ABSTRACT
In China, legislative development has been intertwined with the grand transformation of governance, which includes the two processes of marketization and democratization. The institutional impact of the introduction and construction of a market economy upon the Provincial People’s Congresses (PPCs) has been tremendous. The development of the PPCs was expected to assist the institutionalization of the communist rule in the process of creating a market economy, and therefore, the PPCs tried to serve the national strategy for economic development. In addition to the force of market, the force of democracy has increasingly become strong in Chinese society and generated new pressure upon the emerging governance. Has the PPC system been flexible enough to change in response to these two strong challenges, or too rigid to adapt to the new environment? Has it suffered from institutional decay or experienced institutional maturation?
