ABSTRACT
Ding Xiaoli is a gaunt but lively woman in her mid-sixties; Bai Zhengmin is a jowly and calm but opinionated man of about the same age.2 She has retired from her job at a television parts factory; he from his position in a government forestry bureau. Both were born outside the capital city, but moved there in adulthood and have lived in their current neighborhoods for more than two decades. Both serve as leaders of these neighborhoods, in Beijing and Taipei respectively, acting as full-time intermediaries between an elaborate state bureaucracy and a constituency of many hundreds of households. As this chapter investigates the ultra-local governance systems of which Ding and Bai are a part, and especially the face-to-face personal ties that link them with those they represent, it is fitting to begin by briefly considering these real-life individuals and their human environments. They arrived at these positions by rather different routes. Bai was elected to his post in 1998 in a 1,000-to-650-vote surprise victory over the three-term incumbent, a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), the party whose authoritarian rule Bai had unhappily endured prior to Taiwan’s democratization. Bai won reelection by a larger margin in a 2003 grudge match, when the same opponent sought to reclaim the seat. Ding, on the other hand, has won only symbolic elections in which a few dozen associates raise their hands at closed meetings choreographed by government and Party officials. Despite this sharp contrast, they share a number of qualities that helped bring them to these posts. Bai knows how to negotiate the channels of city government as a result of his work experience in the public sector; Ding has similar kinds of savvy from her experience as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Both are competent and pragmatic problem-solvers, though she has only a middle-school education, while he has a college degree. Most of all, both are “people persons.” Ding knows at least one member of perhaps three-quarters of the households she is responsible for, while Bai gives an estimate of 30 to 40 percent of a much larger neighborhood.3 They know how to listen patiently to the many visitors who seek them out. Strolling around their neighborhoods, they are frequently stopped by passers-by to exchange greetings. Ding is the director and Party Secretary of her Residents’ Committee (RC; jumin weiyuanhui). Bai’s position is that of lizhang: the head of the neighborhood
(li) and its subneighborhoods or blocks (lin). These state-supported structures are examples of systems that I call administrative grassroots engagement, in which states create, sponsor, and manage networks of organizations at the most local of levels that facilitate governance and policing by building personal relationships with members of society.4 Ding and Bai are paid by the state to serve as its designated liaisons within the neighborhood. They facilitate and provide information for a wide range of state programs, from welfare to conscription to policing. At the same time, they also provide a range of services to their constituents, listen to and act on their suggestions and complaints, and organize social and volunteer activities for them to take part in if they choose. While the RC and li/lin systems have many things in common, they also differ in important ways. The RCs are part of a few programs that do not exist or are much less restrictive in Taiwan, such as the family planning system. The coercive apparatus for which they gather information is capable of considerable repression, whereas the Republic of China respects basic civil liberties. The genuine electoral mechanism in the Taiwanese case puts teeth into what in the Chinese case are less tangible forms of accountability to constituents. Thus, while much of this chapter explores individual-level variation in how ordinary people get along with these organizations, it also ventures a cross-national comparison, exploring two cases that are similar in many ways but differ in the degree of accountability and in the potential intrusiveness of state action.5
