Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Diversity and Distribution: The Success and Failure of Economic Development in China's Poor and Minority Counties

为什么在短短几十年里，中国有些地区仍然贫穷，而另一些地区则从贫穷走向富裕？为什么许多受益于两项关键的平权行动和扶贫政策-一些县被指定为"少数民族自治县"，另一些县被指定为"国家贫困县"-的地区增长最慢？虽然这些地区往往受到地理的诅咒，位于中国的偏远地区，自然条件恶劣，与经济增长背道而驰，但它们的增长率之间的巨大差异表明，对它们不发达的解释是不完整的。因此，本课题研究了与上述政策相关的各种政治制度，如上级财政转移支付、民族自治县地方官员的任命等，对县政府、公民和地方企业之间的经济关系的性质以及由此产生的地方经济增长的影响。本项目探讨的假设是，这些机构与地方经济结构相互作用，以激励地方官员提供高质量的公共服务，并在某些地方推行促进增长的战略，而在另一些地方谋取私利。 六个月的数据收集-在香港的档案馆，以及在吉林，甘肃和广东省的各个县-将使罕见的档案材料，深入的案例研究，地理空间数据和非参数匹配技术的使用，以解释这些令人费解的模式。虽然关于多民族地区经济增长障碍的研究越来越多，但这一研究尚未扩展到中国的情况。这是一个重要的遗漏，原因有几个。首先，民族多样性的显著次国家差异使中国成为检验民族多样性、地方治理和经济增长之间关系的现有理论的理想实验室。其次，自2008年西藏和2009年新疆骚乱以来，中国的少数民族地区受到了媒体的极大关注，但人类学以外的其他领域的学者仍然对其研究不足。该项目将填补这一显著空白，使用定量和定性技术相结合，对这些知之甚少的领域得出更普遍的结论。最后，尽管人们对中国在改革时期取得的显著经济增长记录给予了极大关注，但很明显，这种转型并没有"使所有的船都升起来"。"我们对扶贫政策的受益县知之甚少;通过揭示这些政策可能鼓励某些地区增长而阻碍其他地区增长的机制，这个项目将有助于解释为什么中国的一些底层地区？中国的经济等级制度从经济自由化中获益甚微。 该项目将为决策者和学者提供有用的信息。近十年来，公共产品的提供不足或不平等，特别是在多民族地区，一直是发展学者的一个主要关切，也成为美援署等援助组织的一个优先问题。该项目将帮助决策者了解改善或加剧这些问题的政治制度和经济条件。此外，该项目还将生成两个原始数据集，在项目完成后将向公众开放：一个是地理空间数据集，描绘了过去15年来三个省所有县新公共服务项目的分布情况;另一个是基于档案材料的数据库，该数据库以20世纪50年代共产党工作队报告为基础，介绍了各种贫困县和少数民族县的历史情况。

Why have some areas of China stayed poor while others have moved from poverty to affluence in a few short decades? And why have many of the areas that have benefited from two key affirmative action and poverty alleviation policies--the designation of some counties as "minority autonomous counties" and others as "national poverty counties"--experienced the slowest growth? While these areas are often cursed by geography, located in remote areas of China and subject to harsh natural conditions antithetical to economic growth, the significant variation between their growth rates suggests that this explanation for their underdevelopment is incomplete. This project therefore examines the relatively understudied impact of various political institutions associated with the policies just mentioned--among them fiscal transfers from higher levels of government, and ethnicity-based appointment of local officials in minority autonomous counties--on the nature of economic relationships between county governments, citizens, and local businesses, and on local economic growth as a result. This project explores the hypothesis that these institutions interact with the structure of the local economy to create incentives for local officials to provide high-quality public services and pursue pro-growth strategies in some locations, and to seek personal gains in others. Six months of data collection--in archives in Hong Kong, as well as in a variety of counties in Jilin, Gansu and Guangdong provinces--will enable the use of rare archival materials, in-depth case studies, geospatial data, and nonparametric matching techniques to explain these puzzling patterns. While there is a growing body of work on impediments to economic growth in ethnically diverse areas, this work has not been extended to the Chinese case. This is an important omission for several reasons. First, significant sub-national variation in ethnic diversity makes China an ideal laboratory for testing existing theories about the relationship between ethnic diversity, local governance and economic growth. Second, since the riots in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009, China's minority areas have received significant media attention but are still understudied by scholars in fields other than anthropology. This project will fill in this notable gap, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques to produce more generalizable conclusions about these poorly understood areas. Finally, while much attention has been paid to China's remarkable record of economic growth in the reform era, it is clear that this transformation has not "raised all boats." We know little about the counties that have been the beneficiaries of poverty-alleviation policies; by uncovering the mechanisms by which these policies may encourage growth in some areas and hinder it in others, this project will help to explain why some of the areas at the bottom of China?s economic hierarchy have benefited only minimally from economic liberalization. This project will generate useful information for both policymakers and scholars. Under-provision or unequal provision of public goods, especially in ethnically diverse areas, has been a key concern of development scholars for nearly a decade, and has also become a priority issue for aid-granting organizations such as USAID. This project will aid policymakers' understanding of the political institutions and economic conditions that ameliorate or exacerbate these problems. Furthermore, this project will generate two original datasets that will become publicly available after completion of the project: a geospatial dataset mapping the distribution of new public service projects in all counties in three provinces over the past fifteen years; and a database based on archival materials on historical conditions in a variety of poor and minority counties based on Communist Party work team reports from the 1950s.