s. Over time these measures have succeeded in hollowing out the power of village and township cadres. The increasing reach of the central state is the direct result of explicit state policies that have taken power over economic resources that were once under the control of village and township cadres. This article examines the broad shift towards recentralization by examining the fiscal and political consequences of these policies at the village and township levels. Evidence for this shift comes from new survey data on village-level investments, administrative regulation and fiscal oversight, as well as township-level fiscal revenues, expenditures, transfers (between counties and townships) and public-goods investments.

In the broader social science literature, most studies of social protection investigate welfare in democracies, and at the national level, and typically assume that welfare is given in order to influence voting. This paper, to the contrary, considers social assistance in authoritarian China at the urban level. Its findings are compatible with an explanation that there are two dissimilar logics influencing the distributional decisions of lower-level administrators. That is, there appear to be two modes of social policy implementation, which vary with the fiscal capacity of a given city, as indicated by its average wage: Wealthier cities seem to prefer to push off the streets those viewed as unsuited to a modern city, therefore allocating a substantial proportion of their social assistance funds to them, in order to entice them to stay at home. On the other hand, poorer places seem to permit such people to work outside, in the hope that they will thus be better able to support themselves, thereby saving the city money. A data set from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs was used.

This paper analyses Chinese sub-national governments’ implementation strategies to meet national energy efficiency targets in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010). Previous research has focused on the ways governance practices and decision-making structures shape implementation outcomes, yet very little attention has been given to what strategies local leaders actually employ to bridge national priorities with local interests. To illustrate how local leaders work politically, this paper highlights specific implementation methods officials use to strengthen formal incentives and create effective informal incentives to comply with energy efficiency mandates. The analysis is drawn from 53 interviews conducted in June and July of 2010 in Shanxi, a major coal-producing and energy-intensive province. Findings suggest that local government leaders conform to national directives by “bundling” the energy efficiency policy with policies of more pressing local importance or by “bundling” their energy efficiency objectives with the interests of groups with significant political influence. Ultimately, sub-national government officials frame policies in ways that give them legitimacy at the local level.