Since the 2021 military coup, Myanmar has been trapped in complex tri-polar power competition among the military junta, the National Unity Government (NUG) together with its People's Defense Force (PDF), and diverse ethnic-armed organizations. Existing literature frequently adopts binary deterministic forecasts, expecting either enduring military authoritarian rule or comprehensive national fragmentation. Such perspectives often overlook layered relationships between short-term battlefield capabilities and long-run political legitimacy, alongside pragmatic strategic logics held by major ethnic-armed groups. This paper argues that battlefield strength represents only a limited factor in regime transition, while popular mandate, nationwide governance ambition, and geopolitical constraints function as more structural determinants. Although the NUG-PDF bloc lacks immediate military capacity to seize central state authority, it constitutes the most plausible civilian successor, enjoying broad Bamar public support and institutional aspirations for national governance. Ethnic-armed organizations prioritize institutionalized regional autonomy rather than full secession. Under China's conditional geopolitical hedging strategy, Myanmar is likely to evolve toward a decentralized loose-federal equilibrium featuring weak central authority and highly autonomous ethnic regions. While large-scale infrastructure such as the China-Myanmar Railway faces substantial operational and fiscal uncertainties, strategically critical energy facilities including the Kyaukpyu Port and cross-border oil-gas pipelines may sustain stable operations via multi-stakeholder benefit-sharing arrangements.
Transforming Inner Mongolia, by Yi Wang, examines the long-term process of Chinese expansion into Inner Mongolia during the Qing period, which Wang describes as internal colonialization or, in Owen Lattimore's words, secondary imperialism (209, 249). Wang successfully contextualizes the Chinese colonization of Inner Mongolia on local, regional, national, and global levels by utilizing a wide range of Chinese and European sources. The book begins with a summary of the geography, environment, and history of the Mongolian steppe and then discusses various changes that the Qing's territorial expansion during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries introduced or reinforced in the steppe region. Although the Qing officially prohibited the Chinese from entering the Mongolian steppe, its need to maintain various imperial apparatuses, as well as increasing population pressure and ecological crises in North China, drove Chinese farmers to travel outside the Great Wall. The growing presence of Chinese on the steppe—especially in today's Inner Mongolia—compelled the Qing to expand the Chinese-style administrative system north of the Great Wall, giving rise to what Wang calls “dual administrative system” (41–46). As a result, Inner Mongolia witnessed the coexistence of, as well as conflict between, the decentralized Mongol aristocracy and the centralized Chinese bureaucracy.In the second chapter, Wang examines the penetration and expansion of Chinese commerce into the Mongolian steppe. The Qing not only gave Chinese merchants direct access to Mongolia, but it also established a series of politico-military mechanisms—the postal relay system, frontier guard post system, and the institution of annual rotation of Mongol princes and high lamas—to sustain imperial control over the region. Given the cash-poor Mongolian economy, however, it was unviable for the Mongols to meet these official obligations. In this situation, Chinese merchants—most prominently those from Shanxi Province—drew partnership contracts with local Mongol authorities and took on the role of financial intermediary to facilitate the fulfillment of these duties. These developments made the Mongols economically dependent on Chinese merchants while increasingly incorporating Mongolia into the silver-based market system of China proper.The third chapter discusses the processes and ramifications of Chinese migration, settlement, and cultivation in Inner Mongolia. Chinese cultivation would have devastating impacts on the fragile environment of the steppe, causing land degradation and desertification. The ever-expanding Chinese presence also threatened the livelihood of ordinary herders and challenged the authority of local Mongol rulers, eventually leading to ethnic conflicts between Mongols and Chinese. The surge in the Chinese population also necessitated the transplantation of Chinese-style centralized administrative units to the steppe to oversee fiscal and judicial affairs related to Chinese migrants, which in turn encroached upon the autonomy of Mongol banners. Last, Chinese agricultural expansion shifted practical land ownership from Mongols to Chinese migrants, thereby fostering the commodification and privatization of Mongol lands.Chapter 4 explores the rise of a highly commercialized, capital-intensive, and market-oriented rural economy, which resembled agrarian capitalism, in the Hetao region on the northern bend of the Yellow River. From the early 1800s, a group of Chinese entrepreneurs known as “land merchants” (dishang) advanced into Hetao, where they acquired lands from the Mongols, developed elaborate irrigation systems, and established large-scale managerial farms using wage labor. In doing so, the land merchants mobilized large amounts of capital, technical expertise, land, and labor through a sophisticated shareholding system. They also participated in long-distance trade and handicraft industries. These activities increasingly integrated Hetao into the larger regional and global economic system. Wang points out that the existence of such domestically financed and organized developments—however short-lived—counters the conventional view that China, incapable of initiating transformative changes on its own, kept repeating the long-term pattern of smallholder farming and “involutionary” growth.The fifth chapter investigates the expansion of the Catholic Church in Inner Mongolia by focusing on the proselytizing activities of missionaries from the Belgian Catholic order named the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Since the 1860s, a series of rebellions, natural disasters, and famines in North China offered the missionaries favorable conditions to penetrate Inner Mongolia. To attract new converts, most of whom were land-poor and famine-stricken Chinese farmers, the missionaries adopted an evangelical strategy of acquiring Mongol pasturelands and converting them into farmland. The missionaries were also often entangled in land disputes with Mongols, Manchu and Chinese local officials, and Chinese land merchants. During the Boxer Rebellion, these disputes often erupted into violence, for which Mongols came to owe tremendous indemnities. To pay off the huge reparations, many Mongol banners had to resort to land cession, which enabled an unprecedented expansion of the church in Inner Mongolia and stimulated the increasingly Sinicized and centralizing Qing state to penetrate the steppe region.The sixth chapter examines the land reclamation campaign conducted in Inner Mongolia by the centralizing and modernizing late Qing state. From the 1860s, two major challenges brought on by foreign imperialism—the worsening financial crisis and imminent security predicament in Mongolia—gave rise to a significant cognitive shift among high Qing officials concerning the Mongolian steppe, which was now conceptualized as an untapped source of revenue and a locus of strategic defense. In the wake of the launch of the New Policies reforms, the Qing court appointed Yigu, a high-ranking Manchu official, as imperial commissioner to oversee land reclamation in Inner Mongolia, which was considered a way to finance the reform programs and to counter foreign influences on the northern frontiers. By imposing a standardized procedure of land survey, registration, and taxation, Yigu also aimed to retrieve Mongol lands for official taxation, abrogate the Mongols’ hereditary land rights, and transfer the ownership of Mongol lands to the Qing state. As a result, Chinese-style centralized bureaucratic units proliferated in Inner Mongolia. After the fall of the Qing, these developments would facilitate Inner Mongolia's integration into the centralized administrative system of the homogenizing Chinese nation-state.In the end, Wang argues that the historical process of Chinese migration and colonization in Inner Mongolia played a critical role in China's modern transition from a multiethnic empire to a centralizing and homogenizing nation-state. The author also eloquently proves that the development of Chinese colonization on the steppe originated from a set of endogenous socioeconomic transformations well before the impacts from the West forced the Qing to pursue modernization and national integration. Nonetheless, several misconceptions about the history of the steppe are intermittently spotted. For example, the author writes as if the Mongols had not been organized into territorial units before the Qing conquest (27, 37). Recent scholarship, however, points out that territoriality has been ever-present on the steppe.1 Wang also continues to use the term “tribe” to describe traditional Mongol society (26–27, 30–31, 63). Yet a group of scholars has recently challenged the terminology and concept of “tribe,” at least in the context of Mongol history.2 Moreover, the transcription system used for Mongolian words is sometimes inconsistent. Last, this research would have been more nuanced if the author had refrained from characterizing Han Chinese as the “core” and various non-Han peoples as the “periphery.” From the perspective of Qing imperial history, at least during the first half of the empire, the Mongols were not peripheral people. These minor issues, however, do not reduce the overall value of this excellent research. Given that “the PRC government has continued the policy of large-scale Chinese migration and state-sponsored development schemes in Inner Mongolia since the late Qing period and carried these initiatives forward with a forcefulness and efficiency as never seen before” (263), particularly in this time of China's hard-line state policies toward its Inner Asian minorities, Wang's book deserves to be read widely.
Since the 1980s, ongoing reforms in China’s hukou system have drawn increasing attention from various parties, and a consensus generated during the reform period refers to decentralization practices. This research, with reference to new class and social class theories, investigates how social policies alongside decentralization of administration within the hukou system in Beijing and Shenzhen impact on educational opportunities for migrant students. Based on a total of 29 in-depth interviews conducted in these two cities, this research details the differentiation of decentralization practices and influences from two perspectives: 1) financing in private education; and 2) regulation in public education. In terms of financing, the paucity of subsidy policies and additional sponsorship expenses worsen the educational context and prospect for migrant students in Beijing. Comparatively, the Shenzhen government has made and implemented a set of welcomed subsidy policies for migrant students who receive private education, which financially dismantles separation between public and private education and equalizes educational opportunities for migrant students in the megacity. In terms of regulation, accessing public education through hukou conversion is more practicable for migrant students in Shenzhen than Beijing. Nonetheless, homeownership has emerged as an increasingly overweight reference metric in public education access in Shenzhen, which undermines egalitarian policy intentions and effects in hukou conversion practices. With reference to the analysis of the interview transcripts, this research concludes that migrant students are confronted with different inequality of educational opportunities in these two cities, despite the fact that both subnational governments have fully carried through hukou decentralization that has been deemed as an effectively administrative approach to equalize public services delivery, such as basic education.
The right to education for children from rural migrant families in urban areas has sparked heated debates in China. While there are increasing indications of policy changes to bring public education to all citizens regardless of their residency, it is less clear what kinds of resources are needed to create an education supply to serve this constantly moving and ever-growing population. Using archival and interview data on a large urban district in Shanghai, the authors analyze the constraints faced by local government in providing full-scale free education to migrant children. The authors find that the public finance scheme, teacher staffing policy and land use policy are the three factors that constrain the supply of public education in large metropolitan areas. This analysis also shows that under the current decentralized management scheme, local government alone does not have the capacity to resolve these constraints. This finding calls for coordination among various state branches at the national level.
Reforms to China's education sector over the last two decades have sought to diversify the sources of funding education. This paper examines the consequences of these reforms for Chinese families and regional disparities in access to education. To illustrate the implications of education reforms for Chinese families, we draw on a large survey of urban residents across 32 Chinese cities as well as a case study of fees charged by a single secondary school in Chengdu. We argue that while China has made progress in moving towards the United Nations objective of ‘Education for All’, decentralization of China's education funding has impeded access to schooling for many, particularly those living in financially disadvantaged locales, and placed an undue financial burden on many ordinary Chinese households.
We analyze the governance structure and the financing of Kyrgyz education, with special emphasis on the general secondary education system. General secondary schools are under the authority of oblasts and rayons. Our main findings are as follows: 1. The oblast and rayon authorities in Kyrgyzstan are in fact delegated offices of the central administration, with highly non-transparent reporting lines, very little budgetary independence, diffused political responsibility and politicized control over financial flows to lower levels of government. 2. The principle that funds from the central budget for specific functions should be transferred directly (without any intermediaries) to the level of government responsible for those functions is not observed in Kyrgyzstan. In particular, the categorical grants for education are determined and negotiated in a very non-transparent way. 3. The Kyrgyz education sector is fragmented, and the divided responsibilities for management and for finances make rationalization and reform very difficult to accomplish. Moreover, the situation is compounded by the fact that education decentralization has a formal character, and is not accompanied by real delegation of authority and responsibility. 4. The general secondary education system in Kyrgyzstan, although managed according to the rules and procedures common to other post Soviet republics, displays a remarkable degree of regional and ethnic differentiation. The financing levels also vary significantly among oblasts. 5. Parental contributions make up at least 30% of the school budgets in Bishkek. Their collection and use vary greatly among schools, but in all cases are beyond the effective control of either parents or the central and local authorities. Moreover, the emerging system of entrance fees for first grade students is unconstitutional and violates human rights and pedagogical principles. In order to deal with these issues, the Kyrgyz Republic needs to correct the present non-transparent and dysfunctional governance structure of Kyrgyz education, because otherwise any efforts to improve the delivery of educational services or their financing may remain ineffective. The Kyrgyz Republic also needs to define education standards that it will be able to enforce and finance in all schools. Finally, it needs to implement a regulatory system governing parental contributions, which would serve the schools and at the same time allow for transparent and well-monitored use of private funds in public schools.
To Party Core Groups of Branch Offices of the People's Bank of China in Provinces, Centrally Administered Municipalities, and Autonomous Regions (except Tibet): Herewith is transmitted (84) Central Organization Department Document No. 13. Based on this document, we hereby notify you of the examination and approval procedure for cadre appointments and removals in the current endeavor to decentralize the bank's establishment.