Dilemmas of Local Governance under the Development Zone Fever in China: A Case Study of the Suzhou Region

This article aims to explore the mechanisms of the development zone fever in the Suzhou region, located in the fast-growing Yangtze River Delta, and investigates, from an institutional perspective, the practice of relevant intragovernmental governance in the context of rapid industrialisation since the 1990s. A specific mode of governance—the evaluative economic indicators scheme inherited from the earlier socialist planning system, combined with the party/state's promotion/evaluation system—plays an essential role in this transformation of farmland property rights. However, this model of development is not necessarily helpful for local financial conditions and it results in the disclacement of peasants and the loss of land resources. Based on the resulting 'dilemmas of governance', it is argued that, in addition to the 'economic paradigm', which focuses on consequences of fiscal reforms and devolution, scholars should pay more attention to factors such as the party/state's promotion/evaluation system and the stress between the evaluative indicators system maintained by the central/local sectoral command and the territorial jurisdictions. This could be helpful in gaining a fuller understanding of the dynamics and tensions of local developments in China.