2016 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Understanding the Model of Governance in China: Party-state's Integration with Business Entities
| Project/Area Number |
16K17060
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| Research Institution | International University of Japan |
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Principal Investigator |
Macikenaite Vida 国際大学, 国際関係学研究科, 講師(移行) (10773004)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
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| Keywords | state-business relations / model of governance |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In FY2016, the primary focus was on data collection and preliminary analysis. Therefore, (1) the datasets were expanded to include year 2015 (career record of managers incumbent in); and additional datasets for provincial leaders for the analysis period (1992-2015) were created. (2) Primary materials necessary for the analysis were collected, mainly the official documents (party or government) pertaining to personnel appointment policies and practices.
Initial analysis of the data has analyzed manager career mobility between the state institutions at the central level and also party and state institutions at the local level. The findings of the analysis were presented at the 2016 Autumn Convention of the Japanese Association for Asian Studies (JAAS) in November and the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association in the USA in January 2017. The papers demonstrated that inter-system (between the companies and state institutions) career transfers have been a part of the Chinese model of governance, which recruited the best-performing managers from the largest companies in traditional industries to compensate for the government’s loss of expertise in economic affairs following the separation of business from the state. It was shown that this particular model of governance has led to an emergence of a particular pattern of company networks, which provides a handful of companies with extensive links to the state.
While this was a preliminary analysis to survey inter-system career transfers, more complex social network analysis is yet to be conducted.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
More complex social network analysis, which is essential to take full advantage of the collected data, requires more time to be studied in depth. Specifically, the literature on the methodology of social network analysis and its application needs to be studied.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
For the remaining two years, research activities will be centered around two pillars. (1) Explanation of patterns of party-state integration with business entities will be sought through interviews, analysis of official documents (mainly those related to the personnel appointment policies), statistical data (on companies observed: significance in Chinese economy, profits, industry, geographic location etc.; also on the specific characteristics of the managers; managerial experience (years served, position), area of expertise (industry), performance (as measured by the performance of the business entity under their supervision), etc.). (2) More attention will be dedicated to the study of practical application of social network analysis to the analysis of the datasets.
As regarding the research structure, more attention may be given to the analysis of the governance model at local level since data suggest there exists more interesting pattern of networks between the companies and state institutions.
In addition to this, methodological part of the research will likely receive more effort. It was at first stated that this is a secondary goal of this research project, however, application of social network analysis if properly developed and explained may prove to be a convenient and relatively new (in the field of China studies) tool for the studies of Chinese politics.
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| Causes of Carryover |
The remaining amount of grant from this year will be utilized for comprehensive study of social network analysis and its utilization for the data analysis. FY2016 was oriented towards data collection and preliminary analysis and therefore more complex application of social network analysis was postponed to the later stages of the research.
In addition to this, several interviews that were planned to be conducted in the later half of FY2016 were postponed to later due to the scheduling issues.
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| Expenditure Plan for Carryover Budget |
The remaining amount will be used for the theoretical literature of social network analysis, software purchase if necessary, and, importantly, on research assistance, mainly with more technical IT-related tasks in social network analysis.
In addition to this, several interviews will additionally be conducted in FY2017.
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