This talk focuses on the fundamental tensions inherent in governing China. Using examples from bureaucratic personnel management and social media controls, Prof. Zhou Xueguang will explore institutional responses and practices in state policymaking and implementation as governing entities in China have encountered changes and challenges of recent years. The talk will draw from Prof. Zhou’s recent book of the same title (published in Chinese, 中国国家治理的制度逻辑).

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Xueguang Zhou is the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of Sociology and a Senior Fellow at FSI, all at Stanford University. His main area of research is institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships.

One of Zhou Xueguang's current research projects is a study of the rise of the bureaucratic state in China. He studies patterns of career mobility and personnel flow among different government offices to understand intra-organizational relationships in the Chinese bureaucracy.

His recent publications examine the role of bureaucracy in public goods provision in rural China (Modern China, 2011), interactions among peasants, markets and capital (China Quarterly, 2011), multiple logics in village elections (Chinese Social Science 2010, with Ai Yun), and collusion among local governments in policy implementation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations 2011, with Ai Yun and Lian Hong; Modern China, 2010).

 

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This event is part of the 2018 Winter Colloquia; An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.