While the state and its bureaucrats are major players in the reform-era economy, new interests and concentrations of economic power have been created, without legitimate channels between administrators and entrepreneurs. A lack of regulation and supervision has meant these roles are not clearly demarcated (Lü Xiaobo in his text titles one section "From Apparatchiks to Entrepreneurchiks").Lv 2000, p. 242 Illicit guandao enterprises formed by networks of bureaucrats and entrepreneurs are allowed to grow, operating behind a facade of a government agency or state-owned enterprise, in a realm neither fully public nor private. More recently, Ben Hillman has shown how official corruption is facilitated by intrastate patronage networks. According to Hillman, patronage networks 'grease the wheels' of a dysfunctional bureaucracy while simultaneously extracting spoils for the private benefit of their members. Patronage networks also protect transgressors from intrusion by the Party-state's disciplinary agencies. Hillman's study of patronage networks helps to explain how corruption and economic development have been able to coexist in China.Hillman, Ben. Patronage and Power: Local State Networks and Party-state Resilience in Rural China Stanford University Press, 2014.
