A Micro-Geography of State Extractive Power: the Case of Rural China

Abstract

This article argues that geography is essential to explain subnational variation in extractive power. To exercise power over the expanse of their realm, governments need an infrastructure to access even more peripheral communities. But as rulers overcome the problems of distance, they discover the challenges of proximity, because locals influence state agents and undermine state autonomy. Studying the uneven reach of Chinese local governments within their jurisdictions, we demonstrate that micro-variation of extraction in rural China, including monetary and non-monetary levies, provides a rare window onto the micro-geography of power. Physical distance still obstructs extractive power projection into extremely remote places, but physical proximity has become a greater constraint for the exercise of power. Local governments are pressured by their immediate neighborhood, at the expense of less fortunate citizens, who live at intermediate distances: still within the reach of the state, but already too far away to turn the state to their favor. The effect of organizational distance, which in China is mediated primarily through the Communist Party, is similarly dualistic: Party networks alleviate asymmetric information problems, which hamper rural taxation around the world, but party networks are sustained by patronage and therefore jeopardize state autonomy.