Discussion Of The Rural Grass-roots Supply Of Public Goods In The Demand-oriented Perspective

In recent years, Chinese government pays great attention to thecoordinative development between urban and rural areas. With theincreasing development of rural economy, peasants’ living standards aregreatly improved. However, owing to the existence of urban-rural dualeconomic structure for a long period, the development between urban andrural areas of China is imbalanced. As a result, the economic and socialdevelopment of China is seriously restricted. Rural public goods supply,as an important aspect of “three agriculture”(the problems related toagriculture, farmer and rural area), plays a critical role in rural development.At present, the structure of rural public goods supply is unreasonable. Thequantity of supply is insufficient, hindering the development of ruraleconomy and society. On the contrary, the supply of those less needed isexcessive, thus failing to optimize the allocation of resources. As thesupply-demand imbalance grows, peasants’ basic rights to live and workcould not be guaranteed and it negatively affects the coordinativeurban-rural development. In order to resolve the problem of the supply ofrural public goods successfully and purposefully, it is of significant andprofound meaning to explore the causes for imbalanced supply of rural public goods and optimize the supply structure.This thesis carries out studies on a rural town in Jiaxing through themethods of questionnaires and interviews, aiming to explore the realdemands of local peasants and village cadres as well as official workers’attitudes to rural public goods supply of local government. This town istaken as an example so as to approach the problems in the rural publicgoods system and analyze the causes. Based on the results of the research,the existing problems could be classified into certain types: the shortageof total quantity; the unreasonable supply structure; the great differentsupply levels of rural public goods among different regions and betweenurban and rural areas; dislocation and even the absence of the main bodyof supply. To analyze the causes, the following five contribute to thenon-balanced supply of rural public goods: the influence of China’seconomic development strategy; the confusion of responsibility amonggovernments at all levels; financial difficulties of grass-roots governments;the inefficiency of top-down supply decision-making mechanism and thelack of a long-term effective mechanism for the funds supervision.In this sense, the research on the rural public goods supply systemwill help improve peasants’life quality, promote the development of ruraleconomy, change the backward situation in rural areas and achieveequalization on the supply of public goods in urban and rural areas. As aresult, peasants can share more in the fruits of reform and opening-uppolicy. This thesis holds that the key point to optimize the rural publicgoods supply mode is to take peasants’ real demands into consideration.First of all, an integrated urban and rural public goods supply systemshould be built up. Then, construct a demand-oriented supply system.Besides, it is urgent to perfect financial transfer payment system. Inaddition, make clear of the responsibility of all level governments as themain body of supply and construct a rural supply system in which the financial power is matched with the administrative power. What’s more,scientific and effective mechanism should be set up to supervise the useof funds of rural public goods. Finally, a multi-main body rural publicgoods supply system should be constructed.This thesis is divided into six chapters. The first part is introduction,including background and significance of the research; the research statusquo in this area both at home and abroad; research methods and ideas.The second chapter is an elaboration on the general theory related topublic goods system. The third chapter aims at the general situation ofrural public goods supply in China. The fourth chapter takes X(town) inJiaxing for example to take a close look at the present situation of ruralpublic goods supply at grass-roots level. The fifth chapter explores theproblems arising from public goods supply in our country and analyzesthe reasons. The sixth chapter puts forward some possible ways tooptimize the system of rural public goods supply.