The evolution and experience of china’s rural governance reform

The composition and problems of China 's rural governance system at the present stage

China's rural governance system is a grassroots governance system established under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. It is divided into an organizational mobilization system, a management and an operative system, a system of powers and responsibilities, and a service system. Some scholars believe that the rural party organization is the political mobilization start button reserved by the Party Central Committee in rural areas. The grassroots party organizations play their advanced nature and lead the development of the rural service system. The village self-governing committee is an elected organization that implements self-management, self-education and self-service of the villagers according to law. The villagers supervise the exercise of the rights of the village committee and the grassroots party branch, and the party and government departments at the higher levels take assessment and accountability for them.

From the practice point of view, the village committee is not in a good situation, the village-level financial resources are scarce, and the relationship between the cadres and the masses is tense. The institutionalization of village self-government cannot keep up with the actual needs of rural social development in the new era, and the village committee becomes the next level of «township administration» management. At the same time, with the development of new urbanization (figure 1 shows that the rural population has continued to decline after 1990, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2017), people's activity space has undergone profound changes. In the context of increasingly open, flowing, differentiated and diversified rural areas, cultural breaks and multi-value conflicts and rural talents are lost. There is a phenomenon that the actual governance subject and

Source: developed by the authors based of the data of National Bureau of Statistics of China.

2. Reconstruction of China's Rural Governance Capacity System. The composition of China's modern rural social governance structure includes the state's grassroots political power, villagers' organizations, and other organizations. As actors in governance, their ability to participate in governance affects the effectiveness of rural governance. Chinese scholars have different research on the ability of rural governance actors:

3.1. The Constructive Effect of the Participation of National Grassroots Political Power. The Communist Party of China as the ruling party not only plays a decisive role in macro governance, but also its grassroots party organizations play a central role in rural governance. Village cadres and rural party members are generally older, lacking informatization ability, low level of knowledge, unreasonable leadership style, and corruption problems in some cadres. Scholars have conducted a lot of research on the governance of grassroots party organizations. Y. Xianglu believes that strengthening the grassroots party organization as the main line, strengthening the party leadership, developing the economy, serving the masses in the overall thinking of rural governance and improving the establishment of rural grassroots party organizations, deepening the rural collective Property rights reform, giving play to the role of new agricultural management, building rural policy support mechanisms and other countermeasures [3]. L. Rongrong pointed out that the modernization of the governance capacity of the township government puts forward new requirements for the cadre competence, mainly reflected in the four aspects: learning and implementation competence, innovation and patient work competence, response and dedication competence, and emergency and negotiation competence. It is necessary to improve the competency of township cadres. It is necessary to standardize the operation of the system, change the working mode, improve the incentive mechanism, enhance the incentive effect, foster a healthy culture, and eliminate the concept of «official standard» [4]. Y. Zi believes that in the current rural governance, the over-dense of public resources to the country side leads to the target management responsibility system embedded in the practice of grassroots democracy, and causing the bureaucratic hierarchy of the semi-formal administrative structure. Grassroots governance system supplies under a variety of tensions, not only failed to bring the rejuvenation of rural social publicity, but have led rural governance to the opposite of good governance instead. In the process of implementing the rural revitalization strategy, village cadres should become the subject of joint governance of public resources, and may also fall into the hotbed of «micro-corruption» in rural areas without supervision. In order to better benefit the people in modern countries, it is necessary to continuously improve the administrative capacity of the administrative villages and promote the modernization of the rural governance system and governance capacity [5]. In Q. Jingdong's depth study of the project system affirmed its significance for breaking through the bureaucracy, but also pointed out that it may form a monopoly [6].

3.2. The effect of village group participation in construction. W. Yan and W. Chonghui believe that the masses under the leadership of CPC are the main body of negotiation and governance [7]. The active participation of the people is the basis for achieving township governance. Their quality, ability and enthusiasm for participating in public affairs directly determine the quality of governance. However, due to the fact that farmers leave rural areas to work in the city, this part of the population with strong ability cannot effectively participate in the governance of the village. The left-behind elderly, left-behind children, and left-behind women cannot participate in the governance of the village effectively because of their age, gender, limited energy, and other reasons. This is what the scholars call the hollowing out of the countryside. However, the traditional rural concept has been violently impacted in China's modernization process, and the new social order has not been perfected. The cohesiveness of the village residents has been dissipated. This phenomenon is called atomization of the village. Scholars have studied these issues. X. Mingzhu believes that peasant political participation is an important guarantee for promoting the modernization of governance capabilities. We have to do a good job in grassroots party building, arouse farmers ' awareness of political participation; innovate participation platforms, encourage farmers to participate in political activities; strengthen education for the people and enhance the quality of farmers ' political participation; provide participation guarantees and guide farmers ' political participation [8]. L. Yiqiang and C. Ming believe that by developing rural social organizations to build a social foundation for village-level democracy, ordinary villagers will be brought into the process of democracy through organizational mechanisms, and activate the institutional code and creative potential of village-level democracy [9]. H. Ying believes that China's gradual villager autonomy still faces many practical dilemmas, such as the lack of democratic awareness and capacity of the villagers, excessive government intervention in village self-government, and the fact that rural social self-governing organizations cannot provide social foundation for the development of village self-government. To promote the development of villagers' autonomy, we should gradually improve villagers ' sense of participation and autonomous ability, and the government should gradually grant power to lower levers and allow villagers to keep a bigger room of villagers ' autonomy in order to breed self-organization in the rural community, so that the social base of villagers ' autonomy will be strengthened [10].

2.3. The effect of other social groups participating in construction. At the present stage, in the actual process of rural governance, scientists believes that relying on the interaction between the state and society and between the state and the people is very important to the stability of the social order. An authoritative but not omnipotent party listening to public opinion has implications for the transformation of China. In addition to the participation of the state and the public in rural governance activities, actors with specific resources in society also play a very important role in rural governance activities. Y. Deru believes that the significant problem of rural governance is the massive loss of elites in the countryside, the failure of the aphasia of the autonomous system, and the breakdown of the spirit of rural governance. He advocates that the local sages of the new era should be absorbed into the rural governance system according to local conditions and actively play their role [11]. Z. Guofang has studied the participation of social capital in rural governance, arguing that social capital can promote rational collective action, which is conducive to the achievement of rural governance goals [12]. Y. Zi pointed out that some local village-level governance currently exhibits oligopoly in terms of authority structure, resource allocation and interest extraction. Grey interest production, elite alliance and political asylum contribute to oligarchy governance reproduction. The input of exogenous interests and the weak rural society have become the forming and plastic element of the widowed village [13]. On the one hand, it is necessary to use social capital to inject funds for rural development. On the other hand, when introducing social capital to participate in rural governance, it prevents the tendency of oligopoly in village governance.

In 2019 the Document No. 1 of the Central Government, pointed out that the establishment of the leadership system and working mechanism of the party organization led by the combination of autonomy, rule of law and rule of virtue, and the role of the masses in the governance of the main body; supporting talent recruitment, promotion channels, functional positioning, and funding guarantees, and stressing that village committees should perform the functions of grassroots mass autonomous organizations and play the role of various organizations at the village level. Form a multi-agent participation governance model led by grassroots party organizations.

Comparison of typical models of rural governance in China at the present stage

4.1. It is based on a government-led multi-governance model. First of all, the Communist Party of China is China's ruling party, and its ability to govern must be extended to various administrative levels, including reaching the grassroots of the village, to ensure the party's leadership over the broad masses of the people. Rural governance reforms, including village self-government, are also driven by the government. The government influences the autonomy of rural society by appointing villages, education and training, appraisal, and rewarding village cadres; absorbing and influencing rural social elites. Therefore, the government's model of leading rural governance is not difficult to understand. This kind of governance has its historical value naturally, but the existing problems should also attract enough attention.

Secondly, in theory, villagers who are self-governing villages should have a self-management of the villagers. However, due to the existence of grassroots political power, civil authority and other organizations, they will have an important impact on the decision-making, implementation, methods and effects of rural governance. The grassroots government determines the direction and structure of governance and deals with matters within the system. Civil authorities and other organizations deal with matters outside the system. In some cases, grassroots regimes need to use civil authority and other organizations to help deal with things that are difficult to do with laws and orders. Therefore, there is a pattern of dominant participation in multiple participation. In some cases, this model will become an alliance of local interests. However, its positive significance is also obvious. In most cases, everyone has the opportunity to negotiate and communicate.

4.2. It is a model of elite governance. Regardless of who is involved in governance, they are elites with certain resources (distributive resources and authoritative resources) and social status in the village. Whether it is the past «village gentry» or the current «capable person», they play the same role in the process of rural governance. These elites are the targets of the state powers in different periods, and they serve the public interests of the villagers through them. This also has its positive and negative side.

China should also pay attention to foreign research results and absorb useful experiences. A. A. Thuesen and N. C. Nielsen believes that the local action groups level makes improvements to local development in the form of leverage, democratisation and bottom-up decision making, which none of the other levels would be able to provide with the same level of efficiency or effectiveness [14]. M. Shucksmith links rural integrated development with spatial planning, local shaping, capacity-building and new endogenous development concepts to study rural governance in northern Scotland and to design specific governance structures [15]. A. Mosimane and J. Silva believes that local governance structures require more external support and oversight to design and implement ways to distribute benefits to community members; fairness can only be achieved when the clear objectives of the benefit-sharing system used by local governance structures involving transparency and share the benefits fairly [16]. In analyzing the rural governance of the Czech Republic, M. Simon and J. Bernard believes that the EU's «project class» measures can strengthen the capacity of rural participants from the outside [17]. These research results provide a good idea for solving current rural governance problems.

Conclusions

First, although scholars suggest improving the governance capacity of different actors, there is no clear and uniform definition of the ability of actors to participate in governance. In particular, the villagers' capacity of autonomy is not defined. It is difficult to investigate and determine which ability that villagers need to improve. Moreover, domestic scholars have relatively lack of empirical research on relevant theories applied to rural governance, and it is difficult to test the theory and improve the theory. Due to the heterogeneity of rural China, scholars' conclusions are also limited to a certain area, which means that other areas should study their own rural governance issues and solve specific problems in rural development and governance.

Secondly, China's rural autonomy is the villager autonomy promoted by the state, and the enthusiasm of the villagers to participate in governance affairs spontaneously is not high. In order to mobilize the enthusiasm of grassroots cadres, the current state has given support in terms of promotion, assessment, and funding guarantees, and the tendency of village cadres to become more bureaucratic is becoming more and more obvious. This has its positive significance, especially in rural areas where the central and western regions are underdeveloped. Because village cadres have low incomes and few chance of promotion, their enthusiasm is difficult to mobilize.

However, from a long period of time, the impact of this bureaucratic trend requires further research. In the case of external «governance by others» ability continues strengthening, if the villages' internal autonomy cannot be improved or missing, and governance becomes a national matter, the villagers passively accept it. This is clearly contrary to the spirit of governance, and the realization of the national rural revitalization strategy and the goal of governance modernization may be affected.

China is implementing a rural revitalization strategy and proposing effective rural governance. Obviously, improving the ability of each actor and cultivating the internal dynamics of rural governance will be a topic that needs urgent research in the academic world.

References

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