Zhao Shukai: Pluralism powered China’s rural reform

Former official says a pluralistic power structure, neither by design nor the result of negotiation among leaders, created political space and opportunity for reform.

Zhao Shukai (赵树凯; b. 1959) is a Chinese official of rural policy and governance. From 1982 to 1989, he worked at the Rural Policy Research Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee’s Secretariat (later reorganised as the State Council’s Rural Development Research Centre and subsequently the Research Centre of Rural Economy under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs). Starting in 1990, he served at the Development Research Centre of the State Council, holding roles including Director General of the Rural Department’s Organisation Research Office and Director General of the Information Centre. He also served as Deputy Party Secretary of Zhuolu County, Hebei.

In the following article, Zhao dissects the usual cast of reform heroes—central architects, bold provincial leaders, ingenious farmers, canny think tankers—and finds their starring roles less decisive than legend suggests. What really enabled change, he argues, was a contested apex: leaders who could not impose a single line on one another. That stalemate widened room for manoeuvre, emboldened reformers to act first, and forced Beijing to ratify later. The lesson is clear: China’s rural reform thrived when authority was plural and competitive.

Policymaking of rural reform in the 1980s shows that reform depends on a permissive political environment. Policy innovation requires competitive political conditions and cannot exist under absolute authority. A pluralistic power structure provides the political platform and the historical space for reform and innovation. Reform advanced not simply because reformist actors emerged, but because the political structure itself evolved to create enabling conditions. That transformation produced a favourable climate, providing the political space or the political opportunity for change.

In further terms, reform requires not only reform-minded actors but also an enabling political space. Where such space exists, reformers can exert influence; where it is absent, their efforts rarely succeed. In other words, reform-oriented political forces have always existed, but reform itself does not invariably follow, because staging the “drama” of reform requires the presence of specific political conditions. Chief among these is openness in the political structure, both in top-level power relations and in the ideological sphere. Only such openness can secure political space for reform, allow diverse policy proposals to be aired, give rise to policy competition, mobilise reform actors, and translate reform initiatives into tangible socioeconomic results. Conversely, when the structure is highly rigid, officials can only act under uniform directives, think tanks can advise only within prescribed policy lines, and the grassroots lack the freedom to choose policies or create new institutions; reform is unlikely to emerge.

The following article appears in a 21 October post on the WeChat account 沽河虎山, which likely belongs to Zhao: the name references landmarks in his hometown, and the feed exclusively features his own essays and commentary on his work. The post attributes its first publication to the Journal of Central China Normal University, no. 1 (2020), whereas other sources list no. 2 (2020). I have not located the piece in the journal’s index, but the earliest verifiable online appearance dates to March 2020. —Yuxuan Jia

Zhao separately said the piece was first published in the Journal of Central China Normal University in the first months of 2020 during COVID. — Zichen Wang

赵树凯：农村改革的政治逻辑

Zhao Shukai: The Political Logic of Rural Reform

Judging by the reconstruction of the household contract responsibility system, China’s rural reform was undoubtedly a success. But what explains this success? Academic inquiries have typically focused on the actors of reform—that is, on the political forces that participated in the reform process. This analytical perspective is crucial, but not sufficient. Reformers have appeared in many historical periods, yet successful reforms have been rare. This is because reform requires not only reformers, but also specific political conditions; the actions of reform participants depend on such political contexts. An examination of the evolution of rural policy reveals that reform occurred when a relatively relaxed political space emerged. This perspective helps illuminate the political logic underlying the reform.

I

Over the past seventy years of rural development in China, the path has been far from smooth. There have been glorious periods when peasants lived contentedly and production flourished, as well as difficult times when the economy declined and even famine occurred. The fundamental reason lies in policy arrangements.

Reform, in essence, means a fundamental transformation of policy. The establishment of the household contract responsibility system in agriculture during the 1980s was an epoch-making policy shift. It rebuilt the institutional foundations of the rural economy, just as the people’s commune system had earlier reshaped primary-level government. On this new foundation, policies began to allow private ownership of large means of production, the hiring of labour, and the migration of rural labourers to engage in non-agricultural work and business. These changes laid the groundwork for the market economy. Among all the social transformations in rural China since the Communist Party of China (CPC) founded the People’s Republic, none has been more profound than this one.

In December 1958, the Sixth Plenary Session of the 8th CPC Central Committee adopted the Resolution on Several Issues Concerning the People’s Commune, which stated:

“According to the theory of Marxism-Leninism and the preliminary experience of China’s people’s communes, it can now be anticipated that the people’s commune will accelerate the pace of socialist construction in our country, and will become the best form for realising the following two transitions: first, the best form for the transition from collective ownership in rural areas to ownership by the whole people; second, the best form for the transition from socialist society to communist society.”

The document further noted that “it can also be anticipated that in the future communist society, the people’s commune will remain the basic unit of social structure.”

The people’s commune system was conceived as an ambitious blueprint for China’s social development. Its architecture was debated in successive high-level meetings by leading Marxist politicians and theorists, who presented it as a comprehensive path for China’s historical advance. However, it was rejected by farmers. Far from a “golden bridge” to communism, the people’s communes proved a costly detour that left painful memories. The rise of the household responsibility system did more than dismantle the communes; it swept away an entire theoretical edifice of revolutionary development, marking the collapse of a generation’s political ideals.

The establishment of the household contract responsibility system was not merely a change in the form of production organisation, but a profound and far-reaching socio-political pivot as well as the collapse of an old ideology. That is where the difficulty of reform lay. The household contract responsibility system not only laid the groundwork for a new rural economic and political order, but it also recast the urban–rural relationship and propelled reforms in the cities. Since the 1980s, many other reforms have followed, but few match its breadth or significance.

Reform shows the limits of reason. No single ideology or theory can engineer social and institutional change; progress depends on recognising the people’s creativity and choices.

Why, then, did the transformation occur in the 1980s? A look back at history shows that as early as the late 1950s, and especially during the 1960s and 1970s, there had already been repeated impulses to break through the people’s commune system, some of which were even quite strong, yet all ultimately failed. Du Runsheng, who led rural policy research in the 1980s as a key adviser to the central government, once remarked that this reform was an “unintended success.” Originally, the central leadership’s intention was merely to make limited adjustments within the framework of the people’s commune system. Instead, the sudden emergence of the household responsibility system overturned that framework completely, setting off a historic transformation. Nearly four decades on, rural China still operates within the basic governance structure that emerged from this reform.

Although many memoirs and studies have revisited the process, scholarship remains insufficient in tracing the political evolution of the policy shift and the underlying political logic that enabled it.

II

People usually explain the occurrence of reform from the perspective of reform participants. Although this makes sense, it also has aspects that are not entirely convincing.

(1) On the Role of the Central Leadership

This type of explanation emphasises the guidance, direction, and policy arrangements from the top central leadership, and some even regard reforms as the result of policy design by the central authorities. Analyses of this kind appear in works such as Susan Shirk’s The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (1990) and Ezra Vogel’s Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2010). Yuen Yuen Ang, in her latest book How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016), summarises this as “directed improvisation”.

However, judging from the process of rural reform in the 1980s, none of the major policy innovations came from top-level design. When rural reform began, the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee had not yet been convened. More importantly, documents of that meeting explicitly stipulated that “household contracting of land is not allowed.” The prevailing view remained that the people’s commune system suited China’s level of productive forces, and policy strongly emphasised consolidating the commune system.

Even after the household responsibility system spread rapidly, central guidance remained restrictive. As late as autumn 1980, state documents permitted its use only in severely impoverished areas marked by the “three dependencies”—dependencies on grain relief, livelihood subsidies, and production loans—while discouraging adoption elsewhere. This allowance was not an intentional “pilot before rollout,” but a stopgap to ease central fiscal pressures, with the expectation that collective operations under the commune system would resume within three to five years.

As late as March 1981, central policy still held that “general areas should not adopt the household contract responsibility system.” However, the system gathered unstoppable momentum and broke through the “three-dependencies” constraint, making the official line largely nominal. Only then did the central authorities issue Document No. 1 of 1982 [the first policy statement of the year], affirming farmers’ autonomy in choosing production methods. Document No. 1 of 1983 subsequently provided theoretical endorsement, describing the system as “a great creation of Chinese farmers” and “a new development of the Marxist cooperativisation theory in China.”

The policy regarding hired labour followed a similar path. Initially, some central leaders believed that “hiring labour” constituted exploitation and was incompatible with the socialist system, and therefore demanded correction. Some researchers cited Capital, where Marx once stated that having “four helpers and three apprentices” did not constitute exploitation. Accordingly, the central government set a rule that hired labour “could not exceed seven people.” Later, this limit was broken. Although top leaders once attempted to impose new restrictions, they could not stem the tide, and the policy limitations eventually faded away.

Yuxuan’s note:

This is the passage that is often cited as support for the claim that employing fewer than eight workers does not make one a capitalist:

If this labourer were in possession of his own means of production, and were satisfied to live as a labourer, he need not work beyond the time necessary for the reproduction of his means of subsistence, say 8 hours a day. He would, besides, only require the means of production sufficient for 8 working-hours. The capitalist, on the other hand, who makes him do, besides these 8 hours, say 4 hours’ surplus-labour, requires an additional sum of money for furnishing the additional means of production. On our supposition, however, he would have to employ two labourers in order to live, on the surplus-value appropriated daily, as well as, and no better than a labourer, i.e., to be able to satisfy his necessary wants. In this case the mere maintenance of life would be the end of his production, not the increase of wealth; but this latter is implied in capitalist production. That he may live only twice as well as an ordinary labourer, and besides turn half of the surplus-value produced into capital, he would have to raise, with the number of labourers, the minimum of the capital advanced 8 times.

—Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 11 (“Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value”)

During the reform process, the central leadership lacked a unified approach to primary-level innovations and local breakthroughs. Even among supporters, the pace differed—later described as a gradual “process of understanding”—while some opposed reform to the very end.

German scholar Sebastian Heilmann, in Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy-Making Facilitated China’s Rise, summarises the characteristics of Chinese reform decision-making as an “experimental” approach. That is, “Overarching policy targets are set centrally, but policy instruments are developed locally and then tested before they are applied throughout the country.” However, in the actual process of rural reform, the key breakthroughs did not unfold this way. The central leadership had no such “experimental” blueprint; insofar as “experimentation” occurred, it largely followed, rather than preceded, the decisive breakthroughs.

A common view holds that the good policies of the 1980s owed much to leaders who prioritised agriculture and conducted extensive primary-level field investigations. Plausible as this sounds, the historical record complicates it. Mao Zedong launched his career with rural investigations, helping establish the Party’s tradition of countryside research. After 1949, he frequently dispatched his personal staff to the countryside to obtain first-hand information, circumventing routine bureaucratic channels.

In the latter half of 1955, to promote agricultural cooperativisation, Mao personally selected and compiled 176 investigation reports into Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, writing 104 editor’s notes and the preface himself. In 1958, he made multiple rural inspections to advance the people’s commune movement. In 1961, he personally convened a series of symposiums to oversee the discussion and revision of the Regulations on People’s Communes, thereby institutionalising the commune system.

Mao frequently held long private talks with grassroots officials. For example, when Ji Dengkui served as a prefectural Party Secretary in Henan, Mao summoned him more than ten times, with individual meetings lasting four to five hours. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, other senior leaders, such as Vice Premiers Tan Zhenlin and Deng Zihui, as well as ministers in the agricultural system, conducted month-long fieldwork in villages, often under pseudonyms. In 1961, Liu Shaoqi spent a month in his home village, and in 1963, his wife Wang Guangmei lived in a village to conduct the Four Cleanups Movement. In early 1970, both the vice premier responsible for agriculture and the minister of agriculture worked in Dazhai village, Xiyang County, Shanxi Province. Chen Yonggui, a farmer who later became vice premier, travelled widely in the countryside and proposed that county-level cadres engage in productive labour for 100 days a year, commune-level cadres for 200 days, and brigade-level cadres for 300 days—requirements that subsequently became mandates for primary-level officials.

Yet such “deep forays into the countryside” did not ensure that policy matched actual conditions. On the contrary, the deeper the involvement, the further the policy drifted from farmers’ realities and even turned against their interests.

Overall, from the early years of the People’s Republic to the pre-reform period, central leaders were far from detached from the countryside. At one point, officials were required to practice the “three togethers” with farmers—eating, living, and working together. The intensity of this primary-level immersion far exceeded anything seen during the reform era. Wan Li, for example, often toured villages in Anhui with only his secretary but did not stay for extended periods. It is therefore unpersuasive to explain the advent of reform solely by reference to leadership work styles.

(2) On the Role of Farmers

The household contract responsibility system was forged by farmers, who propelled its adoption as a new institutional arrangement. In that sense, crediting the reform’s success to farmers is fundamentally correct. Yet once the lens shifts to higher-level policy processes and the political logic of policymaking, the trajectory of reform cannot be fully explained by “farmer determinism” alone.

Several scholars approach reform from a farmer-centred perspective. For instance, Daniel Kelliher’s Peasant Power in China (1992) and Kate Zhou’s How the Farmers Changed China: Power of the People (1999) both emphasise the critical role of farmers as a decisive political force in the policy process. At a macro-historical level, this argument is certainly valid, and central documents likewise affirmed farmers’ role. Indeed, the household contract responsibility system was invented by farmers and fundamentally driven by them. Yet the issue is far more complex than that.

Historically, since the onset of cooperativisation, farmers have consistently sought household-based cultivation and, later, greater market freedom. Such attempts and breakthroughs recurred time and time again. As early as 1957, soon after the establishment of Advanced Agricultural Producers’ Cooperatives, farmers in some localities experimented with contracting production to individual households. Following the Great Leap Forward and the nationwide rollout of People’s Communes in 1958, which culminated in catastrophic famine, large-scale household contracting emerged in Anhui from 1961 onward. [A note on the institutional sequence: mutual-aid teams in the early 1950s; elementary agricultural producers’ cooperatives, 1953–1955; advanced cooperatives, 1955–1956; People’s Communes, from 1958.]

Throughout the two decades of cooperativisation, farmers’ demands for household-based farming persisted. Yet why did such efforts fail in the past, but succeed in the early 1980s? There must have been other decisive factors at play, namely, specific political and historical conditions. In other words, focusing exclusively on the farmers cannot adequately explain why reform occurred when it did.

A further complication is that, although farmers were the fundamental, underlying driving force of reform, they were never autonomous political actors within specific political processes. In formal policymaking, they lacked an independent institutional locus from which to articulate preferences and were often absent from the bargaining that shaped policy decisions. At the elite level, rival policymakers routinely claimed to speak for farmers’ interests, yet farmers themselves remained offstage. Their influence on policy outcomes was therefore indirect, channelled through political figures.

(3) On the Role of Local Leadership

Within China’s political system, provincial, prefecture-level, and county Party secretaries are often pivotal actors in policymaking for their jurisdictions. Any account of reform’s advance must acknowledge the vision and courage of such local leaders. The folk saying “If you want to eat rice, look for Wan Li” vividly captured Wan Li’s central role in Anhui’s rural reform. Innovators also emerged at the prefecture, county, and commune levels. Yet in a broader historical perspective, the role of local officials is far more complex.

Some overseas scholars were quick to underscore the distinctive importance of local officials, attributing regional variation in reform to differences in officials’ attitudes toward implementing the household contract responsibility system. For example, Jae Ho Chung’s Central Control and Local Discretion in China: Leadership and Implementation During Post-Mao Decooperativization (2000) provides a highly illuminating account of how divergent policy preferences among the top leaders of Anhui, Shandong, and Heilongjiang shaped the pace and direction of reform in their jurisdictions. Even so, when these developments are situated within the broader historical evolution of policy change, the role of local officials in the reform decision-making process should not be overstated.

In the late 1950s, after the People’s Communes were established and the Great Leap Forward launched, rural China suffered a severe famine. In 1961, Zeng Xisheng, Anhui Province’s first Party secretary, actively advanced the household contract responsibility system. Farmers welcomed the policy, and results were remarkable, yet it was forced to be “rectified” in a year. Similarly, Hu Kaiming, Party secretary of the Zhangjiakou Prefectural Committee in Hebei, promoted household contracting but was criticised by higher authorities as “recklessly open-minded” [a pun on Hu’s name]. In those years, many local officials sought to expand household contracting and ease economic controls, but their efforts did not develop into durable or widespread reform.

In early January 1980, Wan Li chaired a meeting of the Anhui provincial Party committee that endorsed the household contract responsibility system. Soon after his departure, however, his successor criticised and reversed the policy. In March 1980, Wan Li was appointed a Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat with responsibility for agricultural affairs. For a time, his work was constrained and defensive as household contracting came under sustained pressure. In later years, he recalled feeling “constantly at fault,” and that “the work was extremely difficult.” [These remarks are consistently attributed to Wan Li’s 1997 oral-history interview; an excerpt is available here.]

Throughout the entire People’s Commune era, many local officials displayed reformist thinking and took pioneering actions, yet reform did not necessarily follow, let alone develop into a nationwide trend. Therefore, while it is important to emphasise the significant role of local leading officials, their influence alone cannot fully explain why reform took place.

(4) On the Role of Policy Think Tanks

This perspective emphasises that reform occurred because there were capable policy research institutions, in other words, effective decision-making “advisers.” American scholar Joseph Fewsmith, in Dilemmas of Reform in China (1994), highlighted the role of a number of young scholars, particularly those in the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who assembled and relayed data and helped shape decision-making at the centre.

It is well known that in the 1980s, the Central Rural Policy Research Office drafted five consecutive No. 1 Documents, creating a remarkable chapter in the history of reform. Therefore, in studies of China’s reform history, many scholars regard policy research institutions as pivotal, even attributing the primary credit for reform to these think tank members. Yet the historical picture is more complex. Few people know that the office’s institutional predecessor was the State Agricultural Commission, and that its principal researchers had earlier drafted consecutive documents opposing the household contract responsibility system before the five No. 1 Documents.

In the spring of 1981, Wan Li denounced the agricultural bureaucracy for “rigid thinking,” calling it a “stubborn stronghold of the leftist line.” That July, after hearing reports from more than ten agricultural ministers, he remarked, “As director of the Agricultural Commission, I have no common language with the agricultural departments,” and signalled plans for organisational adjustments. Throughout rural reform, the policy research institutions themselves went through many twists and reversals. The behaviour of many participants was telling, though later memoirs handled these episodes with deliberate discretion.

Across both the State Agricultural Commission (1979–1982) and the Central Rural Policy Research Office (1982–1989), Du Runsheng was the leading figure in policy research. In the mid-1950s, Du followed Deng Zihui in opposing the overhasty cooperativisation movement, for which Mao Zedong derided him as a “woman with bound feet,” leading to his removal. Du returned to the agricultural sector in early 1979. At the Agricultural Commission’s outset, Du published articles and gave speeches opposing the household contract responsibility system; later, he led the drafting of a series of reform documents that won high acclaim. Du Runsheng’s winding path through policymaking offers a revealing window into the political processes and internal logic of reform.

Over the longer arc from 1953 to 1962, the Central Rural Work Department under Deng Zihui advanced a series of sound policy proposals. Deng, a veteran revolutionary with deep credentials, persisted in his convictions despite prolonged suppression. He filed repeated reports and, in August 1962, held an all-night discussion with Mao Zedong, pressing the case for household contracting. Mao rebuked him—“You haven’t done a single good thing in ten years”—and the Central Rural Work Department was soon abolished. Deng was posthumously rehabilitated in 1981.

Whether one considers Deng Zihui and his time at the Central Rural Work Department or Du Runsheng and his time with the State Agricultural Commission and the Central Rural Policy Research Office, the lesson is similar: the same actors and institutions can play very different roles in different historical periods. Therefore, think tanks, in themselves, were not the decisive driver of China’s reform.

In sum, champions of the household contract responsibility system—farmers, local officials, and policy researchers—had long been present. Yet all earlier attempts failed, and only at the turn of the 1970s to the 1980s did reform take hold. Why it succeeded then remains a central question that warrants further inquiry.

III

In analysing the causes of reform, it is of course necessary to begin with the participants—the farmers, central leaders, local officials, and policy think tanks—and their behaviour and contributions. Yet any account that reduces reform to a linear effect of a single actor is bound to be superficial. A fuller explanation requires an analytical lens that transcends individual actors; such a perspective does not ignore the agency of different actors but rather foregrounds the interactions among them and the structural relations embedded in the system of action.

From this perspective, policy shifts ultimately arose from the emergence of a pluralistic political structure, or what may be termed pluralised power at the top. This configuration of power created new political space: a more inclusive environment that could accommodate reform tendencies, giving nascent policy proposals the opportunity to survive.

China’s rural reform unfolded rapidly from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. From Mao Zedong’s death in autumn 1976 until the creation of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat in spring 1980, it was Hua Guofeng who led rural policymaking. During these years, central positions were largely aligned, and no distinct “reform voice” emerged. However, conditions differed locally. Beginning in the second half of 1977, dissent and partial divergence surfaced in several provinces, notably Anhui under Wan Li, Sichuan under Zhao Ziyang, Guizhou under Chi Biqing, and Inner Mongolia under Zhou Hui.

This divergence did not arise from any loosening of central policies per se, but from the pluralisation of power at the highest level. The key turning point was Deng Xiaoping’s political comeback in the summer of 1977, which undermined Hua Guofeng’s previously unitary authority. Although Deng at that time had not yet articulated a new rural policy agenda, the coexistence of two authoritative figures created political space for local leaders to make autonomous policy decisions.

The pluralistic power configuration took shape at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in the winter of 1978 and was institutionalised at the Fifth Plenary Session in the spring of 1980. Based on a top-level consensus regarding a “collective succession” of central leadership, the Fifth Plenum established a dual-line power structure at the apex: the first line (the Party Secretariat), composed of younger and more active leaders, and the second line (the Politburo and its Standing Committee), composed of seasoned politicians.

In principle, the first line was subordinate to the second, with major questions to be submitted upward for final decisions. In practice, however, an obvious balance emerged between the two. Whether an issue was settled within the first line or referred to the second often turned on the discretion of key first-line leaders. The first line included Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Wan Li, along with Yao Yilin, Hu Qiaomu, and Deng Liqun; after Hua Guofeng’s complete exit from the decision-making circle in December 1980, the second line comprised Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and Li Xiannian.

Neither the first-line nor the second-line leadership was internally cohesive; each contained competing, countervailing political ideas and policy orientations. This arrangement produced a balanced yet open political structure. Within it, intersecting and constraining power relations created a relatively permissive space in which divergent policy lines could find backing among central leaders. Local governments thereby gained a measure of policy autonomy, fostering grassroots institutional experimentation by farmers and affording them a degree of policy freedom. In turn, centre–local relations took on a new, more interactive character.

In this process, local policy autonomy and farmers’ powerful agency grew more and more salient and translated into policy innovation. The expansion of local experimentation further strengthened the hand of reform-minded leaders at the top, facilitating the incorporation of new policies at the centre and widening the scope of reform. In this sense, contestation among top leaders provided the political space and platform for local reform.

Throughout the 1980s, the central leadership maintained divergent policy views and proved unable to persuade one another. The policymaking process was characterised by prolonged stalemates and compromises. Ultimately, outcomes were achieved not through persuasion or consensus; rather, while elite debates remained unresolved, local breakthroughs and innovations advanced rapidly and became the dominant trend. As these developments took hold on the ground, recognition and support were the only viable policy course.

The powerful momentum and remarkable achievements of grassroots experimentation gave strong backing to reform advocates at the top, helping to move reform policies into the mainstream. The trajectory of agricultural household contracting from its emergence to nationwide adoption, and from harsh condemnation to official endorsement over the course of three years, most clearly illustrates this path of policy innovation. Later developments, such as permitting hired labour, farmers’ entry into non-agricultural activities, and the rise of small towns, followed a similar logic and sequence. The political space for reform emerged from a new top-level configuration—a pluralised structure of power and policy ideas. The political logic of reform’s occurrence and success lay precisely in this transformation.

The openness of the political configuration in the 1980s, or what may be termed a pluralistic and counterbalanced power structure, was neither the deliberate design of some individual nor the result of negotiation among top leaders. Rather, it emerged through the continuous evolution of power relations under specific historical conditions, essentially as a compromise outcome. In fact, no one at the top was entirely satisfied with it; they merely tolerated it. Yet it proved, objectively, an ideal setting for institutional innovation.

Policymaking of rural reform in the 1980s shows that reform depends on a permissive political environment. Policy innovation requires competitive political conditions and cannot exist under absolute authority. A pluralistic power structure provides the political platform and the historical space for reform and innovation. Reform advanced not simply because reformist actors emerged, but because the political structure itself evolved to create enabling conditions. That transformation produced a favourable climate, providing the political space or the political opportunity for change.

In further terms, reform requires not only reform-minded actors but also an enabling political space. Where such space exists, reformers can exert influence; where it is absent, their efforts rarely succeed. In other words, reform-oriented political forces have always existed, but reform itself does not invariably follow, because staging the “drama” of reform requires the presence of specific political conditions. Chief among these is openness in the political structure, both in top-level power relations and in the ideological sphere. Only such openness can secure political space for reform, allow diverse policy proposals to be aired, give rise to policy competition, mobilise reform actors, and translate reform initiatives into tangible socioeconomic results. Conversely, when the structure is highly rigid, officials can only act under uniform directives, think tanks can advise only within prescribed policy lines, and the grassroots lack the freedom to choose policies or create new institutions; reform is unlikely to emerge.

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