Why Good Governance Goes Wrong: Government and Village in the Supply of Public Goods in Rural China

Following the rural tax-for-fee reform and the abolition of agricultural taxes in the early 2000s, the overall supply of rural public goods has improved, but its performance is still deficient. During a field study of ecological migrants in rural Ningxia, the authors witnessed the problems encountered in the implementation of a public housing project. This episode demonstrates how the provision of rural public goods depends on rural governance that responds to the tension between modern development and the values of rural society. The failure of the project stems from the clash between the logic of peasant actions and the performance indicators of cadres, producing an internal rupture between rural society and rural governance. In the process of modernization and urbanization, grassroots government is becoming more bureaucratic and technical, with the prevalence of e-government and especially with village committees turning increasingly administrativized and beholden to superior levels of government, and thus is failing to fully embed itself in rural society.