Research Into Township Governance

The key to governing a country is to give priority to the development of the agriculture. Bearing the history, culture, economy, society, people’s livelihood and ecology, rural area is the survival and developmental roots of our nation, the source of human food and clothing. Its beauty, richness, peace and stability show the same features of the country. Good prefectural governance is the base of the stable, orderly and harmonious society. Township government bodies are a bridge between the state and the rural society, having a basic, direct, complex and universal function. Township governance is the basis of national governance, and the modernization of national governance lies under that of rural governance.Based on the Marxist theory of governance, relevant contemporary researches and the sublation on Chinese traditional management theory, this study made a survey of 2687 farmers from 263 villages and interviewed 86 township cadres, provided a deep analysis of the historic change the Chinese rural areas is undergoing under the background of the new-type urbanization and of its demands on the township governance, and offered a systematic investigation of township governance from the following four dimensions on the basis of the present situation of Chinese rural political culture and system.The first part reviews the historical change of township governance. Any governance innovation cannot be separated from history and culture and its existing governance path. During the traditional Chinese society, the township governance has changed from the system to Yi Zhi. Farming civilization and Confucian culture gave birth to typical rural governance with the characteristics of the fusion, interdependence and mutual restrict among the imperial power, the clan authority and gentry power.Since modern times, the township governance evolutes from village and towns autonomy system created in the late Qing dynasty for the national survival to the rural construction practice in the Republican period. Although it has historical limitations, but is a beneficial attempt to save the national crisis and to realize prosperity.The Chinese communist party has developed a successful rural democratic governance in the revolutionary base areas. Soviet democratic governance is effective from the electoral law to its practice. The methods of township democratic elections are distinctive in anti-Japanese base areas, such as drawing a circle, throwing beans, etc.Township people’s congress is elected by universal suffrage in the early days after foundation of PRC, and the township people’s government by the township people’s congress which effectively carries out land reform and the social economic and cultural management. From 1958 to 1983 the management system of the people’s commune is exercised. Under this system, which is an integration of politics and commune, state power extends to the farmers. Farmers’ production and living freedom was almost canceled. This governance model, combining state and society, is beyond productivity and against the wish of the farmers, therefore, stifles creativity and enthusiasm of the society and hinders the productive forces development.Since the reform and open policy, the abolition of the rural people’s communes and the setting up of the township government plays an important role in promoting rural reform, developing culture and education maintaining social order, etc. But since 1994 to the turn of the century, the implementation of tax allocation causes the county financial difficulty. Village and town government bodies have become "tax collection authorities" of the county government, resulting in a tense relation between cadres and masses, and large-scale mass incidents happen occasionally. " Grass-roots power eroded the rural public interest in the name of nation, which causes the separation of power at the grass-roots level and the local society, and then rural social disorder." ①When township and village governance is struggling, some areas of Yunnan, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other provinces successively carried on the reform of township governance system, such as the try on a direct or indirect elections of township party and government main leaders and also the comprehensive reform, which is a beneficial exploration in promoting the modernization of the township governance.On the basis of further investigation, the second part analyzes township governance demands with the historical changes of the rural productive forces, Productivity in the countryside is getting unprecedented development in recent years, and mechanization, electrification, automation; informationization is more widely used in the countryside, which provides the conditions and demands for agricultural modernization. New rural production relations are forming, and new economic organizations, such as the new cooperative, family farms etc, develop rapidly. All kinds of social organizations have become germination potential. Rural entrepreneurs, professional farmers, migrant workers, village cadres, traditional farmers have different social class interests, particularly emerging class having a strong politics participation desire. The change of rural population structure is bigger, large-scale single flow makes an imbalance of rural population age structure and sex structure imbalance. Farmer’s democratic quality, legal quality and cultural quality have improved significantly.The profound change of production methods, population structure, social stratum and farmers’ literacy,in the rural governance environment, puts forward new requirements for the modern governance and creates conditions for modern management. On the one hand, it requires constructing a modern management system which comprises diversification of governance, democracy in power generation, power to run under the rule of law, institution of expression of interest, scientific performance appraisal. On the other hand, it needs cultivating modern governance for building modern towns, developing modern agriculture and constructing the beautiful countryside.The third part analyzes the serious problems existing in the township management system and ability. In the 21 st century, the central committee puts forward new rural construction goal, establishes the development strategy to improve the country and agriculture and by developing the city and industry, and implements the policy of giving more and taking less, and carries out a series of favorable policies such as the cancellation of agricultural tax, perfecting the rural social security. The service function of township government gradually highlights, playing a great role in the rural social security and infrastructure construction. But due to the dependence of system path, management concept, management systems and mechanisms don’t develop as the rural economic and social change, township governance lags behind the rural economic and social development, which shows is as follows:Township governance system is not perfect. First, due to the single governance body, there is a lack of management systems and mechanisms for participation, which put farmers and new social organizations in the position of being governed. At the same time the township governance power is divided into fragmentation, lacking of unity and coordination. Second, the appraisal system is unscientific, and the governance object evaluation is needed. It forms an unhealthy supervision mechanism and causes a lack of platform and system security for the populace to supervise. Third, because of the non-institutionalized farmers’ interest expression, mass incidents have occurred from time to time. Fourth, the legal guidance relationship between the township government and village committee is distorted for the leadership relationship. Fifth, optional and person-dependent governance happens for the unclear relationship of responsibility between counties and townships. Sixth, there is a deficiency in the power generation mechanism of township officials. According to the basic principles of political science and sociology, people are responsible only for those who authorize them. Therefore, only when the masses possess the truly effective authorization, can township and village cadres be responsible for them. At present some local township cadres is formally elected by congress and the NPC, but in fact is appointed by the superior party leaders, which creates some willing slaves, formalism and bureaucracy in the township cadres. In the interview, a township secretary said: “The county party committee secretary of had ever spoken publicly in the meeting ‘don’t be afraid of people to scold you, and I have the final say for your promotion’”.①A mayor said, “The county party committee leaders often claimed in meeting ‘submit your resignation report if you can’t finish tasks assigned by the county, and someone can complete the task.② A retired mayor told that the county magistrate had let him do illegal things, and when intended to refuse for it has conflict with national policy, the magistrate said at the time, the national policy also didn’t write to let you be the mayor. His words implied that do whatever I let you since it is I appointed you as the mayor. ③Obviously, township and village cadres are not responsible for the masses lies in the power generation system of township governance.The incapability of township governance lies in the following aspects. First, the quality of some township and village cadres is low, with insufficient scientific decision-making ability and poor organization and coordination ability. Some cadres’ administrative ability is not strong and they even do false things. Second, the township governance body can’t maintain well the order of the rural market and the development of modern agriculture. Their ability needs rising to promote the rural democratic and politic construction and safeguard farmers’ political rights. Fourth, it is lacking the ability to supply public products, develop rural education, and flourish the prosperity of the rural culture. Fifth, it is not enough to protect the rural environment and promote the construction of rural ecological civilization.The fourth part puts forward the countermeasures of promoting the modernization of township governance system and governance ability advice from the following two aspects: the township governance system, promote the township governance ability.On the one hand, the township governance system needs to be improved. The construction of multiple governance mechanism provides new professional farmers a platform and system guarantee to participate in the township public affairs management and supervision. Township government should improve its duty of public service and social management, and its ability to promoting the construction of small cities and towns, disclose the information to all public and improve the information sharing mechanism by establishing public platform, and establish a complete and effective supervision system for the populate. In addition, it should build a scientific and reasonable evaluation mechanism to make the masses as the main body of evaluating township cadres, open the benefit expression mechanism through improving the system of petition system, define the power and responsibility between township and the county government with the law, and rationalize the relationship among township government bodies, rural party branch and village committee to construct modern country and social relationships. Township governance center is the party committee government of the villages and towns. Therefore, it is the root to improve the township governance system and enhance the capacity of the township governance by promoting power generation system of township cadres.On the other hand, the ability of the township governance should be promoted. Modern township governance is an important part of national modern governance, which needs efforts from eight aspects: Improving learning ability of township cadres, their scientific decision-making, organization and coordination ability and the ability of governance according to law; Improving the rural construction ability of township governance body for new beautiful villages and towns with livable environment, modern industries and modern service system; Promoting agricultural modernization development ability and the agricultural scale management; Developing rural democratic politics construction and political civilization; Raising rural culture and education and local custom civilization quality; Maintaining rural public order and social harmony ability; Maintaining rural ecological environment and constructing ecological civilization; Perfecting rural pension, medical, social assistance and social security.To sum up, an innovative and efficient system of township governance mechanism need to be built to improve the township economic, political, cultural, social and ecological construction, develop agricultural modernization and construct beautiful villages. Its construction may bring out the best in each other the agricultural modernization, urbanization, industrialization and informationization, and make them a mutual fusion and mutual development, which lays a foundation to realize national modernization of management system and management ability.