Mingxing Liu
Biographic Data
| ID | 3628061 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mingxing Liu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mingxing |
| FAMILY NAME | Liu |
| SIGNATURE | LIU M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Peking University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6324-1034 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 507 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Indirect impacts of urban expansion on vegetation net primary productivity: Spatial-temporal evolution and threshold effects
Dual carbon-sink pathways of urban parks: Linking direct carbon sequestration with indirect emission reduction
Predicting Flow State and Learning Engagement in GAI ‐Powered Virtual Influencer‐Mediated Informal Foreign Language Learning
This study examines the role of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI)‐powered virtual influencers in enhancing foreign language learning engagement within informal digital environments in China. Drawing on the Hedonic‐Motivation System Adoption Model, we develop and test a theoretical framework that incorporates perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, joy, perceived behavioural control, parasocial relationships and flow state. Using struc…
Roles of emotions and L2 selves in predicting and mediating Chinese university students’ L2 achievement
As important factors influencing second/foreign language (L2) learning, emotions and motivation have been much researched. Yet, limited research has investigated the associations between emotions and L2 selves and their influence on L2 learning outcomes. Hence, this paper examined the roles of emotions and L2 selves in predicting and mediating Chinese university students’ English achievement. A cohort of 517 Chinese university students participat…
Revealing the nighttime warm effects of urban water bodies: Evidence from Wuhan, China
Integrating Spatial–Temporal Heterogeneity and Driving Mechanisms of Ecosystem Services Into Spatial Management Across Urban Hierarchies: A Case of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China
Effective management of ecosystem services (ESs) is critical for sustainable regional development. Multi‐scale ESs assessments provide valuable insights for spatial management. However, limited attention has been given to the spatial–temporal heterogeneity and driving mechanisms of ESs across urban hierarchies and their integration into spatial management. Therefore, taking the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China as a case study, we assessed spa…
Pathways of multi-dimensional urbanization affecting vegetation carbon sequestration mediated by the urban environment: Evidence from 1298 Chinese cities
Dynamic impacts of urban expansion on vegetation growth in urban environments: A sustainable land management framework
Regulating effects and impact mechanisms of ecosystem regulating services on air quality: Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China
Exploring the Factors Behind Regional Differences in Physical Fitness of Geological University Students
Disgruntled cadres: How tax reduction undermines rural governance
Tax reduction is supposed to garner popular support, yet rural unrest sharply increased following the Chinese government's agricultural tax reform aiming to reduce peasants' tax burden. We argue that the tax reduction could undermine village elites' economic and political incentives to assist the state in implementing unpopular policies and achieving desirable outcomes. We exploit the exogeneous timing of the agricultural tax reform that abolishe…
Revolution, State Building, and the Great Famine in China
In a strong authoritarian state, what mechanisms hold political elites accountable and contain the state’s predatory tendencies? We examine China’s Great Famine of 1958–1961 to understand the variation of predatory behaviors across Chinese provinces. By exploring the Chinese Communist Revolution history and probing into over four hundred biographies of political elites in the newly founded communist state, we first document the revolutionary lega…
Top-Down Accountability, Social Unrest, and Anticorruption in China
What motivates front-line officials to curtail corruption? We contend that performance management can reinforce top-down accountability in authoritarian governments and help contain corruption at the local level. Drawing on a nationally representative panel data of approximately 120 villages in China, we find that when anticorruption is prescribed as a salient policy goal in the township-to-village performance evaluation, village officials are in…
Elite Cleavage and the Rise of Capitalism under Authoritarianism: A Tale of Two Provinces in China
A great challenge for capitalist development under authoritarian regimes is to effectively constrain predatory behavior. Beyond existing frameworks of the dictator’s time horizon and institutionalized power sharing, we introduce an alternative perspective—elite cleavage. We argue that the systematic vulnerability of marginalized local cadres motivated them to ally with grassroots constituents and protect local economic interests in order to incre…
Bureaucrat-Assisted Contention in China
Bureaucrat-assisted contention in China is a type of collective action in which native-born local officials help socioeconomic elites launch or sustain popular action against outsider party secretaries by leaking information and sabotaging repression. Bureaucrats who assist local influentials are neither elite allies nor institutional activists. Instead, they unleash or support collective action as a weapon in a power struggle against ambitious, …
Policy Coalition Building in an Authoritarian Legislature: Evidence From China’s National Assemblies (1983-2007)
Recent studies of authoritarian legislatures underscore the importance of institutions for cooptation and information collection, but many still consider authoritarian legislatures rubber stamps in policy making. We argue that authoritarian legislatures could be important arenas of the contestation reflected in delegates’ bills and proposals instead of their voting outcomes. Specifically, government agencies use authoritarian legislatures to buil…
Revolutionary Legacy, Power Structure, and Grassroots Capitalism under the Red Flag in China
Revolutionary Legacy, Power Structure, and Grassroots Capitalism under the Red Flag in China
Why do political elites in authoritarian regimes, even within the same country, engage in different levels of predatory behavior, whereby some foster vibrant capitalism and others suffocate the innovative private sector? This book proposes a theory of localized property-rights protection under authoritarianism. By combining in-depth fieldwork with archival research and quantitative data analysis, Qi Zhang and Mingxing Liu discuss the post-1949 co…
The Logic of De Facto Power and Local Education Spending: Evidence from China
Decentralization has been embraced as a major institutional framework to promote economic development, but scholars have suggested that decentralization engenders several potentially unintended consequences for accountability, such as local elite capture, which subsequently undermines public service delivery. Existing studies have primarily evaluated these unintended consequences in democracies but not in autocracies. To fill this gap, we investi…
The Fall of the Old Guards: Explaining Decentralization in China
Of time, leadership, and governance: Elite incentives and stability maintenance in China
China's party‐controlled elite appointment system has been praised for contributing to growth and order in recent decades. Inspired by Mancur Olson's insight into elite incentives and governance, we examine how the Chinese practices of elite management affect the character of governance using unique survey and interview data on township leaders and social contention. We find that, first, externally appointed party secretaries experience more peti…
Centralized Deployment and Teacher Incentives: Evidence from Reforms in Rural China
This article evaluates teacher deployment centralization reform in the context of rural China. The administration of regular teacher deployment has been gradually moved from the township (or local school district) up to the county government since 2001. We exploit variations in the timing of deployment centralization and use as a comparison group contract teachers who were not directly affected. Data collected from Gansu Province in 2000 and 2004…
Collective Resistance under Authoritarianism: Elite–Mass Strategies in an Experimental Game
The informal power configuration of local government and economic development policy in China
The spatial variation of local economic policies in Zhejiang province from the 1950s to 1990s can be traced back to the communist revolution prior to 1949. We argue that the revolutionary history shaped the informal power configurations at the county level in Zhejiang province, which in turn determined the attitudes of local officials toward capitalist developments in both the Maoist and reform eras. More specifically, if a particular locality ha…
Reassessing Collective Petitioning in Rural China: Civic Engagement, Extra-State Violence, and Regional Variation
Based on our analysis of a survey of over 100 villages across six provinces, in which we collected both quantitative data and in-depth interview responses, we argue that: 1) autonomous or quasi-independent organizations play a very important role in collective action, but one that is perhaps different from what other scholars have emphasized; 2) the presence of such groups may well foster good governance and help contain the scale of contention, …
Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China
Spectacular economic growth in China suggests the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has somehow gotten it right. A key hypothesis in both economics and political science is that the CCP's cadre evaluation system, combined with China's geography-based governing logic, has motivated local administrators to compete with one another to generate high growth. We raise a number of theoretical and empirical challenges to this claim. Using a new biogra…
Land Leasing and Local Public Finance in China’s Regional Development: Evidence from Prefecture-level Cities
By analysing the evolution of local governments’ roles in different periods of China’s growth in transition, this paper explores local fiscal incentives to use subsidised land and infrastructure as key instruments in regional competition for manufacturing investment since the mid 1990s. Local land development behaviour is related to China’s current land use institutions and intergovernmental arrangements. On the basis of panel data covering prefe…
Policy Coalition Building in an Authoritarian Legislature: Evidence From China’s National Assemblies (1983-2007)
Recent studies of authoritarian legislatures underscore the importance of institutions for cooptation and information collection, but many still consider authoritarian legislatures rubber stamps in policy making. We argue that authoritarian legislatures could be important arenas of the contestation reflected in delegates’ bills and proposals instead of their voting outcomes. Specifically, government agencies use authoritarian legislatures to buil…
Clans, Electoral Procedures and Voter Turnout: Evidence from Villagers' Committee Elections in Transitional China
Villagers' committee elections in Chinese rural areas highlight the promise as well as the challenge of democratization in a one-party state. Why are there huge regional variations in terms of voter turnout rate? Based on a large survey conducted in 2005, we argue that electoral procedures have played a crucial role in signaling the democratic intent of local governments. Villagers were more responsive to more meaningful elections with higher-qua…
Instrumental land use investment-driven growth in China
In the past decade or so, local governments in China have significantly increased their land development activities by acquiring land from farmers and leasing it on a large scale to industrial and commercial developers. This paper is an analysis of how land is used under China's existing institutional background as a competitive incentive for local investment. It is argued that local land development activities have contributed to an investment-d…
Patterns of Authority and Governance in Rural China: Who's in charge? Why
A ‘dual-power structure’ governs the Chinese countryside. Branch committees of the Chinese Communist Party, traditionally the centers of power in the villages, increasingly share their authority with elected villagers' committees. Seeking to illuminate the factors contributing to the division of authority between these ‘two committees’, we view Party branch secretaries and the chairs of villagers' committees as the agents of two distinct principa…
Reassessing Collective Petitioning in Rural China: Civic Engagement, Extra-State Violence, and Regional Variation
Based on our analysis of a survey of over 100 villages across six provinces, in which we collected both quantitative data and in-depth interview responses, we argue that: 1) autonomous or quasi-independent organizations play a very important role in collective action, but one that is perhaps different from what other scholars have emphasized; 2) the presence of such groups may well foster good governance and help contain the scale of contention, …
Of time, leadership, and governance: Elite incentives and stability maintenance in China
China's party‐controlled elite appointment system has been praised for contributing to growth and order in recent decades. Inspired by Mancur Olson's insight into elite incentives and governance, we examine how the Chinese practices of elite management affect the character of governance using unique survey and interview data on township leaders and social contention. We find that, first, externally appointed party secretaries experience more peti…
Elite Cleavage and the Rise of Capitalism under Authoritarianism: A Tale of Two Provinces in China
A great challenge for capitalist development under authoritarian regimes is to effectively constrain predatory behavior. Beyond existing frameworks of the dictator’s time horizon and institutionalized power sharing, we introduce an alternative perspective—elite cleavage. We argue that the systematic vulnerability of marginalized local cadres motivated them to ally with grassroots constituents and protect local economic interests in order to incre…
Development of Financial Intermediation and the Dynamics of Urban–Rural Disparity in China, 1978–1998
Chen Y. P., Liu M. and Zhang Q. Development of financial intermediation and the dynamics of urban-rural disparity in China, 1978-1998, Regional Studies. This paper focuses on the impacts of financial intermediation development on the urban-rural income disparity (URID) in China. Using a twenty-year province-level panel data set from 1978 to 1998, it is found that the change of URID may be explained by fiscal policy during the early reform period …
Top-Down Accountability, Social Unrest, and Anticorruption in China
What motivates front-line officials to curtail corruption? We contend that performance management can reinforce top-down accountability in authoritarian governments and help contain corruption at the local level. Drawing on a nationally representative panel data of approximately 120 villages in China, we find that when anticorruption is prescribed as a salient policy goal in the township-to-village performance evaluation, village officials are in…
The Logic of De Facto Power and Local Education Spending: Evidence from China
Decentralization has been embraced as a major institutional framework to promote economic development, but scholars have suggested that decentralization engenders several potentially unintended consequences for accountability, such as local elite capture, which subsequently undermines public service delivery. Existing studies have primarily evaluated these unintended consequences in democracies but not in autocracies. To fill this gap, we investi…
Collective Resistance under Authoritarianism: Elite–Mass Strategies in an Experimental Game
Grain Procurement, Tax Instrument and Peasant Burdens during China's Rural Transition
In this paper, we argue that China's grain procurement system as a major instrument in rural taxation survived the communes and lost its importance only gradually in recent years. However, as agricultural liberalization progressed, the traditional tax instruments of ‘tax deduction prior to grain procurement payment’ and implicit taxation through ‘price scissors’ gradually eroded. Under such a circumstance, local governments in agriculture-based r…
State Capacity, Local Fiscal Autonomy, and Urban-Rural Income Disparity in China
Continued urban-rural income disparity poses a serious policy challenge in China's economic transition. As the Chinese economy booms and the state's fiscal capacity grows, there should be a corresponding increase in the center's capacity to redress urban-rural inequality. However, it seems that the stronger state extractive capacity since the mid-1990s has not translated into better urban-rural disparity outcomes. Based on a panel data set coveri…
Urban and Rural Household Taxation in China. Measurement, Comparison and Policy Implications
By measuring the tax burdens for both Chinese urban and the rural households in the 1990s, we find that the taxes on the urban households were mainly indirect taxes through consumption of goods and services while those on rural households were largely direct taxes such as state agricultural taxes, local fees and tuition. Although the incomes of rural households were much lower than those of their urban counterparts, rural households were taxed mu…
Regulating effects and impact mechanisms of ecosystem regulating services on air quality: Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China
Bureaucrat-Assisted Contention in China
Bureaucrat-assisted contention in China is a type of collective action in which native-born local officials help socioeconomic elites launch or sustain popular action against outsider party secretaries by leaking information and sabotaging repression. Bureaucrats who assist local influentials are neither elite allies nor institutional activists. Instead, they unleash or support collective action as a weapon in a power struggle against ambitious, …
The Fall of the Old Guards: Explaining Decentralization in China
Education management and performance after rural education finance reform: Evidence from Western China
Guerrilla Capitalism: Revolutionary Legacy, Political Cleavage, and the Preservation of the Private Economy in Zhejiang
In this article, we propose a causal relationship between a region's communist revolutionary legacy before 1949 and the variation in private sector development after 1949. In the case of Zhejiang, the pre-1949 revolutionary experience led to the power struggle between two elite groups, the guerrilla cadre group and the southbound cadre group, in the province after 1949. As the weak side, guerrilla cadres were willing to protect local economic int…
Urban and Rural Household Taxation in China. Measurement, Comparison and Policy Implications
By measuring the tax burdens for both Chinese urban and the rural households in the 1990s, we find that the taxes on the urban households were mainly indirect taxes through consumption of goods and services while those on rural households were largely direct taxes such as state agricultural taxes, local fees and tuition. Although the incomes of rural households were much lower than those of their urban counterparts, rural households were taxed mu…
Instrumental land use investment-driven growth in China
In the past decade or so, local governments in China have significantly increased their land development activities by acquiring land from farmers and leasing it on a large scale to industrial and commercial developers. This paper is an analysis of how land is used under China's existing institutional background as a competitive incentive for local investment. It is argued that local land development activities have contributed to an investment-d…
Education management and performance after rural education finance reform: Evidence from Western China
State Capacity, Local Fiscal Autonomy, and Urban-Rural Income Disparity in China
Continued urban-rural income disparity poses a serious policy challenge in China's economic transition. As the Chinese economy booms and the state's fiscal capacity grows, there should be a corresponding increase in the center's capacity to redress urban-rural inequality. However, it seems that the stronger state extractive capacity since the mid-1990s has not translated into better urban-rural disparity outcomes. Based on a panel data set coveri…
Land Leasing and Local Public Finance in China’s Regional Development: Evidence from Prefecture-level Cities
By analysing the evolution of local governments’ roles in different periods of China’s growth in transition, this paper explores local fiscal incentives to use subsidised land and infrastructure as key instruments in regional competition for manufacturing investment since the mid 1990s. Local land development behaviour is related to China’s current land use institutions and intergovernmental arrangements. On the basis of panel data covering prefe…
Development of Financial Intermediation and the Dynamics of Urban–Rural Disparity in China, 1978–1998
Chen Y. P., Liu M. and Zhang Q. Development of financial intermediation and the dynamics of urban-rural disparity in China, 1978-1998, Regional Studies. This paper focuses on the impacts of financial intermediation development on the urban-rural income disparity (URID) in China. Using a twenty-year province-level panel data set from 1978 to 1998, it is found that the change of URID may be explained by fiscal policy during the early reform period …
Grain Procurement, Tax Instrument and Peasant Burdens during China's Rural Transition
In this paper, we argue that China's grain procurement system as a major instrument in rural taxation survived the communes and lost its importance only gradually in recent years. However, as agricultural liberalization progressed, the traditional tax instruments of ‘tax deduction prior to grain procurement payment’ and implicit taxation through ‘price scissors’ gradually eroded. Under such a circumstance, local governments in agriculture-based r…
Clans, Electoral Procedures and Voter Turnout: Evidence from Villagers' Committee Elections in Transitional China
Villagers' committee elections in Chinese rural areas highlight the promise as well as the challenge of democratization in a one-party state. Why are there huge regional variations in terms of voter turnout rate? Based on a large survey conducted in 2005, we argue that electoral procedures have played a crucial role in signaling the democratic intent of local governments. Villagers were more responsive to more meaningful elections with higher-qua…
Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China
Spectacular economic growth in China suggests the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has somehow gotten it right. A key hypothesis in both economics and political science is that the CCP's cadre evaluation system, combined with China's geography-based governing logic, has motivated local administrators to compete with one another to generate high growth. We raise a number of theoretical and empirical challenges to this claim. Using a new biogra…
Guerrilla Capitalism: Revolutionary Legacy, Political Cleavage, and the Preservation of the Private Economy in Zhejiang
In this article, we propose a causal relationship between a region's communist revolutionary legacy before 1949 and the variation in private sector development after 1949. In the case of Zhejiang, the pre-1949 revolutionary experience led to the power struggle between two elite groups, the guerrilla cadre group and the southbound cadre group, in the province after 1949. As the weak side, guerrilla cadres were willing to protect local economic int…
Patterns of Authority and Governance in Rural China: Who's in charge? Why
A ‘dual-power structure’ governs the Chinese countryside. Branch committees of the Chinese Communist Party, traditionally the centers of power in the villages, increasingly share their authority with elected villagers' committees. Seeking to illuminate the factors contributing to the division of authority between these ‘two committees’, we view Party branch secretaries and the chairs of villagers' committees as the agents of two distinct principa…
The Political Economy of Private Sector Development in Communist China: Evidence from Zhejiang Province
Reassessing Collective Petitioning in Rural China: Civic Engagement, Extra-State Violence, and Regional Variation
Based on our analysis of a survey of over 100 villages across six provinces, in which we collected both quantitative data and in-depth interview responses, we argue that: 1) autonomous or quasi-independent organizations play a very important role in collective action, but one that is perhaps different from what other scholars have emphasized; 2) the presence of such groups may well foster good governance and help contain the scale of contention, …
The informal power configuration of local government and economic development policy in China
The spatial variation of local economic policies in Zhejiang province from the 1950s to 1990s can be traced back to the communist revolution prior to 1949. We argue that the revolutionary history shaped the informal power configurations at the county level in Zhejiang province, which in turn determined the attitudes of local officials toward capitalist developments in both the Maoist and reform eras. More specifically, if a particular locality ha…
Collective Resistance under Authoritarianism: Elite–Mass Strategies in an Experimental Game
Centralized Deployment and Teacher Incentives: Evidence from Reforms in Rural China
This article evaluates teacher deployment centralization reform in the context of rural China. The administration of regular teacher deployment has been gradually moved from the township (or local school district) up to the county government since 2001. We exploit variations in the timing of deployment centralization and use as a comparison group contract teachers who were not directly affected. Data collected from Gansu Province in 2000 and 2004…
The Fall of the Old Guards: Explaining Decentralization in China
Of time, leadership, and governance: Elite incentives and stability maintenance in China
China's party‐controlled elite appointment system has been praised for contributing to growth and order in recent decades. Inspired by Mancur Olson's insight into elite incentives and governance, we examine how the Chinese practices of elite management affect the character of governance using unique survey and interview data on township leaders and social contention. We find that, first, externally appointed party secretaries experience more peti…
Revolutionary Legacy, Power Structure, and Grassroots Capitalism under the Red Flag in China
Revolutionary Legacy, Power Structure, and Grassroots Capitalism under the Red Flag in China
Why do political elites in authoritarian regimes, even within the same country, engage in different levels of predatory behavior, whereby some foster vibrant capitalism and others suffocate the innovative private sector? This book proposes a theory of localized property-rights protection under authoritarianism. By combining in-depth fieldwork with archival research and quantitative data analysis, Qi Zhang and Mingxing Liu discuss the post-1949 co…
The Logic of De Facto Power and Local Education Spending: Evidence from China
Decentralization has been embraced as a major institutional framework to promote economic development, but scholars have suggested that decentralization engenders several potentially unintended consequences for accountability, such as local elite capture, which subsequently undermines public service delivery. Existing studies have primarily evaluated these unintended consequences in democracies but not in autocracies. To fill this gap, we investi…
Bureaucrat-Assisted Contention in China
Bureaucrat-assisted contention in China is a type of collective action in which native-born local officials help socioeconomic elites launch or sustain popular action against outsider party secretaries by leaking information and sabotaging repression. Bureaucrats who assist local influentials are neither elite allies nor institutional activists. Instead, they unleash or support collective action as a weapon in a power struggle against ambitious, …
Policy Coalition Building in an Authoritarian Legislature: Evidence From China’s National Assemblies (1983-2007)
Recent studies of authoritarian legislatures underscore the importance of institutions for cooptation and information collection, but many still consider authoritarian legislatures rubber stamps in policy making. We argue that authoritarian legislatures could be important arenas of the contestation reflected in delegates’ bills and proposals instead of their voting outcomes. Specifically, government agencies use authoritarian legislatures to buil…
Elite Cleavage and the Rise of Capitalism under Authoritarianism: A Tale of Two Provinces in China
A great challenge for capitalist development under authoritarian regimes is to effectively constrain predatory behavior. Beyond existing frameworks of the dictator’s time horizon and institutionalized power sharing, we introduce an alternative perspective—elite cleavage. We argue that the systematic vulnerability of marginalized local cadres motivated them to ally with grassroots constituents and protect local economic interests in order to incre…
Revolution, State Building, and the Great Famine in China
In a strong authoritarian state, what mechanisms hold political elites accountable and contain the state’s predatory tendencies? We examine China’s Great Famine of 1958–1961 to understand the variation of predatory behaviors across Chinese provinces. By exploring the Chinese Communist Revolution history and probing into over four hundred biographies of political elites in the newly founded communist state, we first document the revolutionary lega…
China (27 works) · Economics (24 works) · Political science (23 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (22 works) · Politics (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Geography (13 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (10 works)