Organizing forestry governance: Cadre training in China's multi-level governance regime

Abstract

Extant literature has examined cadre training within the context of the Chinese party-state's adaptive capacities, focusing on training delivered through party schools and administration academies. This article offers a different perspective, analyzing professional training as a steering mechanism in China's multi-level governance regime. Using China's State Forestry Administration (SFA) as a case study, the article explores the structure of training programs within the administration, the types of training offered to forestry cadres, and the role of training in the implementation of policies to promote sustainable forest management. It shows that training pursues different objectives, one of which is to facilitate and contribute to policy implementation. The SFA categorizes trainees into a number of centrally-defined, standardized groups and determines what kind of knowledge and skills each group of trainees are expected to acquire via training. Finally, it shows that training is used as a means to organize governance in China.