Hainan - State, Society, and Business in a Chinese Province

by Br°dsgaard; Kjeld Erik

• ISBN13: 9780415460330
• ISBN10: 0415460336
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-14
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book examines the complex relationship between the state, society and business in China, focusing on the experience of the island province of Hainan. This island, for many years a provincial backwater, was given provincial rank in 1988 and became the testing ground for experiments of an economic, political, and social nature that have received great attention from Beijing, in particular the "small government, big society" project. This book provides a full account of this transition, showing how Hainan casts important light on a number of highly topical issues in contemporary China studies: central-local relations, institutional reform, state-society relations, and economic development strategies. It provides detailed evidence of how relations between party cadres, state bureaucrats, businesses, foreign investors and civil society play out in practice in China today. It argues that despite the liberalization of recent years, especially in the economic sphere, the party state remains the most powerful actor in Chinese society, and that path-breaking reform experiments such as in Hainan remain highly vulnerable due to the central government's hesitation to commit the resources and unequivocal political support needed for the experiments to be successfully realized.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. viii
List of tables	p. ix
Acknowledgement	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Outline of the book	p. 3
"A place that God forgot"	p. 10
Background and history	p. 10
An important front area	p. 12
Establishing a new province	p. 15
"A special zone which is not a special zone"	p. 17
The Hainan car scandal	p. 19
Momentum regained	p. 21
Post-Tiananmen leadership	p. 25
Islanders versus mainlanders	p. 30
The economy of Hainan	p. 33
Growth rates and sectoral distribution	p. 34
Agriculture	p. 40
Land reclamation and rubber production	p. 42
Industry	p. 43
State-owned enterprises	p. 44
"The state takes a lot"	p. 46
Non-state sector	p. 47
Private sector development in Haikou city	p. 51
Non-state economy in rural areas	p. 55
The Nongken system	p. 56
Foreign trade and investment	p. 57
Regulations and policies	p. 57
Foreign direct investment	p. 59
Foreign trade	p. 64
Yangpu Economic Development Zone	p. 71
The most attractive incentive package in China	p. 71
Land lease	p. 73
Special customs zone	p. 75
Yangpu model revived	p. 75
"Small government" in Hainan	p. 79
Bianzhi and nomenklatura	p. 79
Party set up in Hainan	p. 82
The organizational history of the CCP in Hainan	p. 82
Liao Xun and "small government" in Hainan	p. 84
Second phase of administrative reform	p. 90
Third phase	p. 91
Small government in Yangpu	p. 94
Core functions of Yangpu administrative organs	p. 99
Civil service system	p. 101
Yangpu party set up	p. 103
1996 proposals	p. 104
Institutional reform	p. 106
"Big society" in Hainan	p. 108
Content and aim	p. 108
Social associations	p. 109
"People-run" social undertakings	p. 111
Transitional intermediate organizations	p. 112
Civil society	p. 112
Does China need a small government?	p. 113
Hainan and regional cooperation	p. 120
Pan-Pearl River Delta regional cooperation and development	p. 120
The PPRD framework	p. 122
Milestones of PPRD regional cooperation	p. 124
The ASEAN link	p. 128
Different aims	p. 130
Hainan and the South China Sea	p. 132
China's claim	p. 132
Vietnam-China and the South China Sea dispute	p. 134
Gulf of Tonkin economic circle	p. 136
Other clashes	p. 136
Code of Conduct in the South China Sea	p. 137
Hainan spy plane incident	p. 139
Hainan's role in the South China Sea	p. 141
Conclusion	p. 143
Notes	p. 145
Bibliography	p. 169
Index	p. 184
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