Villagers' Self-government Propelled By The Government

After the Villagers' Committee Organization Act of the People's Republic of China was promulgated, there has appeared in the basic rural units the villagers' self-government whose principal contents include democratic election, democratic policy-making, democratic administration and democratic supervision. It has greatly changed the political life in the basic rural units and has brought far-reaching influence to the transformation of political system in the basic rural units. But how did it happen in a certain area? What are the characteristics it has shown in its progress? And what questions do the characteristics reflect? This article based on the villagers' self-government in Henan Province, tries to make a systematic description and explanation on the startup and progress of villagers' self-government in a certain area.The operation of villagers' self-government came through four stages. First was the propaganda and making experiments. Second, extending to a larger extent with steady steps. Third, carrying into an entire execution. Fourth, deepening and improving villagers' self-government. By describing the four stages, the author believes, the startup and progress of the villagers' self-government in a certain area was closely linked with the area's history, culture and tradition. Therefore, the villagers' self-government took on features of outside source and dependency. The government played such important roles as mobilization and education and led every stage of the villagers' self-government and ensured the persistent development of villagers' self-government. Nevertheless, the comprehensive qualities of the villagers, as the principal part of self-government, showed themselves inadaptability and passiveness in the operation of villagers' self-government because their uncertainty about villagers' self-government. Still, the villagers' self-government in Henan Province engendered its unique systematic creation in the establishment of polling booth, the construction of villagers' sovietsystem, the formulation of the villagers' self-government constitution and the openness of village affairs.This thesis classifies the villagers' self-government into two kinds: villagers' self-government of systematic design (on the text level) and villagers' self-government in reality. It points out that villagers' self-government in reality is clearly different from that of pre-setting of systematic design. The main causes of this phenomenon are, observed subjectively, that the farmers themselves as the principal part of self-government have not become "citizens" in a modern sense, and that, observed objectively, the fertile land of so-called petty farmer economy can not give birth to "democratic self-government" because of the inertia of the traditions and cultures of the location. In reality the functions of villagers' self-governing have been greatly restricted because of the administration tendency of villagers' committee and the fact that the government takes the villagers' self-government as a way of organizing the fanners That the villagers' self-government in reality, the author thinks, is short of ideological, social, and political foundations. The self-governing functions cannot be brought into play. The demonstration effect of self-governing itself is engendering aberrance. The villagers' self-government in reality has not become an entity, but only a kind of form.The villagers' self-government in reality, the thesis points out, is carried out mainly under the domination of administration force-the outside variable and represents a kind of governing form by the government under new situations. Accordingly, the villagers' self-government, though including some democracy elements, is not democracy of a complete sense. So under the general situation of present system, when pushing the villagers' self-government, we should take the effects of all the variables into consideration, and steadily advance its progress especially in light of the reality of different rural societies. Therefore three aspe...