Provision, Identity And Social Integration: The Changes And Consequences Of China's Rural Community Service System

Based on a case study of the rural community service system in a county, this paper reviews the formation and change trajectory of the rural community service system since the founding of the new state and analyses its consequence and impacts. It contends that public services are not only related to the people's livelihood, but also do they have great impact on social relations such as farmers'identification and social integration. It can be seen that they have different effects on the farmers'identification with community and social integration due to the different service style in different stage. This dissertation analyzes the how the rural community service system affects the identification with community and social integration and its social impacts at three different historical stages.Firstly, the paper reviews the rural community service in the people's commune period and its influence on the farmers'identification with community and social integration. During this period, the rural community service system is coming into being. This system is characterized by that the public services are provided by community with the support from state, namely, the community provided the public services for itself. And the investors of rural community service system are duality of the community (main) and the state (assist). The main financing sources of rural community service system are collective taxes, accumulation and retention of common funds, equalitarianism and free allocation of materials. Farmers were provided with production and life services continuously according to the non-autonomous co-operation principle under force. In essence, these services are closed within the rural areas. Anyhow, they had ever met the actual demands of farmers'production and life in the fifties, so they were recognized by farmers consistently. However, due to mandatory and non-autonomous cooperative factors in rural community services provision and lack of necessary incentive mechanism, to some extent, manpower, material and financial resources were wasted. And it also worsened the situation of resource constraints and weakened the service provision capacity in the community. So the gap between urban and rural areas was widened. The urban-rural dual structure was therefore fixed. The system objectively increased the tension between community service provision and actual affordability, in addition to the unavoidable mistakes in the operational process, farmers'homogeneous identification was separated gradually and overall social identification was formed. Farmers began to have the internal needs of changing the community service system.Secondly, the paper studies the rural community service after China's reforming and its influence on the farmers'identification with community and social integration. In the period of the household contract responsibility system, the investors of the rural community services were rural community. But now partly and even mostly the investors are households. The state mainly regulated and controlled the rural community services through policies and sometimes gave certain financial subsidies. In the later stage the market was also introduced and the rural community service system is perfected. The financing channels of this period included channels inside and outside the system and it raised funds mainly through collective income, "three deductions (for public reserve funds, public welfare funds and management fees) and the five charges (charges for rural education, family planning, militia training, rural road construction and subsidies to entitled groups)" and fund-raising and apportionment. The previous mandatory provision principle now began to loose and it was characterized by the quasi-mandatory cooperation under the government's auspices. At this point, the reform of rural community service system played a certain incentive role on farmers, and the golden period of agricultural production development was created in the first half of the eighties. However, these reforms were still carried out under the urban-rural dual structure, so they only met farmers'demands of contracting for the lands according to households. For a long-term, China implemented a dual system of urban and rural public service and public service policies, which took cities and urban citizens as the center, this directly resulted in the serious unbalance between urban and rural residents in education, health care, health, social security and other basic public services. In rural areas, most of those public services that should be provided by the state originally were now provided by the rural community. The implementation of tax distribution system further weakened the supply capacity of local governments. The financing channel outside the system in rural community service system increased the burden on farmers and triggered the "agriculture, rural areas and peasantry " issues. Peasants were deeply unhappy to this and some young farmers began to go out to work spontaneously. The flow of farmer workers differentiated farmers'occupation and identity and resulted in their identity fission and identity crisis of farmers thus occurred.Then the paper examines the reform of the rural community service system in the new countryside construction and its influence on the farmers'identification with community and social integration in future. The new countryside construction is a great social construction project and with it great changes had taken place in the rural community service system. The CPC and Chinese government introduced basic public services to the countryside and it had prompted the reconstruction of community. The traditional provision model of rural community service system was broken up and the state began to gradually increase the public financial investments. Thus a multi-provision system led by the state began to take shape. The equalization of basic public services between urban and rural areas and urban-rural integration is the key to the realization of rebuilding farmers'identification and social integration; namely, identification will be produced consistently when the basic public services provided by the state meet the farmers'common demands. Taking the land exchange as carrier for the reconstruction of the farmers'identification, farmers'land will be converted to capital, which provides concrete material guarantee for the development of urban-rural integration and thus it will speed up the process of social integration.Finally, a brief conclusion is made:identification is reconstructed via services and thus social integration is realized. First of all, services are the basis of identification and validity, which is the logical starting-point of the paper. Because identification and validity are psychologically internalized, so long as the political power is identified, its validity is great. Both identification and validity are closely related to interests. The realization and consolidation of interests means the satisfaction of people's demands. And all these cannot come true without the government's public services; therefore, identification and validity are based on services. Next, services are bond of the social relations and organizations, which is also a sign based on the medium between individual and society, as well as the state. The method of the rural community construction in the present stage is virtually one which takes services as intermediary, and by reuniting and reorganizing the dispersed manpower, it will strengthen the farmers'identification with the whole nation and social communities and establish the relation of "individual-community-state". Moreover, strengthening farmers'community identification through the community services represents the social integration at microscopic level. The community service is basic for people, as well as the most important need, thus identification arising from it is steadiest, which is also the value of communities as micro social organizations. Reconstruction of community is a process of strengthening people's identification with community via services and thus making it suit with independence, opening and compatibility that modern market economy reflects and breaking the grade, closeness and exclusiveness of traditional identification. Finally, the realization of social solidarity and integration through the public services represents the social integration at a macroscopic level. The reconstruction of the consistent social identification through public services, and the gradual establishment of the connection between community's and national community, together with the development of urban-rural integration, will push up society towards integration.