Asymmetrical adaptations to grassroots self-government between rural and urban China

This article explores how the party-state in China manages to cope with grassroots self-government (jiceng zizhi) in a changing social milieu. Specifically, the party-state resorts to simultaneous deployment of carrots and sticks, dubbed “dual adaptations” in this article, in coping with the leading organizations of grassroots self-government—villagers committee in the rural and residents committee in the urban areas. On the one hand, it attempts to maintain controls over them to prevent them from becoming alternative power centers, given their inherent potential for authoritative decision-making that could defy the party-state. On the other, it seeks to strengthen its own capacities to accommodate domestic changes, meet the mass demands, and shore up its legitimacy by fostering the mass political participation, competition, and problem-solving ability that offsets the state's inadequacies in governance via villagers and residents committees. The degrees to which the dual adaptations attain the party-state's intended goals, however, are asymmetrical in that they vary between rural and urban areas. This article thus discovers dual asymmetries in the adaptations—with one between rural and urban areas, and the other between the effectiveness in achieving the two goals, which helps enrich our understanding of the complexities in China's internal governance.