The Research Of Village Democracy’s “empty Nest” Phenomenon

Mr. Fei Xiaotong wrote in Local China, “The man who makes a living by farming directly is bound to the land...... But generally speaking, this is one of the characteristics of the local society.” Here,the “local society” is a kind of crystallization,which is formed and accumulated by the villagers from generation to generation concerned by themselves and the cognitive and practical experience of local social phenomenon. The feature of local society is the recessive gene of villager autonomy’s emergence and development. Professor Yu Jianrong also has made interpretation, “The local society has been a society that it was born and died in itself under the local constrains”. “The ‘local’ has more cultural significance, it emphasizes social characteristic that related to traditional farming culture.” “It means village and soil.”Based on the villager autonomy policy, the "four democracies" is a great achievement of the construction of basic level democratic politics in rural areas of China. In the past thirty years, villager autonomy has made remarkable achievements, which has profound significance to rural areas even the whole China on the aspects of economic and social development and overall progress. In this paper, the author uses the concept of “rural democracy”, which originated from the "four democracies", and it is a kind of spontaneous political participation form based on the “local” background. The “local democracy” in essence requires the things that related to everyone should make decisions by all of us, the established rules everyone must obey and abide by, it is a kind of regulating mechanism.Specifically, "four democracies" as a system design began in rural areas is farmers spontaneous behavior, but from the beginning, it contains rules system and mechanism that based on local characteristic, that is, the villagers spontaneously elected and made the organization named “village committee”, it can manage their own affairs; the village committee organizes the villagers to develop village regulations and abide by; the villagers make decisions jointly about economic distribution and other important matters, and so on.The implementation of the "four democracies" is to maintain, realize and safeguard the economic, social and cultural interests of the villagers, the core of which is the operation,implementation and protection of the villagers’ autonomy.However, since the implementation of the "four democracies", the debate on the issue concerning the spontaneous political participation form has not stopped. Moreover, the villager autonomy in practice is also facing a series of difficulties and problems, especially in poor areas. This seriously restricts the further development of the villager autonomy,which has a negative impact on the stability of the rural grass-roots society. The poverty area has dominant features in today that rural labors flood into cities, farmers has low cultural quality and low degree of organization. This results in a serious “empty nest” phenomenon,the rural grass-roots democracy practice also appeared the more serious “empty nest”phenomenon. The author uses “empty nest” that is intended to arouse people’s attention,especially since entering the new century, the "four democracies" in theory controversy has no repose. Many problems becomes increasingly prominent in practice, including democratic election formalizing, democratic decision externalizing, democratic management anomie and lack of democratic supervision, and so on. Village autonomy has encountered many difficulties and problems in practice and is in the state of the development bottleneck. The rural governance is more dependent on external forces, and it is therefore declared that “autonomy is dead”. Then how to solve the problems in the villager autonomy form is not only a problem to be solved and studied in the rural grassroots work, but also becomes the core problem of rural governance system reconstruction and even rural democratic politics construction.The core of the research content is based on the angle of the grassroots democratic participation, is to interpret the present village democracy’s “empty nest” phenomenon on the aspects of its developmental process, measurement of value and samples. First of all, it is to explain the farmers’ “empty nest” identity in the process of village democratic construction, including the absence of subject, unclear cognition and indifference attitude and so on. Secondly, it is to analyze the phenomenon which is about village democracy’s“empty nest” in regime and practice on the two angles of theory and practice. In the practice of village democracy, the rule of law is lagging, the public power is intervention, the village organization exceeds its authority. These special backgrounds causes democraticelection,democratic decision, democratic management and democratic supervision also showing “empty nest” phenomenon. Thirdly, in order to find out the root, the content is to research the “empty nest” phenomenon from the following three aspects, economic poverty,political cognition insufficient and system construction faultiness. Finally,the thesis proposes some advice about the development and reconstruction of village democracy: promoting economic construction and farmers’ economic autonomy, improving farmers’ subject cognition and consciousness, enhancing farmers’ organization degree, these advice are to shape the theory and mechanism of “organized farmers” and "four democracies", then make some innovative ways to build rural democratic construction.Promoting the construction of rural grassroots democracy and protecting the rights of farmers effectively are the great realistic problems concerning rural revolution and development and stability. As the main aspect of the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the rural grassroots democracy is the inner reflection of socialist system superiority. The 17 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has established the system of grassroots autonomy as one of the four systems of democratic politics in China. It also has requested to insist this system as an important part of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The third plenary session of the 17 th made the decision that “improving the system of rural democratic management”. This content is a great system in the process of the future’s village revolution. In 2014 No. 1 Document put forward “the implementation of village autonomy system and standardization”, “exploring effective realization forms of village autonomy in different conditions”; In 2015 No. 1 Document put forward again“exploring effective realization forms of village autonomy according the local conditions”.Why and how to explore effective realization forms of “local democracy” require the academia to take back the connotation and practice logic of villager autonomy, abstractly to study the inner value of China rural grass-roots democracy, development process and future of villager autonomy. The reason why the author chooses this issue to research is to analyze the history,content and operation of Chinese rural management and villager autonomy. Then expose the dilemma and think over it in the angle of politics to expect a bright future. The final purpose is to put forward some theoretical guidance and feasibly proposed policy for theplight of rural grass-roots democratic practice that Chinese people faced through theoretical researching and empirical analyzing and look forward to the development of rural modernization and stabilization.