The Difficulties And Solutions For The Management And Development Of Neighborhood Committees In Chinese Communities

The community is an objective existence of human society,lived in groups is almost the natureof human,the residential mode changes along with the development of human's workingmode.However,it became a concept of academic research since nineteenth Century.Community is the unit of society like the cell in multicellular organisms,its running capacity and the system of management/development determines the actual level of social development.For studying how to manage and develop community,scholars define the concept of community in different ways from different angles,leading to a more and more complicated scientific concept in its connotation and denotation.This paper analyzes the relevant concepts of the management/development for the communities and for the Community Neighborhood Committees(CNC)primarily.Although the community has been existing as the essential element of human society,the scientific subject for studying the management/development of community is a hot and attractive topic because the achievement from the research will definitely impact on the development of society largely.To date,a definition of community in “Chinese urban community constructions” is as follow: the community is a certain geographical territory occupied mainly by family units of residency,who are sharing the same common facility and are regulated by the same neighborhood committee in law.In order to discuss the management of the community neighborhood committee,we have to know well about those concepts related to the community neighborhood committee.The neighborhood committee for a community is a grass-roots level and semi-self-rule social organization with special Chinese characteristics,having partially administrative roles.In a long period,there are many kinds of recognition about the social organization,which can be summarized into three categories.First,the CNC is an artificial autonomous organization,a “government spokesperson” essentially,a “quasi-government organization”.Second,the CNC should be an independent organization which doesn't have to be under the control of the any governments.In another words,the CNC should be a real autonomous organization taking no guidance from the national government.Third,the CNC is an autonomous organization taking guidance from both the national government and the needs of society.According to the rules from “The Organic Law of the Urban Community Neighborhood Committee”,a CNC should be a grass-root autonomous organization of masses with self-education,self-management,and self-servicefunctions.However,the CNC is actually a subsidiary body of urban government,plays partial administrative roles of government,and presents little autonomous feature.The current situation brought a lot of problems and difficulties to the CNC in the management/development of communities.Different kinds of difficulties from many sources not only blocked the proper management performance of the urban CNC,also made it impossible to become an autonomous organization.In order to allow the CNC to have a breakthrough solution for those difficulties,the roles for city local government and for the CNC should be clarified in addition to boost capacity strengthening of the CNC.Therefore,the relationship between the local government and the CNCwill be streamlined,and the autonomous feature will be largely enhanced.Eventually,the CNC will play its proper role and display it proper feature.It is the key to improve the management of community that the difficulties of the CNC facing should be properly understood.On the basis of the combined application of theory and practice,it is the most important step related to the direction of deepening the reform that the function of the CNC should be understood and defined entirely and precisely.The city government can't perform their job properly without the assistance of the CNC,in another hand,the CNC can't do neither without the support and help from the central government and the local government.Because too much administrative interference from the central/local governments onto the CNC,the CNChad to take too much work from the governments,therefore could not perform their independent functions as a fully autonomous organization.Voices appeared in academia and during the practice,wished to cut off the extended hands of government to change the existing running mode of the CNCas an administrative department.However,this is just a meaningless wish now.This is actually the main difficulty ofthe CNC currently facing besides of other difficulties such as turning members of the CNC into public officials,the conflicts between home owner association and the CNC,and making the CNC as an official department,etc.The article is trying to deliver the following solutions and pathways to enhance the development of community by analyzing the difficulties and problems of the CNC encountered during running the community.First,the restructuring of the main body of community management.Setting up a specialized group to undertake the administrative role stripped from the CNC;and no more administrative role will be assigned to the CNC by local government,the street offices and the district offices;the newly established group will take all those jobs.Re-organizing departments of the district government and in street offices;streamlining those sections in street offices;restructuring the system of community organizations and setting a two level system for decision making and task performing.Second,the transformation of the main body's function in communitymanagement.The main body of management in communities includes political parties and government,autonomous organizationsand some social intermediary agencies,etc.The CNC is not only a representative organization in communities,but also an important major managing body for communities.To enhance the autonomy feature of the CNC,the first job is to clarify the functions for the CNC,for the government,and for the street offices,and then adjust their internal structural establishmentaccordingly.Third,the authorization of financial management to the CNC.The government needs to allow the CNC to have the corresponding financial management rights independent from the government controls.The government should allow the CNC to establish various funding channels and fund-raising system,such as allowing them to accept private,enterprises and institutions donations.This will weaken the dependence of the CNC to the government funding support and therefore lay a solid foundation for their autonomy.Last,an active role from residents in the community.It should be recognized that residents in the community are the major contributors for the management/development of community.Their sense of participation to the community management/development is an important social resources of the community.Their participation is the key to the management/development of community,and the theme for the management/development of communitywill be meaningless without their participation.