Decentralisation as a Developmental Strategy in China 369 CHINA REPORT 42 : 4 (2006) Sage Publications New Delhi/ Thousand Oaks/London DOI: 10.1177/000944550604200402 Decentralisation as a Developmental Strategy in China: A Development Model for Developing Countries G. Venkat Raman The premise of this article is that although the central role of the State in developing economies is in- dispensable, decentralisation of decision-making authority is inevitable in the governance of territorially large societies such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). A key component in the developmental experience of the PRC, as regards the two distinct models of development—Maoist and Dengist—has been a marked decentralisation of power and authority, an inevitable requirement in a territorially large and diverse country like China. The crucial point, however, is that during the Maoist and the Dengist eras, the strategies of development were distinguished by, among other features, two very distinct types of decentralisation. Whereas the Maoist developmental strategy was predominantly administrative, the Dengist strategy of decentralisation is predominantly market-driven. Besides, it is highly imperative to note that there are a great many points of departure between the Maoist and the Dengist developmental strategies. This article briefly traces the origins of decentralisation in post-1949 China and compares the Maoist and Dengist policies with regard to decentralisation. It essentially focuses on decentralisation strategies in the period of market reforms and the significance of the Chinese model of development for the devel- oping countries. INTRODUCTION The terms centralisation and decentralisation are often used with reference to the incompatibility in their respective exercise of authority, as if to suggest that an organ- isation which is characterised as centralised is completely devoid of decentralised characteristics and vice-versa. In other words, they are used in a manner as if these two terms are anti-thetical. James W. Fesler, very appropriately pointed out this problem in the following words. He said, ‘Our languages dichotomize “centralization” and “decentralization”, a peculiarity that poorly serve political science. We appear to have neither a term that embraces the full continuum between the two poles, nor a term that specifies the middle range where centralizing and decentralizing tendencies are