Fragmented Rural Governance Behind the Dying Tree: A Case of Intermediaries' Emergent Participatory Action Research in China

ABSTRACT This paper examines fragmented rural governance in China through an emergent participatory action research (Emergent PAR) account of efforts to rescue an ancient camphor tree in Qixi Village, Guangdong Province, China. The tree was a collective ecological resource that stood on public land, carried local memories, and became endangered during rural revitalization construction. The rescue process exposed a governance vacuum produced by the separation between village‐level execution and township‐level approval, together with limited channels through which villagers' concerns and local ecological knowledge could enter formal procedures. Drawing on participant observation, action records, and five cycles of intervention from 2021 to 2024, we show how villagers, volunteer arborists, village cadres, township officials, and researchers interacted and negotiated in the tree's treatment. Instead of resolving fragmented governance, the researchers acted as situated intermediaries who translated villagers' concerns and professional diagnoses into proposals and risk assessments legible to administrative authorities. The case contributes to debates on fragmented authoritarianism, rural self‐governance, and action research by showing how emergent intermediation can create provisional pathways for collective resource governance under centralized rule.