Central-Local and State-Society Relations in China and Vietnam

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Over the past decade, the communist party-states in both China and Vietnam have intensified their control over government officials and societal groups. Do these efforts lead to similar or different outcomes in the two countries? Furthermore, to what extent can the variations in elite politics and state-society relations between China and Vietnam be attributed to historical legacies, political structures, and the strategies of various actors? Utilizing a diverse array of methods, including comparative historical analysis, fieldwork research, survey experiments, and computational text analysis, this panel investigates the relationships between central and local governments, the party and its cadres, and the state and society in both countries. The panel aims to deepen our understanding of the variations among communist and authoritarian countries and contribute to the growing body of literature that compares China and Vietnam (e.g., Malesky, Abrami, and Zheng 2010; Gueorguiev and Schuler 2021; Malesky 2021; Trinh 2021; Truong 2021).

In this panel, Duy Trinh’s paper utilizes parallel survey experiments in China and Vietnam to explore how citizens’ beliefs about factionalism and elite politics influence their perceptions of the motives behind anti-corruption campaigns in both countries. Warren Lu and Minh Trinh’s paper examines the behaviors of local governments in manipulating statistics and how the governmental structures of China and Vietnam lead to divergent outcomes when the central government attempts to curb such local manipulations. Kevin Luo’s paper investigates land redistribution and rural reform projects in China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and South Korea during the Cold War, examining their divergent legacies in rural state-society relations. Mai Truong and Zhihang Ruan’s paper analyzes how the central governments’ efforts to shift blame to local governments and cadres affect public opinion about the regime and various levels of government in China and Vietnam over time. Lastly, Duong Pham’s paper studies how, in a commercialized yet authoritarian media market, different types of Vietnamese newspapers cover corruption news and shape public opinion about the regime and cadres.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• Can Citizens “See” Elite Infighting in Authoritarian Regimes? - Duy Trinh, Princeton University

• Institutional Ambiguity and Curbing Statistical Manipulation in China & Vietnam - Wenzhi LU, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Minh Duc Trinh, Purdue University

• Securing the Countryside: Varieties of Rural State Building in Cold War Asia - Kevin Wei Luo, University of Minnesota

• How Autocrats’ Blame Avoidance Strategies Backfire: The Cases of Vietnam & China - Mai Thanh Truong, Marquette University; Zhihang Ruan, Hunter College, CUNY

• Framing Corruption News under the Authoritarian Shadow: The Case of Vietnam - Duong Thi Thuy Pham, University of California, San Diego

Chair

• Nhu Truong University of Wisconsin-Madison

Discussants

• Paul J. Schuler University of Arizona

• Benjamin L. Read University of California, Santa Cruz