What messages does farmer protest convey? Beyond various grievances and strategic actions from farmers, the existence of protests reveals weakened capacity of the state to govern the countryside through a coherent and robust local leadership. When many inquire how stable China’s political system is against its rapid economic growth and social instability, it is crucial to revisit the fundamental requirement of a capable government: a cohesive state apparatus. By naming local state cohesion “the sinews of state power,” the book focuses on a local and endogenous motor of political change as oppo ... More

What messages does farmer protest convey? Beyond various grievances and strategic actions from farmers, the existence of protests reveals weakened capacity of the state to govern the countryside through a coherent and robust local leadership. When many inquire how stable China’s political system is against its rapid economic growth and social instability, it is crucial to revisit the fundamental requirement of a capable government: a cohesive state apparatus. By naming local state cohesion “the sinews of state power,” the book focuses on a local and endogenous motor of political change as opposed to a national government or society-centered thesis. It is local because the emphasis is on the county, township, and village levels of administration that rural society has most immediate interaction with. It is endogenous because local practices have helped set the tone of national policy debates, and processes unleashed by the local state have ultimately contributed to its fragmentation. The cohesive local state in rural China was formed and institutionalized when newly recruited Party cadres constructed a new identity as state agents in the Maoist era and when their survival skills were reinforced by reforms in the 1980s and the 1990s. The negative social and fiscal consequences of local practices prompted further reforms in the early 2000s, which have redressed certain local deviations and paradoxically undermined the cohesion of local states. Consequently lower state capacity to sanction and reward its agents or extract from society should warn the regime of its own demise.