In a study titled “The Phenomenon of Collusion Among Grassroots Governments,” the sociologist Zhou Xueguang describes how local governments deal with the policies and inspections of their superiors. They use all kinds of means of “policies above, countermeasures below.” Collusion among grassroots governments, he writes, has become “an institutionalized form of informal behavior.”
Zhou also notes that some of these practices have been “an important source of institutional innovation.”