The Identity of Counties after the Decentralization Reform in China

China has been considered a centralized country for a long period of time. With several reforms over the last 30 years, important powers have been gradually transferred to local levels, particularly to counties. The article analyzes this evolution based on a field study in two provinces, Zhejiang and Sichuan. The hypothesis is that the transfer of initiatives becomes a new way of steering the identities of counties in China. The analysis presented in this article is based on two perspectives: institutional perspective about the financial, administrative, and political reform in China and neo-institutional perspective to examine the identities of counties, especially the role of counties’ actors in territorial development and intergovernmental relations within the provinces.