The Study On The Practice Of Village Affairs Oversight Committee

Village-level democratic supervision is an extremely important part in the villager autonomy system, meanwhile it protects the realization of links like democratic election, decision-making and management. Therefore, the promotion of the democratic construction in the grass-roots level, the guarantee of the stability and harmony of the economic and social development in the rural area have focused on the reinforcement of village-level democratic supervision. But in practice, compared with democratic election, democratic management and democratic decision-making, the development of democratic supervision is seriously lagged behind. With the development of China’s politics, economy and society, the collective income in the rural area, especially in the suburban villages has greatly increased because of the management of collective fund, property and resources and land demolition, meanwhile with people’s awareness of democratic politics and rights protection, the villagers pay more attention to the public affairs, especially village affairs which are closely related with their own interests. It is the strong internal need of people to further promote and perfect the supervision of village affairs. We need reform!In June, 2004, the nation’s first village affair supervising committee was established in Hou Chen village, Wu Yi county in Zhe Jiang Province, which was highly appreciated by the Party Central Committee and the idea was widely spread all over the country. In 2010, it was officially legislated in the amendment of The Organic Law on the Village Committee that village affair supervising committees or other forms of village affairs supervisory organs should be established in the countryside. The village affair supervising committee is elected democratically through the villagers’ meeting and the villagers’ representative meeting according to the law. It is a permanent organization which is responsible for the villagers and supervised by the villagers, exercises the supervision power according to the law and supervises the transparency and management of the village affairs and supervises the village finance. It plays an important role in propelling the democratic construction at the grassroots level, the structure of autonomous organization in the rural area, the construction of a clean and honest government, and the party-massed relationship and the cadre-masses relationship.The C county of Shanghai has fully implemented the construction of village affair supervising committees since 2014. Village affair supervising committees had been established in 269 villages by the end of December, 2014 and had elected 807 members. The establishment of village affairs supervising committees has formed a fairly complete "Three committees and two sessions" structure, which further improves the village-level governance pattern, making the people become the subjects of supervision, decision-making and management instead of spectators. It further improves the efficiency of democratic supervision and protects the basic rights and interests of the villagers. It also improves the cadre-masses relationship and promotes the stability and harmony of the rural society. But as an emerging organization, there are still some problems in the operation and function of the village affair supervising committees. The main problems include: the imbalance in the promotion of work, insufficiency in supervision and low approval degree among the cadres and the masses. And the main reasons include: deviation in thoughts and cognition, imperfection in the system design, inadequacy in funds guarantee, insufficiency in staffs’ qualities and abilities and other constraints.Three suggestions are provided here: First, improve and prefect the system design.Second, improve the level of supervision and management according to the law.Third, make the several relationships clear.