Email: naomi.wanyi.xue@gmail.com

Affiliation: Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, The University of Melbourne

Nationality: Chinese

Solving Problems or Causing Trouble: Digital Governance Tools in Practice for Rural Poverty Governance in the post-TPA Era

Abstract

Sustained poverty eradication is one of the main long-term development goals of all developing countries. The latest iteration of China's poverty governance strategy was introduced in 2013: the Targeted Poverty Alleviation (or TPA 精准扶贫) campaign. Its goal is to lift all the absolute poor out of poverty by the end of 2020 through an intensive political campaign. With the end of the TPA campaign, poverty governance in China is shifting to the much looser goals and approaches of Rural Revitalization. In the post-TPA era, relative poverty still exists, while some formerly poverty-stricken households and low-income groups face a greater risk of “returning to poverty”. In recent years, digital governance tools have been commonly used in China's grassroots governance, however, their application in poverty governance, such as sustainable rural poverty reduction and preventing poverty-stricken households "returning to poverty" in the post-TPA era, is still in the experimental stage. In this article, we consider the practice of digital governance tools in grassroots poverty governance of the post-TPA era and their implications for the personal ability of grassroots cadres, local politics and state-society relations. Our analysis is based on extensive primary and secondary data collection in 2022-23 in County A in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), including interviews with former poverty-stricken households, former poor village heads and grassroots poverty-alleviation cadres, particularly TPA Resident Secretaries. While the official government narrative speaks of the application of digital governance tools in grassroots poverty governance as making outstanding contributions to preventing the “return of poverty” and deepening Rural Revitalization, our analysis highlights that the blind introduction of digital governance tools brings new troubles to poverty-stricken households and grassroots cadres. Our analysis is informed by central-local relations and local politics, both of which help us make sense of shifting governance strategies and the role and work of grassroots cadres. To further explore some of these dynamics we also draw on notions of state-society relations in rural China. Our intention is not to assess the outcomes of the poverty campaign, but rather to use poverty alleviation as a lens to explore the application of digital governance tools and shifting power relations and governance practices at the grassroots. We found that in the case study sites, the introduction of digital governance tools not only exacerbated data falsification and fiscal deficits in rural poverty reduction efforts, but also brought new burdens and pressures to the work and life of rural people and grassroots cadres, which raised questions about the efficacy of the digital governance and its long-term results. We highlight new routines in grassroots poverty governance in the post-TPA era, but also some important legacies, both of which contribute to understanding the deepening crisis in poverty governance at the grassroots level.

Bio

Wanyi Xue is a fourth-year PhD Candidate in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne. She is the Chair of the Chinese Studies Research Group (CSRG). Wanyi holds a bachelor's degree in Public Utility Management, a Master's degree in Public Policy, and an Honours degree in Asian Studies. Since 2015, Wanyi has been engaged in research on grassroots poverty governance in rural China, paying special attention to the changes in the personal experiences of poverty-stricken households and grassroots cadres in rural minority areas before and after the Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) campaign and the changes in poverty alleviation policies. In the past ten years, Wanyi has conducted in-depth fieldwork in rural areas of southwest China many times and obtained a large amount of first-hand data, which is extremely rich in fieldwork experience. She is currently submitting her PhD thesis and continuing to pay attention to the new dynamics of poverty governance in China's rural minority areas during the period of Rural Revitalization (post-TPA era).