The Reform And Innovation Of Local System In The Process Of Modernization In China

As the division of space-power of national policy-making setup, the local system highly affects the modernization process of China. This dissertation focused on the following three questions:a) what was the role of local system in the process of modernization dominated by government since1949in which year the People's Republic of China was founded? b) was there any universal significance in some modern countries worth learning for China because thouse countries had or have been approaching many same opportunities and challenges by reforming local government system in the process of moerdenization? c) Which direction the local system will go when China is facing many serious economic and social problems, add the influence of Path Dependence?Regarding research methodology, this dissertation adopted case study including Shanghai, Zhangzhou and Sanya city-regions. To explore the inherent logic of institutional change of local system, this dissertation argued the importance of understanding the social, ecomomic and political context within which local systems emerged in different countries, each of which reveals a distinctive approach to the problems in the process of modernization. This dissertation study local system from an integrated perspective based on the knowledge of human geography, politics and public management.This dissertation included three parts. Firstly, it researched the local systems of some modern countries, and tried to find some universal significance. Secondly, it summed up the experience of China's ancient local system which was based on agricultural society. Thirdly, it took Shanghai, Zhangzhou and Sanya as three cases to study the local system in the process of industrialization and urbanization in modern China.This dissertation revealed that:a) Chinese local system shows great continuity for more than two thousand years since Qin Dynasty, and has been more and more beneficial to centralized state. b) The local system was reformed to realize centralization of authority and establish urban-rural dual system during the period of planned economy, and then it has been changed to cooperate with the process of delegating power and response to urbanization and marketization after the reform and opening-up. c) The core issue of local system in China is the unequal distribution of power and interests and the paradox of administrative level and range in the process of delegating power to the lower levels of government. This is the local system setting of many social and political problems such as continued expansion of income gap between the urban and rural areas, trust crisis to local government, and more and more social conflicts and corrupts. To centralize power, the central government and the higher level governments had to supervise the lower level governments by a huge complicated bureaucracy. That was why the organizational structure of local government floated, and much more civil servants and levels of local government existed in China than in the other countries. d) By comparative study, some universal laws in the process of modernization were found. The basic difference of local system between China and the other modern countries is the spirit and ability of home rule. e) Based on the current political system, the reform of local system can be largely due to technique problem about project design and local government behavior, because the central government has absolute authority. In the future, the Chinese central government needs to improve local self-autonomy system to ensure the steady development in the process of modernization.