Decentralizing while centralizing: An explanation of China's collective forestry reform since the 1980s

Governance systems are characterized by differing degrees of centralized vs decentralized decision-making and distribution of powers. This study investigates the history of Chinese centralized decentralization reforms in collective forestry using data from government documents and secondary literature based on the democratic decentralization and environmental governance frameworks. Additionally, it divides China's collective forest decentralization reform into three stages since the 1980s—the “economic development” period, “marketization cultivation” period, and “ecological protection” period. Our findings indicate that the effect of decentralization reform is largely due to whether the decentralization reform is consistent with the national government's centralized means/mechanism. In the economic development period (1980–1991), there were two sources of conflict: (1) between the centralized timber market system (unified purchase and sales system in state-owned forest) and the opening of the collective forest timber market; and (2) between the horizontal government upward accountability system and the decentralization of financial power to local governments. In the marketization cultivation period (1992–2002), the conflict between the horizontal government upward accountability system and decentralized financial power to the local government still existed, but the centralized fiscal policy of monetary tightening complemented the full-scale opening of the forestry market. During the ecological protection period (2003-present), the vertical government upward accountability system has complemented the devolution of financial power to forestry departments. We also find that the results of decentralization reforms of the government and market system usually affect the decentralization reform results of the community system.