Grass-roots Government And Rural Social Relations Structure Changes - Since The Founding

Grass-roots governments locating in rural areas are the elementary power units of our state to govern country society. In this governance, a special kind of relatively constant and compound relationship appears between the grass-roots governments and the country society, which we call as grass-roots governments-country society relationship structure. This relationship structure is the specialization of state-country society relations, and it in turn affects the efficiency of governance and the situation and prospect of the country society's modernization. Using grass-roots governments-country society relationship structure as the central concept of this thesis, we can see that before the reform, there was an integrating relationship structure controlled unilaterally by the people's communes between the grass-roots governments and the country society. This relationship structure implies that in such aspects as running of power, arrangement of rural resources, realization of interests, the people' s communes were all in the fully dominant positions in contrast with the country society. To some extent, this relationship structure has benefited our state to draw resources from the country society and develop it in according with the strategy of catching up and surpassing others. However, this relationship structure has also prevented the country society from developing itself, and resulted in the governance malfunction of the people's communes at the same time in end. Thus, after the reform, propelled by a series of forces, anewrelationship structure between the grass-roots governments and the country society has gradually emerged, that is, the interacting relationship structure limitedly guided by the township government. This change in grass-roots governments-country society relationship structure indicates that after the reform, although the township governments still have superiorities over against the country society in running of power, arrangement of ruralresources, realization of interests, the country society has gain more and more self-developing space, self-owned resources and some self-integrating capability. Furthermore, the country society has begun to interact with the township governments in the public spheres. On the whole, the new grass-roots governments-country society relationship structure is helpful to promote the country society to develop in the market economy and to dispose some public affairs independently. Besides, it also benefits the township governments to enhance its capability of providing public goods for the country society through making policy according to interests of the country society and cooperating with country civil organizations. Notwithstanding, there are still several tense factors in the interacting relationship structure limitedly guided by the township governments at present, so we need to continue to optimize it in order to construct so-called equilibrium relationship structure between the grass-roots governments and the country society.