In the last decade a variety of local studies and more comprehensive works have shed light on basic-level Chinese politics and society, but Andrew Walder's book Communist Neo-Traditionalism has been the boldest and most influential in proposing a new paradigm for understanding the human realities of life and power in China. Although the empirical base of his study is the state industrial workplace in China, Walder claims that it is applicable to industrial relation in other communist countries, and his theory fits closely with Jean Oi's analysis of clientelism in rural areas.
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Brantly Womack (1991) studied this question.
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