New Actors in the New Countryside: Reshaping Rural Governance in China

This talk explores the roles of external actors in China’s village governance, and examines the competitive and collaborative dynamics among these new actors within villages, with a focus on how they interact to transform traditional villagers’ self-governance into a model of multiple actors’ competitive collaboration, thus reshaping the conventional rural governance paradigms in China. Building on fieldwork conducted in Zhejiang and Jiangsu villages between 2019 and 2024, this talk will address the following key questions: What policies and motivations drive external actors to engage with villages? What significant roles do these external actors play within village communities? How do they interact with each other and with the village communities? Moreover, how does the presence of these external actors impact the conventional self-governance in villages?

About the Speaker

Dr. Yu Song is professor and director of the XIPU Institution at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, and steering committee member of the Centre for Ageing and the Life Course at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests include ageing and the life course, gender and social development, urbanization and migration, local governance and industrial development in China.

This talk is in-person only. The ANU China Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.