China Brief: The business world is overlooking political risk in Beijing
Ground-level governance tightened. Enormous amounts of ground-level power in China rest in the hands of country-level party secretaries. The central government has issued new plans to tighten the monitoring of primary-level governance, incorporating even closer surveillance and ideological control at the grassroots level over the next decade.
In essence, it doubles-down on the vision, promulgated since Xi took power, where the party tightly watches the party, the party tightly controls the public, and the public has no oversight of the party. Holly Snape has a fine summary over at Sinocism.
While these visions of control are frightening, it s important to remember they also come with costs: Local officials have complained repeatedly in private since 2013 of the intense burdens the renewed ideological work places on them, often to the neglect of their existing duties. Those costs tend to be passed down, creating more painful bureaucratic work and necessary ideological performances for everyone, from students to businesspeople.