China's Local Administration: Traditions and Changes in the Sub-National Hierarchy by Jae Ho Chung & Tao-Chiu Lam

Author:Jae Ho Chung & Tao-Chiu Lam [Chung, Jae Ho & Lam, Tao-Chiu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Social Science, Ethnic Studies
ISBN: 9780415673341
Google: tYfcYgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 10031688
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

The designation of deputy-provincial cities

During the entire decade when the separately planned cities were operating – that is, during the period 1983–1993 – tension and conflict characterized the intricate relationship between them and their provincial superiors. As early as April 1985, within a year after the designation of six cities as such, the People’s Daily had already issued a stern warning against the undesirable situation of the provincial authorities and the separately planned cities being at loggerheads.27 Owing both to vested economic interests and to administrative power games, the provincial authorities sought hard to rein in the separately planned cities under their administrative jurisdiction, while the latter strove to expand their own space of operation quite independently of the provinces. Naturally, contradictions and conflicts were more serious with the separately planned cities, which were also provincial capitals that housed both the provincial and city governments.28

Available literature does not enable us to gauge in any systematic way the overall extent of such conflicts and contradictions between different separately planned cities and their respective provincial superiors. Unfortunately, the available evidence on this issue is mostly anecdotal in nature. Yet, it can be safely inferred that the contradictions must have been serious enough for the central government to reconsider the designation of separately planned cities as it related to provincial capitals.29 After a decade of tension and conflict, on July 2, 1993, the Party Center and the State Council jointly issued Document No. 7, which relieved the eight provincial capitals of their separately-planned-city status, thereby leaving only the six cities of Qingdao, Dalian, Ningbo, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and Xiamen to continue with their designation as separately planned cities.30

In February 1994, the Central Commission on Public Sector Reform (zhonggyang jigou bianzhi weiyuanhui), on the basis of support from the Party Center and the State Council, designated a total of 16 cities as deputy-provincial cities.31 These cities included the eight provincial capitals whose separately-planned-city status was canceled in 1993, the six remaining separately planned cities, and the two additional cities of Hangzhou and Jinan. As Chongqing was upgraded to a centrally administered municipality in March 1997, the total number of deputy-provincial cities was reduced to 15.32 As of late 2008, the total number still remains 15.

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