INTRODUCTION

Amidst the country's rapid opening to the global markets and rising fiscal conflicts between the central and provincial governments, the Chinese political center, via the ruling CCP, did seek to exercise a greater degree of political control over the provincial governments in those regions more exposed to foreign trade and exports during the 1978–2005 period. Provincial party secretaries with career trajectories predisposing them to greater compliance with the policy preferences of the national leadership tended to be sent to rule the more globalized provinces. I argue that such territorially targeted political control was aimed at tapping more fiscal resources from the winner provinces to compensate those provinces that were faring less well in the global markets. How effective was such regionally selective exercise of central political control?

If tighter political control was exercised over the subnational governments overseeing the localities that were more closely integrated with the international markets in order to facilitate central resource extraction, we expect the more tightly controlled provincial governments headed by the pro-center agents to fulfill such revenue demands from above more diligently. Strenuous resource extraction on behalf of the center, however, can vitiate the protection of property rights and distort the incentives of the economic actors populating the jurisdictions ruled by those provincial governments. In short, the exercise of a greater degree of central political control for purposes of resource extraction may ultimately retard economic growth in the targeted provinces.