Author Description

This is a study of the organization and operations of Chinese government at the county level. Highlighting the contention-prone yet often collaborative relationships between county officials, and the production units and administration above and below them, the authors open a window on the Chinese state and statecraft in the vast bureaucratic middle ground between Beijing policymaking and community-level politics. Using data drawn from Shulu County, Hebei, over the last decade of the Mao era and the first decade of the Deng period, supplemented by fieldwork carried out between 1979 and 1990, the authors explore the effects, often unintended, of successive decentralizing and recentralizing policy shifts emanating from the centre. The authors' findings disclose a definite latitude in governmental relationships that gave county leaders scope to exercise their political and administrative skills.