| In this dissertation, I study political economy of China's rural politics, focusing on contemporary rural tax reforms and their consequences on local governance and state-society relations. I examine this issue by drawing upon field interviews with more than a hundred people across seven provinces (i.e., Guangdong, Guizhou, Hebei, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang), while I employ simple game-theoretic models to account for the rationality of China's rural policies.; China's new tax reform that started in 2000 reduced the rural residents' financial burden. However it gave rise to a serious problem of local fiscal crises, and significantly weakened the provision of public goods in poorly-endowed agricultural areas. Why did the reform aimed at enhancing the quality of provided public goods fail to do just tat in areas that needed it most? Why did the central government make the decision of this tax reform despite giving the rise to local fiscal crises?; I answer these questions with examining the "democratic choice" hypothesis: that is, unless the Chinese communist leadership was committed to democratization, there was no way to establish efficient taxation and effective system of providing public goods in agricultural areas. I argue that the center's decision becomes less puzzling when considering an often overlooked factor: the center's policy preferences. In particular, I show that though the center has an interest in allowing local governments to collect taxes and provide public goods, this interest is not as strong as its commitment to market-oriented reforms and socio-political stability. When this interest and the commitment conflict---as they did when the increase in local levies sparked rural unrest in the 1990s---the center places its own political survival before local fiscal health. The tax reform since 2000 reflects the center's willingness to sacrifice the latter for the former.; I suggest that if the Chinese leadership wants to enjoy political stability in poor agricultural areas and maintain its authority as a ruling Party in the long run, the answer lies not in blaming bad governance on local governments or undermining local authorities' popular legitimacy and administrative capacity, but in expanding true institutions of democratic accountability. |
