The Research On The Grass-roots Democracy Construction In The New Stage Of China

It is clearly claimed by the General Secretary, Jin-Tao Hu, in the report to theSeventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China that people’s democracyis the lifeblood for socialism. Our Communist Party has been consistently pursuing thegoal of developing socialist democracy, which must be kept in the adamantine progress. Inthe beginning of1980s, the rural grassroots democracy in the form of ’’VillagerSelf-Government’’ has played essential parts in keeping the political stability, economicdevelopment and social harmony in the countryside. With the exploratory improvementand practice in the last thirty years, the systemic theory of self-governance at the primarylevel of society with Chinese characteristics has been founded, which certainly enrichesand develops the Marxist thoughts on self-government.However, in the extremely critical stage of building a new socialist countryside, theconstruction of rural grassroots democracy has encountered several new cases andproblems. The recent village voting-event in Wukan Guangdong Province has attractedgreat attentions both at home and abroad. Some western press had even marked this eventas “the first democratic voting in Chinese countryside”. It is quite confused for us why thisvillage voting-even evokes such a strong repercussion. Perhaps, Wukan Event is an incidentduring the construction of rural grassroots democracy. What attracts people’s eyeballs is thecomplicated systemic engineering on how to solve the underlying problems during thewhole construction process of rural grassroots democracy. Maybe, the focus in the event hasconcerned the whole pattern of benefits from the national viewpoints, which has becomethe most essential point for deepening the overall reforms. Therefore, during the criticalperiod of constructing the new socialist countryside, how to safeguard the peasants’ lawfulrights and interests possesses an extremely practical significance for constructing the ruralgrassroots democracy.Hence, this dissertation starts with the illustrating the main contents and the essentialsignifications of the grass-roots democracy theory with the Chinese characteristics, basedon the abundant classical literatures. Secondly, the main influencing factors and effective strategies for the development of grass-roots democracy are discussed utilizing theliterature-researching and social-surveying methods aiming at the detailed situations oftown Linyi City, Shandong Province. Those factors are presented as following: theunsubstantial foundation and low developmental level of rural economy; the imperfectlegal system on rural grassroots democracy; the weak democratic awareness and the lowpositivity of villagers; the lack of effective oversighting and harmonizing mechanism, andso on. Finally, the dissertation focuses on the improvements and breakthroughs of ruralgrassroots democracy construction. In the course of further development of ruraldemocratic construction in China, there will be the following approaches:(a) acceleratingthe socialist market economy leaded by the Party and government to improve the ruralliving conditions;(b) supplementing the laws and rules on rural grassroots democracy forinstitutional assurance;(c) enhancing the cultural quality of the peasants to make them theactual subject of self-government;(d) coordinating the harmonious relationship betweenthe party branch and villager committee;(e) strengthening the construction of grass-rootsParty organization and talents squad for intellectual support; and (f) fighting seriously withthe opponents to rural grassroots democracy construction.