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ID:
183927
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| Summary/Abstract |
China’s rapidly growing local government debt problem has long been recognized by foreign observers as a risk, but inside China, only recently was this problem called out as alarming. Why has local government debt been allowed to grow with little direct intervention from central authorities? We argue that it has much to do with a “grand bargain” between the central government and localities during the 1994 fiscal recentralization reform. While much scholarly attention has been paid to the consequences of the 1994 reform that left localities with a tremendous fiscal gap, our findings show that Beijing in fact gave localities the green light to create new backdoor financing institutions that counteracted the impact of fiscal recentralization. In essence, these institutions were the quid pro quo offered to localities to sustain their incentive for local state-led growth after 1994. The bargain worked, and growth continued. The drawback, however, was that China’s economic growth has been accompanied by the accumulation of local government debt with little transparency and central control. When the global financial crisis slowed growth, and local deficits and debts spiked, Beijing began to shut down backdoor financing and opened front-door options that were transparent and under the control of national authorities—but with limited success. In the wake of COVID-19, the question is whether the pendulum will swing back toward more tolerance of local debt for the sake of economic growth.
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| 2 |
ID:
183926
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This article examines political criticism and oppositional discourses on China’s Internet from 2012, near the end of Hu Jintao’s era, up through the current Xi Jinping administration. We focus on two main types of Internet activity in which criticism and discourses emerge—online mass incidents and defiant enclaves—and compare their discursive elements. The core messages and critiques by leading activists and dissidents and their followers in the latter have become more multilayered, radical, and antiregime. Both types of political dissent are alive and persist, but the potential for them to connect various social grievances has declined in recent years, as state control over the Internet and digital spaces has significantly tightened.
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| 3 |
ID:
183925
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| Summary/Abstract |
Existing studies have portrayed a lack of broad-based solidarity as a major hurdle to sustained social mobilization. Examining Chinese veterans, this article contends that intragroup fragmentation within a social group can actually help sustain activism when in contention with authorities. This is achieved through a mechanism of “selective identification”: when subgroups make demands, they identify with better-off counterparts, while distancing themselves from veterans who are more disadvantaged. Through this, each successful gain achieved by one subgroup generates and legitimizes claims by other subgroups. Thus, intragroup divisions have not disempowered claimants but have been used as leverage against the government when making demands. This mechanism poses a dilemma for the government: a unified policy response to veteran groups agitating for better conditions is not accepted by groups that believe they deserve more, whereas a differentiated policy creates grievances among those who receive less. Both types of grievances can help mobilize and sustain collective action, even though veterans’ activism has declined in recent years because of a more repressive overall environment.
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| 4 |
ID:
183929
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| Summary/Abstract |
Between 2014 and 2020, China brought back from South Korea 716 sets of remains of Chinese soldiers who had died in the Korean War (1950–53). Why did the Chinese government decide to repatriate the remains of fallen soldiers only after so many years had passed? What are Beijing’s political motivations? We argue that the Chinese Communist Party utilizes the repatriation of war remains as a propaganda opportunity to appeal to veterans and to boost military morale and nationalistic support of the Party. Our study investigates the first cases of repatriating war dead from Myanmar in 2011 and traces policy developments since the establishment of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs in 2018. Our findings enhance understanding of the changing relationship between the Communist Party and vital constituencies in China.
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| 5 |
ID:
183928
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| Summary/Abstract |
Authoritarian governments cultivate an image of popular support to legitimize their rule. One such strategy is to create the impression that their rule and policies are widely supported by the international community. In this study, I systematically explore how the Chinese Party-state uses foreign experts in its propaganda to provide extra legitimacy to Chinese government policies. I collected data on non-Chinese-national intellectuals cited in 31 major news outlets in China, from which I compiled a list of 723 foreign experts who were cited to provide positive evaluations of China. The experts were from 67 different countries but showed a clear US-centric focus. I identified five major issues that they most frequently were cited about and summarized their opinions. The findings of this study show a mixed picture of China’s propaganda strategy: It is sophisticated but also stilted in conforming to existing power structures. It enriches our understanding of how an authoritarian regime like China’s cultivates its image and shapes public opinion. It also draws attention to the social and ethical implications of the possible distortion and fabrication of expert opinions in the propaganda process.
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