ABSTRACT
Our analysis so far has shown that shequ reconstruction has served to build up the infrastructural power of the Chinese Party-state. We have argued that infrastructural power is a necessary precondition to providing social services, which in turn serves to generate output legitimacy. However, it can also be used to provide the rules of the game for citizen participation and autonomous self-administration. As we have seen, the designers of shequ reconstruction aimed to enhance the provision of social services, but were not interested in fostering genuine participation. Rather, the neighbourhoods and their residents were specifically mobilized to participate in social service provision to thereby help disburden the state. These measures, quite possibly, were aimed at co-production, a concept we are going to outline below: state responsibilities are transferred to the neighbourhood communities and participation in the fulfilment of these tasks not only serves to disburden the state, but moreover generates legitimacy and trust. As we have seen in Chapter 4, the dispersion of authoritative narratives also play a role here, since the participants have to believe that they are not abused by the state, but that they are rather part of an idealistic community that bridges the boundaries between state and society, and unites them in striving for the common good.
