Introduction

Collaborative governance has been emerging in China as a new way to adapt the government to unprecedented socioeconomic changes and challenges (Brown, Gong, and Jing 2012). Despite its worldwide popularity, adoption of collaborative governance in China undoubtedly sheds new light on its practical scope and theoretical implications, given China’s differences to earlier Western adopters. Like the apparent success of China’s transition to modernization since the late 1970s, which remains a hotbed of intellectual ventures, collaborative governance may also join this debate and offer a new perspective of understanding. In this book collaborative governance is defined as the sharing of power and discretion within and across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors for public purposes. Such a definition is not new given existing definitions. 1