According to Mann, the state infrastructure power is "the institutional capacity of a central state, despotic or not, to penetrate its territories and logistically implement decisions." From the perspective of state-building, this paper investigates the change of the state infrastructure power from the Maoist time to the Post-Mao period with the case study of the Industrial and Commercial Administrative Office (ICAO) in Guang Zhou city. The paper illustrates the following three arguments. / First, different from the perspectives which focus on the change of the authoritarian or communist factors in China, the state-building studies give us fresh perspective to outline the change of the state infrastructure power from the Maoist time to the Post-Mao period. In the case study of the ICAO in Guang Zhou city, the state fell short of fiscal revenue to finance the ICAO. The self-supply funding system of the ICAO hindered the formalization of the ICAO and rendered the ICAO to pursue revenue increase, which led to the arbitrary charges of the market management fee and distorted the function of the ICAO. Since 1990s, the state tried to check the ICAO's orientation of pursuing revenue increase by launching reforms to change the funding system of the ICAO and promoting the institution-building of it. Despite the limitation of the reform measures, the state enhanced its agent-monitoring capacity under the circumstance of disappearance of political movement and ideological bindings. / Second, the state-building effort of the rulers, the shortage of the fiscal revenue and the path-dependence are three outstanding factors which influence the change of the state infrastructure power from the Maoist time to the Post-Mao era. In the case of ICAO, the rulers takes efforts to extend their power to penetrate the society and monitor their agents. In order to achieve the objective of market control, the rulers established the ICAO and tried to enhance the agent-monitoring capacity. The shortage of the fiscal revenue baffled the rulers efforts to widely set up ICAO and restricted the formalization of it. Furthermore, the path dependence impacts on the development of the state infrastructure power. When the self-supply funding system of the ICAO was established, new problems and resistance arose from the funding system prevent the rulers to reform it. / Third, the state infrastructure power influences the relationship between the state and society. The state infrastructure power not only shapes how the ICAO deals with different market subjects, it also works on the coping strategies different market subjects take to protect themselves from the investigation and penalty of the ICAO. By taking the social control capacity and agent-monitoring capacity of the state into consideration, we could better understand the interaction between the ICAO and different market subjects. / 黃冬婭. / Adviser: Shaoguang Wang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3299. / Submitted: October 2007. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-229). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Huang Dongya.