| The scarcity of public goods in China's rural areas for decades of years, even for thousands of years, and the polarization between urban areas and rural areas in China lead to the urban-rural dual structure, which has harmed the normal operation of our country's economy seriously. The urban-rural dual structure is the obstacle of Socialist New Countryside building in the course of building a harmonious society. As the basic unit of government structure, the rural elementary governments undertake the tasks of providing necessary public services for rural residents. Even though the governments have devoted much funds into the rural areas recent years, the public services couldn't satisfy the people's' needs. We investigated three representative cities (counties or villages) of three economic zones of shaanxi province, the north-shaanxi economic zone, the south-shaanxi economic zone and the middle-shaanxi economic zone, in the ways of on-the-spot investigation and questionnaire survey. The investigations focused on the levels of public services provided by the rural elementary governments. As a result, we found that the reasons which led to the lack of public services provided by the rural elementary governments include six factors, the first is the diversity of economic development, the second is the imbalance between financial power and business power of government, the third is the decentralization of policy and fund, the forth is the monopoly on account of the present political system which harmed the improvement of public services, the fifth is the overloaded expenditure pressure of elementary governments accompanied the lack of money, the last is the low level of supervision and the performance evaluation. How to improve the public services in rural areas in the way of fiscal policy? Our suggestions include six parts, the first is to develop the economy of county level, the second is affirmation of financial power and business power of governments in the manner of law, the third is the conformity and centralization of funds, the forth is to change the monopoly to multi-way provisions, the fifth is the establishment of elementary financial guarantee system for county governments, the last is the improvement of fund supervision and performance evaluation. The thesis will benefit the improvement of public finance of elementary governments in shaanxi province and the innovation of fiscal policy in developing areas alike shaanxi province. |
