Who governs China's rural areas? Institutional safeguards raise the level of governance
Rural governance is indispensable in the modernization system of national governance
Rural governance is the foundation and an important component of national governance. During the period of the Republic of China, the government did not extend below the county level, and rural governance was dominated by gentry governance. After the founding of New China, rural governance was the people's commune system, based on three-level ownership with the team as the foundation, a model in which production was directed by administrative means and economic organizational forms replaced political power organizational forms. After the rural areas implemented the household contract responsibility system with remuneration linked to output, this change in the economic system required the political system to adapt to it, and the "people's commune" model could no longer be used for management, so a strategic response was implemented.
In 1983, township governments were restored in rural areas. In 1987, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the Organic Law of the Villagers' Committees (for Trial Implementation), which began trial implementation in 1987, and villagers' committees were gradually established universally in rural areas across the country, replacing the people's commune model with the "township administration and village governance" model.
The so-called "township administration and village governance" contains two levels: "township administration" and "village governance." "Township administration" means that the state establishes the lowest level of government in townships and towns, representing the state in managing rural areas; "village governance" means villager self-governance, establishing autonomous organizations in rural areas and implementing democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic supervision. Township administration embodies state power, while village governance is the embodiment of social power. The township is the government, and the village is an autonomous organization, based on rural governance and household management.
⟦NL> From this evolutionary process, it can be seen that, whether viewed from the governance system or the governance structure, rural governance is both a foundation and an important component of national governance.
Under the great wheel of urbanization, it is difficult for rural areas to mesh with the state, cities and the market
Since the reform and opening up, and especially since the advancement of urbanization, China's rural areas have undergone profound changes in spatial conditions, population patterns, social structure and interest structure, giving rise to a coexisting pattern of traditional rural communities, new rural communities formed through village integration, and new communities integrated into towns and cities.
The number of township (town) level units reached a peak of 56,000 in 1990 and had decreased to 33,000 by 2012. Villagers' committees peaked at 740,000 in 1990 and stood at 590,000 in 2012, showing that the social structure has already changed. In addition, with the transfer of labor for employment, the ratio of rural population to urban population has also changed. In the past, our rural population was relatively large, but by 2012 the urban population had already surpassed the rural population. In this context, the structure of the labor force has also changed considerably. At present, China has more than 200 million migrant workers, but 62.2% of them find employment at or above the county seat, while 37.8% are below the county level, and 20% of the migrant worker group has already moved into cities. In addition, the problem of rural hollowing-out is severe, and the questions of who will farm the land and who will raise livestock plague the countryside.
In addition, the interest pattern in rural areas has also changed. On the one hand, some villages themselves have abundant resources, and disputes arise over who will control and dispose of these resources; on the other hand, in the process of the government advancing urbanization, the implementation of some engineering projects involves various resources, such as water, electricity and gas construction projects, and livelihood projects such as education and health care. How should these resources be distributed? With economic interests at stake, all actors in rural areas compete for the right to dispose of these resources and interests. All of this involves changes in the rural interest structure.
What problems have such structural changes brought? That is, while changes in other aspects of the state are advancing, how should the rural governance system adapt to the modernization of other systems? How can rural governance capacity be improved? How can the problems of intervention and rent-seeking by grassroots organizations and the government be solved?
The enormous difficulties of China's rural transformation and village transformation are certainly due to the vastness of rural areas, the huge population and the weak economic foundation, but more importantly they are due to the special social content and nature of this transformation: namely, rural areas, which are particular in geography, production, culture and governance, are on the one hand increasingly drawn into the process of market economy and even social construction, and on the other hand increasingly incorporated into the process of modern state governance. This means a rearrangement of the three basic relationships between the state and rural areas, the market and rural areas, and cities and rural areas. This is a tremendous transformation that Chinese rural society has never experienced. The manner, process and prospects of this transformation depend on the attitudes of the state, the market and cities toward rural areas, and also on the attitudes of rural areas toward the state, the market and cities. It is precisely in this sense that observing village transformation can also be regarded as observing the transformation of village relations.