Prof. Lin – Central-local Relationship in China and its Future

Central-local relationship is an important constitutional issue which every nation, whether big or small, needs to deal with. It is usually prescribed for by the constitution of the nation. The formation of the central-local relationship in a specic nation often has its historical reasons. In nations adopting a federal system, such as the United States of America, Australia and India, local governments, especially state or provincial governments, are the basis for the establishment of federal government, which is the central government. In nations
adopting a unitary system, such as the United Kingdom (“the UK”) and China, the purpose to set up local governments is to administer the state aairs more eciently. In many nations, either federal or unitary, all local governments have the same kind of relationship with the central government. That means all local governments have exactly the same degree of autonomy and jurisdiction. In some other nations, however, due to their dierent historical development, dierent local governments may have dierent kinds of relationship with
the central government.

China is a unitary nation adopting the people’s congress system as its form of government. There exist four kinds of local governments at provincial level, enjoying dierent degree of autonomy in China. This lecture intends to examine the future of central-local relationship under the people’s congress system, especially, (i) whether the existing status of central-local relationship is compatible with the people’s congress system, (ii) whether the current status is the best arrangement, and (iii) if not what is the possible future development?