Problems of agent control and localized power bases have impeded efforts by successive regimes in Beijing — from the Imperial dynasties to the post-reform Communist Party — to exert central rule over the Chinese countryside. While the institution of “self-rule” through Villagers’ Committee elections was aimed at improving governance at the grassroots, problems such as corruption, land expropriation, pollution and factionalism remain widespread, in part because power in the villages is still concentrated in the hands of the unelected village party branch secretary. Drawing on the literature on bureaucratic politics and political clientelism, this paper argues that the shortcomings (and successes) of governance in Chinese villages can be explained through the unique positional logic of the party branch secretary. From above, the party branch secretary faces constraints and is endowed with resources that lead him to make decisions with a “bureaucratic rationale,” while looking down into the village, he is guided by a “clientelist rationale.” These separate — and often conflicting — frameworks coexist in a Chinese countryside where economic and political power has again concentrated in a single actor.