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Natural Resources, Local Governance and Social Instability: A Comparison of Two Counties in China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2013

Jing Vivian Zhan
Jing Vivian Zhan*
Affiliation:
The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Email: zhan@cuhk.edu.hk.
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Abstract

This article compares two neighbouring underdeveloped counties in south-west China. They share many similarities in economic, political and demographic structures, but experience divergent levels of social instability. The comparison suggests that, under China's political system and cadre incentive structure, the endowment of mineral resources in one county, and the lack thereof in the other, significantly influences the modes of economic development and local governance in these two counties, and thus contributes to their different levels of social instability.

Keywords

collective incidentscurse of natural resourceseconomic developmentpolitical institutionssocial stabilityChinalocal government
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 213 , March 2013 , pp. 78 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013

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Footnotes

*

The author acknowledges the financial support of the South China Programme of the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies. She is grateful for the help of the informants in Guizhou and for the excellent research assistance provided by Jiang Lu and Duan Haiyan. The author also wishes to thank Edward Friedman, Lianjiang Li, Richard Baum, two anonymous referees, the editors of The China Quarterly, and the audience at the 2010 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article. All errors remain the author's own.

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