Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt: "The grid management system in contemporary China: Grass-roots governance in social surveillance and service provision" China Information (2022) 36(1):3-22

 

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Though I come to this sort of late, I was delighted to have had a chance to read Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt: "The grid management system in contemporary China: Grass-roots governance in social surveillance and service provision" which appeared in China Information (2022) 36(1):3-22.  The object is the grid management system (网格化管理). That, in turn, has become a semiotic foundation for the organization and operation of Chinese Leninism, building on the insights and practices of China from nearly its earliest efforts to manage the masses by the management of physical--and then political, social, cultural, and economic spaces. Mittelstadt's abstract introduces the subject:

How should we understand the formation of the grid management system (网格化管理) of grass-roots governance in China? In this article, I argue that the grid system is an extension of existing governance structures. Facing conflicting central messaging, local grid development encountered isomorphic pressures, leading grids to resemble higher-level administration and to inherit a top–down and stability-focused mode of operation. To support this argument, I analyse five aspects: shifts in elite-level discourse, the proliferation of the grid system, recruitment standards for grid members, grid members’ tasks, and their assessment. Showcasing wide local variety, the grid system retains a managerial approach while collapsing service provision into security.

What had been a physical object--the city grid, has also signified place (social., economic, political), function, and utility--is also a sociospatial ecology, one in which the physical and intangibel are aligned and reinforce each other. That is the point that is developed , in the New Era, and for its evolution as a form of Leninist semiotics, in the grid management system (网格化管理).

it can primarily be understood as an extension of the existing bureaucratic system to the grass-roots level. Responding to conflicting signals from the Centre in Beijing, local authorities adopted a top–down management approach to their grids. This has important consequences. First, it blurs the barrier between ‘stability maintenance’ and ‘service provision’. The grid system relies on a variety of techniques, such as information gathering, daily patrols, evaluations of people’s satisfaction levels, as well as liaising with political-legal agencies such as the police, judiciary, procuratorate, and the wider administrative system. Here, the invasive management of grids by functional departments and grid members renders service provision indistinguishable from stability maintenance. The state becomes inseparable from the people. The second consequence of the management approach is the gradual suffocation of grass-roots autonomy where people are administered rather than given the space to resolve their own issues. Instead of being included in the governance of their own communities or the assessment of grid members, citizens are subject to rather than part of local governance. ( "The grid management system in contemporary China, p. 4).

What is old is new, and what is new is built on old foundations. " Within this system, locally recruited grid members are critical since it is they who engage in the everyday administration of the grid. All of the agents involved thus have the dual role of providing essential services to citizens and social control, which often are indistinguishable from each other." (Ibod., p. 4).