Abstract：Many difficulties occurred in the rural tax-for-fee reform in inland provinces were not found in Shunde. This paper attributes this fact to the comprehensive governmental reforms conducted since the early 1990s in Shunde. which have supplied the necessary institutional back-up for rural tax reform. Moreover, the implementation of rural tax reform has facilitated the further development of governmental reform in Shunde. through speeding up the transformation of government roles and the constitution of a service government in particular. The paper describes the processes whereby changes in different institutional arenas interacted and promoted one another, and argues that these are worth noting for the benefit of ongoing government reforms and related institutional changes elsewhere in the country.
