After the introduction about Shanxi merchant group’s historical and cultural background, this section will focus on the current institutional environment of Shanxi NCCs in Tianjin, which will provide a good base for us to understand the political context where Tianjin Shanxi NCCs try to interact with local states and exert influence in the local governance.
Since 1990s, the Chinese central government started to attach importance to improving the policymaking democratization and scientificness (juece minzhuhua kexuehua)95 and encouraged local governments to explore new ways of improving public participation. Public participation in policy process started with the implementation of “Price Law of People’s Republic of China” on the 1st May 1998, which specified public hearing as the
format of public participation on pricing utilities and public services.96 Price public hearings drew great attention and subsequently the mechanism of public hearings has been expanded to other public services that directly related to public interests. Until now, public participation has been institutionalized in the areas of public sector pricing, urban planning, environmental protection, social construction and management. Besides public participation, the institutional context also gave non-political actors more channels and opportunities to get involved into the local policy process. Even though the breadth and depth of their influence in policy process is still very limited, and even though China is still keeping a high degree of authoritarianism, the process of policy making is not only confined to elite groups any more.
NCCs as a new emerging non-political actor in local governance have been given more opportunities in government consultation and political participation. As local governments claimed to include more actors into the policy process, more opinions and voices got heard
95 “Policy making democratization and transparency” was firstly put forward by Wan Li in July 1986，when
he made s speech on “Policy making democratization and transparency is an important subject for political institution reform” on a work forum of National Science Committee; And this policy has been confirmed in 2004 年 9 月中共十六届四中全会通过的“中共中央关于加强党的执政能力建设的决定”.
96 Source from 刘淑妍，朱德米: “当前中国公共决策中公民参与的制度建设与评价研究”，中国行政管
from society, which led to a more vibrant lobbying phenomenon in NCCs’ sphere. NCCs have been “feeling the stones” to experiment various strategy and tactics of lobbying in this context. Tianjin Shanxi NCCs, like any other NCCs around the country, was enhancing the links with both their home government and host government in order to realise more successful lobbying. However, the smooth and successful lobbying was not only attributed to NCCs themselves, but was also very much depended on the institutional context in which the NCCs were based. Hereafter, I will set out Tianjin Shanxi NCC’s institutional context from the perspectives of its home government and host government, which are Shanxi provincial government and Tianjin municipal government.
Shanxi Government attached importance to promoting Shanxi NCCs’ development in other localities nation-wide. By 2009, there were five million Shanxi merchants doing business outside Shanxi province, and 29 Shanxi Chambers of Commerce located in 22 provinces.97 As a bridge of cooperation and communication between Shanxi Governments and other governments where they were located, Shanxi Chambers of Commerce convened the Shanxi merchants in all these provinces, and transformed Shanxi merchants’ ways of doing business from “individual operations” to “group operations”.98 As in the Ming and
Qing Dynasty, the traditional successful Shanxi Merchants were based on family-owned businesses, which were much individually operated. However, this way of doing business is not adaptable in the new era for the new Shanxi merchants. Among all the 29 Shanxi NCCs in Mainland China, Shanxi NCCs in Tianjin got the award of “China’s top ten most expressive Chambers of Commerce” from China General Chamber of Commerce in 2010. According to the local officials in Tianjin, the Economic Cooperation Office said that Shanxi Chamber of Commerce has played an important role in Tianjin’s Opening Policy and regional economic cooperation.99
The Shanxi Board of Investment Promotion (shanxi touzi cujin ju) is the supervisory management unit for all the Shanxi NCCs located in different places, and has a strong focus on attracting non-local Shanxi merchants to come invest in Shanxi. It is a newly established government department, which integrates the investment function from Shanxi
97 Cited from Shanxi News site 04/09/200, 服务 500 万在外创业的山西人,异地山西商会在并座谈,
http://www.sxrb.com/sxjjrb/yiban_0/2821231.shtml, last entry 24/06/2015.
98 This is just a metaphor to describe Shanxi merchants’ way of doing business from separation to
cooperation.
Economic Commission and Shanxi Department of Commerce.100 The Shanxi Board of Investment Promotion (Provincial level) together with the municipal Investment Bureau made efforts to do better service for Shanxi merchants with investment capacity and willingness, as well as other substantial investors, to attract them to making investments in Shanxi. They combined to be the “mother home” of all Shanxi NCCs around the country. From the empirical evidence collected, it was easy to conclude that Shanxi Government’s policy towards Shanxi NCCs was much focused on investment attraction and other related areas.
Tianjin government had an open but not proactive policy towards NCCs development in Tianjin. Due to the distance with Beijing geographically and politically, Tianjin government was more conservative in policy innovation compared to some provinces in East China and South China, like Zhejiang and Guangdong. However, as a response to the rapid development of NCCs both in number and size in the Tianjin municipal area, the CPC Tianjin Municipal Committee and the Tianjin Municipal Government jointly issued “the Opinions on further accelerating the development of private economy” in late 2013101,
which specified the concrete measures to promote the development of private economy in Tianjin. Among all the measures, they specially emphasize the role of non-local chambers of commerce in Tianjin, and offer more favorable policies regarding financial allowance, lands, banking service and tax refunding issues.
Tianjin Economic and Cooperation Office （ECO） is the supervisory administration unit for all the NCCs in Tianjin, and it promulgated the implementing of regulations for all the NCCs and lower level investment bureaus.102 It further illustrated the clear investment attraction targets for all the relevant department and groups. Tianjin ECO is a deputy prefectural level department and its approach towards NCCs includes: support and encouragement to NCCs in Tianjin to carry out the investment attraction work together with local government; rewards and subsidies to the outstanding NCCs that provided good services to private economy and assisted the local government in investment attraction; support and encouragement to NCCs to purchase or construct Chamber of Commerce
100 See the website of Shanxi Board of Investment Promotion, http://www.shanxiinvest.com.
101 Tianjin Government official site, 中共天津市委、天津市人民政府关于进一步加快民营经济发展的意
见,09/12/2013, http://www.tj.gov.cn/zwgk/zcjd/bdzc/201312/t20131209_226167.htm .
102 http://www.tjdpc.gov.cn/fzgggz/tzgl/tzzc/201407/t20140701_51715.shtml 市合作交流办贯彻落实《中
headquarter buildings with preferential policy; and lastly, support to the NCCs to improve the ability of coordinating complaints and to build up their own mechanism of complaints coordination to solve the reasonable demands within membership enterprises of NCCs. 103