Fragmented but Enduring Authoritarianism : Supply-side Reform and Subnational Entrepreneurialism in China’s Rail Delivery Services

China’s economic reform since 1978 has turned a shortage economy into an economy of overcapacity. To curb the capacity surplus, the government put forward a sweeping proposal of “supply-side structural reform,” although without any specifics of implementation. This vagueness has resulted in fragmentation between China’s central leadership and local agents. Based on two rail delivery services – China Railway Express Delivery (Zhongtie kuaiyun 中铁快运, CRED) and China–Europe Rail Freight (Zhong–Ou banlie 中欧班列, CERF) – this article argues that fragmentation in authority has allowed and even encouraged local actors to carve profit-making opportunities out of the excess capacities (including idle assets). In so doing, they give substance to what would otherwise be hollow policy rhetoric. Such subnational entrepreneurialism and the resulting tacit dynamics between state and local-level actors add another layer to the fine-grained theorization of fragmented authoritarianism in China: despite fragmentation, China’s authoritarian governance endures, but with outcomes now shaped by a cyclical process of decentralization and re-centralization as well as continuous central–local interplay. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London.

中國自1978年改革經濟至今，生產資源由「短缺」變為「過剩」。為了解決產能過剩的問題，中國政府推出了「供給側結構性改革」，卻沒有提出具體的實施辦法。這種模糊的政策促使中央領導和地方人員的權力分裂。本文基於對中鐵快運和中歐班列兩項鐵路貨運服務發展的深入研究，提出模糊的權力分裂，有助激勵地方人員利用過剩產能和閒置資產謀利；而在重置生產資源的過程中，同時也演譯了原本看似空泛的政策。這種地方企業家精神及其不斷與中央互動角力並產生的默契，讓我們進一步微調和完善有關中國「碎裂式威權主義」的理論——中國的威權管治在中央和地方出現權力分權的情況下依然歴久不衰；然而，中央和地方的持續互動和重複的分權集權過程，卻有效地影響著威權管治的結果。