Shouldering the Burden: The Communist Party’s Deepening Penetration into Village China

Abstract Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party of China has systematically centralized decision-making power over a wide range of policy areas while strengthening the organizational capacity of Party institutions to implement the Party’s agenda. The Party has expanded its presence and influence across government agencies, private enterprise and non-profit organizations. The final frontier for Party control lies in the countryside, where villages have enjoyed relative autonomy and civic organizational status since decollectivization in the early 1980s. This article explains how the Party has systematically deepened its penetration into China’s villages by empowering village-level Party branches and Party agents to take control of village affairs. The policies have sought to turn village committees into party-state implementation agencies, but messy realities on the ground raise questions about the efficacy of the measures for policy implementation and formal Party control. Drawing on interviews with villagers, village leaders and township officials in several rural Chinese counties in western and eastern parts of China, alongside Party documents and Chinese-language academic journal articles, this article examines the Party’s strategy for taking greater control of China’s 600,000 plus villages and presents observations about the impacts and consequences of the recent centralization initiatives for rural governance in China.