Rural Tax Reform in China

Linda Chelan Li is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong.

• Introduction 1. Path Creation? Processes and Networks: How the Chinese Rural Tax Reform Began 2. Differentiated Actors: Central-Local Politics in Reform Evolution 3. Embedded Institutionalization: Sustaining Reform Effects 4. State and Market in Public Service Provision: Opportunities and Traps 5. Path Dependence, Agency and Implementation in Local Administrative Reform 6. Working for the Peasants: Strategic Interactions and Unintended Consequences. Conclusion

"The author successfully employs numerous theoretical concepts, such as institutionalism, path dependency, and policy analysis to illuminate her empirical material. This makes the study very useful for graduate students in the social sciences who are learning how to analyze Chinese data in terms of relevant theories... Interviews with Beijing officials allowed Li to gain a degree of insight into top-level motivations, which is often missing from studies of rural politics. Graphs and tables illuminate the points Li is making... This volume is a significant, specialized contribution to our understanding of the predicament of the countryside." - Thomas Bernstein, China Information, September 2012.