A Study Of Supply Of Rural Public Goods In China

China is a developing country with huge amount of rural labors. The progress of agriculture, rural development, the production and life of rural residents are inseparable from rural public goods supply in China. Since 1978, China’s rural economic reform beginning at that time, the household contract responsibility institution replaced people’s commune institution, which brings significant shift of agricultural production incentives and releases rural productivity. Rural residents changed their identity from simple producer to production operator. The reform greatly promoted the growth of China’s agricultural economy. But since 1984, there appeared the "three rural issues" which prominently perform as agricultural production stagnation, peasants’ overweighed burden, comparably decline of farmers’ income, more and more rural social problems. This is due to many causes. In addition to system vicissitude caused by economic structure readjustment, a substantial clause is that the family joint production contract management system disintegrates the rural public goods centralism supply under former collective economy institution, while new supply system do not be established rapidly. The situation causes agriculture public infrastructural facilities to stagnate. The rural public goods’ supply level does not synchronize with the national economy development level. Meanwhile it is also asymmetrical with the entire socio-economic development. There is a huge gap on public goods supply between rural and urban areas. The long-term poor public goods supply also causes rural resident living cost to increase greatly meanwhile their income grows slowly. Agriculture modernization development is restricted seriously too. Therefore, research on rural public goods supply undoubtedly has very important theory and the practical significance.The public goods supply is one of basically economic theory question. By the Western traditional economics theory, "the public goods" should be supplied by governments. Adam Smith, John Mill, Samuelson, etc. hold this viewpoint. But other economists, like Ronald H. Coase, Golding, consider that public goods may be provided through market tunnel. Daniel Kahneman and Vernon L. Smith prove the existence of public goods voluntary supply. Brubaker, Stieglitz and Tiebout conduct research on public goods community supply. In China, the researches in this field are not a lot before 1990s. From 2000, "three rural issues" becomes a hot topic. The domestic experts have conducted relative research from multi-disciplinary, such as induced institutional change, community supply, non-profit organization supply, and multi-dimensional supply. The researches involve present situation, problems, and countermeasures of rural public goods supply. Although the researches have made many progresses, systematic characteristic of these researches is still obviously insufficient. In this case, this paper studies the rural public goods supply question basing on economic theory and former researches. The paper puts forward some countermeasures which have very vital significance.From a practical point of view, current supply of rural public goods does not adapt to the reality of rural economic and social development. Comparing with developed countries, there are still significant gaps. The supply shortage of rural public goods and its unreasonable structure have seriously affected the production and living of rural residents, agricultural modernization and rural economic development. If these problems can not be solved rationally and effectively, China’s urban-rural dual economic structure will be worsen. It will affect stability and sustainable development of Chinese socio-economic system and will hinder China’s modernization process too. Therefore, carefully summing up the lessons of rural public goods supply, reforming current rural public goods supply system and enhancing supply efficiency have vital practical significance for sustainable development of rural economy and society.This paper utilizes the basic theories, the newest research results and fundamental research methods of political economics, western economics, public economics, development economics, public management science, sociology and the history.Unifying related institutions, policies and measures of the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council, the paper conducts comprehensive system’s research on rural public goods supply theory, its history evolvision, essential features, current situation, prominent contradictory problems and origins. This paper puts forward the comprehensive system’s policy proposals to solve the rural public goods supply problems. The author hoped to contribute some for building theory system of rural public goods supply.This paper studies on rural public goods and the supply system from the empirical perspective. By analyzing the basic theory of public goods supply in rural areas, the paper probes the history, current situation, important contradictions and the institutional arrangements. Finally, the paper gives reasonable and sound policy recommendations.This paper tries to carry on the innovation on three aspects:Innovation on content. Being Different form formal researches which mainly focuses on government and market, this research also considered community collective supply and resident voluntary supply. This paper considers characteristics of rural public goods, Chinese present situation, characteristics, malfunction and the insufficiency of each supply ways. The paper studies efficient paths to supply rural public goods through multi-level and multi-channel analyses.Innovation on angle of view. In present stage, Chinese rural public goods supply is influenced by history, political, societal, economic and cultural factors. Therefore, this paper do research work not only from angle of view of public choice theory and public welfare theory, but also from the angle of view of sociology and history. The open research angle of view helps the research content to be richer.Innovation on research method. The paper uses system analysis, the contradictory analysis and the comparative analysis methods. The paper also does normative analysis basing on new institutional economic. These research methods help to analyze problems more carefully and thoroughly. These research methods also help to form a set of reasonable effective countermeasures to solve Chinese rural public goods supply problems.This paper involves six partial contents:The first part (introduction) mainly expounds background and significance of the research. This part carries on a summary to the existing research literature, reorganizes public goods theory systems. The part involves the public goods supply theories either. Among research on foreign theory, the emphasis is the theories about definition of public goods, public goods supply and supply institutional arrangements. Among research on domestic literatures, the emphasis involve reason analyzes of short supply of rural public goods, institutional arrangements and supply system reform. Finally, the part proposes research technique and main content of the paper.The second part (the first chapter) mainly discusses the theory of public goods and the rural public goods supply. Through research on basic theory, the part explains the definition, connotation, characteristics and classification of public goods and rural public goods. The part defines the rationale structure of this paper, and further elaborates the influence of rural public goods supply to rural social economic development.The third part (the second chapter) mainly carries on an analysis on the historical evolution of Chinese rural public goods supply system. Firstly, the part studies different rural public goods supply system from the early years of PRC to 1979, and analyzes the institution vicissitude of rural public goods supply system. Then the part discusses intrinsic mechanism and relation between the public goods supply institutions and efficiency of public goods supply. The part also studies the influencing factors of rural public goods supply system and their influence to Chinese rural public goods supply.The fourth part (the third chapter) mainly studies on the characteristics of present rural public goods supply system. From different angles of view, this part considers function and the influence of institutional factors on rural public goods supply.The fifth part (the fourth chapter) is mainly carries on an analysis on Chinese rural public goods supply reality. The part analyzes recent development, new problems and the reasons of current rural public goods supply reality.The sixth part (the fifth chapter) is built on the base of former theory and analysis on China’s rural public goods supply. In view of the current problems of rural public goods supply system, this part makes reasonable and perfect policy suggestions from different angles including government, market, farmer individual non-profit organization and individual donation.