Decentralization, Money, and Power: The Case of People-Run Schools in China

Abstract

Minban xuexiao--people-run schools-have been alive, if not well, in China for the last 40 years. Starting as popular, voluntary village institutions in the 1940s, minban xuexiao today are low status, low quality schools. Whereas the earlier schools were guided by Communist party (CCP) cadres but managed and financed at the local level, contemporary minban xuexiao are funded at the local level but controlled and guided by provincial and central education experts. This evolution reflects tensions in the Chinese polity between centralization and decentralization; it simultaneously exhibits the growing unease of the Chinese leadership with popular participation in the management of social institutions and, in particular, with populist solutions to the problem of educational development. This study analyzes the evolution of people-managed schools as a reflection of the CCP's incremental move away both from decentralized decision making to centralized state and Party control and from populist education to regular education. These policy shifts uncover the PRC's negation of experiments that have been seen as models for development in poor societies. They represent continuing solidification of trends begun a decade ago. As Unger argued in these pages 5 years ago, the diploma disease has strongly influenced the course of Chinese educational development;' people-managed schools are now, in 1985, even more subject to central control, urban bias, and conflict over educational goals. Concurrently, the value of decentralization in education has been called into question, even though decision making in certain sectors of China's economy is devolving to local levels. Some scholars maintain that decentralization can be a viable strategy when there is agreement between central authorities and local citizens over goals and structures.2 Yet the problem of educational development