Grassroots Party Building in Urban China in the Reform Era

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) efforts and strategies in regard to grassroots party building in the past decade have been well documented in scholarly literature, but empirical evidence remains scattered and piecemeal. Little is known about the impact of such endeavors. How are various strategies implemented? How effective are they? Are primary party organizations (PPOs) able to accomplish their intended goals and help strengthen the governing capacity of the CCP in urban China? What is the popular perception and reception of these organizations within target populations? These questions regarding the long-term consequences of several waves of grassroots party building in the reform era are as yet unclear. Through systematically surveying and compiling cases of PPO building in urban China, as well as examining the operation conditions of a variety of PPOs in regard to handling concrete tasks such as social stability maintenance and crisis management, this proposed project aims to provide a broad and in-depth evaluation of the actual effects of intensive and extensive grassroots party building endeavors in urban China. With a focus on PPOs, this project also addresses two distinct yet related themes: the party state’s institutional restructuring efforts and the development of the non-state sector. Altogether, they allow us to tell a story of the evolving micro-foundation of urban governance in contemporary China.

Two objectives are expected to have been accomplished at the end of this project: First, a database of grassroots party building since 2000 will have been constructed; second, in-depth case studies from four regions of China will have been conducted, in order to assess the actual effects of party building and identify the micro processes and causal chains that have led to different development trajectories.