[摘 要] The state-rural relationship is a key factor affecting the effectiveness of rural grassroots governance. On the basis of reviewing the historical changes in the state-rural relationship since modern times, this paper analyzes the characteristics of the current state-rural relationship, the challenges it faces, and its impact on rural governance. Explore ways to improve the effectiveness of rural grassroots governance by further adjusting the state-rural relationship. It is recommended to further promote the reform of township institutions and the transformation of functions, strengthen grass-roots supervision, give full play to the role of public opinion supervision, vigorously promote the construction of law-based villages, resolutely curb unreasonable petitions, effectively promote villagers’ autonomy, strengthen bottom-up governance, and try out full-time village cadres. Improve the normalized cadre stationed in the village assistance mechanism.
[关键词] rural governance; state-rural relations; governance effectiveness; rural revitalization
[中图分类号] D63
[文献标识码] A
[文章编号] 1674-7453（2022）06-0077-07
Rural revitalization, effective governance is the foundation. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposes to strengthen the basic work in rural areas and improve the rural governance system that combines autonomy, rule of law and rule of virtue. The 2022 Central Document No. 1 also emphasizes the need to highlight practical effects to improve rural governance. However, some recent cases in rural society show that this foundation needs to be further consolidated, and rural grassroots governance still faces difficulties.
There are many factors restricting the improvement of the effectiveness of rural grassroots governance, including a small number of grassroots inaction, chaotic behavior and formalism, the lack of autonomy of villages and villagers in the governance of rural public affairs, the hollowing out and aging of some villages, and the lack of rural governance. The ideology of the people is still outdated, sectarianism and sectarian forces are still prevalent within a certain range, and so on. Behind these many factors, there is a key structural factor – the state-rural relationship, which is a deep-seated variable affecting the effectiveness of rural governance. The state-village relationship is embodied in the county-township-village relationship, especially the township-village relationship.
At present, some rural villages are governed by strong men, while others are weak and lax. These different manifestations of the current rural governance dilemma are all related to the state-rural relationship that is in the process of adjustment. In fact, with the disintegration of the feudal order since modern times, Chinese society has undergone drastic changes and transformations, and the country and the countryside have continued to undergo historical changes, which directly affect the governance order, governance structure and efficiency of the countryside. Reviewing the grass-roots governance in traditional society and the historical changes in rural areas since modern times, and placing the problems and phenomena in the current rural grass-roots governance into the historical changes in the state-rural relationship, it may be possible to strengthen the understanding of improving the effectiveness of rural grass-roots governance. .
1. Historical changes in state-rural relations since modern times
The grassroots governance structure of traditional China has always attracted the attention of historians and sociologists. As Mr. Fei Xiaotong pointed out, “the period from the county yamen to the gate of each house” is “the most interesting and also the most important, because this is the traditional Chinese centralized autocratic system and local autonomy. The key to negotiating a democratic system.”[1]Grassroots society includes two layers of centralization and local autonomy. Officials dispatched from the central government reach the magistrate, and the top-down track no longer extends downward. In the grass-roots society below the county government, there are three informal power systems: the professional civil servant group attached to the county government; A group of gentry composed of officials. The top-down imperial power and the bottom-up gentry power constitute the “dual-track politics” of power operation.[2]On the surface, only the top-down political track executes government orders, but in fact, once the decree is handed down, it turns to the bottom-up political track after passing through the special agencies of the police and the township. At the heart of the bottom-up track lies the local gentry. The gentry ranks first among the four people, with a respected status, presides over the local area, educates the people, and serves the village. healthy operation.
Since modern times, with the disintegration of the feudal system, the rural governance system at the end of the old ruling order has also been greatly impacted, experienced drastic changes, and even fell into disorder and decline for a long time. On the one hand, the abolition of the imperial examination system blocked the succession routine of the local gentry. The traditional gentry, especially the middle and low-level gentry, cut off their livelihood and hope of upward mobility, and lost their support for running local affairs and educating and leading the people, and began to change: some Moved to towns, some slumped into retirement, some became evil gentry. The original Four Minority Society disintegrated, governance and Taoism were separated, modern intellectuals cultivated under the new education system were increasingly alienated from the rural people, and the traditional and organic cycle of keeping local talents returning to their roots for the local society was broken, and the culture was cultivated in the countryside. Many people are no longer used by the countryside, and the countryside has experienced a continuous process of talent loss and flushing.[3]On the other hand, since the end of the Qing Dynasty, due to internal and external aggression, the situation of centralized power and incompetence is no longer appropriate. New administrative agencies and taxation agencies were set up, the formal power end agencies continued to sink, and the integrity of grassroots self-governing units was destroyed, blocking the original dual-track politics and the buffer of gentry power. Governance is in trouble. In particular, the implementation of the Baojia system during the Republic of China built a top-down political track in front of and even inside each house. As politics is a part of social life, the delimitation of political units is naturally constrained by natural, historical and social conditions in life. Baojia is defined by number and strives to be uniform, which is incompatible with the units and patterns formed by long-term evolution in the local area. A more serious problem is the selection of Baojia. Baojia is an administrative agency that executes the orders of the higher authorities, and at the same time, it is also the executor of legitimate local public affairs. In the traditional political structure, these two tasks are shared by three kinds of people: the police in the yamen, the local covenant and self-government. The leader of the group. This setup made the gentry who used to be local leaders face a difficult choice: either give up their local position and join a new administrative system, but lose their independent status and the support of the people; or stick to their local position, but no longer have a platform to act and space, and put oneself in a dangerous and disadvantageous position; No matter what the local gentry chose, the Baojia system actually blocked the bottom-up political track and put rural society at a passive disadvantage.
The extension and sinking of power and the excessive extraction of resources have broken the original political structure, elite ecology and cultural network of the countryside, causing the original village leaders to retreat, but providing opportunities and space for the rise of new forces that are not bound by morality and ethics. In addition, due to population pressure, external economic intrusion, etc., the community of some villages collapsed and disintegrated. Under this circumstance, the old gentry class continued to dissipate, local tyrants and bad gentry and village-level villains took advantage of the situation to steal public offices and became the mainstream of the rural regime. At that time, there was a popular saying in the society that “no gentry is not inferior, and every local is a tyrant”, so that the National Government had to put forward a call to overthrow the local tyrants and evil gentry.[4]According to Du Zanqi, after entering the 20th century, the state regime in the process of modernization ignored various resources in the cultural network and tried to cut off its connection with the traditional and “backward” cultural network, thus losing the communication between the rural elites and supporting role; the gentry group in rural society has experienced a transition from a “protective state broker” that enjoys local prestige and represents local interests to a certain extent to a “profit-making state broker” that uses its position as a profit-making tool, resulting in The “involution” of the state’s grassroots regime.[5]
The important task of overthrowing the disadvantaged local tyrants and reorganizing the rural social order has historically fallen on the shoulders of the Chinese Communist Party. In the article “Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan”, Mao Zedong proposed to “overthrow the local tyrants and evil gentry” and “overthrow the feudal rule of the local tyrants and evil gentry”. During the period of the New Democratic Revolution, the Communist Party of China led the peasants to carry out land reform, so that “the peasants acquired the land”,[6]Successfully explored a revolutionary road for the countryside to encircle the cities and seize power by arms, effectively rebuilding the rural social order. After the founding of New China, the practice and trend of extending state power to the countryside continued. In the early days of the founding of New China, the village level was once designated as a first-level political organization. It was not until the Constitution of 1954 that townships were clearly defined as the most basic political organization, and the village level was withdrawn from the political system. The subsequent collectivization and people’s communes included every village and every villager, and had a stronger top-down control over the countryside. After the reform and opening up, the state-rural relationship has undergone profound adjustments and changes again. The general trend is to rebuild the rural grass-roots governance system from the bottom up. The state power has retreated in the countryside and then generally shows a moderate contraction. The township and village governance system of rural grassroots governance.
2. Characteristics and Challenges of Current State-Rural Relations
Since the reform and opening up, especially since the beginning of the 21st century, with the rapid advancement of industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization, the relationship between the state and the village has been continuously and profoundly adjusted, which is directly reflected in the shortage of township resources, the differentiation of villages, and the changes in the relationship between the two. .
The implementation of the household contract system, the disintegration of the people’s commune system, and the restoration of the grass-roots political power in the townships marked the country’s economic and political contraction from the village level to a certain extent, laying the foundation for the bottom-up governance and reconstruction of the countryside. The villagers committee, which originated from the beneficial exploration of Guangxi villages, has developed into a mass autonomous organization of self-management, self-education and self-service by villagers elected by villagers in administrative villages under the jurisdiction of townships and towns nationwide. Originating from the “Laixi experience”, the “three supporting structures” of rural grassroots organization construction (with the construction of party branches as the core, do a good job in supporting the construction of village-level organizations, and strengthen the overall function; on the basis of villager autonomy, do a good job in supporting the construction of democratic politics, start Internal vitality; relying on the collective economy, doing a good job in supporting the construction of socialized services, and enhancing village-level cohesion) has become the standard model of rural organization and governance since the 1990s, improving the degree of farmers’ organization and consolidating the party’s ruling foundation in rural areas. . Throughout the 1980s, state-village relations (and township-village relations, as a concrete manifestation), exhibited a situation of benign adaptive interaction.
At the turn of the 21st century, my country carried out the reform of rural taxes and fees and abolished agricultural taxes, which greatly reduced the burden on farmers, effectively eased the contradictions between rural cadres and the masses, and improved the efficiency of rural governance. After tax reform, the grass-roots government, which used to rely on collecting taxes and fees from rural areas to maintain its operations, has changed to relying on higher-level transfer payments. During this transition, the behavioral patterns of grassroots governments are also changing. Some scholars believe that the grass-roots regime has changed from the absorption type in the past to the “suspended type” with looser relations with farmers.[7]The relationship between towns and villages and villagers has also weakened to a certain extent. At present, in the power system of some township governments, the personnel management of internal units lacks autonomy, and the existence of vertical units (county-level departments dispatched to township institutions) sometimes weakens the essence of the functions of township governments. Under such circumstances, townships have been given important missions, “a needle under a thousand lines above.” Under the imbalance of powers and responsibilities of townships, the effectiveness of grassroots governance has been affected to a certain extent.[8]
At the village level, on the one hand, with the implementation of villager autonomy, although the autonomy of villages and villagers has been enhanced to a certain extent, due to the existence of institutional inertia, and the ideology of some people is still outdated, there is still a lot of improvement in democratic literacy. Therefore, in general, villages and villagers are still relatively passive, and the political indifference, degree of participation and enthusiasm of villagers are all related to this. On the other hand, the differentiation within the village and the dissolution of the sense of community make the public affairs of the village more and more complicated. With the deepening of the market economy, the further commercialization of agriculture, the prevalence of migrant workers, and the frequent flow of people, the erosion of the countryside (the loss of rural elites) proposed by Mr. Fei Xiaotong has intensified. The internal division of some villages continued, the cohesion declined, and the sense of community weakened. The rural moral concept of acquaintance society that values righteousness over profit is gradually weakening, and the warm interpersonal relationships in the traditional human relationship society are increasingly utilitarian, and the value and spirit of maintaining rural social order are gradually disintegrating. For a period of time after the reform of agricultural taxes and fees, the supply of public goods from public finance to some villages has decreased. For limited policies and resources, not every village has the opportunity to obtain them, and secondly, red tape exists within a certain range, and local powerful figures They usually have local resources such as certain economic resources, which can meet the needs of the village to a certain extent. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, through poverty alleviation and the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, a large amount of resources have been continuously invested in the countryside, and the overall appearance of the countryside has been greatly improved. However, the distribution of resources among and within villages still needs to be improved. .
At the same time, the relationship between townships and villages has also continued to change. Townships have limited resources and their influence on villages has declined. Township cadres lack the power to enforce the law, and they are required to do their work with emotion. In the face of some unreasonable petitions, village “hard stubble” or village problems, sometimes they are helpless. During my research in the central villages, the author learned that there is a local saying about the relationship between townships and villages. In the past, village officials and ordinary villagers were “respectful and afraid” of township officials, but now they are “three thirds”. , that is, they are regarded as leadership, bargaining, and personal feelings each account for one-third. To get out of the predicament, township cadres tried various methods. One attempt is the informal operation of formal power. Township cadres introduce principles of daily life and folk concepts such as favor, face, common sense, etc., into the process of the operation and exercise of formal administrative power. The informal operation of this formal power practice of “soft and hard” is largely a helpless use of local resources due to the lack of formal power resources. Government officials at the grass-roots level had to make up for and strengthen the power of the state in the countryside by exploiting local resources outside the formal power.[9]Another attempt is to appoint some powerful figures in the village who can respond and meet the requirements of the township to the cadres of the two village committees, and then rely on these figures to maintain order. Therefore, in a few places, it can be seen that townships are involved in the election of the two village committees. The purpose is to push the favorite candidates to participate in village government affairs, so as to assist in the completion of key responsibilities including maintaining stability and prohibiting burning. But in fact, in addition to the powers conferred by the official positions, the elected powerful people often lack the moral authority that the gentry group had in the past, and it is difficult to convince the public, and it is increasingly difficult to effectively handle the affairs of the village. Some villages are in a state of weakness and laxity, or are dominated by powerful figures, or public affairs are difficult to advance, and disputes between neighbors are difficult to resolve, and the governance of rural society is in a dilemma.
What needs to be added is that since the 21st century, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the relationship between urban and rural areas has undergone profound and drastic changes. Through various departments and localities, the project system has been continuously invested in villages, especially poor villages, which has greatly improved the development and appearance of rural infrastructure, public services and other aspects, and narrowed the economic differentiation between and within villages in different regions. And the level of disparity has also improved the state-rural relationship to a certain extent, and strengthened the presence, influence and authority of the state and grass-roots governments in the countryside. In recent years, the special campaign to eliminate gangsters and evils and the normalized fight against gangsters and evils that followed have effectively attacked and deterred a group of “village tyrants” and effectively prevented the erosion and destruction of rural grass-roots organizations by underworld forces and clan forces. Influence, purifying the rural social atmosphere, and laying a foundation for the improvement of rural governance.
3. Adjust the state-rural relationship and improve the efficiency of rural grassroots governance
The dilemma of different forms of current rural governance can be regarded to a certain extent as the result of historical changes in the relationship between the state and the countryside in the past. The rise of local tyrants and evil gentry in the early 20th century stemmed from the abolition of the imperial examination system and the continuous downward extension of state power at that time. The extension and sinking of power and the excessive extraction of resources have broken the original political structure, elite ecology and cultural network of the countryside, making the original village leaders retreat, providing opportunities and space for the rise of new forces, and the local tyrants and evil gentry have taken advantage of the situation. . Since the reform and opening up, the relationship between the state and the countryside has undergone profound changes. The general trend is that state power is gradually shrinking from rural society. After the adjustment of township institutions and the transformation of functions, they are also faced with the predicament of power and responsibility imbalance to a certain extent, resulting in the phenomenon of townships struggling to cope with or even relying on powerful villagers to carry out work in some places. The shrinking of state power to some extent leaves room in the villages; the weakening of the community in the villages, the lack of public resources, the temptation of land and various collective resources, etc., provide the soil for some irregular behaviors.
In order to effectively improve rural governance, continue to enhance the effectiveness of rural grass-roots governance, and consolidate the governance foundation for rural revitalization, it is recommended to further adjust the state-rural relationship, focusing on the following tasks.
We will further promote the reform of township institutions and the transformation of their functions, so as to realize the matching of responsibilities and authorities. Clarify the scope of functions and powers of towns and towns, give them the necessary administrative and financial powers to perform their functions, and change the inability to perform functions and assume responsibilities caused by the inconsistency of duties, responsibilities, and powers. Further clarify the division of functions and powers of township and county-level departments (so-called vertical departments) stationed in townships and towns, and improve the coordination and linkage mechanism between the two parties. The comprehensive promotion of rural revitalization is a systematic project, which has the characteristics of a typical “combination of strips and blocks”. It requires the joint efforts of departments and localities to form a strong synergy. Therefore, at the county and township level, it is even more necessary to strengthen the overall coordination between the sections. In addition, to improve the treatment of township staff, and to implement the policy of subsidies for township work and allowances for difficult and remote areas, it can be considered that the income of township staff is higher than that of staff at the same level in county-level organs.
Strengthen grass-roots supervision, establish a fault tolerance and correction mechanism, and give full play to the role of public opinion supervision. Strengthen grassroots supervision, especially strengthen the supervision and accountability of discipline inspection and supervision departments, and curb grassroots ineffective performance of their duties or inaction or disorderly conduct. Establish a fault tolerance and correction mechanism to prevent extensive enforcement of discipline and law enforcement and simplification and one-sidedness of accountability, eliminate the fear of being held accountable for mistakes made by grassroots personnel, and encourage grassroots employees to let go Hands and feet start a business. In addition, the supervision role of public opinion should be brought into full play. After individual cases of abduction and trafficking of women were exposed by the media, they quickly turned into major public opinion incidents. Subsequently, the local government successively issued relevant information bulletins, acknowledging the existence of women abduction and trafficking, and announced that criminal measures would be taken against the parties concerned. Online public opinion has played an important role in supervising the local government to find out the truth of the incident. It is recommended that the relevant departments take measures to provide a relaxed environment and convenient conditions for the news media to face social problems and dare to expose and criticize immoral behavior and bad atmosphere.
Vigorously promote the construction of rural areas under the rule of law, and resolutely curb unreasonable petitions. In the rapidly changing rural society, the old rules are no longer there, and the new rules cannot be implemented overnight, so the realization of governance efficiency has become a problem. In the long run, the rule of law is the general direction. It is a natural process for villagers to accept and adapt to the rule of law. On the premise of respecting the will and acceptance of the villagers and maintaining social stability, promoting the construction of villages governed by the rule of law as soon as possible is conducive to reducing the pains of transition and passing the transition period and transition period smoothly and smoothly. Realize rule reconstruction and order reshaping. It is necessary to continue to promote the introduction of laws into villages and households, and to create demonstration townships and villages for democracy and the rule of law. In addition, the author has learned from research in many places that at present, the phenomenon of unreasonable petitioning still exists to a certain extent. Many towns and villages have some old petitioning households who do not have reasonable reasons but often petition, and their demands are difficult to satisfy. Unreasonable petitioning takes up a lot of time and resources in towns and villages, corrupts the local atmosphere, and affects the effectiveness of rural governance. It is recommended to further improve the petition system, resolutely curb unreasonable petitions, and reduce the pressure on township petitions to maintain stability.
Effectively promote villagers’ self-governance, develop whole-process democracy, strengthen bottom-up governance, and realize the two-way connection and organic combination of top-down and bottom-up. From the actual situation, the bottom-up governance in the current rural governance is relatively weak, and the villages and villagers are relatively lack of autonomy. Therefore, it is necessary to continue to promote villager self-governance and enhance the level of bottom-up governance. At the same time, strengthen the supervision of the general election of the two village committees, standardize the electoral procedure, control the bribery in the election, and eliminate the negative influence of clan and faction forces on the village election. Strengthen democratic consultation and democratic supervision, promote the openness and transparency of village affairs, strengthen the construction of village affairs supervision organizations, and fully implement the “four discussions and two openness” system (the village party organization proposal, the village “two committees” meeting to discuss, the party members meeting to review and the villagers meeting or Villager representative meeting resolutions, resolutions and implementation results are made public). Strengthen the supervision of village cadres, and promote the connection, communication and cooperation between grass-roots discipline inspection and supervision organizations and village affairs supervision organizations.
Trial implementation of full-time village cadres, and improve the normalized cadre stationed in the village assistance mechanism. With the advancement of urbanization, some villages are hollow and aging, which affects the governance efficiency to a certain extent. The “Strategic Plan for Rural Revitalization (2018-2022)” proposes to promote rural revitalization by classification, and divide villages across the country into agglomeration and upgrading categories (the existing large-scale central villages and other general villages that will still exist, accounting for Most), suburban integration, characteristic protection, relocation and merger (villages located in areas with poor living conditions, fragile ecological environment, frequent natural disasters, etc., villages that need to be relocated due to major project construction, and particularly serious population loss) village) four categories. The problem is that it is not obvious and easy to determine which type a village should fall into. The classification of villages is largely determined by planning. In the context of rapid changes in urban and rural society, it is not easy to do a good job of village planning in a scientific, objective, open and fair manner. For those villages that are hollow and aging but still need to continue to develop, we still need to find ways to build strong organizations and increase vitality. With the historic shift in the focus of the “Three Rural” work, various resources continue to be concentrated in the countryside, which will attract a group of capable young people to develop in the countryside. It is necessary to seize favorable opportunities at the right time, select suitable talents, focus on cultivating young people who are willing, enthusiastic and capable of participating in rural work, and select and strengthen rural grass-roots organizations. It is suggested that the full-time village cadres should be piloted in places where conditions are available to improve the level of remuneration, so as to relieve their worries, stimulate their enthusiasm and motivation for work, and help improve the efficiency of village governance. At present, the job responsibilities, job content, and working hours of village cadres are close to “full-time”, but the relative benefits are too low and unattractive, resulting in capable villagers, especially young villagers, reluctant to participate in the work of the two village committees. In addition, it is necessary to improve the normalized cadre stationed in the village assistance mechanism, continue to send the first secretary and work team to the key villages, appropriately increase the care and encouragement for the young cadres stationed in the village, encourage and select the second-line personnel including those who have retired to the village. Retirees and retirees with professional skills will return to their hometowns to participate in the village.
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