The Transformation And Reform Of Rural Grassroots Governance In The Process Of Urbanization

Promoting national governance systems and governance capacity is an important objective of China’s reform and development, modernization of the rural grass-roots governance system is one of the most important and challenging issues. For China’s reform and development, how to achieve orderly governance, social harmony, national stability and sustainable development is a significant issue. It is also the center of current social governance innovation. Currently, China is in a critical period of urbanization development as well as a accelerating process of urbanization. From the perspective of migration and urban-rural structure, our country is experiencing the world’s largest urbanization process. It can be said that China has entered a new era which focused on the city and town.Therefore, how to adapt to the change of new era and build a new system of governance in the rural grassroots, is an assignment of the new era.Take the town of Baoan in Hubei Province for example, its rural grass-roots governance systems in agricultural era has different characteristics, however, no matter the local governance in the traditional agricultural era or the rural collectivization management in people’s commune period before the Reform and Opening up, or the villagers’ autonomy in the current era, its essential character does not change fundamentally, that is based on the countryside, agriculture and farmers, with local, regional, closeness, centralized and characteristicsFollowing the development of urbanization, the rural economy and society in the Baoan town is in transition. To be more specific, the society made up by agriculture is changing to the society dominated by industrial and commercial, the tranditional principle of "state founded by agriculture" is transforming to the modern principle of "state founded by industrial and commercial", farmers are becoming citizens. However, it also puts forward a challenge to the mode of rural grassroots governance, especially the rural population is migrating to urban area and consequently rural become hollow-out, there are increasingly tensions between the large-scale farmers migration and the closeness nature of the community organization and between the urban-rural integration and urban-rural dual system. These tensions demand us to reform the way of grassroots governance in order to adapt to the development of urbanization. In practice, Baoan town also has made some adaptive reforms, including the planning guide, promoting the integration of urban and rural development; promoting population migration and infrastructure building; village integration, exploring the developmental mode of center community; innovating management, improving the urban and rural public service and so on, but, these adaptive reforms did not solve fundamentally the tensions and problems in urban and rural grass-roots governance in the process of urbanization.At present, our rural grass-roots governance faces profound transformation and change, urging constructing a new type of grass-roots governance system which is adapted to marketization, urbanization and rural-urban open migration. This governance system is a new governance system of urban-rural integration which is built based on towns and communities. Its basic features are based on towns, cities townships, integrated urban-rural and regional governance. In substance, the trends of grass-roots governance system transformation is a transformation from a governance system of "agriculture-oriented", "urban-rural separation" to the governance system of "city", "urban-rural integrated". This not only requires the reconstruction of rural grass-root governance space system, also need to the reconstruct the rural grass-roots governance system. From a practical view, adjusting measures to local conditions and advancing rural community construction, heavy frame grass-roots governance of organization unit; exploring a separation of polity and economy, straighten out grass-roots political relationship, remodeling grass-roots governance structure; abolishing the dualistic urban and rural policy and system, and building urban and rural integration of governance mechanism; adjusting government functions, strengthening rural public service, promoting equalization of public service between urban and rural areas, innovating government management concept and changing governance way, innovation governance pattern; strengthening culture protection and culture construction and promoting urban and rural social fusion.