For China’s Urban Residents, the Party-State Is Closer than Ever

In a recent working paper, scholars Yutian An and Taisu Zhang argue that local urban governments in China emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with far more muscle and clout than they have ever had before. Unlike in the past several decades, the sub-district (jiedao, the lowest formal level of government) and the neighborhood community (shequ, technically self-governing entities below even the