The Change Of The Governance Of Rural Agent (1949-2012)

This paper is based on a case study of village L in Northern Anhui Province. The clueof the paper is followed the transition of national governance and rural social. The mainidea is to discuss the change of the governance of rural agent.In the analysis, the author uses the concept which Huang Philip C.C. called simplegovernance as the basic premise. Moreover, the change of national political and ruralsociety is discussed, which could help us understand the change of the governance of ruralagent since the founding of new China. The purpose of this research is not to put forwarda new theory, but to deepen the understanding of the governance in countryside based onprevious researches.The rural agent plays an important role between the state and the rural society. Theagent shows two kinds of attributes: publicity and self-interest. The self-interest meansthat the agent become a self-interested entity and seeks interests from his position; thepublicity means that the agent implements the policy and assumes the duties of the village.The attributes of self-interest and publicity are the key to understand the change of thegovernance of rural agent.After the founding of new China, the government restructured the economic andpolitical structure of the village, trained the peasants who are active to CCP, shaped thepublicity of the rural agent. We can see the publicity from the leader of the productionteam during the period of the People’s Commune, and from the village cadre during thetime of collecting taxes from peasants. This limited the space of the agent to seek benefitsfor himself. After the abolition of agricultural taxes, the practice of the agent become more"official, the rich controlled the governance of the village, but the rich only want tomaximize his capital gains, which highlighted the self-interest of the rural agent andweakened the capacity of the rural agent to govern the village. Along with the increased demand of the family group and the tartar in the village, the publicity of the villagedissolved, the rural agent lost the ability to integrate the daily order of the village.The governance of the rural agent, as an important part of contemporary politics,plays a key role in affecting the process of the national policy in rural practice. The core ofthe change of the governance of rural agent lies in the change of the practice of thegovernment’s policy in different periods, as well as the different reaction of the village tothe government’s policy in different periods. Thus, the change of the governance of therural agent reflects the different process, mechanism and consequences of the practice indifferent periods. While the failure of the rural agent, means the crisis of the villagegovernance.