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This article examines the evolution of the Yunnan model of civil society management, and through a pretest-posttest research design, finds that new regulations in 2010 create a larger role for the local state in developing civil society. These changes bring the Yunnan model closer to the more supervised model of social management pioneered by Beijing and away from the more autonomous model exemplified by Guangdong. This has important implications for the future regulation and development of civil society as the central government debates adopting one of these models as a national system of social management. While both the Guangdong and Beijing models encourage relaxing registration requirements, the social management model in Yunnan develops new channels for state guidance of civil society such as government training, funding, and project collaboration or supervision. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

AbstractIn this article, I analyse civil society development in China using examples from Beijing to demonstrate the causal role of local officials' ideas about these groups during the last 20 years. I argue that the decentralization of public welfare and the linkage of promotion to the delivery of these goods supported the idea of local government–civil society collaboration. This idea was undermined by international examples of civil society opposing authoritarianism and the strength of the state-led development model after the 2008 economic crisis. I find growing convergence on a new model of state–society relationship that I call "consultative authoritarianism," which encourages the simultaneous expansion of a fairly autonomous civil societyandthe development of more indirect tools of state control. This model challenges the conventional wisdom that an operationally autonomous civil society cannot exist inside authoritarian regimes and that the presence of civil society is an indicator of democratization.

In this article, I analyse civil society development in China using examples from Beijing to demonstrate the causal role of local officials' ideas about these groups during the last 20 years. I argue that the decentralization of public welfare and the linkage of promotion to the delivery of these goods supported the idea of local government-civil society collaboration. This idea was undermined by international examples of civil society opposing authoritarianism and the strength of the state-led development model after the 2008 economic crisis. I find growing convergence on a new model of state-society relationship that I call "consultative authoritarianism," which encourages the simultaneous expansion of a fairly autonomous civil society and the development of more indirect tools of state control. This model challenges the conventional wisdom that an operationally autonomous civil society cannot exist inside authoritarian regimes and that the presence of civil society is an indicator of democratization. (China Q/GIGA)