The Rich Govern Rural China

After the rural taxation reform,’govern by the rich’ gradually becomes primarygovernance model, this change of power structure is caused by complicated economic,social and policy factors. On the one hand, rural grass-roots politics start preliminarydemocratization as the task of tax collecting is cancelled, on the other hand, sharp socialstratification in rural community appears while the rapid economic growth, andconsiderable resources are allocated to countryside by the state as a response. With theinput to the construction of infrastructure and the land exploitation by the government,substantial land rent emerges at the surroundings of town areas. Against this newbackground, successfully undertake the project, complete the land development and leadvillagers to forune turn into essential mission of the grass-roots work, the ’two leading’policy in rurul organization work come into vogue, the rich stratum in rural Chinabecomes the principal support of the local government which lack in infra-structure power.However, after the emergence of enormous interests space, village committeeelection is dominated by capital and bribery has entered in a gray area which iswidespread and thus difficult to supervise. What s more, The public character in villagepolitics deteriorates and the majority classes in rural community are excluded，thedemocracy in decision，administration and supervision are impossible to fulfill, so thesocial institutions in order to regulate the division of earning are uncapable to be executed.As a result, the power structure in rural community tends to oligarchy in fiercecompetition.The charity behavior due to kindness emotion by wealthy person as individual cannotexplain the political intention of the whole rich class whose investments are under the’survival of the fittest’ logic given the precondition that they are the winner themselves.Objectively it could gain resource for some part of the region, but not the whole, afterall,the total resources are limited. Most importantly, the oligarchy of power-interests networklies across the state and society which magnifies the ’structure hole’ effect in rural arenahas led to giant resource leakage while flowing into countryside, so, involution of ruralgovernance arise because of the deeper siphon with higher flow rate. This is exactly the same as the involution of state power before the rual taxation reform, unless the flowdirection of resource has been reversed. Therefore, if the benefit game among the powercannot be replaced by deliberative democracy based on the organization of the ruralcommunity, the power-market union will defeat the strategic purpose of the state inresource refluence, and take the socioeconomic life into ’transition trap’,staling andfestering.