For the nearly three decades of coexistence between economic liberalization and political authoritarianism, China remains as an anomaly to the liberal mantra of our time. This book explores a segment of the China Paradox, the state-society interaction channeled by the Residents Committee. Being the largest urban neighborhood organization, the committee deserves study because of its controversial status between ordinary residents it claims to represent and the authoritarian state. The committee enters the discourse as a directly congruent example of the same paradox that the whole China displays, when it is endowed with important, yet tension-changed statutory functions ranging from social control to service provision and neighborhood self-governance. How, and under what conditions, does the committee carry out its functions? What can be learned about changing state-society relations from the dynamics of neighborhood politics in China? This book draws its analytical framework on the theoretical models of state penetration, civil disobedience, corporatism, and synergy, as well as on the practices of American, Cuban, and Japanese neighborhood organizations and the Chinese Rural Villagers Committee. Four distinctive Residents Committees in Tianjin City are studied in detail, and their functions are identified and explained primarily through their structural connections with the lowest state organ in cities, the street office, and residents (including other neighborhood organizations and activists). The book reveals multiple possibilities of Chinese social/political transformation. Among them emerges a promising trend of state-society cooperation, which is realigning and accommodating political authoritarianism and economic openness into a seemingly sustainable pattern of development at the urban grassroots. Referred to as an "amphibian" organization spanning public-private division, the committee highlights the limits of the state-society antithesis in the study of political transformation. The observed patterns of neighborhood politics also raise caution against the universal applicability of the liberal norm of civil society to countries like China with distinctive conditions from which the original norm is present and constructed.

Chinese residential communities are places of intense governing and an arena of active political engagement between state and society. In The Government Next Door, Luigi Tomba investigates how the goals of a government consolidated in a distant authority materialize in citizens’ everyday lives. Chinese neighborhoods reveal much about the changing nature of governing practices in the country. Government action is driven by the need to preserve social and political stability, but such priorities must adapt to the progressive privatization of urban residential space and an increasingly complex set of societal forces. Tomba’s vivid ethnographic accounts of neighborhood life and politics in Beijing, Shenyang, and Chengdu depict how such local "translation" of government priorities takes place. Tomba reveals how different clusters of residential space are governed more or less intensely depending on the residents’ social status; how disgruntled communities with high unemployment are still managed with the pastoral strategies typical of the socialist tradition, while high-income neighbors are allowed greater autonomy in exchange for a greater concern for social order. Conflicts are contained by the gated structures of the neighborhoods to prevent systemic challenges to the government, and middle-class lifestyles have become exemplars of a new, responsible form of citizenship. At times of conflict and in daily interactions, the penetration of the state discourse about social stability becomes clear.

For the nearly three decades of coexistence between economic liberalization and political authoritarianism, China remains as an anomaly to the liberal mantra of our time. This project explores a segment of the China Paradox, the state-society interaction channeled by the Residents Committee. Being the largest urban neighborhood organization, the committee deserves study because of its controversial status interlaid between ordinary residents it claims to represent and the authoritarian state. The committee enters the discourse as a directly congruent example of the same paradox that the whole China displays, when it is endowed with important, yet tension-changed statutory functions ranging from social control to service provision and neighborhood self-governance. How, and under what conditions, does the committee carry out its functions? What can be learned about changing state-society relations from the dynamics of neighborhood politics in China? This project draws its analytical framework on the theoretical models of state penetration, civil disobedience, corporatism, and synergy, as well as on the practices of American, Cuban, and Japanese neighborhood organizations and the Chinese rural Villagers Committee. The research is designed as a comparative study over four distinctive Residents Committees in Tianjin City. Being a fulltime fellow worker for five months, I have accumulated in-depth information about the committees through daily observation, extensive interviews, and intensive documentation. The four committees' functions are identified and explained primarily through their structural connections with the lowest state organ in cities, the street office, and residents (including other neighborhood organizations and activists). The study reveals multiple possibilities of Chinese social/political transformation. Among them emerges a promising trend of state-society cooperation, which is realigning and accommodating political authoritarianism and economic openness into a seemingly sustainable pattern of development at the urban grassroots. Referred to as an "amphibian" organization spanning public-private division, the committee highlights the limits of the state-society antithesis in the study of political transformation. The observed patterns of neighborhood politics also raise caution against the universal applicability of the liberal norm of civil society to countries like China with distinctive conditions from which the original norm is present and constructed

Chinese residential communities are places of intense governing and an arena of active political engagement between state and society. In The Government Next Door, Luigi Tomba investigates how the goals of a government consolidated in a distant authority materialize in citizens' everyday lives. Chinese neighborhoods reveal much about the changing nature of governing practices in the country. Government action is driven by the need to preserve social and political stability, but such priorities must adapt to the progressive privatization of urban residential space and an increasingly complex set of societal forces. Tomba’s vivid ethnographic accounts of neighborhood life and politics in Beijing, Shenyang, and Chengdu depict how such local "translation" of government priorities takes place. Tomba reveals how different clusters of residential space are governed more or less intensely depending on the residents’ social status; how disgruntled communities with high unemployment are still managed with the pastoral strategies typical of the socialist tradition, while high-income neighbors are allowed greater autonomy in exchange for a greater concern for social order. Conflicts are contained by the gated structures of the neighborhoods to prevent systemic challenges to the government, and middle-class lifestyles have become exemplars of a new, responsible form of citizenship. At times of conflict and in daily interactions, the penetration of the state discourse about social stability becomes clear.

Neighbourhood governance is a multifaceted concept that cuts across academic disciplines and intersects an array of policy areas. Therefore this book will find a wide audience amongst public and social policy academics, particularly those with an inter

This book aims to make sense of the recent reform of neighbourhood institutions in urban China. It builds on the observation that the late 1990s saw a comeback of the state in urban China after the increased economization of life in the 1980s had initially forced it to withdraw. Based on several months of fieldwork in locations ranging from poor and dilapidated neighbourhoods in Shenyang City to middle class gated communities in Shenzhen, the authors analyze recent attempts by the central government to enhance stability in China’s increasingly volatile cities. In particular, they argue that the central government has begun to restructure urban neighbourhoods, and has encouraged residents to govern themselves by means of democratic procedures. Heberer and Göbel also contend that whilst on the one hand, the central government has managed to bring the Party-state back into urban society, especially by tapping into a range of social groups that depend on it, it has not, however, managed to establish a broad base for participation. In testing this hypothesis, the book examines the rationales, strategies and impacts of this comeback by systematically analyzing how the reorganization of neighbourhood committees was actually conducted and find that opportunities for participation were far more limited than initially promised. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Development Studies, Urban Studies and Asian Studies in general.

This book examines a wide range of governance reforms in the People's Republic of China, including administrative rationalization, divestiture of businesses operated by the military, and the building of anticorruption mechanisms, to analyze how China's leaders have reformed existing institutions and constructed new ones to cope with unruly markets, curb corrupt practices, and bring about a regulated economic order.

This book reveals the complex relationship between elite perceptions and behaviour, and governance, in China. It moves away from existing scholarship by focusing on functionaries, grass-roots elites, leading intellectuals, and opinion-makers in China and by looking beyond the top leadership, makes a significant contribution to our understanding of shared governance and broadened political participation in China. The chapters in this collection explore the elites’ role as opinion-makers, technical experts, producers of knowledge, and executives or managers, and pose a number of questions, the answers to which are crucial to understanding future political and economic development in China. What are elite perceptions of governance, inequality and justice; what do the elites mean by good governance; what is the influence of non-Chinese Communist Party elites in policy-making and implementation in China; how have they exerted their influence in the PRC and influenced its direction of future development; and what have grass-roots elites contributed to governance in local communities? Providing a keen insight into the role elites have played in governing China since 1978, this book is a pioneering effort to bring together elite studies and governance studies. As such, it will be highly relevant for policy-makers within international organizations, governments, and NGOs outside China as well as appealing to scholars and students interested in Chinese politics and governance.

Now available in a substantially revised 3rd edition covering the changes of the Seventeenth Party Congress and Eleventh National People's Congress and other recent developments, this major text by a leading academic authority provides a thorough introduction to all aspects of politics and governance in post-Mao China.

This book examines the nature and dynamics of gated communities within the specificities of reform Shanghai, a city that arguably has been at the forefront of China’s new urban/consumer revolution.