The Interplay of Elite and Bureaucratic Power

Abstract

Scholarly explanations of Chinese political economy make much of its allegedly fragmented and decentralised character, which is deemed to have diminished the capacity of the central party-state to formulate and implement coherent, coordinated and effective policies. More specifically, policy inertia is often cited as a key problem, the result of protracted consensus building among multiple bureaucracies with roughly equal authority. In addition, other deficiencies such as rent- seeking behaviour and low regulatory capacity apparently plague and pervert the policy process. Such features of the Chinese political system are considered to be the result of the ongoing transition, beginning in 1978, from a centrally planned to a socialist market economy. The reforms associated with this transition saw a shift in the policy process away from the realm of non-institutionalised party leadership and toward a bureaucratically structured governmental apparatus (Huang 2004: 32–33). In addition to growing bureaucratic authority, political resources were further decentralised with the implementation of fiscal and administrative reforms, which transferred significant economic and fiscal power from the centre to local governments.¹ These trends in the first Reform Era resulted in the fragmentation and decentralisation of political authority within the Chinese state below the apex of political authority (the Politburo Standing Committee).