Research On The Equalization Of The Basic Public Services Between Urban And Rural Areas In China

Basic public culture, which is an important part of socialistadvanced culture and the cornerstone of great development andprosperity of socialist culture, plays an important role in promotingthe development of socialist advanced productivity. Along with theproposition of the transformation of our governmental functions andthe service-oriented government, the functions of the governmentgradually transfer from management to service and at the same timethe social and public service functions has gradually became animportant function of our government. With non-competitive andnon-exclusive properties, although the basic public cultural servicesare the standard public goods, they are still not so perfect in China inthat unequal phenomenon is more prominent and serious gapsbetween urban and rural residents having access to public culturalproducts and services exists. So the studying of the basic publiccultural services can not only make our government execute thefunctions of public service better, but also ensure citizens’ basiccultural rights and citizens’ basic cultural needs.In recent years, many brilliant achievements has been made inour country’s economy and became the world’s second largesteconomic entity. At the same time, our government has also madegreat efforts in the performance of the public service function. In 2006, the Chinese government proposed the strategic program of"equalization of basic public services in "11th five-year plan", makingthe equalization of basic public services become a policy to beimplemented and the equalization of basic public services become ahot issue in the development of our country’s economy. Meanwhile,many scholars and experts have specialized in equalization of basicpublic services from different perspectives respectively and madegreat achievements. In this paper, based on the basis ofpredecessors’ research and with reference to the12th five-year planof national basic public service system, the equalization of urban andrural basic public services in our country is discussed from the viewof culture.Based on the previous research, the public services, the basicpublic services, the basic public cultural services and the theory ofequalization are analyzed firstly, and the basic connotation of theconcept is defined. Secondly, we introduced the typical practice ofequalization of basic public cultural services, and summarized thevaluable experience obtained in the process of the equalization ofbasic public cultural services at home and abroad. Then, the largegap and the uneven development of China’s basic public culturalservices existing in urban and rural areas are told. Combined with thegovernment’s related data concerning the status of the urban andrural basic public cultural services, we carried on the contrastresearch and briefly analyzed the cause of uneven development in thebasic public cultural services between the city and countryside.Finally, combined with the former two parts with regard to theintroduction of the valuable experience at home and abroad and the analysis of the uneven development between urban and rural areas,the suggestions of promoting the process of the equalization of basicpublic cultural services in the system and policy areas between urbanand rural areas are proposed.