Meetings as Mirrors: An Invitation to an Understudied Mechanism for Understanding China and Politics

• Published in: China review (Hong Kong, China : 1991) Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 1 - 15
• Main Author: Liu, Junqiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hong Kong 中文大學出版社 01.02.2024; Chinese University of Hong Kong Press; The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press; Chinese University Press
• Subjects: Anthropology; Counties; Decision making; Government executives; Handbooks; Intergovernmental relations; Local government; Meetings; Political parties; Political systems; China
• ISSN: 1680-2012; 1015-6607

Countless meetings are held in the Chinese governmental system every day, serving as a platform for various affairs to unfold. However, despite the ubiquitous nature of these events, there has been a surprising dearth of literature documenting and analyzing them. In this introductory article, we aim to address this gap by first reviewing the existing knowledge in meetings research and then summarizing three articles included in this special feature. These articles focus on the meetings at different levels of the Chinese government, ranging from county and prefectural to provincial and central levels. By drawing evidence from multiple sources, these studies cover crucial aspects of meetings and shed light on their inner workings and complexities. The first article presents findings based on the author's one-year participatory observations as a vice mayor, exploring the duality of executive meetings of a county government in the instrumental and symbolic dimensions. The second article examines how an inter-governmental conference absorbs new members. The third article probes the seasonality of issues under discussion in executive meetings of provincial governments and the state council, and examines the underlying allocation of attention paid to them. The special feature seeks to offer a glimpse into the meetings system in China. Furthermore, we hope to sow the seeds of knowledge in the field of China studies, inviting further exploration and research in this area. We present a tentative agenda for upcoming investigations into meetings within the Chinese governing system, posing challenging questions that may inspire future researchers.