Study Of The External Communication In The Social Conflict In China

High efficiency in public administration depends on well communication between the administrative organization and the outside world, for even in the most basic process of policy-making, public administrators are situated in a subtle and complex network of communication. Karl Deutsch even calls the information transmission system the nerves of the government, from which various functions of the state are generated just like all the functions of the human body are controlled by the nervous system.Since the establishment of the country, public administration of China has undergone a transformation from the traditional to the modern. During the transformation, the relation between the government and the civilians, the function and the role of the government, as well as the conceptions of the government have experienced great changes and are reflecting those changes in the operation of the government. As to the government itself, the advancement in information technology promoted an uplift of the administration from a hierarchical pattern to a network one. So does the structure of the public organizations. They too are undergoing a transformation towards a horizontal network system. Ways of management such as hierarchical order-delivering and external controlling are being gradually weakened, instead, the efficient network administration becomes prevalent, accompanied with which is an increase in publicity. These changes are conducive to the government in their accumulation of information in a broader scale. Meanwhile, they enhanced the superintendence of the society on the government.Due to conflict of interests and mental disturbance of the society, conflicts, including mass incidents, did occur in our transforming society. But generally speaking, those social conflicts did not challenge the fundamental stability of the politics and the society of our country, nor did they influence the efficiency of social administration. According to the reconsideration of the modern social conflict theories on the traditional structural functionalism, social conflicts, so far as being controlled appropriately, serves not only as destructive forces that undermine social harmony but also as positive elements in the society. However, during the government's problem-solving process, the lack of well communication with the outside world and an excellent system of information management in its confrontation with the public results in a predicament in administration and exposes the inefficiency of the system and the weakness of the government when dealing with emergencies. This paper intends to clarify how the external communication process operates in the communication network of the public administration. And through a case study of the anti-garbage-incineration movements throughout the country in 2009, it will analyze the current situation and attributes of the social conflicts in our country, and point out both the experience and the inadequacy of the government in terms of external communication and information management when dealing with social conflicts. Last but not least, it will give suggestions for our government on how to enhance the publicity in external communication and improve the information management when coping with the social conflicts in current years.