Informal governance at China's borders

Tak-Wing Ngo

Chapter 8 in Handbook on Local Governance in China, 2023, pp 127-138 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: China is the nation that borders the most countries. Despite the presence of heavily guarded checkpoints along the borders, shadow exchanges and smuggling activities proliferate across borders. The prevalence of unregulated activities in a highly regulated space underlines the nature of informal governance at China’s borders. This form of governance assumes a heightened importance under the Belt and Road Initiative. Effective governance at the border depends on the state authorities’ skilful manipulation of the formal and informal regimes. Formal customs rules and informal practices are enforced at different time-space conjunctures to maintain a precarious balance between flexible adaptiveness and the sovereign authority of the state. As such, the lack of uniformity and consistency in border governance is in essence a technique of rule that contributes to the resilience of the Chinese state.

Keywords: Asian Studies; Law - Academic; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800883246.00016 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20565_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().