government would go to the localities and negotiate over tax authority, negotiate over appointments authority, and gradually, gradually, gradually, they pulled more budget authority and appointments authority up to the central government so that they would have control. Is there any comparative framework in the United States that would help us to understand the functioning of the Chinese state? No, and I think that that's very important because we tend to think that it's similar. There's a national government, there are provincial governments, there are local governments, but it's a unitary system. It's not a federal system. So for example, local governments don't have the authority to make their own budgets, to collect taxes and make their own budgets. The chief reason why we've got this huge property bubble, because local governments are stuck with the tab for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges and water processing and all that sort of thing. And yet the money trickles down (17/57)
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