Moving Across Hierarchies and Networks: The Role of Actor Mobility in Chinese Politics

Speaker: Christina Maags

The role of actors in Chinese politics has been examined from a plurality of perspectives. While in some studies the influence of elites and factions on political decision-making takes centre stage, other studies highlight the relevance of bureaucratic competition and negotiation or policy networks. Yet, while these approaches shed light on particular institutions or networks, they gloss over the fact that actors move across bureaucratic hierarchies and networks.

This study enquires into what role the mobility of individual actors plays in shaping political processes in China. Focusing on the case of China’s implementation of the UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the study retraces the movement of individual actors in the field of heritage policy across domestic and international policy networks and bureaucratic hierarchies. By examining government documents, newspaper articles and fieldwork data collected in three Chinese provinces (Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Yunnan), this study argues that individuals are highly mobile when participating in political processes as they travel domestically and internationally to participate in meetings, conferences or other events. In doing so, state and non-state actors ‘jump’ across scales to perform certain tasks, extend their networks and disseminate ideas and information across scales to pursue their interests.

This movement shapes the political process, firstly, as it enables actors to form multi-scalar networks. Secondly, actor mobility facilitates the diffusion of ideas and knowledge as well as a certain interpretation thereof across these networks. Finally, the Chinese bureaucracy not only benefits from this spread of information, but it actively facilitates the mobility of state and non-state actors across scales thereby transforming certain non-state actors into “agents” of the party-state.

Christina Maags is Lecturer in Chinese Politics at the Politics Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Christina’s research interests focus on the politics around cultural heritage in PR China unfolding, for instance, within the Chinese Living Human Treasures System (chuanchengren xiangmu), policy diffusion and implementation processes, tourism, and expert-state cooperation. In a new research project, she examines the politics of demographic change in China focusing on elderly care. Most recently, Christina has co-edited a volume on Chinese Cultural Heritage in the Making: Experiences, Negotiations and Contestations at Amsterdam University Press and published “Disseminating the Policy Narrative of ‘Heritage under Threat’ in China” in the International Journal of Cultural Policy (2018) and “When East Meets West: International Change and Its Effects on Domestic Cultural Institutions” in Politics & Policy (2019).