Working for the Peasants? Strategic Interactions and Unintended Consequences in the Chinese Rural Tax Reform

Betting on the strong: Local government resource allocation in China's poverty counties

“…This additional taxation was one source of growing tension in rural areas: in response, beginning in 2000, "tax-for-fee" reforms (shuifei gaige 税费改革) were implemented to relieve farmers of their tax burdens by streamlining local revenue collection into a single agricultural tax and surcharge (Kennedy, 2007;Oi and Zhao, 2007). Then in 2004e2006 the agricultural tax and surcharge were completely eliminated (Kennedy, 2007;Li, 2007), thereby further recentralising central government control over revenue. To compensate local governments for loss of revenue following the tax-for-fee reforms, the central government introduced a system of fiscal transfers to provincial governments, which funnel funds to county governments and eventually to township governments (Yep, 2004;Oi and Zhao, 2007, 84).…”

Economic development and mass political participation in contemporary China: determinants of provincial petition (Xinfang) activism 1994–2002

“…Throughout the 1990s, this financial burden grew to the extent that it exceeded their agricultural income in many places and the arbitrary extra-budgetary fees became a main source of peasant complaints and protests (Bernstein and Lü, 2003;Wedeman, 1997). In the late 1990s, the central government launched a series of tax reforms, fixing the maximum agricultural tax rate at 8.4 percent, and forcing local governments to abolish the agricultural tax by 2008 (Li, 2007;Yep, 2004). This reform significantly lowered the financial burden of the peasants, which reduced the cause for petitions in agricultural regions.…”

How Has the Abolition of Agricultural Taxes Transformed Village Governance in China? Evidence from Agricultural Regions

“…LindaLi (2007) and ChristianGöbel (2010) argue that the TFR and the AAT were actually not the centre's original intentions or pre-planned policies, but rather the consequences of interactions between the central and local states. Thereafter, however, the worsening deficits prompted local governments to turn increasingly to land expropriation to raise revenue.…”