This book reports my decade-long research effort to understand this basic question: How China has been and is governed. And this intellectual journey that led to this book also witnessed the dramatic changes that China experienced during this period. This research began in 2004, when a colleague friend introduced me to an agricultural township in northern China and I got acquainted with local officials and villagers there.
Between 2004 and 2015, I visited this township several times each year, staying one week to a few weeks each time. During my visit, I stayed in a guest room in the township government courtyard together with other township cadres and staff members, and interacted with them from early mornings into evenings. I went with local cadres on their daily routines: attending meetings, implementing policies, responding to crises, or carrying out village elections. I also went to nearby villages and got to know many villagers and village cadres there. Through these activities I gradually gained firsthand experience in and a deeper understanding of policy implementation at local levels and the practice of local governance. During this period, I also worked with several graduate students and other colleagues on government behaviors in other areas.
This research experience offers me a bottom-up perspective to examine larger issues about interactions between policy making and implementation; between the central and local governments; and among state policies, local officials, and grassroots society, and ultimately the logic of governance in China.
The journey of my research took place amidst tremendous changes that China has experienced over the last two decades. I was especially fortunate that I conducted my fieldwork in those years when China was experiencing the grand trend of opening up to the outside world, after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. This larger environment provided the favorable opportunity for my research and facilitated my interactions with the local cadres and villagers.
In those years when I immersed myself in my fieldwork, I began to publish most of my research findings in academic journals in China, as I wanted to engage in discussions and debates in a striving research community on government behaviors. I collected these publications and integrated them into a book manuscript in the Chinese language in 2013, and in the following year it was accepted for publication at Sanlian Shudian, a prestigious academic press in Beijing. The book manuscript had to wait for three more years before it got approval and went into print in March 2017. The first printing of 7,000 copies were sold quickly, and the press was planning to reprint by May. But the reprint was halted for undisclosed reasons, and eventually my book was “unselfed,” a coded term meaning that it was not allowed to be reprinted or circulated. And the press returned all copyrights associated with this book to me.
This book, now in the English language, is based on the aforementioned book in Chinese published in 2017. But most of the materials are revised and rewritten into English for the first time.
Throughout this research process, I have accumulated many debts to many friends, colleagues, and institutions that helped me along the way. I am most grateful to those villagers and local cadres in the township of my fieldwork. When I first arrived, I was a stranger and an outsider to them. Over the years, we got to know one another well, and I gained their acceptance, trust, and friendship. They helped me in many ways and educated me about their everyday life experience, their views of the world, and the actual processes of problem-solving and policy implementation at the grassroots level. Regrettably, to protect their anonymity I cannot record their names here and express my gratitude to them.
Over the years, I received valuable comments, critique, and support from many colleagues and friends in China. They are Cai He, Cao Zhenghan, Chen Guoquan, Chen Jiajian, Chen Nabo, Di Jinhua, Feng Shizheng, He Yanling, Huang Jin, Huang Xiaochun, Li Lianjiang, Li Lulu, Li Qiang, Li Youmei, Liu Shiding, Liu Yuzhao, Ma Jun, Ouyang Jing, Qu Jindong, Qiu Haixiong, Shen Yuan, Shi Puyuan, Tian Kai, Tian Xianhong, Zhang Jing, Zhang Xiang, Zhang Yonghong, Zhao Dingxin, Zhao Shukai, Zhe Xiaoye, Zhou Feizhou, and Zhou Li-an. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, I presented my work at various conferences and workshops at Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, the University of California’s Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Irvine campuses, and so on. I thank the participants at those presentations and especially Karen Eggleston, Mark Granovetter, Kevin O’Brien, Jean Oi, Leonard Ortolano, Minxin Pei, Scott Rozelle, Andy Walder, and Yingyu Ye. I am especially indebted to my mentors James March and John Meyer, who had strong intellectual influence upon the organizational approach adopted in this book.
I want to especially thank Ai Yun at Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing and Lian Hong at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. They are my former students, now colleagues and friends. My research project intersected with their dissertation research, and I have learned a great deal from their research. Some findings reported in this book were first jointly published with them.
My intellectual journey spans several institutions that have provided a great academic environment for my research: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Duke University, and Stanford University, as well as a fellowship year at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences (2008–2009). Over the years, my fieldwork research has been supported by several funding sources at Stanford: the Asia Pacific Research Center (APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Center for East Asia Studies (CEAS), Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies, Hewlett Faculty Fund, China Fund, and UPS Fund. In addition, I am grateful to Nancy Hearst for her superb copyediting assistance. I thank Sara Doskow, my editor at Cambridge University Press, and editorial assistant Jadyn Fauconier-Herry, who guided me through the publishing process.
I am grateful to my wife, Zhaohui Xue, who has supported my intellectual journey, tolerated my long absence from home, and always shared my excitement and curiosity in research. Without her encouragement and persuasion, there would not be the English version of this book. Finally, I thank my mother, Tang Xiulan, who nurtured my intellectual curiosity as I grew up and set the example for me in her life of continuous learning, and to whom I dedicate this book.
