Large Administrative Region Of China Research :1949-1954

China is a country with vast territories. To set up a central—local governance structure covering these territories has been a challenge to people and parties in power. In the year 1949—1954, the central government of China set up great administrative region ( GAR ) above province level. This dissertation explores the background, structure, operation, influence and evaluation of GAR and displays the complete picture of the"rise and fall"of GAR.In China's history, various types of central—local government power sharing structures have existed. In modern Chinese history, provincial authority had existed as the highest level of executive system and had showed certain degrees of stability. In 1927, the Communist Party of China ( CPC ) started military revolution to gain political power and set up some authorities in some isolated areas under its rule. Later, these CPC—ruled areas grew bigger in size and number and these local authorities became the embryonic form of GAR. In 1949, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, CPC decided to establish GAR above province level and after 3 years'practice, divided the country into 6 GARs.After the establishment of GARs, horizontal power organs, such as party committee, legislature, executive branch, judiciary branch, military branch, social society branch, all kept retained or newly set up. The central bureau dominated the horizontal power structure. In terms of vertical power structure, the central bureau and GARs lied between the Central Committee and provinces and yet maintained a great degree of self- initiation. The central committee of CPC maintained its control over GARs through government channels and non government channels. In terms of non government channels, CPC had set up party committees at each and every level of government to lead and control the work of government.In the year 1952, GARs faced the possibility of being abolished after the Central Committee had finished the mission of"governing the complex via the simple"and"transforming separation into unity". Yet for the sake of continuity of policy and stability of national political life, the Central Committee adopted a gradual approach. GAR's government, military-executive committee, and central government's north-China executive committee were renamed as executive committees and GARs were downgraded to be the representative organ of the Central Committee for each region and no longer functioned as an independent level of government. After these adjustments, GAR's vertical power had been greatly scaled down and its horizontal power had been centralized to the Central Committee.After the adjustments made to GARs, top level leadership of CPC had showed signs of policy differences and contradictions. For the purpose of strengthening central power, the central committee took measures to eliminate decentralization-ism. The occurrence of"Gao-Rao"incident made the central committee of CPC move quickly to abolish GARs. After the abolishment of GARs, for the purpose of preventing decentralization and enhancing socialist transformation, a highly centralized governance mechanism which could be called"vertical dictatorship", namely"thousands of threads from the top controlling a tiny needle at the bottom", replaced the previous relatively decentralized governance structure.The setting up of GAR and the coordination between the Central Bureau and GAR had made contributions to national unity, political stability, economic recovering, culture management, and paved the way for social transformation and economic planning which took place later on. From the point of view of CPC leadership and national building, it effectively solved the separatist issue in China's history and it also strengthened national unity and power centralization and ensured the recovery and development of national economy. Its abolishment after the"Gao_Rao"incident seemed to be hastily arranged. Later on CPC had to try other central-local mechanisms to prevent occurrence of the vicious cycle of"tightening control leading to non vitality and loosening control leading to chaos". So adjustments in governance structure should be in line with the overall national condition and overall structure of the national political establishment, while keeping good coordination between party structure and government structure.