The Implementation Of China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation Polices—An Ethnographic Study In Village G

Although China has undergone rapid economic and social development, poverty in rural regions has curtailed the leadership’s goal of creating a moderately prosperous society. Consequently, the state has undertaken a targeted top-down approach to alleviating impoverishment. Few studies have investigated how this policy is implemented in practice, and fewer still consider the perspective of grassroots level policy practitioners. These “street-level bureaucrats” play a decisive role in policy implementation at the grassroots level where a tension exists between their status as ‘agents of the state’ and ‘spokespeople for community interests’. Policy implementers at the grassroots level face competing pressures and demands from organisational hierarchy, local society and market forces. How they implement Targeted Poverty Alleviation polices in this complex and volatile environment is the focus of this study. This study provides a micro-level perspective on the implementation of national poverty reduction policies from the perspective of rural grassroots actors and uses an impoverished village (Village G) in China as a specific case study. Adopting an ethnographic approach, this work collects, analyses and interprets a large corpus of primary data, drawn from eight months of exhaustive field observations and in-depth interviews. The research overcame barriers in cultural practices, language communication, and transportation, as well as limited access to resources (particularly difficult after the outbreak of COVID-19) to present valuable empirical information on poverty governance in rural Chinese society.

The approach to the research is framed by Thomas Smith’s policy implementation model and the theory of street-level bureaucracy. The study systematically analyses the behavioural choices and strategic responses of grassroots policy implementers under conditions of competing pressures and limited resources. The study presents four key scenarios of Targeted Poverty Alleviation projects in Village G: infrastructure construction; the relocation programme; industrial poverty alleviation; and coping with higher-level inspections. These scenarios analyse the strategic and tactical behaviour of grassroots cadres in the process of policy implementation. The study finds that grassroots cadres in Village G face a squeeze due to pressure from above and resistance from below while carrying out their administrative duties in relation to Targeted Poverty Alleviation. In the context of political pressures and internal conflicts within an intra-bureaucratic hierarchical organisation, grassroots cadres complete the task of poverty alleviation by expanding upwards - striving to expand their discretionary powers - and unblocking downward - flexibly employing those same discretionary powers to their advantage. They leverage informal systems such as personal networks and clan power to obtain resources and support, while managing conflicts and frictions in policy implementation through strategic alliances and formalistic coping. When political pressure clashes with local knowledge and market conditions, grassroots cadres must fulfil the tasks of their superiors while taking into account local realities and villager needs. Street-level bureaucrats adopt flexible strategies in the implementation of policies, to ensure policy implementation becomes more “localised”. These flexible strategies include reinterpreting policy content, adjusting the manner of implementation, and only selectively implementing policies under specific circumstances.

This study enriches the theory of street-level bureaucracy by adapting it to the case of Targeted Poverty Alleviation in rural China. This thesis challenges the dominant view that the discretion of street-level bureaucrats can be effectively limited by strengthening their management. While bureaucratic controls may seem to increase administrative pressure, they may not reduce the discretion of street-level bureaucrats. The case study of Village G shows that even in the face of increasing policies, regulations, e-technology, and evaluation and monitoring, the discretionary power of street-level bureaucrats is not completely compressed, but rather exercised in a flexible manner. The focus on rural cadre and the challenges they face implementing Targeted Poverty Alleviation policies contributes to our understanding of state-society relations and street-level bureaucracy. It provides insights for pro-poor policy design and implementation in contemporary rural China.