Institutional Reconfiguration: Labor Allocation Patterns and Chinese Modernization

Abstract

Against the institutional background of a premodern domestic organizational structure, the PRC Government started a cautious but quickly extensive institutional reform at the end of the 1970s. The political reasoning responsible for this daring departure from Maoist policies was simple: to head-off a seemingly inevitable “dynasty change” caused by an unprecedented political, economic and ideological crisis. Beyond many CCP leaders’ expectations, however, the reform has increasingly transformed so much of the Chinese domestic organizational structure that the CCP regime, though surviving its comrades in most other socialist countries, has lost much of its grip of the nation; even the party itself has been profoundly affected by these institutional changes.