The Government Responsibility Of Rural Social Security

Issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers are key factors restricting sustained development of economy and construction of harmonious society in China, as China is a developing country with 8 hundred million of rural population in social transition period. The thesis titled"The government responsibilities in rural social security"is to explore the significant issue in resolving issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers, which is how to establish the rural social security systems. The arrangement of government responsibilities is of great importance for the benign running of the rural social security system. The study of the government responsibilities in rural social security is of great theoretic and practical values. Theoretically the study is able to reviewing the present arrangement of government responsibilities in rural social security system, recognizing the deficiency in present system and providing the theoretic foundation for establishing a sound rural social security system; practically the study is to restructuring the arrangement of government responsibilities in rural social security system and to providing a possible design for the reform of the rural social security system serving for resolving issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers.The government responsibilities are defined as the arrangement of the obligation or duties of government in Chinese rural social security system, which are political responsibilities and legal obligations as well. The actual reason why government should take responsibilities in rural social security is the orientation of government policy result in the deficiency of social security in rural areas while agriculture, countryside and farmers of China have ever made great contribution to the realization of economic goal in China in the past several decades. The theoretic explanation for the government responsibilities in rural social security system are: firstly the rural social security is of the feature of public goods while the government is liable to provide public goods; secondly the social transition from agricultural society to industrializing society requires the establishing of rural social security system and the government is liable to take the cost of social transition; thirdly social security system is a formal arrangement to prevent social risks and the government is the only one who is able to provide the system. From the view of laws, both international convention and the constitution of China proscribes the obligation for the government to provide social security system, therefore the government is out of question to provide social security both for urban and rural residents.If the steps of establishing rural social security system are divided as the period of collective insurance, the period of family and land insurance and the period of social security, government responsibility in rural social security experienced the development from being recessive to being lack of and till the end being responsible. However there is always the misunderstanding of this issue for thinking that the government is unable to take the responsibilities in establishing rural social security system and the rural residents have had land as their insurance for the social risks, which results in the establishing and restructuring rural social security system only stay in the period of appealing and researching . With the lack of legal proscription of rural social security, the government responsibilities in rural social security is vague and ambiguity and lack of supervision. Therefore it is of great necessity to restructure the arrangement of government responsibilities in rural social security system.Restructuring the arrangement of government responsibilities in rural social security system may be begun with the pattern design of the rural social security system. With the considering of the reality of rural areas, rural social security should take the model giving priority to social insurance combined with national insurance and compulsive saving. According to this model, the government responsibilities include financial responsibility, organization establishment, supervising and system providing, which could be realized through reasonable distribution of responsibilities between central government and local governments, cooperation among government, market and the third sector and improvement of supervision system.At present, the rural area is in the transitional period from land insurance to social security. This transition includes three kinds of occasions: for the rural resident who have lost land to exchange land compensation for social security; for the rural residents to meet the requirement of scale farming, to exchange shares of land transaction for social security; for the farmers growing cereals, to exchange cereals for social security. If the government responsibilities in rural social security systems are divided into direct responsibilities and indirect ones, then the government responsibilities concerning financial responsibility, organization establishment, supervising and system providing belong to direct responsibilities and the indirect responsibilities include realizing the above transition through system arrangements.