Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2014

 

A Political Analysis of the Expenditure of Municipal Governments in China

(Abstract)

 

He Yanling, Wang Guanglong and Chen Shiguo·

 

People-oriented urbanization depends upon the preferences expressed in municipal government expenditure. The politics of such expenditure must answer the question of who benefits in the course of urbanization. At present, Chinese municipal expenditure is a serious problem with a spatial bias. This bias has been constantly modified under the banner of people’s livelihood. The complexity of the politics of Chinese municipal expenditure is a sign of the complexity of municipal government. As a compound body, a municipal government has the three dimensions of “the state at the local level,” “local government” and a “bureaucratic organization.” It undertakes different institutional roles and different functions in these different dimensions, and attains different goals. Within this multi-objective system, municipal governments’ expenditure preferences are dominated by “getting a promotion,” which triggers a series of urban social problems and conflicts. A city is in essence an aggregation in which the government provides collective consumer goods (municipal public services) by means of spatial agglomeration. In order to avoid risks to China’s future urbanization, municipal expenditure has to change to “spending for the sake of the citizens,” and complete a step-by-step institutional transition from a governance mode of “using officials to control officials” to one of “using citizens to control officials.”