Governing Chinese Urban Community: Resource Allocation And Structural Transition

Community structure comprises an arena where different players interact on community governance issues, and is driven by their efforts on maintaining interest. There are different relations between different players, depending on specific social conditions as well as their specific interests. And thus it indicates a correlation between social transformation and community structural transformation. The community structure changed several times, both in planning era and market economy era, and these changes follow a basic law and portrays a transformation path: government would adjust their definition of urban functions according to the social input, and vice versa, the new definition would trigger new adaptation of the government functions, and further it would change the way in which community gets and uses resources, which finally shapes a new community structure.When People's Republic of China was founded, the party and the state managed community affairs by resorting to political control. This kind of mandate model was based on state monopoly of resource allocation, which gave birth to an "administrative" community. In the one hand, the state successfully transformed the community structure by changing its resource system, and on the other hand such a transformation strengthened governmental control over community. It finally made the street community a "unit" community, where the two kinds of functions overlapped. The specific structure of the administrative community changed as the definition of urban function changed, and it satisfied the specific needs of the special time and situation, such as Urban Commune era, early Cultural Revolution, and late Cultural Revolution.The path changed again since the market economy comes. The definition of urban function after the Third Plenum in 1978 pays more attention to the "living" function while emphasizing its "production" function. It indicates a new balance between the state interest and personal interest. Commerce and service industry are developed to improve living standard, and the market based relations pluralize the channels of community resource allocation, and finally its structure: community members are able to manage most community affairs by using their own resources, and at the same time the government reduces its direct involvement to those affairs by contracting out, which helps the growth community organizations for taking over tasks formerly held by government, including kinds of non-profit as well as profit ones, and these autonomous organizations are playing important role in governing community. No matter how different the community structure is, effective coordination between government administration and community autonomy is necessary to community building.The pluralization of community structure highlights the value of democracy and optimal outcome in community governance, and autonomy takes the lead in community reforms started by government. Government's receding from community affairs needs the follow-up of the effective community autonomy. So here are two conditions for community reform rulemaking: firstly, the new rules can facilitate social organizations to get their own governing resources; secondly, the new rules can guarantee efficient resource consumption. Only if the two conditions are followed can the new rules survive.To sum up, the community structural transformation is based on its resource allocation: unitary resource allocation makes a unitary community structure followed by a domination-submission interaction model, while plural resource allocation a plural community structure followed by deliberation-coordination model. The two differences portray the situation of democracy in grassroots society, where the building of the relationship between community members concerning on the rights, responsibilities and interests is undergoing. This dissertation insists that the more plural of resource allocation, the more diverse of the social structure and the more favorable for democracy, and that whether citizens can maintain their own resources for autonomy and whether the state can make justice through reallocation of resources are critical indicators of democratization of a country.