Looking through all the cases of Tianjin Shanxi NCC’s engagement in the local governance, it was hard to find a typical policy case of Tianjin Shanxi NCC influencing the local policy process. However, its engagement in the local politics was not less but much more than other NCCs. What they had mostly participated in was centered on working as the bridge between local governments and their membership enterprises, with the focus on assisting local governments to manage local business. Below I will introduce some examples to illustrate how Tianjin Shanxi NCC has worked with the local government to straighten out the relationship between government and enterprises.
The first example of Tianjin Shanxi NCCs’ bridging local government and enterprises was helping local district government to organize “one-stop field service day”120 meetings with
enterprises in Hedong District of Tianjin (Interview with GSP, Tianjin Shanxi NCC). Along with the private business’ development in Hedong district, the private entrepreneurs had higher requirements towards the management and services that local government should provide. Besides, different districts in Tianjin faced fierce competition on investment environment and attraction to foreign investors. So in order to keep private
120 “One-stop service” is one of the consequences of “public service oriented government construction”
reform in China. Before, citizens and enterprises need to go to different government office to deal different issues in terms of household registration, tax rebate etc. In order to improve the efficiency, local government gathered all the offices from different government departments in the same place, and carried out the public service to citizens and enterprises.
business staying in the district, the local district government had to improve their service in terms of enterprises registration, essential documents for operation, taxation procedures, etc. Tianjin Shanxi NCC’s office was located in Hedong district, and it kept a good relationship with Hedong District Government. Moreover, the president of Tianjin Shanxi NCC used to be the deputy-director of Hedong District government before retirement. In 2011, Tianjin Shanxi NCC proposed to the Commercial Committee of Hedong District Government to carry out some field service to Shanxi NCC’s membership enterprises, in order to closer the relationship between government and enterprises (Ibid). The Commercial Committee then passed on this idea to the deputy-director of Hedong District who was in charge of business. This proposal was quickly responded with feedbacks from government office, which designated Tianjin Shanxi NCC to organize this “one-stop field service day” to Shanxi NCCs’ membership enterprises in Hedong District, and asked relevant government departments to provide necessary assistance (Ibid). Therefore, later in 2011, this “one-stop field service day” activity was carried out among membership enterprises of Tianjin Shanxi NCC.
In this “one-stop field service day” activity, Tianjin Shanxi NCC was responsible to select sites, promote the activities among membership enterprises, inquiry with enterprises to understand their business requirement and finally coordinate public servants from relevant government departments to the field service site. This activity was usually held in a big hall or public place. On that day, the membership enterprises got direct feedbacks or answers of the questions from officials in the relevant department, and established good communication atmosphere between two sides. And the government department got to understand the needs of business more efficiently, and gathered the first-hand business information from private enterprises. As same as the first case in this chapter, the “one- stop field service day” initiative also became a routine event for Hedong District government and Tianjin Shanxi NCC afterwards, and this practice was spread to other NCCs and district government in the following several years as well (Interview with ZSL, Tianjin Shanxi NCC).
4.6.5 Case analysis
In the above case, Tianjin Shanxi NCC bridged the local government and enterprises through coinciding their interests and requirement. In the policy area focusing on policy
implementation and alike, Tianjin Shanxi was very skilled in approaching local government and exerting its influence. In the interaction with local government, Tianjin Shanxi NCC secured its role in the local governance and the limited influence in the local state-business relations. However, this was not policy lobbying in represent of membership enterprises’ interests.
In practice, Tianjin Shanxi NCC summarized their way of survival in the Chinese local political ecology. They were active in assisting local governments to “manage the bosses” (Interview with ZSL, Tianjin Shanxi NCC) in private sectors. Based on their state network oriented strategy, they frequently cooperated with local governments to improve the level of management and service towards private enterprises, and smoothed the state-business relationship on the local administrative level. However, their partnership with local governments also helped local governments to enhance the state’s control to private sectors, which to a certain degree hindered private sector’s long-term development.
There was another case to show that Tianjin Shanxi NCC tried once to influence policy making in the case of proposing to amend the “Rules of Implementation of “The Labor Contract Law of People’s Republic of China’” (zhonghua renmin gongheguo laodonghetongfa shishi tiaoli) (the New Rules, hereafter) in 2009,121 but it failed. In that case, some representatives of membership enterprises of Tianjin Shanxi NCC reflected in NCCs’ regular meeting that the New Rules promulgated in 2008 by the State Council was hard to implement in practice, and some items in the New Rules were contradicting with the existing system. And they proposed to let Tianjin Shanxi NCC to draft a report regarding this issue to Tianjin Government and legislature bodies. Tianjin Shanxi NCC took this offer but did not put this work into priority. It took quite a long time for them to finish the report. At the end, they did not find an appropriate government department to submit this report, and this proposal was suspended (Interview with RJH, members of Tianjin Shanxi NCC).
From the above case, it was easy to see that Tianjin Shanxi NCC did not have attempts to lobby policy makers, which reflected the insufficient incentives to push them to conduct lobbying activities. Though Tianjin Shanxi NCC was initiated bottom-up and had a strong base in Shanxi business circle, yet in its “coupling” process with state, its independence
121 See details in 中华人民共和国劳动合同法实施条例（全文), 中国网 china.com.cn, 2008-09-18
was gradually eroded by local state’s advancement, which eventually lead to the decreasing of their lobbying motivation and capacity.