Rural Power Struggle And Villagers’ Autonomy

With the tax reform and the development of township enterprises in the rural area, farmers have lighter burden and more income. More and more rural residents wants to play a role in the political stage. So, the fight for power in the rural areas is getting more and more intense nowadays.The case of a fight for power in a village in Binzhou Shandong province tells this: in the fight for power between the two Committees in the village, there are different villager factions and town governments playing different kinds of roles. As one villager can get little recourses, many villagers corporate with other individual or agencies to exchange, share and collect more recourse. This is how the "factions" are formed, which is used to earn mass basis in the fight for power. Villagers of different factions, leaded by their head, launched fierce election and fight. The town governments can not control the election directly, but they can take advantage of the power they have to make plans for the candidates who are controlled by them to make achievements and further get promotion. Villagers of the neutral factions gains little from anyone’s winning, so they usually wait and see, negatively participating in the political activities and sometimes they even behave free-riding.The fundamental cause of the fight between different factions is interest. Villagers will weigh personal needs and public needs to take strategies; The town government can take intervention or non-intervention actions towards the election of Village Committee and the fight for power between village officials,while villagers can object to the government or keep silence,which formed a type on game model. The two Committees of village, bound by the government and the villagers, will take corresponding strategy according to the conduct of the counterpart, which make the two Committees end in endless fight.The fight between the two committees for power calls for more and more bribery in election. The election environment has been seriously destroyed and grassroots democracy becomes a mere formality. As a result, villagers have little passion to participate in election, incomes of village become less and the debts become heavier. On the other hand, as farmers have more income and they know more about the present leaders, they have reference in the next election. Meanwhile, when the fight for power between the two committees grows in intensively, the consciousness of villagers in safeguarding their rights, in democracy and law have been promoted greatly.The conclusions of this paper are as followed:Firstly, the transformation of economic environment has changed the interest demands of both the villagers officials and villagers. Economic interest instead of social interest, becomes the main factor in village election. Secondly, the traditional village clan forces are now replaced by different factions based on economic interest. Thirdly, the town governments do not directly appoint the village officials any longer. They are neutral on the surface but in fact they support candidates to their advantages to obtain performance.