Licensed Commoning and the Authoritarian Commons: Governing Participation in China's Community Gardens

ABSTRACT China's environmental governance transition combines intensified vertical accountability and performance‐based management with expanding calls for public participation. However, despite growing demand for civic engagement, there remains limited understanding of how participatory environmental initiatives are structured and governed in practice. Drawing on multi‐sited ethnographic research on community gardens in Shanghai and Nanning, this paper argues that community‐based environmental initiatives in urban China increasingly operate through licensed commoning , a mode of collective stewardship in which participation is formally authorised, procedurally regulated, and conditionally delegated by state actors. The analysis shows that community gardens are shaped by procurement contracts, performance indicators, and intermediary organisations that structure who may participate, how responsibilities are allocated, and how outcomes are evaluated. Licensed commoning enables rapid scaling, policy alignment, and short‐term stability, but it also constrains relational autonomy and shifts long‐term governance risks onto communities and civil society actors. Comparative evidence further reveals that more embedded forms of commoning, characterised by informal authorisation and dense relational practices, can sustain deeper collective engagement, yet remain institutionally fragile and vulnerable to administrative intervention. By conceptualising licensed commoning as a distinct governance modality, the paper contributes to debates on environmental participation, multilevel governance, and accountability in authoritarian contexts. Empirically, it demonstrates that participation in China's environmental transition is neither purely bottom‐up nor simply co‐opted, but actively produced and governed through auditable and revocable arrangements that shape both the possibilities and limits of collective environmental action.