The Construction Of A New Socialist Countryside And Local Government Functions

As an agricultural-based country, problems of "Agriculture, rural areas and Farmers" are very important in China because of the vast rural areas as well as the large rural population. Moreover, the fundamental position of agriculture in the national economic developments and social stability makes it more crucial. The rural areas of China have undergone historic and profound changes since reform and opening up. The agricultural economy is developing dramatically and the income of farmers is rising steadily. The concepts and lifestyles of farmers have been changed during the last decades. However, problems still exists in the rural cause concerning the goal of achieving a well-off society. It is still one of the biggest present problems in the process of Chinese modernizations that our agriculture and rural areas are not in good health and our farmers are very poor. In order to solve these issues, the significant development strategies of our new socialist countryside have been proposed in the 5^th Plenary Session of the 16^th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The main contents of the strategies include "developing the productions and lives, civilizing the rural residents, tidying the villages and administrate the rural areas democratically". The construction of a new socialist countryside is a complex project, which requires the supports and promotions of the governments at all levels especially the local governments who are the direct leaders. It is necessary for the local governments to apply new ideas and solutions to the problems of "Agriculture, rural areas and Farmers" and the administration of the rural areas. As a result, the local governments should change some of their existing functions to smooth the new rural constructions.The outline of this paper is as follows. The first part introduces the present theories related to the new rural construction and local governments. The second part discusses the relationships between the new rural constructions and the local governments. The background, significance, objectives, content and features of the new socialist rural constructions are mainly indicated as well as the important roles of the local governments. The third part discusses the achievements, challenges and problems in the new rural constructions in details taking the situations in the L city of G province as an example. Moreover, the phenomenon and reasons of the function lacking in local governments including the city, county and township level are analyzed.The fourth part of the paper presents the conclusions and its discussions. The solutions in the standardizing and reconstruction of the local government functions in the new rural areas are preliminarily studied, which are following the 20-words guidelines of the new rural constructions and the requirements of a service-oriented government.The innovations of this paper are as follows. Firstly, the time characteristics are distinguished in this paper because the researches of the local government functions are based on the backgrounds of the new rural constructions. Secondly, the researches are based on the empirical analysis of the situations in the L city of G province. Situations in L city have been investigated with two dimensions, namely the longitudinal axis of new rural constructions and the horizontal axis of the local government functions on city, county and township levels. As a result, the accumulated experience on the new rural constructions of L city has been summarized, which is believed to be a significant example for the new rural constructions in other underdeveloped areas of China. Furthermore, from the scheduled analysis of the L city situations, such as the difficulties and problems in the new rural constructions, the gap between the status quo and the goals and the problems in the local government functions, it is deduced that the functions of local governments in China are not enough in the new rural constructions. Then suggestions on the conversion and reconstructions of the local government functions on different levels are proposed. Finally, the interdisciplinary research methods have been adopted in the paper. The problems are well solved based on the analysis in different levels from the management and economics point of views.