China’s urban community is an important venue to examine the function of political discourse. Drawing on the theory of strategic action field, this article regards community as a field where officials act as incumbents, citizens as challengers, and the political discourse as an internal governance unit. The empirical data from multiple cities demonstrates that political discourses have facilitated the incumbents with several pragmatic utilities such as assuring the state’s dominance, mobilizing citizens’ participation, and disciplining resid...
