China's Latest Riots: A Reader Comments

In response to my post about the Weng'an riots below, commenter Zhangshan made this observation:

...I will not be so quick to agree that there is 'no way' for the central government to reassert control. If we look at the past few years, that is exactly what the central government has slowly been doing. The sacking of (former mayor) Chen Liangyu in Shanghai sent shockwaves through local Chinese government, and although it was arguably a political move, it was also a re-assertion of Beijing and ZNH (that is Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters in Beijing) authority over one of the more powerful local governments in China. Shanghai is no longer quite so much in its own orbit, now. .....The Supreme Court has begun to automatically review all death penalty cases, in an attempt to standardize and 'legitimize' results in these cases; this, too, is an example of slow increments of power-centralization in China. Recently, the State environmental protection Administration (SEPA) was promoted into a full ministry, the Ministry of Environmental Protection; although vertical administration has not been fully implemented, you can bet that will be on the horizon.

Good points all. I should have mentioned that there has been a considerable effort by Beijing to reassert some authority over the provinces, but as Zhanghsan himself goes onto say, in China, the devil is in the details. All of the examples above are well and good but it is at the county and township level that the local authorities are almost completely autonomous or, heaven is high and the emperor far away (天高皇帝远), as the oft-repeated saying goes. A classic example of this is the Environment Ministry. Yes, making it a Ministry is a step in the right direction but as Zhangshan notes, until all of its officers are centrally appointed (right now, except for a few very senior provincial level officers, they report to local authorities) and regularly rotated through the country, it still effectively is powerless at the local level, which is precisely where the most appalling pollution occurs. I'm sure they will try but resistance will be fierce, to put it mildly. Typically of China, this isn't a new problem: since sometime in the Han dynasty (around the turn of the millennium I think but would have to check) the fumuguan (父母官 or father and mother official, so called because of his wide responsibility and power) appointed at the county level during imperial times was banned from ever serving in his home district and only allowed to serve limited terms precisely to avoid compromise by local gentry and merchants.