Taxes Era Township Government Reform. Study

In March 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao announced that the agricultural tax would completely abolished since 2006 in China at the Third Session of the Tenth National People's Congress, which marks a substantial leap in the reform of rural tax and fee in our country.The abolishment of agricultural tax has not only effectively curbed "The Three Chaos" in rural areas and reduced farmers' burden, but also helped greatly raise the farmers' manufacturing enthusiasm and ease social tension as well as rapidly improve the relation between cadres and the mass. However, it also would exacerbate the stretched finance of township and bring difficulties for the operation of township government, not to mention providing support for an effective solution to the problem of "agriculture, country and farmer". The township government is the most grass-root level of the Chinese government, but it is also the most basic of regime organization which has the closest relation with agriculture, country and farmer. The problem of "agriculture, country and farmer" cannot be resolved without both effective policies promulgated by the state and other strong supports, but its solving also extremely depends on the township government actions. However, there are still a large number of issues in the township government, including not attending to its own affairs but meddling in what is not its business, the phenomenon of "vacancy", "misplacement" and "offside" of the government functions, not efficiently taking on the role of township government, not meeting the demand for the township government through the development of the new situation. Therefore, township government reform has become an imperative task.Since 1980s, township government reform in our country has been put on the agenda, but reviewing the former reforms we notice that they did not achieve much success, because the former reforms were always limited to the adjustments of the organization structures or personnel changes which did not basically reform the system and mechanism. What's more, most of reforms were just turned to be formalized which resulted in the circle of "simplify-expansion-re-simplify--re-expansion". After the reform of rural tax and fee, especially the complete abolishment of the agricultural tax has been implemented, the township government revenue decreased and even indebted and difficulties appeared in financial operation, so under this financial pressure, the effective reform of the township government is the best option to tackle the fiscal crisis. In addition, the complete abolishment of the agricultural tax has also liberated the township government from the past numerous tasks of levy and rendering grain, thus they can concentrate on providing public services and truly fulfill people's expectation. The arrival of post-taxation era has brought opportunities for the reform of township government. Under the current circumstances, how to actively explore an effective way to change and improve the functions of township government when the financial difficulties of township promote the reform of the local government system has become one of hot academic issues. This thesis attempts to make a helpful probe into how to efficiently build a service-oriented township government.