Farmland preservation and watershed management in China: a perspective of local entrepreneurial leadership in the party-state mechanism

This chapter explains how China politically motivates local entrepreneurial leaders to solve complicated environmental issues within the authoritarian party-state context. Three Chinese characteristics of entrepreneurial localism/urbanism are particularly identified: upward accountability, quantifiable evaluation and vertical mobilization. Careerist local cadres prioritize farmland preservation and river pollution control when these two topics are assigned as ‘one-vote veto’ indicators by their supervisory authorities. In addition, vertical subtracting and vertical coordination are two ways of mobilizing lower-level cadres to accomplish fixed-territory (such as farmland) and trans-boundary (watershed) performance assignments. Monitoring technologies can be used to effectively quantify cadre performance for these indicators, encouraging local leaders to flexibly develop certain tactics to achieve the assigned environmental goals. While there was a short-term success, certain long-term social and political externalities are discussed at the end of the chapter.