State Autonomy In China’s Economic Development

China’s economic development maintains sustained and rapid growth over the past 30 years since reform and opening up,which created a “development miracle”.It is a real challenge to discuss the role of state in China’s economic development.But the theory of state autonomy provides a feasible analysis perspective for us to understand and research the state-building of modern state. The school of “Bring the state back in” excavated state autonomy theory’s value fully, which applied to analyse the phenomena in different fields of politics, economy and society. The school of “Bring the state back in” established the core position of state in the social and political analysis and developed state theory, which based on the the concept of state autonomy. The theory of state autonomy is widely applied to different fields and different phenomena analysis since the 1970 s and 1980 s.With state autonomy as the basic analysis concept,this paper analyzes the problem of state-building in the process of reform and opening up in the research perspective of state autonomy theory. The paper analyses the evolution of state autonomy before and after the reform and opening up in the comparative perspective firstly.Then the paper will discuss the intrinsic relationship between state autonomy and economic development and dilemmas of state autonomy in the new period. At last,the paper will put forward the basic goals and reshaping path of China’s state autonomy in the future.In this paper, its research content and frame structure are arranged as follows:The introduction part firstly begins from the background of state autonomy theory and leads to the research topic “state autonomy in China’s economic development”. It also elaborates the theoretical significance and practical significance of the research.Secondly,it reviews and comments the research and application on state autonomy theory at home and abroad.Thirdly, it elaborates the main research methods and framework. Finally, it summarizes the possible contribution and deficiency of this paper.The core content of chapter one is to comb the development of state autonomy theory and explain the concept of state autonomy.The main goal is to have a relatively clear cognition about thoughts origin, development process and definition of state autonomy theory.State autonomy theory originates from Marx and Engels and Max Weber’s theory of state.New Marxism are the opener of research paradigm on state autonomy. New western Marxism’s core representatives are Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband,who developed structuralism state theory and instrumentalism state theory separately. The school of “Bring the state back in” combined international factors,state structure with social factors in order to explain state autonomy and formed new theory system and research paradigm centered on the concept of state autonomy,whose ideological basis is based on criticism and inheritance of New western Marxism’s state autonomy.Chapter two analyzes state autonomy theory’s bases in the application of China.Its applicability contains two aspects, including historical conditions and applicability context.On the one hand,China has the characteristics and capacity of state autonomy at the beginning of reform and opening up for China’s special historical conditions.They are the heritage of China’s historical revolution and the development of bureaucracy,the sense of ruling crisis and the strategic leadership of top elites, the equal society structure caused by egalitarianism and cultural tradition obeyed state authority. On the other hand,its applicability contexts includes four aspects. They are state guide requirements from the transformation and development of economy, state autonomy’s challenges from economic globalization, state autonomy’s erosion by social transformation and state capacity’s challenges caused by the complexity of social governance.Chapter three analyzes state autonomy in China’s economic development before and after the reform and opening up in the comparative perspective.This part compares changes of historical environment, state-society relations and central-local relations, based on the concept of state autonomy.This part also analyzes the relations between the evolution of state autonomy and China’s economic development.Firstly,it analyzes the historical environment at home and abroad before and after the reform and opening up.Planned economy characterized by state command led to a development dilemma in domestic environment. Economic globalization brought many challenges for China’s state autonomy.Secondly,this chapter compares the evolution of state autonomy in the perspective of state-society relations. We regard reform and opening up as the Cut-off point of the history.The drive of ruling crisis consciousness make China seek the ruling legitimacy based on economic performance and realize the transition of state form from absolute autonomy to bounded autonomy. China formed a totalitarian society centered on administrative power and state working unit system before the reform and opening.The bounded state autonomy achieved the conversion of social unit from unit organization to family or individual after the reform and opening up. The bounded state autonomy produced a relative autonomy society and relized the separation about the relationship between state and society. The decentralization reform released free resources and active space,which provided vitality and creativity for economic development.Finally, this chapter compares the evolution of state autonomy in the perspective of central-local relations.Local autonomy is the basic variable to understand and judge the relationship between central government and local government.Compared with the decentralization reform before and after the reform and opening up,local autonomy transformed from closed autonomy to bounded autonomy. On the one hand,the introduction of market mechanism broke the closed autonomy of local governments. Local autonomy’s inner driving force is from its double identities,which are distributors of economic surplus and competitors of political power.The incentive tradition of political performance,the centralized structure of bureaucracy system and competitiveness from market mechanism shaped local autonomy characterized with innovation and development. Local governments promoted China’s economic development powerful,who guided by the market and drove by double incentives.On the other hand,the central government has not put all the attention on decentralization reform and economic development,it also seeks the balance of central-local relations at the same time. Central government maintains state autonomy successly by strengthening financial power and controlling personnel system in the process of game between central and local.The core content of chapter four involves three aspects. Firstly,this part analyzes imbalanced dilemma of state autonomy and social costs of economic development.The development centering on the economic performance has fallen to a dilemma that social development lag behind economic growth and China presents the sight of development and rupture at the same time. Imbalanced development and social inequality has become huge challenges to China’s economic development and state autonomy.The causes of dilemma derived from the imbalance of economic development values and the imbalance of state autonomy,that the over-expansion of despotic power and insufficient development of infrastructural power.The over-expansion of despotic power is often associated with the plundering government and the insufficient development of infrastructural power is often connected with captured government.China must be on the alert aobut dissimilation of government behavior caused by the imbalance of state autonomy in the process of deepening reform.Secondly, this part analyzes the orientation of state autonomy in period of China’s new normal. The basic trend of China’s economic development is forming new growth consensus,which is under the background of new normal.Its value orientation is the quality of economic development and social justice.So it can give consideration to ecological effectiveness,economic development quality and development of people’s livelihood.It is more protective,compensatory, developmental, balanced and inclusive.The goal of China’s state autonomy in new normal is to limit despotic power and develop infrastructural power and achieve the balance of two powers.Thirdly, this part discusses the reshaping path of state autonomy in China’s Economic Development. Whether solution to governance difficulties and challenges or reshaping path to state autonomy,the key factor depends on adjustment and reshaping of political system.It includes values and practice.The former involves guidance and evolution of values. The latter involves reshaping and improvement of system structure.It contains several aspects in the perspective of deconstruction,including transformation of governance values, promotion of social autonomy, reshaping local autonomy, improvement system of power restriction and enhancement of state capacity building.(1)China needs to transform governance values and adjust the orientation of state power in the view of value concept.The adjustment and goal of governance values is to form multiple governance system,including state,society and market.In order to regulate state power and improve governance efficiency,China should take building service-oriented government as the join point between economic system reform and political system reform.(2) China needs to promote social autonomy in the perspective of state-society relations.In terms of social governance structure,state should enhance social autonomy ability by promoting different governance body’s autonomy. In terms of state role,state needs to embed society actively in order to reshape social autonomy.State can be associated with the society actively and reform state-society relations by entering path, cooperating path and cultivating path and promote social autonomy.(3) China needs to reshape local autonomy in the perspective of central-local relations.On the one hand, the central government should change the driving force and assessment indexes of local governments in order to guide local government’s behavior logic.On the other hand, state should follow the principle that unify the power, responsibility and benefit and be based on system in order to regulate local government’s function and duty.(4) China needs to improve system of power restriction.If state wants to solve problems associated with state power in the process of China’s political development,the fundamental outlet lies in the institutional innovation within state power itself and state-society relations. In terms of China’s governance structure,if state wants to achieve the goal of regulating state power and guiding government behavior,state must construct the modern institutional constraint system and rely on rational institutional framework.It also should take the rule of law and democracy building as the basic strategy.(5) China need to enhance state capacity building.Both from the theoretical level and practical level, system construction is the key factor to develop infrastructural power. China’s social construction and government system reform are more associated with state system construction and system of self-discipline logic in the future. Therefore, state capacity building needs to depend on system construction and be guided by social justice values. State capacity building should centre on constructing the service-oriented government and strengthen state redistribution ability and public service ability.