2025/08/06 by David S. G. Goodman
paper · doi:10.1177/0920203x251362114
The policy goal of establishing local social governance in the People’s Republic of China since 2021 highlights two somewhat contradictory tendencies in its spatial politics. One is increased social welfare provision through economic, social, and governmental institutions cooperating to create self-sustaining communities. The other is greater city-district and county-level local control by the Communist Party of China. Local social governance remains in its infancy with limited policy implementation. The evidence to date though from an examination of the development of local social governance does not suggest major changes in the longer-term balance between the party-state’s undoubted centralist and decentralist tendencies. Moreover, while there may be the desire both to improve social welfare provision and to extend the reach of the state and the party, the proposed programme of change faces immense challenges.