Introduction

Professor Zhou begins with the observation that spatial mobility among officials has been an important control mechanism in governing China, proposing a model of stratified mobility across administrative jurisdictions to account for patterns of spatial mobility in the Chinese bureaucracy.  He argues that patterns of spatial mobility are regulated by the dual processes of political control and local autonomy and reflect contentions between the central authority and local interests in China. Patterns of spatial mobility provide valuable information on variable coupling between the central and local governments, the reach of the state, and the reach to the state.  He will report preliminary findings of spatial mobility among chief officials in Jiangsu Province of China, between 1990 and 2008.

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About the Speaker

Xueguang Zhou is a professor and the Chair of the Sociology Department at Stanford University, where he is also the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development and a Senior Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His main area of research is institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, Chinese organizations and management, the Chinese bureaucracy, and governance in China. Professor Zhou currently conducts research on the rise of the bureaucratic state in China. He works with a research team to examine patterns of personnel flow among government offices to understand intra-organizational relationships in the Chinese bureaucracy. He also studies the historical origins of the Chinese bureaucracy.