The Politics of Financing Education in China

The Politics of Financing Education in China

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The Politics of Financing Education in China Tingjin Lin Jiangsu Distinguished Professor of Public Administration and Dean of Institute of Urban Development Studies, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, China

Tingjin Lin 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-00915-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-43597-5 ISBN 978-1-137-00916-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137009166 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

To my parents

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Contents List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration viii ix xi 1 Introduction 1 2 Developing the Bureaucratic Framework 22 3 Personnel Rules and Education Equalization 45 4 1994 Tax Reform and Provincial Fiscal Dependency 75 5 Personnel Rules, Fiscal Dependency and Education Inequality 93 6 Conclusions 132 Notes 141 Bibliography 173 Index 189 vii

Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 Intra-provincial inequality in education finance 14 2.1 A framework of elements and stages in institutional analysis and development 28 4.1 Budgetary revenue and expenditure of the center (1978 2009) 84 4.2 Budgetary revenue and expenditure of local governments (1978 2009) 85 4.3 Fiscal dependency and personnel rules 92 5.1 Effect of educational background on promotion speed 105 5.2 Party age and promotion speed 107 5.3 Promotion speed and age of joining CCP 108 5.4 Promotion speed and divergence of education equalization (Model 2) 122 5.5 Governor s promotion speed and education inequality (Model 2) 122 5.6 Governor s promotion speed and education inequality (Model 2) 123 5.7 Secretary s retirement rule and education inequality (Model 2) 124 5.8 Fiscal dependencies and education inequality (Model 2) 125 Tables 1.1 Regional disparities in financing compulsory education 3 3.1 Education inequality of Jiangsu, Henan and Ningxia (1994 2001) 68 5.1 Descriptive statistics of numeric variables (1994 2007) 94 5.2 Descriptive statistics of dummy variables (1994 2007) 95 5.3 Explaining promotion speed 102 5.4 Data sources 112 5.5 Inequalities in education finance (1994 2007) 113 5.6 Descriptive statistics of retirement rule 114 5.7 Descriptive statistics of fiscal dependency 115 5.8 Heteroskedastic linear regression models 118 viii

Acknowledgments This book could never have been completed without the help of many people. I would like to thank Professors Yang Ming and Shen Mingming for first sparking my interest in China studies and quantitative methods when I was a student in Peking University s master s program in comparative politics. As I progressed through the PhD program in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong, I was truly blessed to have a wonderful and dedicated group of supervisors and dissertation advisors. Professor John Burns, Dr Daniel Lam and Dr Peter Cheung were extremely generous with their timeandconsistentlypushedmetoimprove.iwouldliketoexpressmy deepest gratitude in particular to Professor Burns for his advice, support and encouragement throughout the course of my research and studies. I enjoyed his style of supervision. I would also like to thank Professor Gerard Postiglione in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong, Dr Richard Hu at the University of Hong Kong, Professor Gong Ting at the City University of Hong Kong and Dr Glenn Shive at the Hong Kong American Center for their help at various stages of researching and writing this book. I am grateful for the financial support that made it possible for me to attend the ICPSR s summer program on quantitative methods at the University of Michigan (2006) and to conduct dissertation research at Harvard University (2007 2008). Support for this research was provided by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, a Research Postgraduate International Travel Grant and the Fulbright (Hong Kong) Scholarship. While in the US, I received inestimable help from Professors Elizabeth Perry, Martin Whyte, Gary King and Ronald Suleski at Harvard University, Shi Tianjian and Emerson Niou at Duke University, and many more academic experts at the Fairbank Center and Harvard-Yenching Institute. I really appreciate all the kindness I experienced in the US. I would also like to acknowledge my friends in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, who made my stay in HKU not only possible but pleasurable. ix

x Acknowledgments Last, but certainly not least, I am also indebted to my family and friends outside academia. I thank my parents for their endless love. The author and publisher acknowledge, with thanks, the permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals) to use Tingjin Lin s article entitled Intra-provincial Inequality in Financing Compulsory Education in China: Exploring the Role of Provincial Leaders (1994 2001), published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Education on September 1, 2009. A project funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.

Note on Transliteration Pinyin, formally Hanyu Pinyin, is the official system used for transcribing Chinese characters into Latin script in Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Developed in the mid-20th century by the Chinese government, the pinyin system has become the internationally recognized standard for transliterating Chinese text. It has also been the standard for the global scholarly community for more than two decades and is the standard used by the United Nations and most of the world s media. It is used throughout the book for transliterating Chinese characters. xi