Rang guo jia tou zi zai nong cun yun zhuan qi lai: Zhongguo di fang fu pin jue ce de jing ji he zheng zhi luo ji = Making state investment work in rural China : the economic and political logic in local anti-poverty programs

Ph.D.In developing countries where poverty constituted a political concern, the state might can adopt a principal-agent model and top-down financial transfers to promote redistributive initiatives. However, without strong incentive mechanism and monitoring capacity, the central principal has difficulties in controlling local agents, who might may not implement anti-poverty policies according to the state’s redistributive goals. In comparison, the large scale of rural poverty reduction in China during the Anti-poverty Campaign initiated in 2015 has constituted an intriguing empirical question about how the Chinese state ensures effective policy implementation. This dissertation argues that current institutions could can reach an equilibrium balance between the central control and local discretion, through which the central authorities maintained ultimate control over anti-poverty agendas, while the local agents utilized economic and political strategies to optimize enhance redistributive efficiency in rural areas. On one hand, the central state utilizes its administrative authority and economic resources to inject capital into the rural economy to substitute the labour of the population living under poverty, when they have insufficient labour force to lift themselves out of poverty. Through state-subsidized industries and capital-replacing-labour mobilization strategies, the state guaranteed can increase income sources for the poor households. On the other hand, cadres sent down from higher levels to the villages strengthened the state’s political control over the rural society. By allowing non-local village cadres to govern the implementation of antipoverty policies, it reduces the risk of elite capture.在發展中國家，貧困治理占據重要的政治議程，國家可以利用政府間委托代理關係，通過自上而下的財政轉移支付實現收入再分配目標。然而，如果缺乏有效的激勵機制和監督能力，中央政府難以控制地方代理人按照國家統一的扶貧意志執行政策。因此，在中國精准扶貧運動中，中央决策機關如何能够激勵地方政府在在短時間完成大規模農村脫貧任務，就構成了一個關于國家控制能力來源的實證問題。論文認爲，中國現行的扶貧制度既可以維持中央對扶貧政治議程的最終控制權，又允許地方利用决策自主權提高再分配效率。一方面，國家利用行政權威和資源動員優勢，通過建設收入補貼機制和資本替代勞動力的經濟動員策略，爲缺乏勞動力資源的貧困家庭構建起排他性的收入分配資格。另一方面，國家利用官僚動員策略進行政治控制，通過駐村幹部取代本地幹部介入和監督農村扶貧利益分配過程，限制精英俘獲機會。周昊玥."2019年3月".Parallel title from added title page.Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2019.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-122).Abstracts in Chinese and English.Title from PDF title page (viewed on February 21, 2022).Zhou Haoyue