While burgeoning research on China's state–society relations has paid attention to the Party, little is known about how the Party interacts with diverse actors and involves itself at the grassroots level in a specific region. This article delineates Party-advancement strategies at the community level in Shenzhen since 2013. To reclaim its leading role at the grassroots level, the Party opted for “Party–government disaggregation” by framing community governance as a Party-building affair, separating the government's affairs from those of the Party and “kicking” the government out of the community. Under the rubric of “reshaping Party–mass relations,” the Party penetrated deep into the community by innovating a “centre-periphery” organizational system, absorbing community elites in a top-down way and using a “service delivery taking the lead” method in a reciprocal exchange. In the end, the Party-governance structure, in which Party–mass relations are at the core, was reframed in the communities.

China's environmental crackdowns under Xi Jinping have led to a sweeping shutdown of private enterprises. To circumvent this, enterprises have developed different survival strategies including direct lobbying to government officials and indirect lobbying through business associations. Based on comparative case studies of environmental lobbying in Chinese cities, our research finds that larger enterprises, enjoying more economic leverage, tend to lobby directly using their own political connections to sway environmental enforcement. By contrast, smaller enterprises are excluded from these clientelist networks and have to lobby through business associations, the effectiveness of which hinges on the support of large enterprises. Therefore, we argue that although the Chinese government's increasingly stringent environmental policies have shrunk the lobbying (and living) space for private enterprises, the existence of environmental clientelism protects economically powerful and politically connected private enterprises but sacrifices the others in the implementation of environmental policies.

The growing tension between mainland China and Taiwan has a cultural aspect closely related to national identity. We focus on recent history curriculum changes in the mainland and in Taiwan and find that education authorities on both sides have implemented master narratives for content selection in and organization of history textbooks. In mainland China, the master narrative of pluralist unity constructs a geographically consistent Chinese nation throughout history, which bolsters the state's current claim to a territorial integrity including Taiwan. In Taiwan, the master narrative of multiculturalism becomes the essence of Taiwanese identity, and weakens Sinocentrism in Taiwanese official historiography.

Under President Xi Jinping, the strengthening of the Chinese Communist Party's political control occurs in conjunction with an evolving administrative role for government-affiliated associations. Analysing associations that are subordinate within China's strict hierarchy but which have degrees of operational freedom yields insights into the changing nature of public service and administration in China. Evidence from 63 interviews conducted from 2018 to 2022 with government departments and affiliated associations in the education sector reveals the complexity of state control and degrees of constrained autonomy achieved by affiliated associations. The government exerts control over financing, personnel appointments and core business activities but, over time, associations gain varying degrees of operational autonomy to influence the education agenda and fill gaps in public services. The interdependency and relational variance we find in the case of Ministry of Education-affiliated associations contributes to broader understandings of the complex and fragmentary nature of the Chinese state and public administration.