The Changes Of The Road In Village D, Shanxi Province During The Past Sixty Years

This paper studies the influence of the construction from the state and support from community on the change of a road in the past 60 years, by applying the theory of the relation between the State and Society. After investigation of historical development and the empirical analysis of D village, we found that the social structure which combines both of state's construction and community's support determines the change of a road.In the early stage of the liberation of the People's Republic China, the road of the village looked like a mule trail. In order to make a difference, leaders of the village called for maintaining roads and the costs were shared by the villagers. Although the State-building affected the village elite,but maintaining road stemmed from tradition of the village community——daily production and needs.During the period of People's Communes, members from both of the Sheng-Chan-Da-Dui and the Commune were volunteered to work for that. The roads were totally changed into newly specious ones. At that time, the social structure of the rural was showed as follows:firstly, the State controlled most of the rural social resources such as allocation of production and subsistence. The State established authority and State and society almost coincide. Secondly, the State had a robust capacity of mobilization and organization to combine political, economic and Cultural Centers of the society. The system developed the rural production and public facilities, strengthened the rural control and limited the development of individual farmers.In the time of Tax Repartition System, the roads were looked the same. The village received taxes, and organized villagers to maintain road. The weak collective economy of village directly undermines the collective consciousness of villagers. On the one hand, the village committees was no longer organized farmers to cooperate in production, and farmers had to farm respectively.On the other hand, the scant cun-ti-liu for public utilities was difficult to meet villagers'production needs, and the villagers rely on his own to deal with a large number of public affairs.In the period of Tax Reform, the income of the village gets less and the village provided the cost of maintaining road by compulsory. Rural areas on their way became hollow. The State departed from public affairs. The implementation of Tax Reform made the increase of domestic income, while the decrease of the local income. The drop of people's income in County and rural area ebbed the support for the charity. Local government wanted to get the income, ignored public utilities and little beared its responsibilities. Local government shows a serious violation of its proper role. Due to the local government acts of the profit caused excessive repetition from the peasants. The "pressurized system" made the conflict between farmers and country government.In the period of Construction of New Countryside, facing the disintegration of the rural, the State increased rural investment. The implementation of the project made the original soil being turned into a concrete road. From the perspective of "top-down" and "down-top",we found that not only village built good roads by the State's investment, but also village communities assisted and supervised State's behavior by the internal organization and human resources. The village community was not Prosperous. The limits of macro-structure and rural fracture made the country "top-down" of mobilization weak and investment insufficient, and made rural community's power lack.In short, the effect of the new rural development is limited.The change of the road of a village reflects the change of the rural society. The improvement of road needs community's support and state's construction, in the same way, the development of the rural villages needs community's support and state's construction.