Tiao-kuai
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The tiao-kuai (Chinese: 条块; pinyin: tiáo-kuài; literally "branch and lump") system, also known as tiáotiáo-kuàikuài (条条块块) to emphasize the plurality, describes the quasi-federal arrangement of administration in the People's Republic of China. The term tiáo refers to the vertical lines of authority over various sector reaching down from the ministries of the central government. Kuài refers to the horizontal level of authority of the territorial government at the provincial or local level. According to political scientist Kenneth Lieberthal, "The former coordinates according to function ([for] example, environment); the latter coordinates according to the needs of the locality that it governs." Thus a local environmental protection bureau may have reporting responsibilities to both the central government's State Environmental Protection Administration and to the mayor of the city in which it is located.
Constitutionally, organizations in both the functional and territorial systems of governance are assigned to a system of ranks. Central ministries are at the same rank as provincial governments. Writes Lieberthal, "One key rule of the Chinese system is that units of the same rank cannot issue binding orders to each other. Operationally, this means that no ministry can issue a binding order to a province." This means a province may challenge, overrule, or ignore decisions made by a ministry. This two-dimensional arrangement sometimes creates undesirable conflicts, and there have been calls for tiao-kuai integration (条块结合; tiáo-kuài jiéhé), although this is unlikely to occur due to resistance from the provinces.
Under the Deng Xiaoping reforms, provinces were given substantial economic and political authority. This posed a problem for the central government in that the central government had no independent means of enforcing its authority to prevent local protectionism or enforce standards. Hence in the 1990s, the PRC government began creating parallel central organizations. Most of these organizations deal with economic regulations.
An analogous situation can be seen in federal systems such as the United States where a federal and state agency operate in parallel, but neither has the authority to command the other. Although the power relationships are similar the actual powers exercised can be quite different. For example, there are parallel institutions for police and financial securities regulation in the United States, but not in the PRC.
