From commanding state towards regulatory state: A case study on China's drug safety regulation regime transformation

The empirical studies of comparative political economy discovered that four different governance modes have been invented by mankind to deal with state-market relation: laissez-faire, interventionism, developmentalism and commanding plannism in history, which fosters four different types of states such as laissez-faire state, positive state, developmental state and commanding state. After 1980s more and more countries have adopted a neutral governance mode - regulatory state to govern their socioeconomic affairs. This global wave of regulatory reform has also impacted on China's ongoing socioeconomic reform. Therefore, this paper attempts to answer three questions about contemporary Chinese political economy system: As a long-time commanding state and decentralized developmental state, for what causes Chinese government decided to perform regulatory reform policies and build a regulatory state in mid-1990s? What kind of structural obstacles are Chinese regulatory state building meeting and facing? Which unique characteristics does Chinese regulatory state have?By taking drug safety regulation as a typical case of risk regulation and Chinese regulatory state building, this article will provide a series of replies accordingly enlightened by the theory of regulatory space: First of all, it is the collapse of Interest Community of Government, Enterprise and Shiye Unit (ICGES) that fosters the regulatory state rising in contemporary China. Actually the collapse of ICGES under the development-orientated drug regime leads to three governance crises in drug safety regulation: role conflict, information failure and infrastructure weakening, which become the direct drive for regulation reform after 1998.Secondly, nowadays there are five main structural obstacles which are threatening current Chinese regulatory state building seriously: problematic regulatory independence, high-cost for regulatory information capacity enhancement, administrative-relied regulatory style, rent-seeking orientation of regulatory corruption and unmatched regulatory infrastructure. Essentially, ail those obstacles can be traced to three historical backgrounds of Chinese regulatory state building: longtime commanding economy, the overwhelming trend of decentralized developmentalism and authoritarian political structure.Finally, the author is inclined to employ a term of "transitionary regulatory state" to define the characteristics of current Chinese regulatory state in contrast to other regulatory states based on well-rounded market economy and democratic political system. Being different with other matured regulatory state, the transitionary regulatory state has its special features from the perspectives of regulator, regulated and regulatory process, which can be reflected vividly in this case study. For the regulator, most of the regulatory officials are "entrepreneurial bureaucrats" and a combination patter of administrative and regulatory bodies. For the regulated, the main risk sources from illegal market competition instead of epistemological blindness caused by modernization For the regulatory process, its regulatory orientation also aims to protect manufactures or distributors to maintain high-speed economic growth apart from consumers' interests. It depends highly on administrative coercion or frequent campaigns rather than legal or high institutional regulation. And its regulatory accountability is relatively lower than advanced regulatory state.Key Words. Commanding State, Decentralized Developmental State, Transitionary, Regulatory State, Drug Safety Regulation, Mixed Regulation.