Constructing A Sound Operational Mechanism Of Rural Government

The model of villager self-government for the rural community was given its natural birth in the early 1980s, following the collapse of the People's Commune system. Promoted by the central government, the model has spread widely in the rural communities of our country. It has now become the grass-roots level democratic system and rural governing model with Chinese characteristics. The present paper makes a case study of villager self-governing practice in the rural community in DaKou, Yancheng, Jiangsu Province. The 20-year long self-governing practice in DaKou has profited the rural community in various respects, such as upholding the villagers' democratic rights, developing rural community democracy and maintaining rural social order. However, the village also meets with the problems which exist in all rural governments in China, such as the infrequency of villager conferences, the unrepresentativeness of villager conferences, the monopoly of community affairs by the party branch, the withering of villager committee's rights, and the tense relationship between villager committee and the party branch. Therefore it has become important for researchers to study how to further construct a sound operational mechanism of the rural government. Researchers have put forward a series of suggestions and measures dealing with the universal problems in rural governing practices. Following an extensive review of the existing solutions to the above-mentioned problems, a new type of rural governing form is proposed in this paper, which aims at a central leadership of the Party by means of villager conferences. Based on Villager Committee Organization Law of People's Republic of China, the author elaborates the legal basis of this new form, analyzes the underlying social structure and social organization theories, discusses the necessity of the new form in rural economy and social development and argues that this organizational form is a guarantee of the system for the development of rural community democracy, supported by Lenin's power balance theory and elite democracy theory.