Rural Community Governance:Transforming From Hard Governance Into Soft Governance

The "township politics village governs" system is based on " the people’s communes " in the planned economy period, although after the first rural governance reform named villagers’ autonomy, but not completely, still strongly with a "hard governance" color, highlighted in the characteristics of indexing, visibility, closeness, mandatory,and so on. Along with the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, the Chinese traditional agricultural, village and farmers are accelerating "end", radical changes have taken place in rural governance space and time condition, the rural community management system is more and more exposed its historical limitations, the second rural governance system reform is on the political system reform agenda The Third Plenary Session of the eighteen central committee of the CPC put forward the target "to promote national governance system and governance ability modernization", there is no doubt, we can’t realize the national governance system and governance ability modernization withour the rural governance system and governance ability modernization. It’s the only way of rural governance system and governance ability modernization that we should used the new rural community institution to replace the villager autonomy system.There is historical inevitability and rationality of the formation of rural community hard governance system. It adapted to the planned economy system, and was advantageous to the state to control the society. With the development of economic marketization, political democratization and cultural diversity, the rural community governance is transforming from hard governance into soft governance, from home community, clan community into cooperation community. In this thesis, the author take the historical reflection on interpretation as the basic orientation study, based on deconstruction traditional "rural hard governance" model of the theory presupposition and the features of the system, analysed the transformation of some rural communities governance model, and tried to extract a "rural soft governance" theory, to guide the rural community construction and social management comprehensive governance innovation practice in the developed areas. The rural soft governance has the characteristics of non-indexing, no visibility, democratic consultation and cooperation governance, and it will become the main model of rural community governance in the post-industrial society, era.Since 1949 year, we completed the land reform through agricultural co-operative movement and established the collective ownership of rural land. The scattered small farmers were organized as "commune member" of "the people’s communes". The binary relation of "national-farmers" was replaced by the triangle relation of "national-collective-farmers". From the traditional autonomy and semi-autonomous "country gentleman governance" to completely "official governance" the "people’s communes" system, the People’s Republic of China had completed the first transformation of rural governance. This transition does not change the home community character of the rural community, but laid the foundation of rural hard governance model including the binary household registration system, the urban inspector system and safeguard stability hardly.After the reform and opening up, we gave up the people’s commune system in politics and established the villager autonomy system. The political function of the people’s commune was inherted by the village committee, the economic functions of the people’s commune was inherted by rural enterprises. The reform is not complete, the cultural, ecological and social functions of the people’s commune has not been properly placed, just set up a transitional rural governance structure named "countryside politics and village governance". From the people’s commune to the villagers’autonomy, the People’s Republic of China had completed the second transformation of rural governance. This transition did not break the inertial thinking of country hard governance, but drawed into the factors such as the rule of law, industrialization, so as to make the parts of the rural community transform from home community to the clan community and open up a new era democratic governance, of rural community.In 2006, the agricultural tax was canceled. We summarize lessons of the village committee system and launched the "new rural community construction"comprehensive experiment. We try to governance the rural issues from origin through the construction of material civilization, spiritual civilization, political civilization, social civilization and ecological civilization. This is actually continue to complete the historical task of the radical reform on the people’s commune system, in fact,the reform is function integration: put the five scattered functions into the "new rural communities", and you can regard it as a comprehensive reflection on the past rural governance and "rural secondary reform ". From the village committee system to the new rural community system, the People’s Republic of China is doing the third transformation of rural governance. This transition will be the end of traditional village, agriculture and farmer, the political, economic, cultural, social and ecological functions of the people’s communes are "packaging" for the new rural community inheritance, and on the new rural community platform to realize the revival of the village, agriculture and farmers. Strengthen the "peaceful community" social management system construction. The past "hard governance" will transform into a combination of hard and soft, and establish the long-term mechanism of the modernization of rural governance system and governance ability.The rural soft governance is a new academic thesis and an innovation theory in rural governance research. The rural soft governance has fundamentally changed in such aspects as governance subjects, legal basis, governance means, governance objects and governance effects compared with traditional hard governance model. On the governance subject, the grassroots government, rural community management departments, rural elite, villagers’ economic cooperation organization, all kinds of rural "third sector" in the platform of deliberative democracy to carry out various forms of cooperation, consultation and dialogue, advocate the polycentric governance mode. On the legal basis, we emphasize "hard law" such as the laws, the regulations and other rules, we also emphasize "soft law"such as village regulations, customs, habits and the citizen moral. The CCP rural community party branch strengthen the use of "party soft power" in the rural community governance through cultural propaganda and education, goals, guiding and the behavior reform On law enforcement tools, we should reduce "hard" means such as enforcement, command, fines and increase "soft" means such as mediation, negotiation, persuasion, cooperation. On the governance objects, the governance emphasis are transforming from material plane"remove old house, build the new building, park and square" into spiritual level "social mentality", "moral", "community culture" and so on. Finally realize the organic unity of the leadership of the CCP, governing the villages by law,and the villagers’autonomy in rural community, complete the historical task of the new rural community governance transformation.from hard governance into soft governanceThis dissertation put forward a new "community--farmers" research framework. A lot of people prefer to use the "state--society" analysis framwork when they study rural governance research. This framework maybe have some explanatory power on the western society, but not precise for the analysis of Chinese rural governance. Because the market economy is not developed, Chinese rural does not exist the modern sense of "civil society", since democracy is not perfect, China nor exist the modern sense of the constitutiona state. The "hard governance" theory based on the "state--society " analysis framework is lack of practical explanation, we must develop a "soft governance" theory based on "community--farmers" analysis framework and use this theory to guide the new rural community " social management comprehensive governance " practice after the the revival agricultural.and farmers. The "community --farmers" research framework consider that, the relationship between community and farmers should advocate a kind of integrationism life which keep pace with the times, the relationship between community and state should realize mutual adjustment for autonomy and democracy, the relationship between the state and farmers should shows benign blend for control and service.The target of rural community development is to construct the cooperation community.With the transforming from hard governance into soft governace, great changes have taken place in the organization system and the community character of the rural community. The historical process of the village committee system was replaced by the new rural community system is essentially the historical process of the end of Chinese village and the revival of Chinese village. But there are different laws between the end of the west village and the end of the Chinese village. Western countries put an end to the traditional village in urbanization, and realized the revival of the rural communities with counter urbanization. China put an end to the traditional village in non-agricultural, and is realizing the revival of the socialist new countryside with communitization.We should review the transition of Chinese rural community governance model in the opinion of cornmunitization and cooperation, the traditional villages will become form from home community, clan community into cooperation community after the baptism of the modern industrial civilization. In order to complete this historic transformation smoothly, the key factors are to the correctly understand the connotation and function of the new rural community, not "destroy the village" but "build the village". Through the comprehensive improvement of traditional village, the new rural community is becoming orderly management, perfect service, civilization auspicious social life community.